Moving on, moving forward.

Not again.

Rowan crashed through the underbrush, running as fast as his immortal legs could carry him. Branches scratched his arms and face and leaves snagged in his hair. The sound of Fenrys crashing behind him was merely background noise, Rowan was focussed on one thing and one thing only.
Aelin.
Something was wrong.
He couldn't feel her, couldn't feel the bond.
There was a wall as hard as granite separating them.
Separated. Again.
No.
No matter how hard he pushed, no matter how forceful he was... nothing.
No no no.
So he ran. Every breath, every step, begging and pleading for him to be wrong. Praying that she hadn't been taken from him again. Wishing, dreaming, that he had not failed her. Again.

He finally broke through the trees, and what he saw made his heart stop dead in his chest.
The world slowed. The birds stopped chirping and the wind went dead silent.
The only sound the rushing of blood in his ears.
Rowan didn't hear Fenrys slide to a stop next to him, didn't hear the fae whisper the vicious curse under his breath as he beheld what was in front of them.
Blood.
Blood mixed with dirt and despair. The scent of fear and panic, helplessness, still echoed in the air.
His mate's fear and despair.
He sniffed the air. He could smell Aedion, Lysandra, Gavriel..... and Aelin.
But mixed in with the scent of his friends, his family, was something, in all his years, he had never ever smelt.

What the hell.

He charged towards the door to see it wide open, the latch completely torn apart.
A forced entry.
He warily stepped inside and beheld the completely destroyed foyer.

Tables were overturned and the banister was smashed and broken.

The padding from the couches were spread on the floor and glasses were smashed. Wine splashed up the walls, mixed with blood.

And there, on the floor of the kitchen, Aedion's and Gavriel's swords.

He looked back up the stairs, not for the life of him wanting to proceed, but he knew he had to.

He stepped on the first step, hearing the familiar creak and stared down at it for a moment.
He listened to the sound of Fenrys sorting through what was left of the lounge trying to find evidence.
Fenrys' sighs of despair echoed through him.

He stared down, whoever the hell did this was going to meet a very slow and agonising end.

Rage boiled up in him. How dare they hurt his family.
He took another step up. And another. And another. Until he reached the top.
The scene upstairs was not as bad as downstairs although the door to Lysandra's room was utterly destroyed, only mere splinters remained.

He turned to the wall and slammed his fist so hard into it that it cracked. How could he have let this happen? Again. Not just his mate, but Aedion, Lysandra, and Gavriel.

The people that took them must be very powerful to have been able to capture those four, and evade their detection.
He heard furniture moving and walked out of the room, to the top of the stairs, to see Fenrys righting a toppled side table and placing half a broken vase on it. He stared down at it with a look of lost helplessness on his face.

"We need to start looking for them," Rowan said, willing the hitch out of his voice.

"I know," Fenrys replied, his hand drifting over the broken vase.
They stood there in silence, staring at the broken vase.
One of the banister poles toppled to the ground with a loud crash.
The empty sound echoed through the house. Neither of them moved for a solid three minutes in silence, thinking, processing, until Rowan could no longer handle it.
"We have to go now, we can't waste any more time."
Fenrys moved away from the vase and into the lounge, coming back out with Gavriel and Aedion's swords.
He handed Aedion's to him.
The sword of Orinth.
"We better hurry then."
They collected whatever food supplies they could find, they didn't know how long the journey would be and they wanted to waste as little amount of time hunting for food as they possibly could.
They made their way out the house and inspected the scene they found there.
Blood, dirt, more blood and... Cart tracks.
Rowan called Fenrys over.
"There's four cart tracks," Rowan pointed out, "They must have had this planned, how did they know we would be leaving?"

"They must have been watching us," Fenrys said, kneeling down and brushing the tracks with his fingers.

"If so, then how did we not detect them? How did they evade that, how did they hide their scent?"
Rowan began pacing.

"And now that we know they were here, we can scent them. I've never smelt that before, have you?" Fenrys asked, rising to his feet.

"No. Never, I've never smelt that before," Rowan shook his head and squeezed the bridge of his nose, "It smells powerful, old, and dangerous."

"Should we tell Elide and Lorcan? They're still at Perranth."

"Yes we could use their help, and I think we should inform Dorian in case he has heard anything about these strangers."

They'd have to find a messenger for that. Rowan growled at the time they'd be wasting.
That could wait though. First matter of business, following those tracks. They didn't want anything to disturb them and they certainly didn't want to lose the scent.
They followed the tracks, the scent, until the sun sunk behind the mountains, then they followed them under the glow of the moon.
They followed them, so intent on the task at hand that they didn't bother to analyse the strange unfamiliar feeling slithering it's way into their bones. They found themselves being lead further into the forests, the carts would have only just been able to fit.
The tracks became harder and harder to see, to scent. Until, they just stopped.
Right in the middle of a small clearing.

This clearing was different.
It was... made.
The trees all bent outwards away from the clearing at jutting unnatural angles. Their leaves were curved and burnt and blown off. Stained black. There was no grass, just ash and dirt.
And there, right in the centre was a strange black blur on the ground.

The cart tracks finished there, just disappearing suddenly. They walked towards the blackened ditch in the ground, round and about the size of a kind sized bed.
As they walked towards it, the strange feeling grew and they looked at each other.
"You feel that?" Fenrys asked.
Rowan looked to the stained black dirt and nodded his head.
They cautiously stepped towards it, Rowan crouching down to run his fingers over the blackness.
His fingers came back black, feeling as if they were covered in ash and oil.

He sniffed it, flinching back and screwing up his noise at the putrid smell.
Fenrys watched his reaction, mild disgust on his face in response.

"What is it?" Fenrys questioned.
"How the hell do you expect me to know?" Rowan replied incredulously.
"Hey, I never know what you know. You know random weird things alright," he defended, putting his hands up.
Rowan rolled his eyes, although the corner of his lips twitches upwards.

He looked around the clearing, still crouched down, "Sample some of this, we will take it with us, try and find out what it is."
They scraped some onto a handkerchief    and folded it up, storing back into one of their bags.
They marked the clearing on their map, despite the fact that neither of them would forget where it was, and made their way towards Perranth.
They set a brisk pace. They had to get there as fast as possible, they didn't know where the others were or what kind of danger they were in.

And Rowan was not going to accept any of them dying.
He would crawl into the deepest darkest hell to get them back.

His family.
Wherever they were.