God of Discovery [high fantasy, slow build, mlm]

Chasing stories - part 2

It was a few nights of camping on the road later that D'Argen suddenly awoke when the scent of citrus assaulted him like a punch.

"What? What is it?!" He immediately jumped up and looked for Yaling.

Lilian and Abbot awoke much the same way, startling upright and looking around first and then at Yaling.

The woman was crouched by the fire with a hand lifted in D'Argen's direction, signalling him to be quiet. Her eyes were closed and her face was scrunched up in concentration.

D'Argen ran his tongue over the roof of his mouth, trying to soothe the sour taste of her scent as she used her mahee. She did not respond even when the taste turned into a tingle.

D'Argen opened his own mahee and formed the hand gestures that would allow him to access one of Yaling's spells to improve his hearing. It would never be as strong as hers but he did not have to open his mahee too much before he heard it as well. There was a sound that reminded him of a falling boulder, a support beam cracking, or one of the naturalists using their mahee to try and destroy a mountain. He dropped the spell and opened his eyes to look at Yaling, waiting for her confirmation.

"There is fighting," Yaling finally said and opened her eyes. "North of us. Near the road. Something is strange about it."

"I will go first," D'Argen said and stood up. "Follow me as soon as you can."

"Wait!" Lilian said but it was too late, D'Argen already had his mahee open so turning it from Yaling's hearing spell to its original purpose to run was instinctive. The initial push from his run created a small crater in the ground and blew away the last of their dying fire. He had to slow down almost immediately though, not wanting to run right past the scene without noticing it.

As he ran towards the sound, D'Argen reached for the bow at his hip where it was attached to his quiver.

The original design was a metal contraption Master Upates, one of the First Five and the strongest artificer of them all, had personally made for him thousands of years ago. When D'Argen flicked his wrist out, the four metal rods that made up its body snapped together into a full bow that was almost as tall as him.

Since the original design, D'Argen had gone through dozens of bows and not one of them worked as smoothly as the master's creation. His newest one had a snag in one of the mechanisms; it still snapped open but it could never do so if the string was already wound tight. Instead, he had to use one of the turn keys on the ends to tighten the string once the bow was unfolded.

D'Argen was already used to this delay so he always reached for his bow first, even before the much faster daggers he kept in his boots or the more comfortable sword hanging on the same hip as his quiver.

Another loud sound, one that reminded him of fire and smoke and demons torn apart under the strain of mahee as the mountains moved, startled D'Argen out of his run. He slid to a stop off the main road and waited for the rumble to fade away, but it was already gone. Too fast. Faster than any mahee he had ever seen used during the wars that could create such a sound. Even Yaling's whistle echoed more than this sudden burst of sound.

A flash of light, too bright to be anything other than magic in the early morning, preceded yet another explosion of sound. Explosion. The walls of their towers turning into pebbles when the flying demons rained down on them with fire. D'Argen shook his head to try and stave off the memories. He knocked an arrow in his bow and lifted it to aim towards the trees on the side where the sound and light had come from. The sound of the explosion was much shorter and more focused than those the demons had caused during the wars, even if just as loud.