Riordan ran a hand over the back of his neck. Duane could probably be an ally if Riordan trusted him, but he just couldn’t do that so easily. He’d been using Daniel to sort out his own thoughts and the young man’s easy acceptance made talking way easier than Duane’s no-nonsense competence. Still, there was one thing Riordan hoped Duane would help with, for Daniel’s sake.
“Hey,” Riordan began, “I’m going to wake up soon, which keeps me out of this place. Daniel will be alone and asleep…”
Asking for help, even for someone else, had been taboo for so long. Riordan couldn’t find the words for it. Fortunately, Duane seemed to get what he was trying to say and took pity on him.
“I’ll watch out for the kid,” Duane assured him, slapping Riordan on the shoulder in a way that was probably meant to be friendly. Probably.
Riordan studied the man, but the truth was he didn’t have much choice. He either trusted Duane to do alright by Daniel or he tried to kick the ghost out. He almost regretted bringing Duane into this refuge, but he knew it was his discomfort speaking and that it had been the right thing. He had no reason to assume that Duane would harm either Daniel or Riordan. The urge to disembowel the ghost was all Riordan and his issues. Though, he’d be all over it if Duane did something to actually deserve it.
“Right.” Riordan acknowledged Duane’s confirmation with a sharp nod, shaking off the contact as soon as possible. He wanted out of here.
He had to be careful with intention because the next moment, Riordan blinked his eyes open in his pine-scented dirt nest. He felt an echo of pressure on his chest, like a weight had been set on him that kept him from breathing in properly. Ignoring his emotional discomfort and its physical effects, Riordan poked his nose out of the brush pile to check his surroundings.
The sun was still up, but lower in the sky and beginning to dip behind the treetops, if not the horizon. Some of the evening animals were already stirring in the long summer twilight, but Riordan didn’t hear or smell anything human nearby. It seemed he remained free of pursuit for now.
Despite the fact Daniel had only haunted Riordan for a single day, it still felt uncomfortably lonely to wake up without him. Riordan had plenty of practice surviving on his own, but not in being actively doing… anything more than surviving, really. Not in a damn long time. He had his family, then the military, then his team, and then he’d given up and just ran away from everything. No one had any positive expectations for him now, including himself.
The first step to surviving though was to keep going. Right now, that meant crawling the rest of the way out of the brush and putting one paw in front of another. He had a hike to complete and the sooner he did it, the sooner the death mage could be stopped.
Well, one other thing needed to be done first. Riordan’s stomach rumbled, threatening to gnaw on his spine. He hadn’t eaten anything in nearly twenty-four hours, which contributed to the drain on his energy reserves as his body used magic to make up for it. It was no wonder that his well was still less than half full. He had been pushing hard under less than ideal circumstances.
Fortunately, honey badgers were omnivorous, though they had a preference for animals and insects. This wouldn’t be the first time that Riordan chose to eat as a badger when food palatable to his human side was unavailable. The brush pile housed plenty of small creatures. A bit of hunting found him the entrance to a rabbit den. His claws ripped the den apart and Riordan snapped up a rabbit before it got away from him. He pinned a second one and snapped its neck while he ate the first one.
The taste of fresh blood and fur appealed to his animal side. His human side tried not to think about it too hard in the name of expediency. It didn’t help that rabbits can scream. He pulled his meal away from the den to finish it, seeing no reason to torment the survivors of his breakfast. Dinner. Meal. His sense of time was all fucked up now.
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Hunger sated, Riordan oriented towards the northwest and got walking again. He kept an eye out for water sources as he walked, finding another small stream with relatively clear water to drink from. It tasted of minerals and pine needles, but it kept him going. Endure and move on.
Riordan wasn’t staggering exhausted like he had been shortly before he slept, but he still felt achey. He hadn’t been this badly injured in a long time. He couldn’t remember if this feeling was normal for healing from serious injuries or if it was a side effect of the ritual. Or the haunting, for that matter. Riordan didn’t have enough information to make good choices yet.
