He’d known that their attackers would be part of a larger group, and Keeran wasn’t going to risk another ambush from any friends that may come looking when the thieves didn’t return. Campfires far below showed the silhouettes of caravans, not dissimilar to the Peregrinians, but these lowlifes weren’t interested in trade. Not when there was pure profit to be made stealing from the vulnerable on the roads, of whom there were far too many now that the Astraea were burning whole villages to ash.
Keeran let himself glide to the ground, his wings silently cutting through the night air, and Shifted the moment his talons brushed the grass. His booted feet landed with little more than the sigh of crushed stalks to give him away, and he ran, more beast than man, towards the gentle flicker of flames in the distance.
The encampment was large—an impressive collection of some of the worst depravity Demuto had to offer, a stain on a country already mottled by injustices. A stain he would not allow anywhere near Aelia, not a second time.
He drew his sword, death whistling its approval as he cleaved the air with it, bringing it down into the chest of his first victim. The camp may have been large, but there would be no survivors to speak of the monster who slaughtered with a speed no mortal man possessed, who razed through them like a warrior from a forgotten time.
Keeran didn’t need to hold himself back, as he had with Aelia watching. He unleashed the beast inside him, and it roared its way through the encampment.
By the time he was finished, the only movement in the camp was the flickering of the campfires, and even they seemed to cower before him.
Gods,he had missed flying. Almost as much as he’d missed fighting, properly fighting. Now, with the wind carrying him through the night, and the creature in him quieter than it had been in months, he felt like a different person.
He savoured the feeling of the cool air rushing over his scaled body, feeling it part at his nose before rippling over him all the way to the tip of his tail. His venture into Demuto hadbeen productive, having checked off almost two-thirds of the artemians on his list, but not being able to Shift freely had taken its toll.
It was hard for any artemian not to Shift for any length of time, the build-up of magic growing past the point of discomfort, taking them closer towards their second natures. A predator-born artemian might struggle to control their natural tendency towards aggression, dominance, and defiance, whereas those who were prey born might sink into anxiety and subservience. It was no different for a Dragon, only a thousand times worse.
His head was clearer than it had been for days, and the right path lay before him, obvious in the moonlight.
Keeran had grown up with a man who had been wrecked, mind and soul, by a pair bond. Khaled fought it long enough to raise Keeran, being more of a father to him than his own had ever been, teaching Keeran how to use the rare fire magic of their people. In Keeran’s eyes, Khaled had rescued him, showing him the power of control when so many of their people had sunk into the worst parts of themselves.
But even Khaled, a Master in the War of Two Kings, renowned for his unwavering discipline, had been unable to fight the devastation of the pair bond. Keeran had seen it firsthand, on the last terrible night the Dragons set foot in Demuto. His mate had died, and Khaled, the most powerful Dragon alive, had burned almost every soul that had turned against them to ash.
So few Dragons still carried the ability to wield fire magic that no one could stop him; no one even stood a chance.
Now, with Khaled gone, it was Keeran who would be unstoppable.
So it was with utter conviction that he made his decision. He must leave Aelia.
He would return to camp, pack up his things, and fly ahead to scout out Beserkir from the skies. Just as he should have done days ago.
The thought tore at him, the tugging in his chest stronger than ever since he’d kissed her, but now that he knew what it was, he would fight it. With every fibre of his being.
Suddenly, his vision flickered. The grasslands beneath him disappeared, and he found himself standing in a screaming crowd, utter pandemonium erupting around him. Trees, dark and menacing, loomed overhead, their branches reaching skeletal fingers to the sky. Smoke filled the air, and he coughed against the acrid bite of it as it filled his lungs.
Just as quickly as it had appeared, the vision vanished, and his heart jumped into his throat as he found himself nosediving towards the ground. He threw his wings open and beat them hard to regain the altitude he’d lost.
What the actual fuck was that? He blinked and shook his head, utterly disorientated.
He levelled off at a safe distance, too high for anyone to think him anything more than a bird, even if he should be unfortunate enough to fly over a sharp-eyed artemian. His eyes darted around nervously, and just when he thought the whole thing must have been some kind of stress-induced hallucination, his vision shifted again, and he was back under the trees, a stampede of panicking people around him.
His body moved of its own volition, and he saw Beserkir looming over an older man, staring up at him fearlessly despite the wasted arm tucked into his jacket. Horror surged through him as Beserkir raised a blade slowly overhead, as if he had all the time in the world. His body tried to surge forwards, past the people shoving at him, obscuring his view of the one-armed man, but something held him back.
He turned to see what it was, and his blood turned cold when he saw himself standing beside him. All his features were obscured by shadows except his eyes, which burned crystal clear, black as night, and infinitely more terrifying. His own hand restrained him, no matter how hard he pulled and pleaded, his expression remained unmoved, uncaring. By the time he’d turned back to Beserkir, the one-armed man was down, coughing up blood on the floor, alone and dying.
Keeran snapped back to reality with a sickening lurch, freefalling through the air with his wings luffing uselessly towards the sky. He twisted in midair, his wings nearly ripping free from their sockets as they caught him, close enough to the ground that he startled a few deer. They careened away from him, springing through the grass, but he paid them no heed as he landed, Shifting just in time for his boots to touch the ground.
He ran a few steps to slow himself down, his landing far less graceful than usual, before dropping to rest his hands on his knees until he could think past his frantic breathing.
The pair bond snapped to life, ramming into his consciousness like a sledgehammer, nearly knocking him off his feet. Anguish radiated from it, so devastatingly agonising he clutched a hand to his chest, until the bond withered to nothing more than a tug once more.
Realisation slammed into him, and his head whipped in the direction of the camp.
Aelia. It was coming from Aelia.
He ran, leaping through the grass, arms pumping until he overtook the deer that were fleeing his landing, speeding past them in an inhuman blur. He barely slowed as he thundered into the camp, not caring if she saw, only caring that someone was hurting her, was causing her such pain.
But there was no one. The horses reared back as he arrived, heads high, eyes wide, but otherwise, the camp was still.
