Sons of Ironstorm - Book 3: New Alliance

Heralding the Return

It was a full Watch later that found KeLarion pacing the small apartment he and his wife shared at the behest of the Aeshin'laur council during the covenant deliberations, ignoring the bright, early afternoon sun pouring in the large window overlooking the top of Palace Hill. Shellan watched her beloved husband pace with nervous energy from her chair beside the window, worry in her eyes. He had only just returned from an emergency meeting of the Aeshin'laur where the effort to reassemble the alliance forces was put into motion. Would that effort be in time to save thousands of elves from the demons, was a question only time could now answer.

<<Shawn is a skilled and accomplished warrior, my love,>> she softly pointed out. <<And a Wielder of a Weapon of Power. I'm sure he'll return to us safely.>> It had to be so; she didn't want to think of any other possibility.

Not slowing his jerky strides one iota, KeLarion nodded tightly. In his mind, he knew Shawn was easily one of the most powerful beings on the planet. It would take a massive effort to hurt him now. But the only creatures capable of such an effort now stood on Uepoluan soil. If he had gone to attempt to prevent the Kaal Eran from establishing a southern beach head without even the Redeemed behind him, he was at a very real risk of being killed before even getting to the Final Battle. And that was a thought he didn't care to consider long. It made a father's heart ache for his son's safety.

Turning tightly, the slender Sylvasin warrior made to make another pass through the room. Before he could step forward once again, however, a light tap sounded at the door. Thinking it possible news about his son, he quickly changed his path and made for the door. Shellan, however, beat him to it, almost snatching the door open in her haste.

And he found not a messenger waiting there, scroll in hand, but Jeorgina and Shiana instead, both wearing nearly identical expressions of worried concern.

"Forgive us, KeLarion, Shellan, but we were hoping to wait here with you for news of Shawn." the lovely Ironstorm queen quietly explained.

Silently Shellan put her arms around both Jeorgina and Shiana in reply, the three holding each other for comfort for a long moment before KeLarion urged them to step back inside.

"Of course, your Majesty," the graying veteran said with an understanding smile as Shiana sat in the chair beside the window and Shellan and Jeorgina sat together on the bed, arms still around each other.

"Family should wait together in times like these."

Unaware of the turmoil rippling through the city at the Wielder's disappearance, a young groom in the uniform of the alliance's air wing was carefully brushing a griffon's hindquarters as the great beast fed high in the griffon aerie in the heart of Nazahn Suur, the greatest of Elvenfast's fortresses. So wrapped up in her task, she didn't feel the strange tingle washing across her skin that spoke of distant power focusing across space on the aerie.

The griffons, however, creatures of magic themselves, did. The groom looked up in concern as the griffon she had been brushing abruptly backed away from its trough, hissing deep in its throat.

<<What is it, boy?>> the groom softly asked, looking up at the great beast in front of her. Then her attention was captured by the shifting of other griffons in nearby nests, an unsettled motion that coupled with low hisses of alarm to send a chill dancing down the young elven soldier's spine.

Her alarm growing, she looked out of the nest she was standing in at others close by. What, in the name of the Maker, was making them so nervous?

Then the open space laying between the nests and the perches leading out of the aerie's heart abruptly split in half, a gate ripping into being out of thin air in answer to her unspoken question. As she stared over the nest's woven wall, there was a shifting of motion at the gate's mouth. Then it vomited out a tight stream of battering-looking elven soldiers, not a few of them helping others with great and horrible wounds, their clothing and armor smoking and torn by some dark force.