Chapter 648: Leaving The Forest Behind

Damien sent Fenrir back at the edge of the plainfield.

The wolf gave him a long look before it went, the kind it gave when it understood the reason and did not have to like it. Damien scratched the thick fur at its neck. "You'll get your turn," he said. Fenrir huffed once, and the portal took it.

Luton went next. The slime had been riding on his head all morning, full of fruit and happy about it, and he lifted it down and held it for a moment. Flying cost essence, and he wanted to keep what he had. "Rest," he said. Luton pulsed and was gone.

That left him alone at the edge of the grass with the whole sky in front of him.

"Summon Skylar."

The portal opened a few steps away. The Shadowfang Wyvern came through it with its wings folded tight and its head low, the way it always arrived, like something being unrolled. Charcoal scales. Silver around the eyes. It looked at him, and he looked back, and the wyvern lowered its neck so he could climb.

He did not climb yet.

He turned around and looked at the forest.

From here it was only a wall of dark trees behind a strip of grass, no different from a hundred other forests on a hundred other maps. Anyone who saw it for the first time would think it was just a lot of trees. They would not think about the ring, or the crack running to it, or the thing that lay under the ground and called him weak.

He remembered the first time he had stood in front of it.

That was almost three years ago. He had been a boy with a title that nobody wanted and a pack that was already half empty. Every sound in those trees had been a threat. Every shadow had a mouth in it. He had slept in roots and eaten whatever did not eat him first, and some nights he had honestly not known if he would see the morning.

He had spent a little over two years of his life inside it since then, all told, counting the first time and counting this one. It was long enough to change what the place was.

Now the trees had a different shape in his head.

He had walked through three strongholds and burned them down. He had killed a captain that tried to scale up through him and a Stormhorn that put a horn through his chest. He had broken seven seals.

He had crossed a plain full of stone men, and he had come out of the other side, and something in the dark had looked at him and decided he was worth talking to.

Every living thing in that forest had once been something he had to be afraid of.

Now he was the one they were afraid of.

He grinned.

It was not the cold grin. It was a plain, open one, the kind he let out when nobody was around to see it. He stood there with the wind pulling at his clothes and let it stay on his face a while.

Then he climbed onto Skylar.

He thought about it as the wyvern settled under him.

His summons were growing. That was the clearest thing he knew. Fenrir was a breath away from the top of its grade, and the Stormhorn's remains had done most of the work.

Cerbe had eaten its way through half the demons in the forest and was bigger and hotter than it had been when they started. Aquila was finally catching up. Luton and Lin were both Grade Two and both getting stranger by the week. Skylar had a few things it had not shown him yet. He could feel them sitting under the surface.

He was growing too. The blood in his bones was proof of that, even if it was not finished.

But he did not know how strong he was.

That was the honest answer. He had never fought anyone who counted. Mana beasts and demons, hundreds of them, all kinds, all grades. He knew how to kill those. He knew how they moved, what they feared, where the cores were.

A strong human was a different animal. A strong human had trained for decades.

A strong human had tricks, and teachers, and ways of fighting he had never seen. He had never stood in front of one to fully battle them and the ones he did were either too weak or ended up mutating. He had no idea where he would land.

It was a little frightening, and a little exciting, and he did not mind either feeling.

What he did know was what he was leaving for.

He had not thought of it as a list while he was inside the forest. The forest had taken up all the room. But as he sat on Skylar's back with the grass moving beneath him, three things stood up in his head without being asked.

The first was easy. Hunt demons. As many as he could find. They made him stronger, they filled the kill counter, and they were the reason he was out here at all. The one place that had been full of them was empty now, so he would go where they were.

The second was harder to say.

His brother.

He did not know what Damon thought about any of it. He did not know if Damon thought about him at all. But he wanted to see him. Not to settle anything. Just to look at him and know what kind of person had grown up in the life that was supposed to have been his.

The third was the one that never moved.

House Terrace.

The name sat in his mind the way a stone sits at the bottom of a river. Not loud, not moving, but always there. The Lord of that house had looked at his own son and decided he was worth less than an empty room. That Lord was going to find out what the room had grown into.

Damien did not know how. He did not know when. He knew only that House Terrace was going to pay for what had been done.

That was the third thing.

"Alright," he said. "Up."

Skylar launched.

It was fast, as it always was. One heavy beat and the ground was gone, the grass shrinking to a green smear and then to nothing. He felt the wind hit his face and let it. The plainfield turned under them, wide and strange from above.

He saw the crack first. It ran from the old altar toward the trees, a thin dark line through the grass, and it looked very small from up here. Next to it was a wide patch of broken stone where the golems had fallen, scattered like toys somebody had thrown across a floor. The altar sat in the middle of it, still glowing faintly.

