Chapter Fifteen
Waking the Giant
The further north Richard travelled the colder it began to get. Mountains began to sprout up from what had once been small rolling hills, and now white and fluffy snow flitted on the cool air like he had stepped back into winter. His thin leather armour and protective cloak barely kept the cold away, and flying up as high as he and Loki were only made it worse. He shivered constantly.
They had been in the air for what felt like hours, and the sun that had once been high in the sky was now dipping down towards the line of towering mountains off to his side. The shadow that was now being cast over the land below him stained everything it touched, making it hard to see what, if anything, was down there; and this made Richard worry more. He wouldn't have noticed if he had flown right over Daiya.
Loki seemed to sense this distress and turmoil going on inside Richard's heart, and every once in a while he would look back and growl softly in this throat; almost as if he was asking what was wrong. Richard just patted him on the neck and pushed him forward, wishing and hoping that he would see some sign that he was getting close or didn't miss what he was looking for.
He remembered Daiya explaining how she had managed to find him on Earth, by feeding magic into her engagement rune. However, as Richard learned quickly, this seemed to require more finesse and skill than he had initially thought, and no matter how much arcane power he pushed into the rune he could only get a general direction from it. Still, a direction was better than nothing, and he kept Loki on that heading as he checked every few minutes to make sure that nothing had changed.
As time continued to drag on and he grew more and more worried about what he would find when he finally caught up, horrible images of death and destruction began to run through his mind. One thing he had learned from the attack on the school the other day was that their enemy was not playing around; and that was putting it lightly. For whatever reason they decided to start this war, they were serious about it; serious enough to attack an academy in the heart of enemy territory just to get at the students who would one day step on the front line against them.
Those were just students though; people who hadn't completed their training and education and would probably be seen as easy targets by soldiers who had been fighting and killing for years. What would it be like to come across a large force who was prepared and trained to fight other soldiers? How brutal would a fight like that truly be? What kind of hell were Daiya, Coni, and Aura heading into?
Richard really didn't want to think about it, but he couldn't stop those horrible images from flying through his mind as he and Loki screamed through the air at a pace even faster than they had started out with. He had seen just how truly capable his wife, aunt, and mother were during the attack on the school; but this was different. This wasn't a surprise attack or even a small skirmish the likes of which had been happening all across the northern borders for the last few months. No, this was the first large scale battle of this war.
Richard had seen the reports back at the palace with his own eyes. He had stood there at the table during the war council while Generals planned everything out, so he knew how dire this situation was. And that knowledge was starting to wreak havoc on his state of mind, because all he could do as he and Loki shot through the air was wrap his hand around the necklace that Daiya had given to him on their wedding night and hope against all hope that he made it to the ones he loved in time.
