Throne of Glass/ACoTaR FanFiction

Part Three:

When they finally reached the mountains, Aelin was exhausted. She knew that Rowan was, too, but he did not say anything about it. In fact, he showed his exhaustion by being crabby with her, hurtling curses in her direction every time she complained about being tired, about this being a useless trip, wishing the witches had just dealt with the portal. Of course, Aelin knew that was impossible seeing as the witches, even with their iron teeth, could not defeat the Valg. It was her job alone, the legacy that she had been born into as a Galanthynius.

"Shut up!" Rowan growled as Aelin started to complain again, saying that her back was sore from riding for so long. She shot him a look, her turquoise eyes full of ferocity as she bore her fangs at him. He rolled his eyes at the empty threat, knew that she would not do anything to harm him. That was where he was sadly mistaken.

She let him get ahead of her before she started, let him think he was safe before she bounded forward, smacking the back of his head as she passed by. It wasn't anything truly fun, mostly because she wanted to save her fire for when they got through the mountains, which was only another day's worth of riding, but Rowan did not have the same compassion for her. Seconds later, he blew her straight off her horse with his freezing wind.

Aelin growled and crouched like a lioness before him, her horse now startled by the way she was acting, and also the sudden ejection that Rowan had caused.

"That wasn't funny." She hissed.

Rowan proceeded to ride past her, nudging her horse along with him. He scoffed at her and rolled his eyes, pushing his horse and hers beside him to a gallop so that she would have to catch up. She cursed him, but he just glowered back at her, "I thought it was pretty funny." He retorted, galloping faster off down the mountain path. Aelin narrowed her eyes as she focused her fire, lighting a small flame from beneath him. She grinned wickedly when she heard him swear to high hell, hissing her name though the fire was already extinguished. It was not before long that Rowan had dismounted from his horse, making the two beasts stay where they were and charged at her, angrier than before. She welcomed his challenge with a sly grin.

"Bring it." she whispered.

~

The next day, Aelin was still sore from the fight between her and Rowan, though she supposed she deserved it, maybe just a little. She hissed as she raised her arm, stretching upon her horse. He had hit and punched her hard that beneath her shirt and tunic, she could feel bruises forming. Even with her Fae body, which healed faster than her human body, the bruises would still be there for another 24 hours at least. Rowan didn't hide his satisfaction about that.

Aelin stopped dead in the next second, one moment she was cursing Rowan in her mind, and then the next they were both stopped, breathing quiet as they listened to the forest and mountains surrounding them. Rowan had said that there were ancient beasts in the mountains, ones that had returned when magic had returned to Erilea, but she had not believed they would come across said beasts so early on in their trip. They still had three days in the mountain passes before they reached the Frozen Wastes between the Ruhnn and Anascaul Mountains, and Aelin wasn't sure what would happen between that time, but she gathered her fire in her fingertips as Rowan dismounted from his horse. Their steeds were silent, too, fearing what lurked in the safety of the tall hills and peaks of the mountains passes. Perhaps one of the Valg had gotten through the portal and had gone looking for them. But, even if that were true, Aelin could not smell the strange, sulfurous scent of the Valg. Instead, she smelt something oddly strange, something that she had never smelled before.

Just as the sound of laughter caught her ears, Rowan was charging forward, his hands going out to grab something hiding in the brush along the mountain pass, catching at long ears, fur atop the pointed cones, almost like hair, or a rabbit's ears. Aelin's interest piqued at this and she dismounted her horse as well, coming closer to inspect the creature that her carranam was holding in his grasp, his fingers turning absolutely white with his grip on the creature. Aelin's eyebrow raised when she saw that the thing was no more than three feet tall, not exactly a lesser fae, but something faerie in origin, at least, by the way it spoke, begging forgiveness. She could just barely understand the words coming from the creature, though she could not remember all of the Old Language.

"What are you doing here, imp?" Rowan asked, "Your kind do not usually lurk in the mountains." Aelin wasn't sure what this thing was, other than that it was apparently called an imp. She felt ridiculous for not knowing as much as Rowan, but he was immortal and she had spent most of her life running away from her Fae heritage.

"My apologies, my Lord. A portal opened between dimensions and many of my kind, among others, crept out through it, into your world." the creature - an imp - spoke strangely, but Aelin was able to understand him perfectly fine. She put her hands on her hips and stared the imp down. He looked at her like she had two heads, sniffing at the air between them, his face going completely berserk from what he smelled on her, "A half-breed?" the imp asked, not really asking for an answer to his question, "How is that possible. Do your Fae and humans not have a treaty between you not to associate with humans in that nature?" 

Rowan growled at the creature before Aelin was able to get a word out, "Things are different in this dimension, imp." Rowan threw the creature to the ground, "I suggest you return to where you belong." not saying another word, for fear that Rowan would harm him, the imp scampered off into the woods, going in the same direction that they were going.

Aelin's brow furrowed, "Don't you suppose it would have been a good idea to keep him with us, so that he could show us where the portal is?" 

Rowan glanced at her, but didn't say a word as he went back to where their horses were waiting silently. When he mounted and had gotten a few more feet down the mountain path, he answered her, "There are more creatures like him where he came from. I can smell them all now, and you should be able to soon enough. Their scent will lead us to the portal."

Silence ensued then, and for a few minutes Aelin just thought over what the imp had said about human and Fae relations. Though her great-grandmother was Mab, sister of her aunt, Queen Maeve, she was still a "half-breed" as the creature had stated. She wondered why the imp had seemed so shocked, especially when it seemed a normal enough thing in her world, what with all of the demifae warriors that had been in Mistward - and they had not even been half of the population of demifae in their world. What was this other dimension like that Fae and humans did not associate with one another? In their dimension, Fae were near gods, though not quite. Were they actually revered as gods in this other dimension, or were the humans kept as slaves? Aelin felt a hiss rolling up her throat before she stopped herself from thinking like that. 

"At least now we know that the portal did not open up to the Valg dimension." Aelin tried to be positive, though she probably knew less of this new world than Rowan did. As an answer, Rowan just nodded tersely, continuing on with their journey in abstract silence. She huffed, but kept quiet as well, trying to sniff out the dozens of other faerie like creatures that had come into their world through this new portal. Aelin settled to trying to imagine this new world through the rest of the three day journey...