13-A Roar

The Beasts' Forest:

With the grey fog's disappearance, the evil spirit too dispersed with her last words directed towards Susan, leaving the place as empty as it could be.

Susan and Adam toured the two halls that just a few moments ago were full of grey fog, and they found nothing important inside except the highly decayed corpse of Atalya, nothing was left of it, just bones. She also had nothing on her, just her clothes.

Other than that, they found nothing, no murals, no relics, nothing at all.

Susan was able to see that Adam was more than just a bit disappointed about that.

she watched as Adam lifted the remains of Atalya using the gigantic hands before dropping them in a grave he built at the centre of the second hall, on the Tombstone he simply wrote, Atalya, A Danupira.

After that, they left the ruins in silence, but not before Adam gave them one last scan. On the way, Adam said nothing, and neither did Susan, each of them was thinking about something, lost in their thoughts.

A considerable period after they left the ruins, Adam turned to Susan and said:

"We will be setting our camp here for the night."

Susan just nodded lightly and started getting the space around them in order while Adam busied himself with setting the fire up and collecting some woods and twigs.

After they were done with that, as Susan was getting ready to see what to do for dinner, she suddenly felt those waves she felt so many times today again, if they were a bit clearer this time.

Turning to Adam, she saw that he was just standing there with his eyes closed, he didn't have his sword in his hand too.

"Good, there's nothing dangerous close by," he nodded as he opened his eyes, before adding as he met Susan's eyes, "I'll have to go and scout ahead a bit, we are getting closer to the more dangerous areas of the forest, we should be more careful."

Susan's felt as if her heart stopped for a second, and as the blood left her face.

"Don't worry, it won't take long," it seemed that her reaction was as clear as she guessed it was as Adam tried to console her hurriedly, "and I will be leaving a barrier around here, it should keep you safe... Just dont touch it..."

Feeling that no matter what she said she won't be able to change his mind, Susan could do nothing but nod at him reluctantly.

Adam then murmured something softly with his arms spread, Susan felt something move around them but wasn't able to put her finger on what it exactly was.

When she returned to her senses again, she saw that Adam had dropped his hands already, and around their camp, there was a barely seen transparent barrier.

Nodding to himself, Adam brought his attention to Susan again as he said:

"This barrier is enough to handle most the beasts and monsters around here, and it's going to hide you from them too, as long as you don't touch it, so be careful about that."

Done speaking, he turned around and left in a random direction.

Susan felt a bit of fear that what he said was nothing but an excuse to abandon her there and leave on his own, but one worried glance around her made her calm down a bit, Adam seemed to have left most of his stuff in the camp, the only thing he seemed to have taken was the sword on his waist.

'Adam for sure wouldn't have gone through all those problems just to leave me here...' She forced herself to calm down and threw those dark thoughts away.

Trying to find something to do to keep herself busy, she turned to the bag that Adam used for the ingredients he collected and had on him, deciding to start working on dinner.

Her thoughts though, were still outside her control, hopping from what happened to her and what the evil spirit, Atalya, said. And how it seemed that there were things she didn't know about herself.

Trying to bury herself in work worked somehow, but, around half an hour after Adam left, something weird happened, the atmosphere around her suddenly turned awfully oppressive, she noticed that something was off.

It took her a bit of thinking, but she soon knew what was happening, the forest was quiet, too quiet, there was no sound around her except the rustling of the leaves.

The more time passed while the forest was in this state, the bigger her fear became, that was the first time she felt anything like this since she set foot into the forest, she felt as if she was the only living being there, as if everything else had disappeared.

Her heart started beating fast and deafening silence all around her only made the sound it made that more enhanced in her ears.

Her beating heart, her heavy breaths and her irritated movements as she looked around her whenever she thought she heard something all filled her senses and made her start losing her cool and react even stronger.

Just as she was about to lose her cool and start screaming if anyone was there, because that's the only thing she could think of, another thing happened.

Roarrrr!

A deafening roar was heard from the depth of the forest, and as soon as it did, the forest came back to life again, birds flew from the trees and the sounds of animals running and roaring sounded out as if they were running from where the sound came from

The roar petrified Susan, the horror she felt couldn't be compared to anything she experienced in her life, as if whatever made that roar was something even her deepest nightmares won't be able to come up with, something made her experience fear from the depths of her soul.

Fortunately, that roar only sounded once, and a bit after that, the forest returned to its normal state, with that oppressive feeling covering it disappearing just like how it appeared at first, without a trace.

Susan didn't have to wait for long, soon after that roar rang out, Adam returned, making her release a breath she didn't even know she have been holding.

"Wha... What happened? What was that sound?" She asked with a bit of lingering fear.

Adam first gave Susan a scanning gaze, as if making sure that she was alright before answering:

"It was probably a monster from the depths of the forest, fortunately, it was just passing by, it should have returned from whence it came from already, you don't have to worry."

"Good... Good..." She murmured as she felt her heart settling down at last.

She also didn't know if she was only imagining it or not, but she somehow noticed that something was off about Adam, as if he was a bit tired.

She didn't push that or try to question him, all she did was nod lightly before returning to dinner with her heart a bit more at rest.

The more time passes that night, the more Susan felt as if something really wasn't alright with Adam, he was quieter than usual and he also was less lively than what she got used to these last few days.

Even though she really wanted to ask Adam about what was wrong with her and what he promised to tell her, she decided to wait a bit more when she saw him like that.

