The Demigod Proving

by S. James Nelson

  But maybe that also wasn’t the reason he kept kissing her. Maybe it was just that he found it so pleasant.

  His desire grew with each moment the kiss continued. He bent his legs so that she didn’t have to crane her neck so much. He wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her closer. A little squeak of pleasure rose from her throat.

  She was his mate from a former life. He could feel it—he had a connection with her. But he couldn’t tell her he knew. If he did, the pull toward her would become that much stronger. He couldn’t concede everything to her. That would be too much.

  But maybe he could go with her. Just for a while. Just to get to know her better. The scales in his mind tipped in favor of it.

  He pulled his lips from her.

  “Very well,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 49: Interrupted

  Always approach shadows with caution. Always. The one time you forget the danger that can emerge from darkness, you will get a nasty surprise.

  -Athanaric

  Wrend’s agreement to go with Leenda sent a thrill through her. As it was, she almost couldn’t breathe, what with his body almost one with hers. Just her thin shirt separating them.

  Nevertheless, she pulled away in order to take his hand and pull him forward, toward the door.

  “Wait,” he said. “I need boots. A shirt. Probably pants.”

  “You look fine without a shirt,” she said, but didn’t object further as he grabbed his clothes out of the chest and pulled them on.

  He moved with a hurried grace, hardly pulling his eyes from her even when he sat on the cot to lace up his boots. She picked the hat back up, and with a sly grin at him snatched the lion from the cot. A prize. By the time she’d put the hat back on her head and tucked the hair up underneath it, he was fully dressed again and belting on his knife.

  “Do you really think you’ll need that?” she said.

  He looked at the knife and shrugged. “It’s always with me.”

  She joined him at the door, and he took her hand as he peeked out of the tent to make sure the way was clear.

  “Maybe we should go separately,” she said.

  A sliver of light slipped through the tent flap, lighting one side of his face as he looked at her.

  “You lead the way,” he said.

  “You’ll follow? You won’t abandon me?”

  She saw the desire in his eyes and knew he wouldn’t. To feed his passion, she touched his face and kissed him again. When she pulled away, his voice became falsely stern.

  “Lead the way.”

  She stepped into the night. Not ten minutes had passed since she’d entered the tent, but the night felt different. The air felt cooler in her lungs, and the ground felt softer beneath her shoes. The stars shone brighter. The moon’s thin crescent shone more sharply against the sky. But everything else—the physical shapes around her—seemed insubstantial. The tents, trees, and bushes passed by like ghosts, hardly bearing substance because of the fog over her mind.

  She moved fast, taking a circuitous path through the tents in order to avoid the paladins. He followed her at a distance, not as adept at avoiding guards. But they let him pass without issue, and before long they reached the edge of the camp, where the ground sloped uphill in a long, dark ridge. A copse of trees covered the top of the ridge. Krack waited on the opposite side, perhaps half a mile away. At least, he did if he’d kept his promise—which she thought he probably had; she was finally getting through to him.

  Paladins, each spaced a hundred feet apart, patrolled the area. They marched back and forth along some invisible line fifty feet out from the camp. As she stood at the edge of the last tent, listening, the paladins in the darkness to the left called out that all was clear and safe. At first it came only as an indistinguishable mumble through the darkness, but it gradually grew louder and clearer as paladin after paladin called it out, going down the line.

  “Safe and clear here.”

  Wrend crept up behind her—he wasn’t particularly quiet—and she turned as he approached her.

  “When I came into camp, I jumped over them,” she said. “I leapt from the top of the ridge into the city.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, and it occurred to her that he didn’t know the extent of her abilities—the same ones that anyone who used Ichor could have.

  “I can’t do that.”

  He said it without looking at her, but she wished he would. She wanted him to lean over and kiss her again. Now, staring at him, feeling him so close, she found that the walk through the camp had not diminished the strength of his pull. It had increased it, as if the promise of what might come had lodged its way between her ribs, into her heart.

