Mythic (NaNoWriMo14)

Chapter 22 - Fractured

A week passed.

It took their small group five days to get out of the ancient forest, even with the divine knowledge of an oracle. Nazine was a deadweight, unconscious for all but the small window of time after Rena fed him. The result of that was a slow, plodding pace as Cayden was forced to carry him, but even if he'd been able to walk, Rena doubted they could have moved much faster. Tia struggled to keep up, often panting and calling for a break.

Rena herself didn't find the constant walking hard. She suspected the physical training had significantly increased her fitness over the weeks. Her muscles ached less every time she slept on the hard ground, and she felt stronger with every sunrise, eventually able to share the burden of Nazine with Cayden.

The first night out of the forest, they slept under the shelter of a small bank by what Rena guessed was Soul's River, the effective trunk of the river system that ran all the way into Leristith and the Heart portal's surrounding sacred woodland. Following it would guide them straight into Leristith.

It was also the night that Rena cut Cayden's hair. Since his use of ley when the Unbounds had first kidnapped them, he hadn't had the chance. He'd tried of course, but one night in the ley-rich environment of that ancient forest had grown it all back again, leaving him grumbling about getting tangled in branches.

It was strange to see Cayden's hair short again. Rena had grown so used to it long that seeing his back was weird. He still tossed his head every so often, yet to shake the habit. Rena reminded him by updating the new count of 'how many times Cayden had impersonated a horse'.

But for whatever reason, when they stopped that night, Rena couldn't relax.

She stood up and wiped the back of her mouth, having fed Nazine for the night.

"Kat, you're up," said Rena, gesturing at the shadow Mythic. "I'm not feeding pigeon boy soup again tonight, he got it all over me last time.

Kat groaned but accepted her duty nonetheless. She grabbed Tia by the wrist and dragged her over to Nazine, despite her protests.

"You can hold the bowl," said Kat to Tia, handing the oracle the utensils. "You can sit there and daydream at the same time."

"I'm not daydreaming, I'm trying to figure out if anything's going to happen tonight!"

"Welp, you can figure that out while holding the bowl."

Rena shook her head and moved to the centre of their chosen campsite—a small cluster of trees nestled in the otherwise open plain—and set about imbuing fire into the curved rock they'd found along the way. Having grown tired of holding the fire to everyone's likings, Rena had figured out she could imbue her fire into objects the same way she could with her illusions. Even Kat had a hard time hiding in the shadows when there was a magical fire marking her position.

With the fire happily crackling away, Rena bunched her arms together and drew her knees up to rest her chin on.

She let her eyes drift to Cayden. As per usual after a feeding, he was off to the side, muttering to himself as he grabbed at his head.

It worried her, the way it was taking him longer to snap out of the trance her feeding placed him in every time she did it. He still refused to let Kat or Tia do it, claiming it'd be twice as hard for Rena to pull herself away with their richer ley-imbued energies. They all knew that, but what Rena didn't care to admit was that Cayden's energy was just as delicious as theirs, if not more so.

The thing that always pushed her away from him was the look on his face when she did it. Suddenly, he wasn't Cayden anymore. He was someone else, an older man drawn from her memories, reaching, pulling—