And licked him.
He cursed and shoved the shadow panther away, but it nuzzled against him, shoving him deeper into the mud. Jeric lowered his sword and grinned as Shadow’s messenger continued to lick his clothing.
“I’m going to kill Shadow,” Mind said.
Is that any way to treat my messenger? the panther asked, and Mind caught the remnant of thoughts. It was an echo, but Shadow had obviously known what the panther would do when they met.
Mind shoved the panther aside and stood to wipe the mud from his clothing. “Just tell me your message so you can dissipate.”
What I have to say is too important to reveal through a messenger. Shadow’s voice came from the shadow cat. Just come to Ilumidora. You’ll want to hear Elenyr’s plan. We discovered something, and trust me, it’s big . . .
Chapter 30: A City Destroyed
The farther Mind and Jeric journeyed south, the more bleak the region became. Wind whistled through empty villages, the vacant structures dark and forlorn. Animals were gone, some barn doors left open in haste. Then they reached Terros.
The city was gone.
Stone walls and wooden houses, castle and hovel, even the waterfront, all had been reduced to a pile of rubble. The outer fortifications were unrecognizable, the farms rent and torn until the land looked broken. The cobblestone streets and gilded manors of the rich were nothing but a sea of broken stones and scorched beams.
“It’s been erased.” Mind stared in horror at the destroyed city.
“This is the work of Draeken’s army,” Jeric said.
Mind knew the people had evacuated to Ilumidora, but the devastation would not have been stopped, not even by the allied forces. Anything powerful enough to cause such damage would not be stopped, not by a million soldiers.
“We must hasten.” Mind pointed to the road south, where trees were torn up, the gravel ripped apart by the passage of thousands of fiends. “The fiends are already on their way south.”
“How are we going to get through Draeken’s army?” Jeric asked.
“Leave that to me,” Mind said.
They flicked the reins and hurried south until finally a bend in the road took the disturbing sight of Terros from view. Struck by a renewed sense of urgency, both pushed their steeds, driving them through the night and into the next morning. For two days they hastened their journey, until they reached the fiend army.
Mind and Jeric left their horses and crept through the trees, advancing to the edge of a short cliff overlooking the valley. The sun had begun to set, and in the darkness Mind watched the earth ripple with moving bodies of millions of fiends, the dark creatures marching south. Trees in their way were uprooted or hacked to splinters, boulders were shoved aside.
To the east, more fiends poured from the hills, cascading down the slopes in a wave of flesh. Sipers, the doglike creatures the size of lions. Quare, the spindly humanoid beings that had once been krey or human. And krakas, the captains wielding giant obsidian swords. Then Mind spotted a fourth type.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
The beast resembled a scorpion, with a long pointed tail extended over its back. Larger than a wagon, it had dual pincers and thick, scale-like armor. The tails flicked, and then one snapped, sending a bone spear streaking into a boulder laying in its path. The spear plunged into solid stone, the boulder cracking from the impact.
“Skorpians,” Jeric murmured. “They were once beasts of burden on Kelindor. The Dark twisted them into creatures of war, giving them tails and claws.”
Mind’s features darkened and he pointed east, towards Blue Lake. “There are trails between the fiends and the lake. If we hurry, we should be able get ahead of the fiends and reach Ilumidora in time.”
Jeric nodded and the two returned to their horses. Wheeling their mounts west, they worked their way around the fiend army before taking a thin trail through the rolling hills adjacent to Blue Lake. Scattered fiends, separated from the main army, frequently crossed their path, and Mind altered their thoughts, sending them in different directions. The body of a dead fiend would be discovered and investigated, but he doubted anyone would notice if a fiend wandered away.
They raced through the night, the horses laboring to maintain the pace. When the sun rose, Mind’s gaze lifted to the haze that hovered over the fiend army. Like a storm cloud, it wafted off the fiends and blurred the clouds, obscuring the rising son.
“The Dark may not have been able to enter,” Jeric said, “but the fiends are infused with it.”
Mind nodded, and tried not to think about the enormous breadth of the cloud. If the army was even half the size, it was larger than Mind feared. He realized that unless Elenyr had a plan to stop them all, Ilumidora would end up like Terros. He shuddered at the thought and urged his flagging steed to greater efforts.
The horses gave out the next day, but Mind managed to subvert a pair of elk. Moving the saddles over, they left the horses and continued their path on the unusual steeds. Far less sturdy, the animals didn’t last long, but after two days, they managed to pass the front of the fiend army. Just as they reached the forest of Orláknia, they encountered a vanguard of the alliance.
Mind dropped from his saddle and approached the scouts. “We’re half a day’s ride ahead of them,” he said.
The elf eyed the docile elk. “You got around the fiend army on that?”
“Just the last day,” Mind said. “Do you have a pair of horses we can use? We need to reach Ilumidora.”
The officer called an order to a lieutenant to fetch some steeds, and two were brought forward. The captain offered food and drink, and Mind slaked his thirst from the water skin. Then he shook his head clear of fatigue and nodded his gratitude.
“Did you see Terros?” the captain asked. “Scouts said it was destroyed.”
“It’s gone,” Mind said.
“All of it?” another elf asked. “How is that possible?”
A dull reverberation came through their boots, and as it mounted, all eyes turned towards the road. Winding east and north, it passed over a hill several miles away. As they watched, a dark wave crested the rise and poured down the slope, its sheer size eliciting muttered curses and a prayer from the other scouts.
“Ero save us,” one archer breathed.
“He can’t save us this time,” Mind said, glancing at Jeric. “We’re going to have to do it on our own.”
