“So he just... told you to go home?” Eloric asked again.
“No, he told us to go home,” Aeris responded. “You’re welcome by the way. I’ve answered this question at least five times and you’ve yet to show proper gratitude.”
“I just don’t understand why,” Eloric said again, looking down at the loose dirt beneath him and refusing to acknowledge Aeris’ request for appreciation.
“Well, I told him I had been struggling, and, well, I probably vented a little more than I should have, but he was... understanding. Comforting, even,” Aeris responded, the words felt like a confession. “Which is more than I could say for some of my own family. He told me my connection to the Tether would manifest when it meant to and that I should take the rest of the day off when he realized how much I’d been struggling with the Tether. Doesn’t sound all that complicated, really.”
“It’s an interesting gesture coming from a man without a single good word said about him,” Eloric responded, doing his best to mask his irritation with Aeris’ naivety and the obvious jab at Aedin. “This is the same man who sent an entire Althalite unit to our front door to collect Lyceum dues just hours after they were late. He doesn’t seem like the type to comfort anyone.”
“He’s from Althalos, of course people are going to tell unflattering stories about him,” Aeris responded. “Most of the stories we hear are probably coming from people who were upset with him about something, so I doubt they are the most credible...”
As Aeris rambled on in defense of Headmaster Restin, Eloric thought he heard his name echoing in the forest behind him. The call caught him off-guard, he scoured the grounds behind him where he thought the sound came from. But as he examined it, the forest line was empty, and he could not see anyone on the path or otherwise. Must’ve been the wind, Eloric thought, still confused.
But as his eyes dragged across the treeline to the right, he noticed something else: five large figures, armored in Althalite colors and brandishing swords in their dominant hands. They were behind the first row of trees that broke into the pathway, but as he saw their pace quicken, instinct kicked in, and in the same breath, he shoved Aeris into a sprint alongside him and yelled at him to run.
Aeris looked back at them, immediately listening to his brother’s command. For a stretch, the pair of them stayed on the dirt path, but Eloric quickly realized they’d have a bigger advantage in the forest; it was familiar terrain for them and harder to navigate as a foreigner donned in full armor. Althalites never bothered adjusting to the forest ecosystem around them. They just tore what they needed down and built over it instead.
“What in the hell is happening?” Aeris asked, panic setting deep in his question. “Why are they chasing us?”
“Just keep running,” Eloric said. “And whatever you do, don't slip.”
If the guards were from Althalos, they were probably associated with the Lyceum, and if that were true, then it was also likely they had records of where they lived, Eloric formulated. This meant it wasn’t simply a question of outrunning or losing them. They needed to get mom to safety and warn Aedin about what was happening. As he thought through a plan, he didn’t dare slow his pace.
Even without a connection to the Tether, Aeris was able to outrun the guards inside the forest. Frustrated, the guards took to using their own connections to hurl large stones the size of their heads at them as they gained distance. A few came close, but it didn’t seem like this was a particular attack that Althalite guards practiced.
If it were just Eloric, who could call on his worldbind, he likely would have lost them somewhere in the forest. But leaving Aeris alone wasn’t a question, so he’d have to figure out a plan while they ran. When they gained enough distance, they would stop, catch their breath, and try to come up with something to do. Eloric couldn’t run into town, no one there could stand up to five Althalite guards, and he refused to even consider putting others at risk by bringing them into whatever situation they were currently in.
His best plan was to run, long enough to hopefully buy Aedin enough time to finish his hunt. He’d probably have Breka with him, and if anyone were going to protect them, it was them. He had no idea how long they would be gone for, though, and he suddenly remembered hearing him talk about a visera sighting. If he were off hunting visera, he wouldn't be back until after dark, at best. At worst, he’d be gone for a few days. Shit, Eloric thought.
“Listen,” Aeris said, gasping for breath as held his arms above his head. “You have to run ahead of me. Get to the house, get mom out, find Aedin, and we will meet up at Breka’s shop as soon as I am able.”
“I am not leaving you,” Eloric said. It was a point of fact, not a counterpoint in a debate.
“I will be fine,” Aeris responded. “I can outrun them well enough and keep them at a distance to buy you some time, and you can move a lot faster when you aren’t holding back for me.”
“And what if you can’t?” Eloric said. “You slip one time, make one wrong move, and you’ll have a sword through your chest. You’re safer if I am here, and I am not leaving you alone.”
“And we are all going to die if you stay,” Aeris said, angrily. “They are from Althalos, probably the Lyceum. Which means they know where mom is, where Aedin will be, and if they kill us first neither of them will have any warning. They’ll be caught completely off-guard. So stop acting like him and fucking trust me.”
