Starting Life From Zero: Far From Home

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Cool night air rippled past him causing his cloak to flutter out behind him as tore across the night's sky. The forest was dense enough that he had trouble seeing to the ground in some places, but given the magnitude of what he was looking for he didn't think that it would elude him for much longer.

Of course it wouldn't he had been told that if he came here and did just this that he would find it. Why wouldn't he believe this, the Gospel as of yet had never led him astray. This path, the current one, was the direct line to all of his goals and desires. He had but to follow it to the logical conclusion.

It was hard for him to express these goals to others and let them know what it was he desired or how he planned to go about getting it, but after all of these years he could feel it within his grasp. The that he had waited for were finally there and all that he needed to do was make sure that they were set up just as they needed to be.

And that they were free of distraction or temptation that might draw them away from their true purpose.

A dark shape moved beneath the canopy of the trees, though it was only visible in the spots where he could see to the ground. Since Peter, Rem, and Steve had wiped out the majority of the Wolgarm in the area their kind had been replaced by the Knickerbocker—a kind of bird that had been pressed out of the forest some time back by the other mabeast. They were larger than regular birds for sure, but this shadow was much too large to be them. He dipped down out of the sky, slowing his flight and circling the area intent one getting a better look at what he had seen.

Roswaal had gotten a good look at his target at the capital the other day, though he couldn't very well unleash his powers in the middle of the city to the degree that he would have needed to stop it nor could he capture it without arousing suspicion.

Or should he say her. He was unsure of how much of the old her remained, but from looking at the way she interacted with those in the castle it seemed to be none of it. There was also the matter of these powers that she displayed and her calling herself an Inquisitor. As far as Roswaal knew there had been no such thing previously, but in the last few years he had heard reports of them.

The power that he had seen this Inquisitor use seemed almost like it was a Witch's ability as it wasn't normal magic or a divine protection. He remembered that his teacher had talked about false witch powers being something that she might be able to produce, but he didn't know if she had ever actually tried it. As it stood, that was the only thing he could think of.

It was inconsequential where the power came from, so long as he neutralized it and took the body back before it could be destroyed or damaged. That was the thing that the Gospel had told him would be necessary, or at least the thing that it had hinted at.

Very little light reached the floor of the forest, but he could still make out the writhing shadow as it passed. The Inquisitor had spoken when he last saw it, but that didn't mean that it was the same as the person who had once inhabited that body.

Roswaal was reluctant to just begin firing spells through the treetops as the thing. He increased hi speed, flying low over the treetops until he could see the ground again; he was out ahead of the Inquisitor now and he came to a landing in the small clearing facing the direction that he had last seen it in.

Through the darkness ahead he could hear the trees rustling, but otherwise the forest around him was silent. Normally there would be mabeasts and animals around as he was well outside of the barriers that he had set up alongside the road. It seemed that the Inquisitor had driven them away too.

Roswaal inched forward, walking through the knee high grass of the clearing toward the tree-line until he heard a great whoosh. He twirled to one side, dodging as the first one of the puppet bodies rocketed at him from the line of bushes that marked the end of the clearing. Then a second was flung his way and he jumped and spun, kicking it twice so that it sailed off through the woods.