At the far edge of the plain he saw a few shapes gliding low over the grass. The gliders, still alive, still angry. They were not following. They had learned.

He looked away.

The plain ended. The land narrowed to a thin strip, and then to a beach, and then there was nothing underneath them but water.

It was dark water, even in the daylight. Not the bright blue he remembered from pictures. A deep grey-green that looked heavy, as if you could not push a hand through it.

He did not like looking at it.

"Higher," he said.

Skylar climbed. The air got cold and thin. They passed through the first layer of cloud, a grey mist that clung to his clothes for a few seconds and then let go, and kept going until the lower clouds were beneath them like a soft white floor. The water was gone from view. He breathed out and felt his shoulders drop.

He knew what was down there.

Not exactly. Nobody he had ever spoken to had gone to the bottom of that water and come back to say. But the forest sat on an island, and the island sat in a sea, and the old records said the sea had things in it. Deadly things. Things that lived deep, where light did not reach, and had been there for probably longer than the island had. He had read enough old records to know which ones to believe.

He was confident now. Not stupid. There was a difference.

He could take a Grade Two creature with all of his summons beside him. It would be a bad fight and he might not walk away from it clean, but he would fight it, and he would most likely win.

A Grade One was something else. A Grade One would end him before the fight even started. It would not need a plan. It would just be stronger than everything he had, in every direction.

And anything above that would not even give him a chance to run.

He knew where the line was. He had drawn it a long time ago, and he was not going to step over it just because he had a few good weeks.

Better to be safe than sorry.

So they flew high, above the clouds, with the sea hidden below them, and kept going.

Hours passed.

He saw other things up there. Far to the left, a big shape with wide wings, drifting along the edge of the clouds. Far to the right, a smaller group of them, moving in a loose line. Every one of them was too far to be a problem, and every one of them kept its distance.

When Skylar's course drifted closer to one, it swung away without any fuss. He did not need to look. He could feel them tracking him from a long way off, careful and quiet.

They were avoiding him.

He understood it perfectly. It was the same reason he had told Skylar to stay above the clouds. It was the same reason he would not have gone near the water if you had paid him. Everyone out here was afraid of something. Everyone had a line.

He sat on Skylar's back with his arms resting across his knees and watched the sky go by.

It was a long flight.

At some point the wind eased off a little and the sun moved low in the west and the gold of it lay across the cloud tops like spilled paint. Skylar settled into a steady rhythm, its wings moving slow and wide, the beat of them coming up through his body like a heartbeat.

He closed his eyes for a moment, just to rest them.

He did not know when he fell asleep.

When he woke, the light was different.

It was late afternoon, or something close to it. His neck was stiff. His arm had gone numb where he had slept on it. He lay on Skylar's broad back with his cheek against warm scales, and for a few seconds he did not know where he was.

Then he remembered.

He pushed himself up and looked around.

The clouds were gone, or most of them. They were thinner now, scattered pieces drifting far apart, and between them he could see the water. It was closer than it had been. Not much closer, but closer. Skylar had come down a little while he slept, probably when the cold had started to feel too thin for him.

But the wyvern had not come down far.

He leaned over the edge of Skylar's neck and looked. The water was still a long way below them, a grey-green plain stretching out in every direction. Skylar was keeping its distance. It had come down only as far as it needed to and then stopped, the way he would have told it to if he had been awake.

He had not told it to do anything.

It had just known.

He sat back and rubbed his face with both hands. Then he reached forward and put his palm flat on Skylar's neck, between the scales, where the skin was warm.

"Good," he said.

Skylar's head turned a little. The eyes caught him for a moment and then went back to the front.

He nodded to himself. That was why he trusted Skylar with the long runs. It did what it was supposed to do whether he was watching or not, and it did not push the line.

His stomach growled.

It was a loud one. It echoed in the open air, and he was fairly sure Skylar heard it. He had not eaten since the morning, and the morning felt like a week ago. He put a hand on his stomach and sighed.

"Summon Luton."

The portal opened and the slime came through, landing on his knee with a soft wet sound and sitting there looking up at him.

"I need the fruit," he said. "The ones from the tree. A few."

Luton did not argue. A faint ripple moved across its surface, and three of the dark green fruits slid out of its body one at a time and rolled gently onto his lap. They were still cool. Still firm. They looked exactly the way they had looked when he picked them.

He picked one up and bit into it.

The sweetness came first, then the deeper taste under it, and finally the faint hum of essence that he had gotten used to. He chewed, and swallowed, and leaned back against Skylar's neck with the sun on his face.

It was good.

He ate the second one slowly. He ate the third even slower. Luton sat on his knee and watched the horizon with him, and Skylar's wings kept beating, steady and wide, carrying them toward wherever land was waiting.

He did not know how long it would take.

He did not mind.