“The worst kind of nightmare,” Araes replied, shifting his stance into a fighting position. They made their retreat to the shoreline at a silent, excruciating pace. Tethys’s arms never relaxed from their clenched position around the lieutenant’s hips. With each step, she felt the sway of powerful bone beneath a line of hardened muscle.
Judging from the feel of his body beneath the now-soaked tunic, he was a seasoned warrior—a perfect specimen of the human male form. If her heart wasn’t currently in her throat, she might allow herself a moment to revel in the curves and angles of his physique.
Her pulse quickened with each step of distance they put between their bodies and the creatures. How the lieutenant remained so collected in this moment of terror, she wasn’t sure, but she focused on his steady heartbeat, willing her own to match his tempo.
Only a few strides remained to the opposite shoreline. Tethys took a step in time with Araes’s perfectly, but her heart stopped when the crack of a branch skidded like a pebble over the river’s surface. Entirely focused on keeping their eyes fixed on the three creatures, neither of them noticed the driftwood behind them.
“Fuck…” Araes hissed.
A heartbeat later, the creatures, with clicking jaws, lunged toward the river. Their limbs collected fallen leaves and loose dirt as they dragged alongside their bodies. The largest one growled again. Tethys squeezed her eyes shut, feeling Araes’s chest rise and fall with lethal calm.
“Goddess,” he whispered, pulling her from the protection of his embrace. “Run.”
Her eyes shot open. Disturbed water splashed along the surface. The creatures leapt from the riverbed and disappeared into the cool blue rapids. “Where did they go?”she cried, her head throbbing with a raging pulse of panic.
“Run!” Araes barked again. The world pinholed around her as her legs fought against the sandy riverbed. They weren’t fast enough.
Three rapid, foaming lines serpentined over the surface. The creatures were closing in. Frantic fight or flight took control. She clawed against viscous water, focusing on the shoreline growing closer with each step. Blind to anything but solid ground and the trailhead beyond, she battled the distance with panting breaths.
Strong, calloused hands gripped her thighs. Then hard bone shot into her chest, forcing out every breath of air from her lungs. Araes plucked her from the ground and threw her over his shoulder as if she weighed less than a pebble.
“They’ve located us. We have to go. Now.”
Tethys watched the three creatures resurface, the taut skin along their scalps disappearing then reappearing with each foot of distance they gained.
Araes leapt for the shoreline and powered across the small grove outlining the eastern riverbank. He kept his eyes locked with lethal focus on the three creatures. With mere seconds of space gained, he placed Tethys on the ground and nodded to the trail.
“Go, alert the others,” he commanded. Gone was the arrogant glimmer in his golden-flecked eyes. Only electric intensity sizzled in those irises—sharp, lethal intensity and something just shy of death.
“Go!” he repeated before she could protest. Her feet raced down the trailhead, flying over fallen branches and a thick blanket of rotting leaves. Guttural screams echoed through the rustling canopy overhead.
Had her magic ever manifested, she could’ve incinerated those three creatures’ very existence. They’d be meresmudges on the ground with the snap of her fingers.
Weak, pathetic body.
She never felt more like a waste of immortal space than she did right now. They probably picked the lieutenant apart as she ran, his shredded skin catching in their razor sharp teeth. The clearing came into view and she pushed her limits further, feeling her thighs quiver beneath her as she flew to the royal chariot.
“Proc, there’s something along the river. Quick, please. Lieutenant Araes is holding them off, but he needs your help,” she said, violently shaking her still slumbering husband. He gasped, startled by such an abrupt awakening.
“What?” he breathed, shaking sleep from his free falling brown locks.
“There’s no time. Go, now, please,” she said. There wasn’t time to explain why not only was she drenched, droplets of water puddling on the floor from her matted wet curls, but also why she was entirely nude save for the grey cloak that clung to her skin. He scrutinized her current state before rising from bed.
“Proc, I’ll explain later, just go. He could be dying out there,” she begged. Procyon huffed a response and with a snap of his fingers, dissipated like smoke.
Chapter 9
The creatures met the shoreline only moments after Tethys’s golden curls disappeared down the trail back to their encampment. Araes, with weight dispersed equally on both feet, raised his sword in preparation for the impending ambush. His heart boomed in his chest with a deafening, frantic drumbeat. Although he wasn’t sure of their true name, the 15th referred to them simply as ‘death wielders.’
He’d slain a handful of them that’d wandered too far into Venian lands from Ursae. They suspected these creatures were of the Flatlands in the far north, but how they managed to slither this far south and so deep into the eastern realm, he wasn’t sure.
The tallest one, clearly the leader of the trio, gnashed its rows of teeth and chattered its tongue. As if alerting the others of its findings, they snapped their heads toward Araes, the sinewy tendons cracking beneath greying flesh.
He sucked in a breath and steadied himself. The rush of the river faded into silence as his pulse settled into a slow,rhythmic beat. He’d fought these things before, so he knew what to expect when they made their first attack. But, he also knew that the death wielders traveled in hoards.
Along the northern border, before he and his battalion were reassigned to the Canissaen front line, three death wielders slipped through the cracks of their keep’s exterior walls. They hadn’t made it far before meeting blade’s edge, and the infantry went to bed with ease, thinking they’d exterminated the only threat.
However, they were quick to find that three death wielder scouts would typically push ahead of the hoard and lay the trail for the remainder. Just before dawn, the battalion faced an invading force of the monstrosities nearly double the size of their unit. They’d laid waste to the keep, taking four souls with them before the morning sunrise.
