Page 34 of Cursed Shadows 4

I climb up the bag for the tree until I’m slumped over it.

My belly is pressed painfully against the prickled wood. But I drape myself, arms spread—and I go limp.

I rest.

My breaths are heaving. Water chokes out of me.

I stay draped over the tree.

10

DAXEEL

††††††

Insects crawling,skitteringover a corpse. That is what comes to Daxeel’s mind as he realises the sheer rush of fae around him, light and dark,everywhere.

Even through the mist, with the crevasse far behind him, Daxeel can’t sprint more than a few steps before he sees another fae.

The portal spewed them out in a mess, disorganised, and most have apparently landed on the middle of the mountain, above the greener trees and the rivers, but—at a glance—a week’s trek from the summit.

Daxeel doubts there is a pattern to where the fae are deposited on the mountain. It’s a flurried reaction of intrusion. The portal flings them here, but the Mountain of Slumber resists the invasion, throws them at random.

The fae do not belong here.

The gods do not want them here.

It brings to mind a hand swatting away at flies—and they disperse. The fae are the flies, the fall is the scatter, the gods are the hand.

No matter who Daxeel stepped into the portal with, before or after, or even that he only moved into the portal a mere second after Nari, or that he held onto their bond like an anchor, one that slipped from his grip when the winds tore him away, wherever they land is unpredictable.

If he’s glad for anything, it’s thathelanded near the battle on the crevasse, not Nari. Wherever she is, he can only hope it’s more secluded than here.

Because now, he charges through scattered chaos.

The mist was hiding this—a mass butchering.

Daxeel spears through it all, pockets of bloodshed, cold bodies bleeding out onto snow, distant cries and snarls that split the air, the clash of swords—

The turning gazes of the litalves flicker with recognition.

He doesn’t break pace as he dodges arrows that zip towards him, twists around a pair of axes aimed at him, ducks behind another dark one just as a litalf makes to barrel into him and tackle him to the snowy ground.

No matter the urge, Daxeel can’t waste time on these litalves. He has a goal, a destination, and he doesn’t break pace as he runs for it.

Daxeel and Rune knew they would find one another before anyone else. They knew that Samick and Dare would go off on their own to track Nari. That Caius would be determined to start—and perhaps finish—this alone.

So, Daxeel and Rune agreed upon a signal. One they could trace to the other, to find one another, fast.

Rune has ignited the signal.

It burns high up in the mist, above the span of white-dusted woods that Daxeel weaves through.

The blue of his eyes burns, locked onto the signal.

Black sparks crackle in the icy fog. Not unlike those smaller firecrackers that younglings will throw at the streets, the sparks arc metres above the ground before they erupt in a fist of sparks.

But they don’t last longer than some minutes.

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