Gravel skipped down the hill as Ember marched defiantly down the mountain. A few large drops of water splashed onto her horns, causing her to pull her robes closer around her.
In the back of her head, she heard a voice telling her she was being stupid, begging her to go back. She stubbornly shook her head as if shaking something out of her hair. She glared harder at her shoes, angrily cursing the rain and her friends. How could they be so blind? She had tried to save them and they pushed their way foolishly upward. They chose death, and she wouldn't follow them.
Ember decided to walk back to her uncle to live underground with the rest of the tieflings, a group that was intelligent, that would provide safety and stability. Soon, after the storms had cleared she would go back to Auntie, to tell her that she had found her family and invite her to stay in the mountain. Someday she would go to the top of the mountain to bury her friends, after the threat had vanished on its own.
Thunder grumbled in the distance and fog began to descend, entangling Ember's feet in mist. After 20 minutes, Ember's feet began to slow. She sank to the ground, all anger gone. What had she done? Why had she turned her friends away? She couldn't let them die, after how much they had helped her! What sort of heartless demon was she?
The rain pounded against her head, soaking through her robes, but she didn't care. Perhaps her friends would be better off without her. They wouldn't wan her after she had abandoned them so near to their goal.
A sudden blood chilling scream ripped through the air. Ember shot to her feet, tail whipping the fog away in an agitated frenzy. Her sharp eyes searched through the downpour and locked onto a distant, wide winged creature with two very familiar shapes clutched in it's claws.
Ember's eyes widened in rage, but not toward her friends. Rather her fiery anger was directed toward the feathered thing in spiraling in the sky.
She caught Ceaser's neck, swung herself onto his scaly back and in a second they had launched toward the massive bird. As though ignoring the rain, the tips of Ember's horns burst into unextinguishable flame.
YOU ARE READING
The Unfortunates
FantasyBattered and beaten, broken and bruised, three faithful friends take on the treacherous quest to journey up the crumbling Hadid Mountain to face a village crushing giant, battling beasts and their own hopelessness as they go. Will their quest end in...