  “But you can get past them, right?” she said. “They’ll let you out. And I can just leap over them.”

  His brow furrowed. “We can try.”

  “Just meet me up in those trees.”

  She nodded uphill, past the paladins. It would be dark in those trees. No one would see them. Krack wouldn’t know they were there. Her heart raced at the thought, and she leaned up to kiss him, letting it linger for a moment as he touched her cheek with light fingers.

  Then she separated from him and bound Thew and Flux to her body. She’d already been harvesting both constantly since leaving the tent; she did it so much, had such experience, that she almost did it unconsciously. Like breathing. She took about a dozen steps back into the camp, so she could get a running start, and with one last look at Wrend, applied the Ichor to her legs and body and started to sprint.

  Her hat flew off as she lifted into the air, and her hair whipped in the wind. It was a good jump. Without Flux—just the application of Thew to strengthen her muscles—she would have leapt thirty or more feet, but with Flux she lifted high into the air, in an arc like an unusually tall rainbow. The ground dropped away from her, and she adjusted the path of her flight toward the trees. A paladin looking up into the sky might think she was a large bird passing overhead. The camp and tents shrunk, and she lost sight of where Wrend stood in the shadows. The trees gained definition as she approached them.

  She laughed at the wind rushing in her face, at how the ground slipped by her just like it had when she’d flown as a draegon.

  As she descended, she applied Flux against her motion, slowing her flight to the point that her foot struck the ground with no more force than a normal running stride, and not much faster. She took half a dozen more steps and came to a stop just a few feet away from the edge of the forest.

  She turned back downhill. Wrend, almost invisible in his black clothes, had left the tents and started up the hill, toward the paladin. He had his arms up in friendly greeting. The paladin, its armor glinting in the dim night light, walked toward him. To the right and left, the next paladins over also headed toward Wrend.

  Watching the scene from the safety and anonymity of the trees, Leenda couldn’t repress a quiet laugh. Her mate was coming to her. At long last she could spend time convincing him that she was his mate, and he was a draegon. He was softening, and soon he would come with her. She could feel it.

  She started to step into the cover of pinion pines, just to be safe, but stopped at the sudden sensation of another presence nearby. Elation evaporated, and she scoured the darkness of the branches. Here and there a hint of moonlight angled down into the needles, illuminating a branch or trunk. Nothing moved, though she could feel someone watching her. Goosebumps rose up on her arms and she stopped breathing, as if that would make it easier to find the source of danger.

  And it moved. A massive shape, twenty feet back in the center of the trees, in the uttermost darkness. In so little light, it was just a formless shadow—but a huge one. Four or five times her size.

  Athanaric. It had to be Athanaric.

  “You may have been my son’s mate,” he said, and strode toward her, “but I am the master of his soul.”

  He pushed trees aside as he crashed through the branches. Splotches of moonligh
t found his face as he came nearer.

  She couldn’t move. She couldn’t shout, scream, or run. He’d found her. He’d known she was coming and where she would be.

  Panic jolted her as an image of that afternoon flashed through her. She'd run out of Ichor and collapsed on the rock, nearly tumbling over the edge and into the patch of purple flowers. The fear of that moment returned to her, froze her in place. He’d loomed so tall over her. He was so much bigger than her. So much more powerful, and he’d had such rage on his face that she was certain she would die. And now she felt it, again.

  Only, another fear burgeoned inside her, born of an unexpected question.

  Was Krack safe?

  That thought—and that thought alone, as even thoughts of Wrend fled her mind—gave her the sudden ability to move again.

  And she did.

  Chapter 50: Situation in flux

  It's much harder to learn how to use multiple types of Ichor when under stress, but in the end, you will learn more in a shorter period than if you learn it in a classroom. If you survive, that is.

