The Blightspawn Noble

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Eliza Risel's hair thrashes in the wind, as she confirms the presence of almost a dozen wheeless carriages giving them chase above a vast ocean of trees.

"Faster!" Eliza yells at the small open peephole within her carriage, where she sees the driver holding his gloved hands up over a white board. One hand shoots to the left, their carriage shooting off in that direction.

"Telling me 'faster" doesn't help." the driver complains, dropping towards the forest below and whipping abruptly around a pair of trees.

"Maybe if I get my bow out." Eliza says, looking to a small sack in the middle that constitute their luggage.

Eliza holds more tightly to keep herself from being thrust to the other side, where a young man sits with a dispassionate expression. He is scrawny, looking starved and just big enough to fit his clothes. The only physical traits the two share are their raven black hair color and gold-yellowish skin.

"It wouldn't matter if you could hit. There's no one in those things." the driver says.

"Who in the bolgias is driving them?" Eliza asks.

"I don't have time to get into details. The short of it is, they're enchanted."

"Obviously their vehicles are enchanted, that is how they fly." Eliza says.

"Not just flying, dear. Remotely controlled too. Think of them like a pack of big, wooden puppets. Volumtrun aren't risking their guys on this. "

That does explain how stilted their pursuit is. Controlling that many is burdensome even between two or three. The only advantage, perhaps the one that matters most to their would be captors, is that they lose nothing if their own carriages crash.

"So much for Volumtrun's truce. Why did they bother offering us peace if they were just going back to their usual tactics?" Eliza asks.

"One hand doesn't always agree with the other in Volumtrun." the driver says.

Two of their pursuers are catching up on either side of them, and another abrupt turn brought them closer to the one on the left.

"They will catch us!"

"Mysti, erm, mister driver does not get caught so easily." the driver assures, flying them forward a few feet, the two more beside them doing the same, though the one on the right crashes into a pair of trees for their effort. Now only the one on left is close.

Shadows cast over them. Looking out again, Eliza yelps and pulls her head back in.

"Above us too!"

The ones above dropped, but their driver pulls forward before they can be knocked downwards.

"How many of them do you see now?" the driver asked.

"I am not looking out again! By the fates, with our blessing one of them will slam against us as soon as I stick my head out!" Eliza says.

"I have to keep looking forward, so you need to look back. Don't blame me, blame the system." the driver says.

"What does that even mean?" Eliza asks.

"There's a third option." the scrawny young man says.

"Yes?" Eliza asks.

"We let them capture us. They'll send guys to retrieve us and I can kill them. Saves us trouble." he says.

Eliza frowns. She should have expected that answer from Leon. Her cousin, even now, does not seem to appreciate their predicament

Being chased is nothing unusual for them, that has been their lives for nearly a decade now.