Journey onto the Storm (BOOK 2)

Chapter 23

ADARA

Yuven collapsed into the dirt and his eyes rolled to the back of his head.

In the shelter of leaf-shaped shadows, Fenrer sped for his fellow Storm Warden as a bloody battlefield came out of Yuven's lips. The forest itself held his breath when his entire body stiffened in one wave. Before she could muster the strength to find her voice, he convulsed.

A sharp word of the sea escaped Fenrer when he knelt at his side and Yuven choked. Adara pressed her fingers to her lips the more Yuven writhed. Fenrer locked his runic expanders. The crack of magick spread to grow into a bubble of gold around their immediate area, and she came closer to remain in its protective embrace. "Fenrer?" she rasped when Fenrer gently adjusted Yuven so he laid on his side. "What's happening? Gods..."

"Please don't panic," he said with a raised hand in her direction. "I can handle this." He unhooked the glimmered pocket watch from his belt, and clicked it open. His thumb pressed against the top to start the ticking of life.

Tick.

Fenrer kept his other hand on Yuven's shoulder.

Tick.

Blood, dotted with tar, oozed into the path.

Tick.

Thunder boiled in the distance, though the tree cover made it hard to discern how far the storm was.

It continued to tick. Longer and longer.

"Fenrer, is there anything I can do?" she begged past the haunted tolls of a dissonant, crimson-locked bell. Every tick led her up the steps into a bloody pile of bones and unrecognizable meat. Anything I can do to turn back what was done to you? Baskets laid barren of a friend's wish to share in the bounty of a tree, so far from home. Adara sank to her knees when Fenrer shook his head in response, never taking his attention off the golden trimmed pocket watch, whose hands ticked with the circuitry within. It creaked in the floorboards as she pulled herself upwards into her fear, to face the monster recognizing her through stone. Her hands shook with the ringing of Prunal's bells. It whispered with the ocean foam when Fenrer held out a phial, full of glittering clear liquid with a mouthed word.

Her fingers wrapped around it, and held it close.

Fenrer's golden shield locked them from the shadows in the trees, and it released its breath along with her when Yuven stilled, and Fenrer pressed his thumb once more on the starter of his pocket watch. Birds chirped in the trees, unaware of the bloody field below, able to spread their wings and flee the chaos. Silver stars danced within the phial of clear liquid, and when she handed it back to Fenrer, the silver flames danced into moss.

"Yuven?" Fenrer questioned when Yuven recoiled into his own body.

Yuven dug his fingers into the dirt, and pushed himself with his arms. Sweat plastered his white hair to his brow. Confusion and annoyance twisted along his brow. Blood dripped off his lips with each breath he took, but he stopped his crawl to stand when Fenrer rested his hand on his back, handing him a cloth. "Stay down for a minute more, Yuven."

"Nex." Yuven hissed, his nostrils flared as he focused on something she couldn't see, his pupils thin beads. "Yuven Traye, d'lo mai." He pressed the cloth into his lips when he adjusted himself to sit on his hindquarters, away from the puddle of tarry blood he left behind. Fenrer sat in front of him with the phial of clear liquid in his hands. Adara joined them, causing Yuven to eye her in displeasure and distaste as he nuzzled deeper into the cloth, grabbing the phial from Fenrer with one hand free.

"Give him a minute," Fenrer said to her when she took a seat, before rifling through Yuven's pack for the small notebook he kept close, slipping the pen out of its binding. He wrote in curved numbers, before placing it back into Yuven's bag. In the silence, she held her pounding heart of the crimson-soaked memory. "We need to find some sort of shelter. If not a township before the steppes, a shrine," Fenrer observed with a frown at Yuven when he put the cloth down, but placed his brow in his other hand with a soft groan.