It is a howl, but it is closer now, much closer. The unnatural, soul-chilling cry of the Batlaz hound echoes across the plains, seeming to come from every direction at once.
My gaze snaps to the west, where the cry seems loudest. He is already looking, his entire body rigid, a low, warning growl rumbling in his chest.
Ice floods my veins, a frigid tide that steals all warmth and hope. They are on our trail. They are gaining. We cannot rest yet. We cannot rest at all.
8
XYLON
The howl is a poisoned dagger in the night. It is a sound made of magic and malice, and it promises a relentless pursuit.
I do not hesitate. My hand, a thing of claws and brute strength, closes around her arm. She is impossibly small, fragile. I pull her along, my long, powerful strides eating up the ground, forcing her into a desperate, stumbling run. We must move. We must put distance between us and that sound.
The world is a storm of sensory input, a riot of information that was once my torment but is now my only map. The wind is a living thing, carrying stories that I read with my entire being. It brings the scent of the coming dark elves, a faint taint of cold iron and colder ambition. It brings the foul, unnatural stench of their hounds, a miasma of wet fur, stale blood, and the crackling ozone of dark magic. The scent is a brand on the air, a promise of the pain they bring.
The wind also brings other tales. To my left, the sharp, pungent fear-scent of aSurufamily, huddled in their burrow deep beneath the earth. To my right, the clean, mineral smell of a spring weeping from a rock formation. Ahead, the dry, dustyperfume of night-blooming moon petals. Every scent is a path. A choice.
My body screams its own story. The wounds on my flesh are a dull, hot throb, a fire that her cool paste has soothed but not extinguished. The exertion of the escape, of the fight, of this desperate run, has hollowed me out. A gnawing, ravenous hunger claws at the walls of my gut. My muscles, starved for fuel, ache with a deep, shuddering need.
The beast inside me smells theSuru.
Food. Hunt. Kill. Eat.
The command is a jolt that travels through my limbs. My pace slows. My head turns toward the scent of the burrowing creatures. The saliva floods my mouth. The hunger is a living thing, a predator inside the predator, and it wants to be fed. It would be so easy. So simple to veer off, to rip open the earth and silence this gnawing ache with a meal of hot flesh and blood.
I look down at her.
She is struggling to keep pace, her breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. Her face is pale in the moonlight, her eyes wide with terror. But she does not stop. She does not complain. She runs, fueled by that stubborn courage I can smell on her like a second skin. She is small. She is fragile. And she is my only purpose.
The beast can starve.
I force my head forward, away from the scent of prey. I ignore the gnawing claws of hunger. The hunt for food is a distraction. The hunt that matters is the one at our heels. I focus on the other scents, the other paths. The Dark Elf scent is stronger to the east. The hounds are circling, trying to catch our trail. But the clean scent of water… that is to the north. Straight ahead.
Water hides. Water washes away the trail. My father’s lessons, shards of memory from another life, are my guide.A warrior uses the land the gods provide.
I change our direction, pulling her toward the sound I can now faintly hear beneath the hissing of the wind—the distant, steady roar of moving water. The terrain grows rougher. We scramble over ancient, weathered stones and through thickets of thorny bushes that claw at my hide and tear at her tunic. She does not cry out. She just grits her teeth and pushes on.
The roaring grows louder, a constant, deep-throated thunder that vibrates through the soles of my feet. We break through a final line of scraggly trees and stop before it. A cliff face, thirty feet high, a curtain of pure white water crashing down into a frothing pool below. The air is permeated with cool mist that clings to my skin, a blessing on the heat of the curse.
The scent of our trail stops here. But the hounds are smart, magically so. They will search the edges, circle the pool. It is not enough.
I scan the cliff face, my eyes piercing the gloom. The beast sees only a wall of stone and water. The man sees a pattern. A place where the rock behind the falls is darker, hollowed out. An overhang. A cave.
I nudge her toward the edge of the churning pool. She looks from the waterfall to me, her eyes questioning. I do not give her time to doubt. I push her forward, gently but firmly, into the icy spray, toward the curtain of water.
She gasps at the cold but moves without question, disappearing behind the cascade. I follow, the full force of the crashing water a brutal, shocking weight on my shoulders. It is a deafening, blinding world of thunder and spray.
And then we are through.
The space is small, a shallow cave no deeper than my own height. The roar of the waterfall is a deafening, constant wall of sound, sealing us in. But it is dry. It is hidden.
She stands in the center, shivering, her arms wrapped around herself, her tunic soaked through. I nudge her deeper, toward the relative warmth of the back wall. She obeys, sinking to the ground, her body trembling with cold and exhaustion.
I turn and curl my massive body in the entrance of the cave, my back to her, my face to the thundering wall of water. I am the door. I am the shield. Let them come. They will not touch her. My massive, clawed fist clenches and unclenches at my side. The warrior is on guard.
We wait in the roaring darkness. Time ceases to exist. There is only the thunder of the water and the clean, calming scent of her courage behind me.
A new sound cuts through the roar. A frantic, high-pitched yapping. It is distorted by the water, but it is close. Too close.
