Journey onto the Storm (BOOK 2)

Chapter 14

ADARA

You.

It rolled in her ears with a hiss while she ran through the undergrowth. Blood dripped off the moons and created acidic rain. Holes burnt through the canopy and hit the ground with a heavy thud. Bubbles formed on the dirt while crimson muck wrapped shadowy sinew to create the hungering beasts of the Obscura. It groaned and cracked with bones and ligaments tearing through the undergrowth. Her feet stumbled in a hole, and she hit the ground with a wet smack.

Her heart exploded with her fall, and she snapped off the grass and back into the chirping night. Tightness crushed it with an iron fist as she hauled herself off the ground with the quiet flicker of a campfire. On the other side of the fire, Yuven, who rested with his head in his arms without responding to her once again. Stars twinkled in the sky, the night young, and her nightmares ferocious with their couple days of endless traveling with very few breaks.

She brushed her finger down her nose and breathed deep of reality. Another one... at this rate, I won't be able to keep up. Soreness crept through her thighs at her rush of the night and days. Off to the side, Fenrer had his back to them both. Flakes of bark fell from whatever he whittled at with careful hands, and Adara straightened herself out. "How long have you been up?" she questioned.

"Haven't slept," he responded, unstartled from her voice before turning on his small seat of logs. A small sphere rested in his hands, glowing with magick. He slipped it into a small pouch. "The sun is still a ways off."

Adara groaned and rested back on her arms. "I would, but..."

"Nightmares?" he asked.

"Again." Adara sighed and tugged out one of the books she took from the Warden outpost to keep herself occupied from training and walking both — with her dreams added a sprinkle of death to the mix of pain. "I mean, I used to have nightmares a lot as a child, but nothing like this," she added to the wind, careful not to disturb Yuven, all to avoid his wrath about schedules and lists.

Fenrer drew his shoulders upwards. "Do you want to talk about it?" He ran a small glyph up the dead log he sat on, which tugged out the wood and bark and curled into a serrated sphere. It returned to his hands, and he pressed his knife against the uneven pieces. His movements were methodical and practiced, trained on his work. "Nightmares often come from something deep within the mind — something the river of thoughts finds itself trapped against."

"Oh, I'm not having ominous prophecy dreams?" she asked with a smile, and her fairy tales bloomed to life.

The edge of the knife hesitated on one stuck out piece of bark, and he turned to her with a soft huff. "I don't know. I suppose that depends."

Adara froze at his wording. "Are you saying people can have prophetic dreams?"

He hummed, soft with the ocean. "It depends on how you define a prophetic dream," he pointed out and continued his work on the sphere full of magick, protected in a wooden casing while he whittled it to a smooth coat. "Dreams can have meaning but have no bearing on our reality is what I meant," he corrected with a smile at her. "The mind tells us things through the river of aura and emotion, and it is hard to define it. Minds aren't books." He sighed and finished off the sphere, holding it in his palm.

"Yet... you can read them?" she dared to ask the question. "Minds, I mean."

Fenrer put the sphere into the pouch and set his knife back into the sheathe along his armor, and didn't look at her. "Not in the way you're thinking of." He moved his legs over the other side of the log and considered her. "If you asked me to tell you what you're thinking of at this moment, it would not come out in a way that makes sense." Arms folded against his chest, he tipped his head at her, then slid to the ground and rested his back against the fallen logs. "You should get some sleep."