The accusation pushed a pang of guilt straight through Eloric. As he looked over to his little brother, he could see resolve—and desperation—in his eyes. He hadn’t been the only one plotting as they ran, and, as much as he hated to admit it, Aeris was right. There was no conclusion where they came out alive if they just kept running and hiding. They needed to get everyone to safety, and lose them long enough to figure the situation out...
“I can do this,” Aeris continued. “I am not helpless, but mom is, and you are the only one who can get to her in time. I know the forests, and I am sure they are after me anyway. I doubt my meeting with the headmaster was a coincidence.”
He looked out to the forest line, where faint footsteps became audible once more. As they drew closer, Eloric opened up his connection, feeling part of the weight of his body drop. His fingers tingled as the Tether moved through him, and he looked down at Aeris once more.
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“Don’t get caught,” Eloric said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Get to the shop unnoticed. We will find Aedin and figure out what the hell is going on.”
“Good plan, why didn’t I think of it?” Aeris smirked, smacking Eloric's right arm as he stood up from his squat. “They are getting close.”
“Go,” Aeris said. “They’ll see you run off alone and then keep searching for me. I’ll buy you enough time.”
Eloric nodded, and then he forced himself to run, looking back as Aeris braced himself to run as well. His movement caught the attention of the group, and, to his surprise, they followed him. But as he looked back to gauge the distance, he only saw four of the Althalite on his tail, and it didn’t look like they had any intention of pulling off. Either one had gone back to report the chase, or they had stayed back to find Aeris. Either way, he had to trust his brother could handle it as he pushed deeper into his tether, picking up speed as boulder after boulder flew in his direction.
Eloric gained enough of a lead to eventually lose them, but he didn’t relent. Eventually, he leaped over the creek that signaled his home was near and made his way into the familiar property. As he approached, someone stood under the small awning as his mother opened the door. He had to fight panic as he thought about the missing guard, who might’ve decided to head straight here instead. To his great relief, Eloric saw the details of the man’s features as he closed the distance. Silver hair—a good sign—wrapped tightly into a bun, standing a few inches taller than his mother at the door.
Even as he was being chased, Eloric could recognize the overbearing and boisterous positivity from a league away. It was Taris. Relief flooded his body as he made the realization, followed shortly by another wave of panic as he remembered what was running after him. He yelled out to them as he slowed himself to a stop, just a few feet from the shed in their yard.
“We need to leave!” Eloric yelled. “Mom, Taris, come on, let’s go now. They are coming for us.”
“Wait, what?” Taris asked. “Good to see you too, Eloric. What’s going on? Why are you so worked up?”
“Eloric, calm down, my love,” his mother said, calmly, bringing a hand to his cheek. “Who is coming, dear?”
“I don’t have time to explain,” Eloric yelled. “We are being followed by Althalite, they are trying to kill me or Aeris. But they know where we live, so we have to—”
“You aren’t going anywhere,” a callous voice called from the treeline. The tall, barrel-chested man was in the leftmost position in their line. “Didn’t expect you to run off on your own without your brother. Tsk tsk tsk. Who knows what could have happened to him?”
The man smiled, and the other three chuckled. Taris walked in front of Aeris, carefully standing equidistant from the group of men, Aeris, and his mother. “Not sure what business you have with my little brother here,” Taris gestured toward Aeris. “But I suggest you find your way back to the Althalite encampment you crawled out of.”
“Our business is the brats, you Somnari scrum,” the man said. “And from the looks of it, you are more bark than you are bite. What’s your trade anyway? Gardener? Or maybe a basket weaver?” He lifted his hand and pointed it toward the shed, ripping a long piece of wood from the roof and launching it at Taris, who ducked just in time to dodge its impact. The piece of wood slammed against the house, causing a whole side to crumble. While Eloric and Aeris became distracted by the damage, the four men rushed.
Two of them toward Taris, one toward his mother, and the last toward Aeris. The first two borrowed a few more pieces of lumber from the shed, unleashing them at Taris, who threw himself to the ground as he avoided the onslaught, but they were fast, and by the time he had pulled himself up, two men had one of his arms each and used the leverage to shove his face into the dirt with devastating impact. Eloric watched as he lost consciousness, propped up by nothing but the Althalites.
The third had no trouble getting to Adisa, who had begun to run toward Eloric. When he caught her, he swiped the back of his hand cleanly against her chin, and plunged his sword deep into her stomach. As her body began to fall, the guard caught her and threw her limp body inside the house. Before the fourth could grab him, Eloric screamed at the sight of his mother’s lifeless body, launched himself upward, landing on top of what remained of the roof of his home in a desperate attempt to get to her.
