WolfStar still hung from her hand, very slowly unwinding himself from the defensive huddle he'd been forced to assume when she'd dragged him inside the tower.
What in curses' name was she doing?
StarLaughter ignored WolfStar's almost inaudible mutterings and groans, concentrating instead on the silence of the tower rising above her. Should she risk it?
Ah, but what choice did she have! None! And WolfStar even less.
"Spiredore," she said. "We would go to the northern Icescarp Alps." And StarLaughter placed her foot on the first of the steps, and walked upwards.
WolfStar screamed as she dragged him effortlessly after her and the edge of the first step dug into his ribs and then his hip.
Within a few steps StarLaughter increased her gait to a trot, giving WolfStar's head an impatient twist to shut him up.
Qeteb raged when he emerged from Spiredore to find StarLaughter gone. Not because he was in any manner frightened of her, or even because he needed her, but because she had disobeyed him.
She had flaunted him, and no-one did that and lived to enjoy their small rebellion.
"Sense her!" he hissed to the other Demons, and they sent their senses scrying over the entire land.
Nothing.
Then Qeteb sent his far sight and his power raging over the land. Where? Where? Where?
But wherever it was, StarLaughter had managed to evade him.
How? She had no magic that could withstand his!
Where?
Furious, Qeteb sent firestorms tumbling about Tencendor. They ravaged from the Murkle Mountains to the Nordra, and from the Minaret Peaks to the cliffs of Widewall Bay. Sheets of ice fell from the sky, and impaled creatures as they scrambled to avoid the fireballs. Molten earth spurted in great gouts from the chasms that wound over Tencendor.
And even this did not flush forth StarLaughter, nor reveal her presence.
Qeteb slid down from his beast, strode over to Barzula, and hauled him from his mount to the ground.
He sent a furious armoured foot booting into the Demon's abdomen. " Where is she?"
"I do not know, Great Father!" Barzula screamed.
"Where is she?" Qeteb roared as he punched Sheol in her throat, sending her to the ground as well.
"I do not know, Great Father!"
" Why did you not kill her?" Qeteb bellowed.
All four Demons now huddled on the ground, their faces pressed into the dirt.
"We thought you might like to play with her," Sheol eventually whispered.
Qeteb fell silent, regarding his Demons.
"Get up," he said, and turned away, staring into the northern distance. Star Laughter had escaped very far away, and that probably meant north. But not only had she escaped, she had somehow managed to cloak herself from his power, and that Qeteb did not like at all.
She should not know how to do that ... and if she had found the means to do so, it meant that there was still some secrets left in this land that Qeteb did not understand.
Secrets probably powered with the knowledge of the Enemy.
"It should not be so," the Midday Demon whispered to himself. "Haven't I ravaged this land completely?"
But even as he said it, Qeteb knew that his power was not yet absolute. The power of the Enemy continued to linger within the land — the Sanctuary was the perfect example of such power — and until the StarSon was dead, Qeteb could not destroy it completely.
He looked skywards, and beckoned. "My lovely," he said. "I would speak with you."
StarGrace spiralled down from the sky.
"I need you to hunt," said Qeteb.
Spiredore deposited StarLaughter and WolfStar in a world that was different to the one immediately about the Maze and Spiredore, but that was, nevertheless, substantially the same.
StarLaughter stood and stared, smiling and seemingly uncaring for the moment that WolfStar lay crumpled and semi-conscious at her feet.
The trip through Spiredore (or, rather, the journey up its sharp-edged stairs) had not been kind to him.
StarLaughter let him be for the moment, allowing her eyes and senses to absorb the scenery. The Icescarp mountains had always been frigid and barren, picked clean by the icy winds that whistled over the northern Iskruel Ocean and through every blackened crevice of the ranges.
But before Qeteb had wasted the land, the mountains had always seemed alive ... almost as if warmth smouldered under their cold, hard skin, and all one had to do was find the way down through the crevices to reach it.
Then, of course, the Icarii had made their home in the mountains. Talon Spike had been the greatest mountain of all, and the Icarii had gradually tunnelled and chiselled away its interior to create living spaces in which to enjoy their exile from the southern lands.