Found?
Found who?
The words wanted to leave Kair’s lips, but Cassian’s poison had been much more potent this time.
Of course…
After removing the poison from my body, he now knew exactly how much to use so that I wouldn’t be able to move at all.
Damn lion!
At that moment, something wet and cold came close to Kair’s face.
One of the creature’s chitin-covered legs slowly passed over Kair’s frightened face and wiped away one of his tears, though in the process, it stained it with blood.
The blood of one of the young men who had fought right beside him.
What the fuck was that???
Perhaps noticing the frightened look Kair had just given it, the creature began to speak.
“Your eyes…
They’re not the same as his.” The voice seemed to scrape against the air and was so insane that Kair’s own mind interfered with the words, creating something resembling radio static.
“We searched for him…
We didn’t find him?” The spider-owl’s face turned, examining all the bodies scattered around the cave, and then, in a completely unnatural movement, returned its focus to Kair.
In a brief flash of madness, the creature seemed to laugh through its beak.
“Then you aren’t him…
So we’ll make you become Him!” A wave of arachnids began moving in a single rhythm.
The wave emptied the cave and carried away the bodies of the dead youths.
Many were wrapped in webs that were all too familiar to Kair.
Shit!
Where are you taking me?
What do you mean, make me Him???
Helpless.
Cassian had left the young man without a lineage completely helpless.
Kair’s field of vision quickly changed.
The air seemed cleaner, and the sky was almost glowing on the horizon.
The creature’s legs moved rapidly between the enormous roots with an enviable familiarity and ease.
From above, Kair could see what had happened.
All those roots had moved, revealing a gigantic space.
A deeper region of the shallow area he had seen when he first entered the Fracture.
All around them, the roses were dead.
Some had been killed by the youths from the camp, while others had been destroyed by the flames that had spread into this region.
Kair’s brain quickly pieced together the things that had been tormenting him for much of the test.
The roots were sealing the Elites in small regions near the underground.
With so many flowers dying, the roots began to move, perhaps out of necessity, or because they could no longer keep the Elites under control.
The venomous heat in Kair’s chest diminished considerably, and his eyes turned toward his arms.
There, some of the creature’s feathers seemed to be doing what Cassian had done.
They were slowly absorbing the poison and making Kair’s body feel lighter.
Wait…
If the roots were sealing these creatures, and the flowers had certain functions…
That’s why the webs were holding the roses in place.
These things had been planning to break free for a long time!
The Princess’s and Rael’s flames only sped everything up!
As Kair was carried rapidly toward somewhere not far away, a young girl lay on the ground.
All that remained were evaporating puddles and holes where roots had once been.
Ashes rained down around her, and much of her scales were broken.
Red blood, as crimson as her hair, flowed down her body.
Above the young girl stood the spider-seahorse.
The creature did not have a single scratch.
Its entire body was intact, and its eyes spun with madness.
Its legs rose toward the sky once again, but this time, Elyra could see traces of lucidity in the creature’s gaze.
Its neck turned in a specific direction, and its voice, soaked in insanity, echoed through the area.
“Him…
We found him!” Those words were the spark that caused Elyra’s consciousness to fade, and her world to turn black.
On the other side of what had once been a sea of roots and crimson flowers.
Hundreds of bodies lay scattered across the ground.
All dead.
Hundreds of young wolves had met their end, and blood formed a river around the creature.
In front of it.
The young Duskfang held his sword.
A faint red liquid dripped from it, but even that blood seemed wrong.
With a glow that was somehow sacred and, at the same time, insane.
Wrong!
In front of him.
The spider-wolf stared at him with sharp eyes.
It was clear that two of its twelve legs had been cut off.
Blood flowed from them in a constant stream.
Inflicting wounds like these would have made Rael quite proud under different circumstances.
But here, he knew very well the price he had paid to cut the creature’s legs.
Hundreds of youths were scattered everywhere, dead.
Their numbers had been reduced in a horrifying way.
And the most painful part…
Even his veteran wolves lay dead in piles.
His eyes moved toward a familiar body.
A young wolf with red fur lay dead, his eyes wide open.
Half of his back had been split apart.
He stared at Rael as if begging for help.
I’m sorry, friend…
I wasn’t good enough for you.
No…
I wasn’t strong enough to protect any of you.
Refusing to cry beside his fallen comrade, the young two-colored wolf breathed in the air heavy with death and raised his gaze toward the creature.
However, he saw that it wasn’t attacking.
A deep silence formed until its snout turned toward a specific direction and began sniffing for something.
And from its lips came that insane voice once again.
“So it finally happened…
He has returned!” The impact was like a punch to Rael’s brain, but he endured it.
Just as he had endured every insane sentence from the spider-wolf since the battle began.
Who returned?
Do they have a leader?
If a damn Commander appears here, it’s over.
Even the lineage leaders couldn’t be certain they could handle something like that.
Rael remained standing, but he had to use his sword for support.
Even with the worst headache of his life, he remained rational.
He could not die.
Hundreds of wolves still needed him here.
Then, contrary to what he expected…
The spider-wolf began moving back toward the hole it had come from.
As if none of the hundreds of deaths had anything to do with it.
Many minutes passed before Rael finally collapsed to his knees.
“Did it end like this?
Everyone died because of the whim of a Rank 2?…” Rael’s lips, now completely free of any trace of transformation, trembled, but soon his teeth clenched.
His eyes turned toward a place that had once been engulfed in flames.
He wasn’t stupid…
If Kair had managed to connect the dots, Rael, with far more information, could do the same.
In fact, he could almost say it with certainty.
“Elyra…
The damn serpent royalty!
You…
No, your entire royal family will pay!
The deaths of hundreds of wolves will not go unpunished.
I swear!” Amid the blood and bodies of his kin, Rael watched the dawn emerge across the sky.
Morning was near.
He would return home.
And the royal family would feel the wrath of the wolf lineage.