Airel: The Awakening (Airel Saga Book One)

Chapter XVIII

THE AIR WAS BITING as Kreios flew through the sky. His thoughts raced with reckless fantasies in which he cut the enemy to bits and pieces. He issued the battle cry and fell upon them with the Sword, praying there would be more demon flesh in reserve so that he could cleave that too. Then his mind turned toward the Seer, and what he would do to him when they met this time. 

His body was shaking with rage and his eyes burned with righteous hatred for the cowards who had taken his daughter. He had every right. He would personally send every last one of them to hell. 

After having lost his wife, he was broken and desperate. Now that he had lost his daughter—and he wasn’t sure if she was dead or alive—he felt the eyes of the heavens upon both him and his quest for justice. Now vengeance would belong to Kreios, and he would deliver it without mercy.

He breathed heavily. Tears streamed down his face, but the wind took them as it took his desperate scream, the cry of a father for his missing daughter. There would be a time to mourn, but this was not it; he was strong enough right now and that was how he would choose to remain.

He descended into the trees and alighted softly, deep in the dark wood near the main road from Gratzipt. He could smell horse manure. The demon horde would be flying from his retribution on their black mounts, moving quickly by horse through the forest to make as much distance as they could.

He moved toward the road quickly.

At its edge, he stopped. He could now smell dust in the air along with the scent of their horses, a fetid scent choked with the unmistakable signature of decay. They passed not long ago.

He withdrew to the cover of the wood and climbed a tall tree, leaping into its uppermost branches. He observed the terrain for miles around, looking for any trace of his prey. He could sense they were near. He could hear the clop of hooves on the dusty hardpan of the road, moving west toward the setting moon.

He knew which way to track them now.

Kreios wanted to break into their midst with sword drawn and slice them to pieces, but he feared what would become of his sweet baby girl in such a skirmish. He silently dropped to the ground in the dark shadows of the forest and pulled the hood of his cloak low on his brow. With graceful speed, he began to close in on the enemy, sprinting in stealth along the roadside, dodging brambles and leaping over fallen trees.

Ahead of him at a wide spot in the road there stood two war mounts, black as night. Sweat was pouring from them; they had been ridden hard. A stream murmured nearby.

He observed the enemy from a position of cover behind the mossy storm fall of a log among giant ferns in a small, snowless glade. The riders stooped to the stream to drink. These must be the extreme rear guard of the battalion. The rest would have gone on ahead and probably had his daughter. 

Kreios took a moment to listen to the sound of the wood. An owl called out. The little creek steamed as it flowed over rocks and under old logs. The clean smell of receding snow, the tang of deep forest decay, of moss and rotting redwood and fungus, filled his nostrils. Nature’s sounds and smells, including those incongruent anomalies that did not belong, flooded his senses. He could hear their blackened hearts pumping, the slurping of their lips as they bent on all fours and drank like dogs.

There was an adjoining meadow by the roadside. It was filled with dormant stalks of tall grass spent by the heat of summer last. Kreios slipped into the field and moved forward, a panther stalking its prey.

Then, close by and muffled, Kreios heard a baby’s cry. There was a jiggling movement in one of the saddlebags. A horse moved in reaction, which brought the cry to his ears again, this time more insistent.