He set his pace at a gait sustainable over long distances, knowing he still had miles left to go. How many miles was unclear, given he neither knew his exact starting location or where the outer boundaries of the territory would be. He stopped for more water whenever he found a decent source, but otherwise pushed onward without delay, the sun setting as he scurried across the countryside.
As he got closer towards his goal, Riordan searched for roads and other traveled paths. An established territory would have a boundary spell that covered their whole outer edge, even if they didn’t have a shaman of their own. Such things would have been set up when the territory was first settled, whether by a shaman of the community or someone hired, and then maintained by the place of power they had settled around. The magical marker signs leading up to the territory had to be set up separately though and most groups didn’t bother putting those anywhere that didn’t have enough travelers along it to justify the magical effort. This far from the killing tree, the benefits of being able to spot those outweighed concerns about being spotted by death mages.
Hell, maybe he’d get lucky and get spotted by another shifter before he hit the territory and Riordan would be able to pass on the information without ever having to interact with the boundary. He didn’t think his luck would work like that though, not after the last few days. The universe hated him, which seemed fair. Riordan hated himself. Still, he could hope for the best while expecting the worst.
Riordan spotted a creek, partly by the plants that grew densely along its banks. He kept it to his right as he traveled. The sun had fully set by this point, but he was pretty sure the creek was heading west-northwest. He was starting to see more of the rural grid roading now as well, having to scramble over roads that were either gravel or one giant pothole. There was no traffic on those roads at this hour, but also no territory markers. The creek eventually fed into a wide flat river with a stony bottom. There was a sign where it crossed under a decent road that declared it the Platte River. Riordan knew nothing about the geography in this corner of Michigan and once again wished for Daniel and his more local knowledge.
Shortly after that, Riordan began spotting houses through the trees on the other side of the river. Combined with the scents and sounds he was picking up, he was approaching a small town. He considered his options, whether to shift human to go into town more directly or skirt around the edge looking for more major feeder roads in the hopes of finding territory markers. In the end, he stuck as a badger and followed the river as it curved around the town. His human form was still muddy and disreputable. He would stand out more than he wanted, he traveled more easily as a badger, and he wanted to conserve his energy.
His choice was rewarded when the river once more ran up against a larger road, this one a two-lane highway. Getting closer, the signs revealed it to be US 31 and he seemed to be near a place called Honor. More importantly, when he focused, Riordan could feel that itch signifying a territory marker nearby. The sensation was almost impossible to describe to someone without magical senses, sort of like someone else’s phantom limb being pricked but you feeling it and it not really hurting either.
The marker itself glowed near the junction of US 31 and route 679. Invisible without magic sensing, it was the magical equivalent of the highway signs that tell you how many miles to the next major towns. In appearance though, the marker looked like a stylized bear made of sand and trees. When Riordan focused on it, he got the information that the territory boundary was only a bit more than a mile north of here and claimed by shifters.
Reading the marker also flared the magical brand burned onto Riordan’s forehead and crushed him with a sense of unwelcome that had Riordan hissing and pressing his belly into the gravel on the shoulder of the road. Exiles were not allowed in the territory, it practically screamed.
Too fucking bad.
Riordan started along the road leading north, keeping it in sight but moving off into the underbrush and yards further out now that he’d found a marker. He tried not to let himself dwell on how much dealing with these shifters was going to suck. He repeated a mantra that this was important and that they would understand why he’d push the limits of his exile terms because of this. Riordan wasn’t entirely sure he believed it, but what could he do? He wasn’t stopping a death mage on his own.
Somewhere nearby, a clock chimed midnight. As the bonging noise tolled out the time, a burning sensation crawled up Riordan’s left arm, from wrist to shoulder. It started as a dull pain and then flared to agony as the magical rope yanked on Riordan’s soul, the force enough to move him physically even as the magic hauled his human side to the surface. His body transformed without Riordan’s permission, but the pull didn’t stop there.
Riordan lost his grip on his physical self as his mind was pulled to the tree. The world faded to blackness filled with flowing fog and hungry rotting blood even as his body passed out too quickly to even scream.