“Perhaps, but you can’t crawl down a cliff...” He led her away, helping her traverse the uneven ground. “And even if you could, you would make a perfect target for an arrow.”
“I’m a perfect target for everything right now,” she whispered. “I don’t want to stop.”
“You would travel through the twilight and onward into the dark now? Farther away from all you once knew when you begged me not long ago to go back? I’m not easily fooled,” Vedikus warned. He had expected more of a fight once the dust had settled, once he had shown her the world beyond. It was a terrorizing view, being at the brink of a shrouded world without being able to see into it, not knowing what lay within. Only knowing more horrors awaited.
It was home to him. He was bred on top of old bones and furs, the mist licking at his newborn body.
All he knew of Savadon and his female’s world was what he had been told by his mother and the occasional wanderer. That life in the light was easy, that it had a softness to it and that humans brought that softness into the labyrinth where it didn’t belong. He also knew that softness was begotten by corruption and delusion.Oh, the deviousness of humans.
He could be devious too.
Vedikus gazed back over the colorless mist, picturing the bog that was soon to be in their future. If he peered hard enough he could almost imagine the toothy, jagged mountains on the other side and even harder still, the green lights that would indicate the trails leading into and out of Prayer.
“If I stop,” she rasped, “my thoughts will become the thing I focus on and I don’t think I can bear them. I never got to say goodbye to my...”
“To who?” Vedikus urged. Was there a male in her life? He had not thought about it before and gripped Aldora tighter.Another male.The need to feel hot blood bubble up between his hands quickly overcame him. The ground sloped and he quickened his steps.
“My family.” Her voice was laced with sadness.
He heard her say the words but the black cloud filled his skull. It was a dark thing that had a mind of its own. One he easily succumbed to and one he usually only felt in the throes of battle, at the zenith of a berserker rage. The thought of something taking away his prize and claiming it for themselves infuriated him. Not because he felt something for the human female, that anything she had to offer wouldn’t someday be his, but that his power over her might be affected.
“You have no family now, only me,” he growled.
“I’m only a means to an end with you. One I’ll accept because you haven’t hurt me, but that will never change the fact that I have a family out there, one that I’ll miss for the rest of my life... however long it is.”
Vedikus pulled Aldora after him and off the rocky slope and into a circle of boulders and ruins deteriorating on the cliff’s edge. “And yet you don’t want to stop long enough to think about them. Is missing them so painful?” He never missed his brothers, only their usefulness on occasion.
“Yes,” she breathed at his side.
He gritted his teeth and moved them deeper into the old ruins.
Crumbling stones covered in moss quickly surrounded them as he made his way through, listening for any beasts or monsters that may have made camp. There were old tools and broken wares piled up throughout from passing bands, and the deeper he moved into the ruins, the more the old stone walls were covered in symbols and spellcasts. Whether they were put there with paint or dried blood he wasn’t sure and didn’t stop to investigate. There would be leftover magic lingering and if it were dark magic, he did not want to spend the effort to clear it out. Not while he had a female to take care of.
They stopped short of where the shadows began. “From here and until daybreak you’ll think of nothing but me.” Vedikus picked up the cord that he’d let fall and tugged her close. “Do you understand, female?” Her body shuddered in response.
“Aldora,” he warned, grasping her hair and forcing her to face him.
Tears glistened her eyes. Vedikus scrutinized them, appreciating the amber sparkle they made. A feature he wanted his future bull-sons to have.
“I’d rather be sad and thinking of them than give any more of myself to you!”
“You’ve given nothing of yourself to me.” He squeezed her flesh.
She wrested from his hold and he let her go. “I’ve given you my life, my life and my trust, and how could I? You’re not even human.”
“Your life was never yours to give, only to take, and I have taken it. It is mine, female.” He turned back to the passageway that led deeper into the ruins, deeper into the ledge, letting his rage cool. “You will give your thoughts to me tonight and I’ll ask nothing more from you. Wait here.” He left her to return outside, ripping armfuls of vines and blisterwood from the gnarled overhanging trees before hefting a boulder to block the entrance. When he returned, he found her sitting against a broken wall, rubbing her calves.
She stood, using the wall for support as he approached. “Follow me,” he ordered, bringing the blisterwood to his lips and lighting it on fire.
Darkness consumed them quickly and the air grew colder with each step. His hooves clacked against the stone, splitting them as he moved through. Aldora followed behind him obediently and he wondered if she had really given him her trust.
The ruins veered off into rooms that were covered in webs and nests, some of which he burned down as they passed. The smoke drove the smaller critters away. Aldora clutched his back at one point as they continued through.
It wasn’t until the trickle of water could be heard that he stopped. Vedikus moved to the source and scouted the small space he had chosen. The room was deep within the ruins, in the ground, which had its advantages and disadvantages, but there was no such thing as true safety at night in the mists. Death prowled the land after dusk in a myriad of forms.
He placed the blisterwood in the center of the space and well away from the water flowing down the wall. He slipped his hand in the water where it pooled at the bottom before it flowed away into the stones below.
“Is it fresh?”
