* * *
Once the men were buried, Raxx continued to scour the scene for evidence into the early hours of the morning, all the while pleading silently to find something, anything, to lead him in the right direction. He did another lap of the clearing, for what must have been the hundredth time. This was exhausting.
Suddenly, Raxx’s foot slipped in the snow. His wings shot open to steady himself and he looked down. A familiar blade’s hilt stuck up out of the snow. Raxx snatched it and held it up. This was Haros’s sword. The demon had a unique custom blade that was etched with mysterious marking and symbols. It had been a souvenir from his time training with the Black Bones, an underground battle school back in Banesteppe.
So Haros had lost his weapon? That didn’t bode well. Raxx weighed the sword heavily in his hand. He stared at his reflection in the blade for a moment, focusing his majick.
“Haros!”Lephas shouted. His voice sounded distant and far away.
“Get out of here! Go!”Haros roared in response.
The shadow demon glanced at the blade curiously. Haros was telling Lephas to make a break for it. The commander must have escaped.
Raxx glanced across the clearing once more. Like a magnet, his eyes were drawn to a dense patch of undergrowth. Majick tingled through his body as he approached. Brushing aside the foliage, he sagged with relief. Two people had passed through here, side by side. Raxx tucked Haros’s blade into the satchel at his back and faded back into the shadow realm.
He traced the prints – one heavy, another much lighter – through the woods. It could only be Lephas and the princess. Raxx had no idea what had happened to Haros, but as Haros’s body wasn’t in the clearing, Raxx could only hope that his friend was still alive somewhere.
As the shadow demon followed the commander’s path, the forest began to grow thinner and the ground rockier. Before he knew it, Raxx was standing at the edge of a cliff, staring down into another dark expanse of forest. The wind whipped at him, but thankfully Raxx couldn’t feel the cold in his incorporeal state.
The commander and the princess would have certainly died if they had gone over this edge. The drop was far too sheer to even contemplate jumping off. He looked down over the brink, relieved to see no mangled corpses at the bottom.
Raxx hunted around for anything else that might hint at what happened here, but he found nothing. He growled under his breath with frustration. It was no good. Though an expert tracker, Raxx had lost them. He glared over the edge once more before turning around and heading back to the clearing.
The shadow demon stopped to gaze solemnly at the fresh graves for a moment before gathering his thoughts and heading back towards the main road. Raxx needed to inform Zelrus of everything that he had discovered. The king needed to know that the trail had gone cold and Haros may have been captured. Maybe the king would have some better ideas.
The journey back to civilisation passed quickly, Raxx sped ahead with adrenaline coursing through his veins. Lephas was an expert navigator, if he and the princess were still in these woods somewhere, Raxx had no doubt the commander would get the pair of them back to safety if he was able.
What concerned Raxx the most was how unprepared the commander and his men had been for a lengthy hiking expedition. They hadn’t taken much in the way of supplies; confident their mission would have been two or three days at the most.
Hestaesia was a harsh landscape to survive in at the best of times, she was ferocious and unforgiving. Lephas knew how to survive out here, but he had a prisoner in tow and they were undoubtedly injured and exhausted. Raxx had heard of many men, even some older and more skilled than Lephas, having their lives stolen by these frozen wilds.
Lost in thought, Raxx slipped and skidded when a bright blast of light speared from beneath his shirt. He fell down into the snow, disorientated by the sudden painful burning sensation that assaulted him.
The shadow demon hissed with pain and scrabbled for the crystal that he knew was hanging on a chain at his chest. With a brutal tug, Raxx snapped the chain from around his neck and hurled the crystal away into the snow, gasping for breath.
Once the sting from the hot crystal had passed, Raxx stared at it wide-eyed.
What the…
The crystal had been cool and dark for years. After Tabitha had forced him to keep it, promising that it would come in handy again one day, Raxx had the gem hooked to a chain.
Despite disbelieving the prophecy foretold by the witch all those years ago, he had been unable to throw it away. Raxx wasn’t really sure why, but he had worn it around his neck ever since.
Now he stared, dumbstruck, at the glowing crystal. It was shining brightly, just as it had done for Tabitha all those years ago.
Raxx scrambled through the snow, picking the crystal up by its chain to avoid touching it directly. It shone like the sun and Raxx winced, straining his eyes against the glare.
A horse’s snort echoed through the forest and Raxx whipped his head around in the direction it came from. He stuffed the crystal back into his pocket and jumped to his feet.
With the bright crystal hidden, his dark eyes adapted quickly. He froze, staring through the pine trees at the dark shape of a figure on horseback, plodding along the road.
Raxx stalked closer, fading further into the shadows so as not to be detected. Who was out here, this deep into the forest, at this hour?
The figure was slender and hidden beneath a navy-blue velvet cloak. The horse the mysterious rider sat atop was a beautiful specimen. It was unlike any horse Raxx had ever seen. Its coat was a rich reddish-brown colour with attractive white markings on each of its legs. It must have cost a fortune.
Raxx leapt from shadow to shadow, following a safe distance behind the traveller. His majick roared inside his head, clamouring for more information.
The horse snorted again and shook its head, the buckles jangled loudly in the silent forest.