  -Wrend

  Wrend approached the paladin with both hands raised to shoulder level, so the soldier knew he bore no weapons. Leenda had landed at the top of the ridge and stood near the trees, a black shape against a larger, blacker mass. If he hadn’t known what to look for, he wouldn’t have seen her. Her red hair helped.

  “Hail, paladin,” Wrend said.

  He slowed to let the paladin approach, planning to explain that he needed to leave camp. The paladin should let him by; barring specific orders to do otherwise, they let demigods come and go as they pleased.

  The paladin held a bow with an arrow knocked, and wore a sword at the side. As always, a hooded and masked leather coif covered its head, although its eyes glinted through the holes in that lifeless way of all paladins. Its ring mail rattled as it approached, coming down the hill at a measured pace, stopping about twenty feet away. It raised the bow, but didn’t draw.

  “Who are you?” it said.

  Its voice rasped like that of most paladins, an expected product of a slowly rotting throat. When the body decomposed enough—even despite the embalming efforts of the priests—the paladin would lose its hard-earned ability to speak.

  Two other paladins approached, one from each side, both with bows raised. It was normal protocol.

  He kept his hands up and rotated to the side so they could see the tree-branch emblems embroidered down his shirtsleeve.

  “I’m Wrend, son of Athanaric, demigod.”

  Saying it like that—declaring it with such confidence—gave him pause as he remembered who he was and what the Master needed of him. Really, he shouldn’t do this. But he wasn’t about to stop now, with Leenda waiting for him up the hill. It wasn’t entirely the desire to taste her lips that drew him, but more and more as he’d walked through the tents behind her, it was the Master’s refusal to release him from the proving. It frustrated Wrend. Angered him. Made him want to rebel.

  The sound of wood snapping made him look up the hill just as Leenda started to move to the left, along the top of the ridge. The trees just past her shifted, cracked, and swayed against the starry sky. A dark shape emerged from the trees and started after Leenda. It could only be one thing.

  Somehow, the Master had known to wait there for Leenda.

  Wrend’s stomach lurched. He was discovered. The Master knew. The scales tipped back in favor of obedience.

  The paladins didn’t seem to notice. The two others had stopped thirty feet to the right and left, and had drawn their bows.

  “We’ve been instructed to not let you leave,” the one near him said. “Orders directly from the Master.”

  At a previous time, Wrend would’ve turned back. But things had changed, and his indecision lasted only as long as it took to focus on his discernment, bind Thew to his legs, and start forward. The paladins wouldn’t harm him. They wouldn’t shoot unless they had specific orders to do so, and Wrend couldn’t see that happening; the Master valued him too much. They might try to stop him, but they’d fail because they wouldn’t catch him.

  He bolted past them. First, he'd lied to the Master. Now he'd deliberately disobeyed orders. But what did he have to lose? The proving put his life at risk anyway. And besides, the Master was here; he already knew what was going on, and retreating would do Wrend no good.

  The paladin he’d spoken with shouted. The two on the sides started after him, but he lost sight of them as he bounded up the hill, past the clumps of prickly sagebrush, his attention split between ensuring his feet found good landing spots, binding Thew to his legs, and watching the pursuit ahead. Leenda seemed so small and quick, and the Master so huge and lumbering. He didn’t gain ground on her, but stayed only a short ways behind, taking fewer but larger steps.

  Wrend wouldn’t catch them. He’d only first used Thew to run faster earlier that day—although it seemed like weeks had passed. This time it came easier, and each stride carried him further, but Leenda and the Master had the benefit of Flux, and ran too fast along the top of the ridge in front of the trees, already far to his left and extending the gap every instant.

  The green waves of Thew emanated from his belly, from where his food digested. He could discern them easily, even in the night, for they weren’t affected by light or the lack thereof. But he wanted the Flux. He needed to harvest and use it, or he would never catch them. He shifted the focus of his discernment, similar to changing the focus of his eyes from a distant object to a nearby one.

  And that did it.

