Eternal Beasts

Are We Not Allies?

Jared grunted as the vision let go of him and he found himself back in the here and now, the tingling in his left eye fading. Well, the timing of that could've been better. But, at least he now knew the Altara had also been returned, as promised. He gave his body a wiggle to wake it up then made to move off the portal stones.

"Oh, so you are alive!" a hard female voice said in westerling. "Keep your hands where we can see them if you'd like to stay that way, mageborn!"

Fighting off the impulse to groan in frustration at being so easily caught, Jared slowly lifted his hands into sight.

"Good. Smart enough to follow instructions," the voice said. "How about this one: step off the portal stones, pretty boy, and walk five paces forward?"

Grimacing, Jared did just that, carefully stepping forward the distance the voice directed him to go. Then hands were pulling his arms behind his back, obviously intent on binding him. And, for a moment, he instinctively resisted that pull.

"Whoa there, big fella. We didn't say do something dumb like try to resist," the voice indicated as the hands pulled harder. His expression tightening, Jared relaxed his arms and let them bind his wrists with leather cords.

"There we go. That's a good nysim." Then he was surrounded by no less than six hooded and masked individuals in forest camouflage, four of them only a few inches shorter than him, the other two just a little shorter than that. And every one of them had grimly functional longbows nocked and drawn, their arrows capped with barbed warheads.

"Now that we have your undivided attention," one of the shorter figures said, her voice marking her even though her dappled mask covered her face. "Want to tell us what in the name of the Light you're doing, jumping in almost right on top of our war camp?"

"Are we not allies in the Light?" Jared asked.

"Forgive me, handsome, but that sounded like a question, not an answer," the female countered tautly. "Want to try that again? Before we just push a half dozen attitude changers into you and leave you for the crows?"

Jared barely throttled back the urge to snap the cords and flatten the grass with these six idiots before they could loose their bowstrings.

"I need to speak to your war leader," he said instead. "I come bearing an urgent request."

"Something like: 'Don't kill me?'" the female countered. "Because that's all I'm hearing. Certainly not a valid reason to talk to the war leader."

The big man drew in a breath and let it out slowly.

"My name is Jared," he began. "I am the Lord of Griffons and I was sent to this camp by the Daughter of the Storm Shattered Seas in the hopes that your wizards would agree to portal me either to Findias, the last City of Stone. Or to the mountains of Muul kerKerath so I can carry out a rescue mission for a captured griffon!"

For a long moment there was silence as the six scouts stared at him. Then, as one, they began to laugh, obviously not believing him. Shaking his head, Jared sighed. Then, with a surge of strength, he snapped the cords wrapped around his wrists.

The males he took out first, quick slaps to the head and face to stun and disorient. Then the non-speaking female was next, the woman gasping in shock as he was suddenly in front of her without looking like he had actually moved. She too got a slap that dropped her like a straw-filled dummy.

Then he was knocking aside the speaker's bow and hoisting her up into the air by a grip on her tunic. He looked up at her as she wildly struggled at the end of his arm, his expression hard.

"Now, let's see if you can follow directions. Take me to your war leader ... please!"

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