A Voice in the Night

Part 3

Zahara was running at full speed ahead of Zaber and even for an elf with on magic she was incredibly fast. It didn't take much presence of mind for Zaber to keep up though, he was jumping from ground to log to branch and back to the ground in fluid motions with the ease of a trained Sentinel.

The power in his veins flowed like a river, the heat of the sun hit his skin and became energy, then entered his veins and was sent to the heart and pumped out in his very blood as magic.

It gave him the strength of five, ten, twenty men with stamina to rival the demi gods of legend. He had the eyes of a hawk and the ability to hear a twig snap half a kilometer away in a hurricane.

Yet with all his power he still felt weary of the terrible and terrifying power that drew him on, yet he could not resist its allure.

The trees flew by and in their wake they left nothing but dust and footprints on the jungle floor.

It had been a long time since he had felt such urgency and he had to hold himself back so as to not leave Zahara behind him.

They ate miles for breakfast and came to a place where the jungle began to change. The trees looked sick, they could see there the leaves were brown and the bark was rotting on the trunks. The slowed and Zaber looked up to the canopy, it looked as though something had scorched the tops of some of the trees.

They had halted now and Zahara was breathing hard, yet she managed three words though her panting. 'Evil lingers here.'

Zaber stretched out his hand and touched the tree in front of him closing his eyes and opening his mind.

He felt its life force, this was something all elves could do. It was said that when the gods created the world they carved men from clay, the cat like creatures the Ash'aha of the frozen north from ice and the elves of the south from the trees themselves.

The rhythm of the jungle flowed through all plants and animals and elves being so in tune with the rhythm they were born from could connect with the jungle. Zaber let the rhythm into his body felt it join with his own, he matched it to his and opened his eyes, it was uneven and slow.

'Dark magic has lashed this place, it has sapped the very life from the plants.'

'How?' Zahara asked regaining her breath finally.

Zaber held up a finger forestalling her. 'Do you hear anything?'

She went silent for a moment and shook her head, 'I hear nothing.'

'Exactly,' he said. 'There isn't a life form for over one hundred meters from this spot in every direction. Its all gone.'

At that moment Zahara look down and laying at her feet. So small but so obvious, she rebuked herself for not noticing it before, was a small dead squirrel.

She picked it up and cradled it in her hands, it lifeless body surprisingly soft and light, the stiffness of death no yet set in.

She looked up at Zaber, her face the picture of sorrow. 'Who would do this?'

Zaber's face had become cold and hard. 'As you said, evil lingers here. Whatever did this I believe it is the very thing we are searching for.'

Zahara moved to a tree pushing away the leaves and dirt at its base and placing the squirrel in the hollow before covering it back up again. She turned to Zaber and a look of urgency had come over her. 'We should keep moving, before it's too late.'

With that they took off in the direction of the canyon, the closer they got the more common the site of the sick and the dying and the burnt became.