“Put that one into the house with her,” the fourth man with a slender frame and high-voice demanded. “We will take this one together.”
From the yard, the pair of Althalite threw Taris’ body into the door on top of his mother, and in a quick motion, two of them had scaled the side of his house in full armor with impressive ease. Both men lifted their swords, pointing the tips at him in a direct challenge. Eloric leapt off the rooftop toward the now completed dismantled shed. But he almost lost his footing, slipping on a piece of stray wood as he came down onto the shed. A moment after he stumbled, he felt the pommel of a sword smash directly into his temple, darkening his vision for a moment and sending him fumbling a few feet.
As he rose from the ground, his vision still failed him, but he felt the handle of an old garden scythe he used to trim the wildgrasses and wheat with his dad years ago. He gripped it, hard, raising it between himself and the Althalite as his vision began to return. The man laughed as the other three guards lined up around him.
“You think you can defend yourself... with a garden tool?” he laughed. “It doesn’t even look sharp enough to cut bread. Surrender, now, and we will make it painless.”
“Why are you even attacking us?” Eloric asked, gripping the scythe even harder. The sun had already crested over the mountain side, but there was still no sign of Breka or Aedin anywhere. It was just him and this dull scythe against four Althalite guards. He needed time. “We didn’t do anything. We broke no rules, made no slight, especially not one that would deserve death from a killing squad. Just tell me why you are doing this before we meet our end.”
“Don’t know,” one of the men smiled, closing the circle around him with the other three guards. “Orders are orders, and the order said your brother was a threat and that you knew too much.”
“Could have just been you two, if you had just accepted your fate quietly,” another chimed in behind Eloric. “But now you’ve gone and gotten your sweet mother killed, not to mention that friend of yours. He will need to be sorted out too now, thanks to you.”
All four raised their swords in unison, and Eloric’s grip squeezed tighter as he gave the curved blade a wide, shaky swing, earning himself another round of laughter from the men as they grew closer, crushing the shaft of the scythe with one or two blows from their swords.
“Get away from me!” Eloric yelled. As soon as the phrase left his mouth, he felt a crash on the ground beneath him. Dirt flew high into the air in a thunderous clap. When it settled, Eloric struggled to understand what he was seeing. The beast was covered in white and light tan feathers with a blackbeak.
A... Vael’Strix?
A Vael’Strix that stood twice as tall as any of the Althalite men, who were now raising their swords upward at its head. It had opened its wings to fully cover Eloric from any attacks, not that the guards currently had any intention of ignoring the large creature for a chance at him.
It lunged forward, lifting its talons and driving them straight into the neck of one of the guards. Blood erupted from the gash, like slag from a volcano. The other three guards charged, quickly, lifting boulders and stray pieces of wood and sending them directly toward the beast. It dodged most of them with relative ease, but a large piece of timber clipped the Vael’Strix’s wing, causing a loud crack to emanate. What Eloric was sure amounted to a broken bone didn’t seem to deter its attack, and the beast lunged again at the three men. Eloric couldn’t help but feel like its movements were clumsy, not as elegant as he thought the Somnari vael’kin would be. If he was lucky, the maneuvers would be at least enough to get him out alive though, assuming it didn’t come for him next.
But what the Vael’Strix lacked in grace it made up for in sheer power. A swift whip of its wing caught one of the men’s chest, crushing his ribcage and leaving him coughing up blood on the floor, gasping for a final breath that would never come. He watched on as it dove headfirst toward one of the remaining guards, currently positioned directly behind him. Its talons came dangerously close to marring Eloric’s face, but it hit his target with lethal precision. Its beak found its way completely around the man’s neck, its head ripping cleanly off with terrifying ease, leaving behind nothing but part of the man’s neck bone behind.
The last of them—the one who threatened Eloric’s mother and Taris—made a run for it. Eloric expected the Vael’Strix to launch after it, but, to his surprise, it didn’t move as it made its way to the treeline. Instead, it just watched, intently, as the fleeing man got closer to the forest. The fleeing guard looked back in a desperate attempt to see how much distance he had put between them, but before he could refocus on the path ahead, Aeris appeared, swinging an Althalite sword in a perfect arc through the man’s neck. The body dropped without so much as a twitch, and the head rolled slowly downhill back toward the house.
Breka then emerged quietly from the forest next to Aeris, walking quickly toward the bobbing head, her entire tunic covered in blood. She put a foot on top of it to stop its trajectory and looked over toward Eloric as the giant feathered body of the Vael’Strix collapsed.