She screeched as they scrambled up her legs and sank their fangs into her haunches.
“Stay away from my horse!”
I splayed my hands, ignoring the ache in my shoulder. My eyes fluttered shut as I drew a powerful gust of wind. The trees rattled with the force of it, leaves whipping past my face with eager efficiency. The swell of it filled my belly, pushed up through my chest until it was near to bursting.
With a shout, I unleashed the gale upon them.
Their lithe bodies flipped and twisted in midair, screeching all the while. They clawed for Equinox—relentlessly snapping their needle-teeth into her flesh—but they were no match against the force of my mágik.
I breathed deeper into the power, raising both arms before me. I wrenched them apart, directing two opposing currents.
The manók tore straight through, blood and organs spewing forth. What was left of their desecrated bodies scattered through the tree branches and tumbled through the brush.
Red rained down upon me, splattering my face. I wiped it away with the arm of my cloak, tipping my head back against the roots of a sturdy oak.
“Equinox,” I whispered. I could no longer see her through the gaps in the trees.
Pain lanced through me, fire in my abdomen.
One of the manók must have survived, for it was upon me now. It sliced through the skin of my hips, buried its teeth in my bone.
I scrambled for my dagger, but my grasp came away empty. I clawed at the beast with my hands, fur and dirt and blood catching under my fingernails.
It only clamped harder, drawing a bellow of pain from my lips.
“Equinox!” I shouted, desperate.
The manók snarled around its mouthful of flesh and bone. It shook its head from side to side, tearing the meat from me.
I glared into its slitted fox-eyes, sweating and panting.
“Fuck you,” I ground out through clenched teeth. I pushed against it, desperate, but it did not release me.
The sound of rumbling on stone and Equinox’s throaty roar was a welcome terror.
I wrapped my fingers around the creature's neck, wrenched it free from my side. My trusty mare reached the manók before it could flee—before it could even blink.
Her jaw clamped around the manók’s skull, crushing it in one blood-gushing, bone-crunching crack. She spat it out, wrung out and lifeless.
She nuzzled her soft nose across my chest, smearing my cloak with blood, and exhaled a satisfied breath.
“Yes… I’ll live,” I groaned. I stroked my hand across her broad cheek. “Thank you.”
The wound at my hip ached, and I feared it would leave a nasty scar. I packed it tight with dressing fabric.
Equinox stood vigil over me as I drifted in and out of sleep.
We breathed easier when the light of day painted over the sky once more.
Equinox and I traversed the ever changing landscape, the only consistency the small stream which would lead us to the ocean andour destination. As the final rise of mountains came and passed, indicating the border between Acsilla and Ordelés, I felt the grip of the mágikal barrier which separated the two tugging at me before finally releasing. The barrier had been raised by the Rázuri after they had left Ordelés behind, hoping to forge a better life free of the persecution humans had turned upon them.
Acsilla had risen, but Ordelés had been left mágikless.
Power slowly drained away from the land around me. It was tangible in the heaviness of the air, pressing down around me, and in the withering wildlife which struggled to survive. Sadness panged through me, at the thought of living this way. But the people of Ordelés had never known any different. The barrier had existed far longer than living memory.
I longed for tall mountain peaks and towering trees in every shade of green as I left them behind for a flatland of sparse brown woods. The breeze tasted of salt and brine the closer I moved to Ordéles and its grayscale seaside villages.
On the third evening, I came upon a small cottage along the water's edge in Kis Temare. The last known whereabouts of Seren Corso.