  The white waves he’d only barely sensed before leapt to life before him, rolling out from his body in fast, short bursts. He pulled them back in, harvesting them. They filled his soul differently than Thew did: whereas Thew made it feel like his veins swelled, the Flux made his skin crawl. Neither sensation was exactly physical. It existed on a plane other than his body, but it was real, nonetheless.

  He’d nearly reached the top of the ridge when he bound the Flux to his body. He had no idea how to use it, and where he should bind it to, so he attached it to as much of his body as he could. In the process, he almost lost his grip on Thew, and for a moment the binding of Flux completely failed.

  Ahead, Leenda disappeared around the edge of the trees. The Master roared, reaching out and grabbing a tree to pull him around the corner. The tree bent and cracked, but didn't break. In a moment, the pursuit passed beyond Wrend’s sight.

  As his foot came down in one of his longer strides, he bound and applied the Flux in a burst. At the effort, the Thew slipped from his grasp and his legs weakened. Pushed by the Flux, his body flew forward. His head flopped backward—he hadn't been ready for such a thrust—and he lost control of the application. The binding failed. But it was too late, anyway. He’d pushed too hard in a manner he couldn’t control. His arms and legs flailed. He crashed into a bush of sagebrush.

  He’d seen it coming, thought to leap over it. Instead, the bush grabbed his legs and feet, tripping him. He flailed, unable to catch himself, and careened face-first into another bush. The leaves and branches tore at his face and clothes.

  When he came to a stop only a second later—with his back twisted awkwardly, his arms tangled, and his thighs smarting from where they’d hit the sagebrush—he just lay there for several seconds, smelling the pungent sage, cursing his fool attempts at heroics, and hoping he hadn’t landed in a bush of poison sage. If he had, he’d be dead in just a minute.

  Chapter 51: Kicking god

  I hate it when my life is in danger. That emotion is magnified when it involves my son.

  -Leenda

  As had happened earlier that day, Leenda’s Thew began to wane. She hadn’t had that much to begin with, and only Flux kept her ahead of Athanaric. She had to apply her Thew in bursts, as she took a leap or landed. It required exquisite timing as she bounded around the grove, over rocks and sagebrush and juniper trees. She could have entered the grove, the dark mass to her right, since Atha
naric might get stuck in the trees. But she didn’t want to get tripped up by an unseen branch or root. Better to stay out in the open, where the star and moonlight could light her way.

  Athanaric cursed as he pursued. She didn’t look back, relying instead on instincts to gauge his distance—that, and the sound of his heavy footfalls. He must have also had a limited supply of Ichor, or else he would have caught her long before.

  Unless he had something else in mind.

  She only needed to make it to Krack. He could fly her away. Athanaric wouldn’t be able to keep up.

  If—.

  If Krack had stayed where she’d left him. The hollow terror of earlier that day, when she’d realized Krack wasn’t where he was supposed to be, reverberated in her heart. What if he’d abandoned her, again?

  What if Athanaric had already found him, and killed him?

  As she crested a small ridge, the trees gave way on the right, and ahead the ground sloped down. The countryside opened up before her. The desert extended out for miles, with the moonlight and starlight shining in a dull metallic blue off of the sea of sagebrush, punctuated with spots of yellow poison sage. Junipers and pines stood like shepherds over their flocks of stone. Off to the right and down the hill, Krack lay in the dirt, his body, tail, and neck stretched out long, as if he bathed in the sunlight. He’d always slept like that. Even since he was a pup he liked to extend to his full length.

  But was he now sleeping? Wouldn’t he have heard Athanaric’s cursing and footsteps? Maybe it was just how close she was to the giant, but in her chest she could feel the rhythm of his deep voice and his boots striking the ground.

  “Krack!” she said. “Krack, wake up!”

  Her voice extended out from her, but the vast openness of the desert swallowed it.

  Krack didn’t move. Goat guts!