AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You have questions, Caspyn, and I may have some of those answers. We have much to discuss.”
Ryndle said nothing more as he led me away from the camp, everyone parting for us as though they were waves in the sea. The movement was in opposition from what I had seen them do every other time Ryndle had walked through them. They did not stretch out their hands in an effort to touch him. They did not grasp and follow him. They watched with tear streaked faces as Ryndle led me away. They watched as we walked, their blood covered hands clutching to children, clinging to Lightens who could barely stand.
Their wide eyed expressions of amazement were usually only reserved for Ziah, seeing it everywhere pulled at the muscles in my back, making it all worse. I gripped my blades as though I would rush them, my magic sparking as though it would get them to stop.
I growled, willing them to stop whatever idolation had begun to fester, but they stared on with that glossed over expression that before now had been reserved for Ryndle.
There was no fear there, no panic. Even as I walked by them, dripping with the blood of those who had tried to kill them.
Without my dark clothes and leathers the crimson stain was everywhere, it covered every inch of me. It dripped over my skin, drying in patches in a thick sticky mass. The crimson stained Catalyst, the wielder of Sypher magic who walked through death again and again.
I wasn’t sure any of them saw that.
With each blood drenched step, more of the Lightens rushed to line our path, it was only when we had nearly reached the end of them, reached the tree line that the villagers had almost certainly used as a cover, did those expressions change. Their eyes grew wide as one by one they lifted their hands to their heads, bodies shaking as they pressed three fingers to their brow before extending them out to me.
As they lifted their hands, the tattoos on their arms began to glow, the same outward dissonance I had seen in Ryndle glowing and glittering from each of the twisted words that covered them.
“Ryndle,” I was snarling, my fury from the fight only growing and sparking. I lifted my blades as though in warning, I wasn’t sure any of them noticed. “What the fuck are you playing at?”
“This is no game, Caspyn. They are wishing you well,” he whispered it like it was a prayer, which was only pissing me off more.
“I don’t have time for your riddles–” I began but he raised his hands as we reached the edge of the forest.
“You have time for this.”
He gestured toward the forest, toward the tall trees that I had ventured into many times before when I hunted the Fae.
Except that the forest had somehow changed.
The usually tall, thin trees that were surrounded by underbrush and bathed in the dewy light of morning had shifted to something dark. Massive trees stood close together, their tall branches and bulky trunks like sentinels that would not let the light in. The brush was dense, the wide leafed bushes and ferns twisting over one another as some unseen animal croaked and hissed. The shadows were ominous and somehow familiar. Even in the morning light, when streaks of gold would usually pull through tree trunks in glittering beams, everything was bathed in inky silhouettes. Haunted.
“What is this–” I began, but again he cut me off.
“What do you feel?” I wanted to tell him I felt the cold wind of his lies. That I felt the blood drying to my arms and legs. I felt the heat of my magic as it prepared to stop whatever nonsense he was playing at. But before I could even open my mouth, a sharp familiar feeling twisted over my skin, the tingle of warning that always denoted Fae.
But somehow, this time, it didn’t feel like that dark warning of the monsters at all.
It felt like light, it felt like the spark of energy that I experienced when Lyani touched me. That spark of light that was now spreading from those intricately spiraled words that covered my abdomen and my back, that were pulling from there, leading me right into the dense trees.
“What do you feel?” Ryndle asked again, the soft taunt telling me he knew exactly what I was experiencing. I growled in answer. I had already told him I didn’t have time for his games.
Thankfully, he didn’t ask again.
“Go. See where that pull leads you this time.”
“More games?” I snarled, even as I took a step into that quickly darkening forest. It had just been morning, hadn't it?
“Not anymore Caspyn, Light Bringer. See where it leads, and then I will tell you everything.” I turned to him, already snarling to demand that he give me answers now and tell me exactly what I wanted to know.
But he was gone.
I had heard him speak, felt his warmth, I had seen him only seconds ago, but now he was gone.
“Ryn–” I turned, expecting him to be right behind me, but there was no one there.
No, there was nothing there.
Not a man, not a wagon, not a child or an animal.
