Upon Wings Of Change

Chapter 57

I half sat and half lay on Taureen's shoulder as I looked around alertly. This part of the forest could only be called creepy. Thankfully, I was pretty sure that the six heavily-armed guards accompanying Taureen and me could keep any of the local wildlife at bay.

We were outside of the wall, and we had glimpsed some of the nasty predators that I already knew roamed this forest. Two had tried to attack the group of Kymari; they had learned too late that the guards were packing energy weapons and weren't in a mood to play around.

This is definitely an easier way of traveling though. Every person in the group was riding something they called a skid. It looked like a sea-doo or jet-ski, but hovered easily at whatever height they wanted. The six formed a rough circle, with Taureen and me in the center, as they rode in the open space between the underbrush and the canopy.

They weren't going any faster than I fly, in case I missed the scent. Not that they were letting me fly; Taureen had a very short leash on me as I remained on his shoulder. I barely had enough slack to stand up since he didn't want to chance me falling off and getting hit by those behind us, although he knew my agility was more than a match to dodge such a vehicle.

Taureen and I had talked earlier, and I was going to ignore the scent of crawlers unless we were practically on top of them. He did want me to note if I started scenting more than one in an area though, as it might mean we were near the hive.

I sighed as I watched the scenery flying by. This is like looking for a lizard in the middle of the forest. In reality, that is exactly what we were attempting to do, and we had no clue where to start. We were searching the forest in a pre-planned pattern that the fighters had arranged earlier.

I enjoyed the feeling of the wind in my face and flowing along my scales. At least we are covering a fair bit of ground pretty quickly. I snorted slightly as we passed a faint odor, "Just passed an old crawler trail. Pretty weak scent, probably several days old."

Taureen would make a mental note of the location and, once we were back at the house, put it on a map to see if there was any pattern.

We eventually ended up at the city walls as our shift ended. They had discussed the potential of going for longer, but had discarded it almost immediately. The people in charge had no desire to test my endurance or my reliability if they started doing longer shifts, just in case I got tired and failed to notice a scent trail.

I had told Taureen that it was fine for us to go longer, and he had mentioned that I could go a few hours longer with no issue, but they didn't want to take that chance. They were a patient race. If the hive was out here, then it had been here for a couple of months already. Another week or two wouldn't make much of a difference, even with a sicora hive.

   

       I sat on the table beside the map of the forest as Taureen highlighted the section we had cleared today. I hadn't realized just how far apart the cities were. The area we had cleared was a tiny line that looked overwhelmed in the huge unmarked area of the forest. He put two small pink dots on the map where I had scented the old crawler trails.

"Any idea if it was the same crawler?"

I shook my head. "No. It might be possible to tell with a fresh trail, but there is no chance with something that old and faded."

I examined the map. Each day we had cleared a small section, often going out in different directions. Highlighted routes went out from the city like spokes on a wheel. After two weeks, the space we had cleared on the map was quite pitiful. Serena and Tom are having much more fun inspecting those trade ships.