Daevas -I- ✔️

Chapter 13.3: Friend

Long silent days passed between Kaval and Ari. Although the sun was out, the clouds blocked any rays of sunlight from shining down onto them. They were dark clouds threatening to fill the land with rain once more. Ari could smell it in the air. He shook away his distaste for it and looked around at his sparse surroundings, ignoring Kaval's presence altogether.

The trees barely had leaves on them when they were well into the summer months. They were dead much like the grass around them. The land was too open, too vast, and too empty for his liking. Rein had always taught him to avoid such terrain when the land was unfamiliar because it would be leaving him defenseless and exposed to whatever lurked in the shadows. Ari could feel it. Those haunting eyes and presence of lessers. And those things that pulled at his legs, sinking him into the ground. It brought on the same kind of feeling he felt when he was deep in the crypts below the dark place. Ari held himself tight, trying to think no more of it. That place frightened him even when he was not there and that thought alone bothered him.

"It is quiet," Ari murmured, catching Kaval's attention.

"And what of it? Does it... unnerve you?"

"Yes," Ari admitted. "It smells... "

Kaval smiled then.

"Of what?"

"Death."

"Death? What a peculiar thing to say when there is not a dead thing here."

Ari stopped walking and looked at Kaval.

"The feeling I get when I walk closer to that mountain is the same one I felt when I went to the dark place that once was a fallen temple." Ari did not know if he should say more, but more words came spilling out of him. "I had woken something then..."

"Oh," Kaval said uncaringly.

"Was it you?"

Kaval nodded causing Ari to close his eyes.

"I had not called but you answered. You have the blood of a Great running through your veins. It had to be you or some other. But others, like us, are hard to find."

Ari took a couple paces back and meekly touched his neck.

There was a reason for why Auovin did not want Ari to go anywhere with him and why Cyrus tried to keep Kaval away. Ari thought, at first, it was because they wanted to continue to shield him away from the side of him he had not known. Slowly, Ari was coming to believe that was not the reason why.

"I thought I had told you this already," Kaval said as he reached for Ari's hand. "Do not worry, Ari. I will not hurt you. I do mean that. Truly."

"So then tell me the real reason why you want me to go there?"

Kaval frowned and looked away from Ari.

"Even if I tell you, it will not change a thing. Do not ask questions you may not want to really know the answers to. Not yet. Not now. I am not the one to answer them."

Ari did not bother to prod any further. It would get him nowhere. So he thought to ask another question.

"Your markings then... Where did you get them?"

Kaval rubbed the back of his neck as his eyes lowered to the ground.

"How is the better question. I do not know which of the three had put me to sleep... but they are the reason how." As best as he tried to hide it, Ari could hear the anger slipping through Kaval's voice.

"And the markings etched onto your skin when you had... ?"

"They are the things that bound me to sleep. Unlike blood demons, we do not sleep as they would, so we do not need such markings on our bodies."