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They had a simple dinner before they both headed to bed to try and get some sleep, a lot was going through their minds though, so sleep was going to be hard.

***

"Just what are you?"

After a mess of weird, bloody and painful scenes, those words were the ones to wake her up from her sleep at the end.

She opened her eyes, jumping into a sitting position as she looked around her. She saw what she had gotten used to these last few days, the refreshing sight of swaying trees and different grasses all around her.

She fell again into her bed and closed her eyes, remembering that sentence that got stuck in her mind ever since that weird evil spirit that she and Adam met said it, they were four words only, but they affected her a lot and hit her at her core

It wasn't a surprise that she dreamt of that really, she stayed up till late the night before as she thought about what that weird spirit meant.

She remained in her bad unwilling to move for a long time, feeling tired and sluggish, as she thought of her life these last few days. her life changed in its entirety, and everything was flipped over its head.

"Come on, we have a long day ahead of us, no time for being lazy," still stuck in her thoughts, she heard the lively voice of Adam.

She hadn't even seen his face, but just from his voice alone, she knew that he was back to normal.

With a small sigh, she gave up and stood up to start a new day.

***

Lupri, City Centre, Arrival Square:

The arrival Square got its name from the biggest Reception Tower in Lupri, possibly the whole world, being there. This tower itself wasn't open for public use but was especially there to receive the Alpha's important guests, in other words, either the Royalty from different races or their representatives.

Nilus loved it at the Arrival Square, the square was one of the most famous and beautiful places in the capital, and it was a place he liked sitting and relaxing in, leaving his worries and problems aside, things he had a lot of these last few days.

The situation in Lupri wasn't that good these last few days, everyone felt the oppressive atmosphere that covered the whole Royal Capital in a while now as if something big had happened, or was going to happen.

Everything started with the heads of the strongest families in Lupri heading to the First's Castle five days ago, that on its own wasn't anything weird because they would go to the castle from time to time to hold meetings, but that time, something weird happened.

It didn't take them a lot of time to return, and it was clear to the many people who always kept their eyes on them that not all those that entered the castle had left it, many soldiers had disappeared, and there were even some rumours that Afokash lanik was heavily injured or even dead.

After that, things in Lupri changed a lot, the number of soldiers patrolling the streets increased and with that the number of patrols and their vigilance. That made things quite hard for Nilus and people like him.

Nilus hurried to stop himself from thinking of that, he had decided to come there to relax a bit, and not to think about all those things, even though even relaxing at his favourite bench in Arrival Square seemed like an impossibility after what he had noticed.

Since he got there, he noticed the arrival of four caravans of carriages followed by their escorting knights, and them passing the gates that led through the walls and into the tower's lands.

All the caravans were under the lead of unique carriages, they were uniquely designed, decorated and were bigger than normal, he was sure that even Lupri's noble families would face problems acquiring ones like them, but that wasn't what worried him, no, that was because of the emblems on the side of each carriage.

No one in Lupri would have found it hard to recognize those emblems, not to mention Nilus who knew the emblems of most prominent families in Tellor.

No matter how he tried to get himself to calm down, he couldn't, he already knew that some guests were coming to the kingdom today, but he wasn't expecting them to be these.

After a short while of him being in that state, Nilus sighed in resignation, he stood up and looked around him before his eyes fell on a homeless man who was sleeping in a hidden corner not far away from him.

"Get up, how many carriages went through those gates today?" Asked Nilus as he kicked the sleeping homeless man.

The homeless frowned with annoyance he lifted his head to look at Nilus, when his eyes fell on the man standing in front of him his expression changed drastically before trying to bring it back to normal and speak normally.

"Ten caravans, they were ten, nine of them held the emblems of the nine races of the Pact of Ten and the tenth was the phas'."

Nilus nodded lightly, things were as he suspected, a meeting was asked for the Pact of Ten, and with how things were those last few days, something big was probably going to happen.

With those thoughts still swirling around inside his mind, Nilus returned to his seat, leaving the homeless man wiping his sweat after he left.

Not long after Nilus sat down again, he heard a noise from behind the gates leading to the Reception Tower, that made him sit up straight as he threw his eyes at the gates.

He hadn't felt any movement in the mana; there were protection and concealment runic glyphs on the whole ground of the tower, so that was to be expected, but he knew that one of the caravans was probably leaving.

As expected, the big luxurious gates opened up and soon after, a group of knights followed by a fleet of well-made carriages under the lead of a big modestly decorated carriage giving a sense of graceful dignity got out.

The colour of the carriage was light green and on its side, there was a coat of arms, it showed a big green shield with five gems set in it in an inverted V shape surrounded by a faint radiance.

Nilus recognised the emblem at a glance, it was the phas'.

Nilus kept his eyes on the carriage as it left the gates, and then he noticed something a bit weird, one of the windows was open, and from inside of it he was able to see the gentle face of a young woman looking outside in wonder and awe, the girl had long black hair and gentle and fair facial features.

Just as his eyes fell on her, she turned around and their eyes met for a second before the window was shut by a light green radiance.

Even after that carriage had departed for many minutes, Nilus couldn't return to his normal state, for some reason, the expression and the eyes of that young woman when their eyes met refused to leave his mind, and the longer he thought of her, the harder and faster his heart beat.

"How can anyone be that beautiful..." There and then, Nilus forgot all his worries and problems as he thought of that black-haired young woman.