Anya

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Anya!” Dimitri’s voice echoed through the empty cabin. He had run all of the way to the cabin after killing the demon but just as he had suspected – she was not there. He was only glad that after he left his invisibility spell that cloaked the cabin had disappeared because then he would have really been worried.

Well, he would have been more than he was now and his worry scale was pretty high at the moment. There were more than just the one demon out there, he was sure of it and that put Anya in danger. He could not believe he was stupid enough to walk away from her! He knew that she may be hurt but he thought her biggest danger was the man-handling guards not demons who could probably remember the birth of her grandfather!

Demons were not to be trifled with, he was fourteen when he killed his first one and he had not looked back since. However, they were not all as easy to kill. There was a rumour in Anceps that there was a dark corner that only held the most dangerous of demons and goblins. He shuddered at the thought, those he knew would give him a battle considering that they were powerful but after they passed the four hundred year mark they also became magical, it was not as strong as a sorcerers but it did make them a lot harder to defeat.

He had never seen one. The oldest demon he had seen was two hundred and fifty years old. His father helped take him down after he set fire to fourteen huts and killed nearly twenty people. They killed him but it was hard. If he came across a demon that was over a hundred years old on his own, he would be able to defeat it but it would bring a lot of unwanted attention. Even if it was in the middle of nowhere.

Dimitri was only fifteen then, he had never experienced anything at the time and he felt so proud of himself when his dad patted him on the back lovingly and let him sit next to him at the family table instead of his older brother Boleslav, who usually took that spot.

That was one of his happiest days, it was testing and he nearly died but he managed to hold his own and he did not need his dad to come and save him and that was what made him so ecstatic. It was the day that Dimitri pinpointed as the day that he became a man.

“Anya!” He repeated in his deep voice. The wind was carrying his voice through the trees as he turned away from the cabin and started searching between the tree trunks for any sight of them. They could not have gone too far, or he hoped they had not. He did not yet know how this place worked and he had already been lost once, he could afford to let that happen again.

After you ran through the trees, the path went in both the left and right directions. Last time he went in the left direction and he would have seen them if Anya went down there so he turned right. His strong legs carried him as he ran down the path at an extraordinary rate. He needed to catch them up as fast as he could.

He did not know how far it was to the palace and they had at least an hour and half on her as he hovered his hand over the fire in the cabin and it was barely warm, which meant they had not been too long.

While he was I the cabin, he also picked up a small knife. He didn’t know who he would encounter on this journey and if he had a weapon that was not a wand, he felt more reassured in that he had a back-up of sorts.

After a good half an hour of running on the same path, a village was directly in front of him down a small hill. The village was tiny and there was nobody outside at all. The weather was not as bad as it had been so it made Dimitri a little wary. Even during the storms he had seen people out on the market stalls and now there were none? Something must be up.

Anya had never mentioned any special holiday coming up and she told him quite a bit about the history of Daighte when they were in the cave so he knew that whatever had happened was more of an emergency situation, which made his grip on the knife and his wand tighten.