“Aetos, the usual?”

“Okay,” said Aetos as they summoned their magic in response to the command from the count. Till now, they’d managed to keep the demon wolves at bay with well placed arrows and timed Magic Missiles. They had expected to conserve their mana and use it when required but it seemed that the moment of need was now and so they obliged.

Aetos, the smaller man of the two summoned what could only be the wind. The lackadaisical breeze wrapped around the carriage suddenly whipped itself into hazy streams of air that seemed to be almost visible to the eye. He moved his hands as he whispered incantations lost in the roar of the wind. The horses seemed to go faster by just a little. Then they seemed to be like greased lightning. Faint green wings seemed to form on the hooves of the horses as well as the sides of the carriage. Once manifest, the carriage moved much, much faster than any of the monsters here. From the distinctive wings of wind on both the carriage and the horses, this was the very intricate and very useful wind spell, Wings of the Sylph.

“Not bad, my friend but you forgot this. Serve, crash.” Light spilled out of the sky as branches of lightning struck the flying monsters like the roots of a resplendent tree. The scent of ozone and burnt flesh was only a mere memory as the carriage sped away at a speed that even the trained horses were finding odd.

“You’re a monster, you know,” said Aetos as he sighed and sat down a little exhausted. Now was the time to let the mana recover. Who knew what spells they would need soon now that speed was their only purpose?

“Tell me, don’t you think that he was over the top right now? Why didn’t he use a stun spell instead of the Thunder Crash spell?”Aetos grumbled to the ones who were seated within the carriage. Surely they would understand that the spell Zyste cast was unnecessarily showy and did nothing while his spell was of some worth.

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“Don’t bring others into this mess, Aetos, I merely wanted to let the beasts know that we of the House of Gryphon are not prey. We are the predators.” There was a smug quality to the voice that simply meant that others wanted to punch the lights out of Zyste but few ever managed that.

“You simply wanted to show off to the boss right? Didn’t you say that the boss’s cousin sister was worth giving your left n…”

“Hell no,”stuttered the other man and it was quite clear as to why. Zyste despaired as to why he was even friends with this green haired omen of ill will. And that statement was said in confidence. After all who could ever be worthy of their boss’s sister? Yet, men could dream right. Or so all of the thoughts ran in his mind. That was because he knew that the Boss would know now and there was no way that he would survive the night to see dawn.

“BETTER SAVE UP ALL OF YOUR ENERGY. ONCE WE GET BACK WE’RE GOING TO TRAIN TOGETHER.” This night never seemed to end as he sighed. These two were the best that he had but they were also the ones that should never have been part of the army. For goodness sake, they still called him boss as though he were the leader of some gang of thugs. Still, they were good men, loyal and most of all strong. He could not avoid looking at the ghost of the smile on the boy’s face. At least they were good enough to function as comic relief then.

The two on the other hand were now silent. Nothing caused them as much fear as what seemed to loom in front of them. They had to train with the Count. Zyste and Aetos did not learn their lessons as they continued to gesture and point at each other speaking a language that was wholly of the body. Still even in the midst of this silliness, Magic Missiles continued to fly and hit the mark of which ever wolf even came close.