CHAPTER 24

The return to the Aerie was as unceremonious as the departure. Cillumn's dragon landed beyond the bathhouse wall, at his urging. He really didn't need to force the full beast on Lis twice in such a short time. He wasn't even certain how she had taken the first transformation and now that the enemy had been delayed—if not defeated—his worry for her grew.

He was weary from the flight and battle, the energy that danger had given him was quickly fading.

But the bathhouse interior was empty, and for some time, too. It had been cleaned, as well, not a towel out of place, and no sign of her ruined clothes, or his own shirt. He did spot his weapons, left carefully propped against the wall, and strode over to retrieve them. But he found himself disappointed and slightly worried.

He shouldn't expect her to remain within the bathhouse, if he thought about it. But he was at a loss as to where she might be, instead. There hadn't been many places she had attended during her stay, and none were conducive to solid rest, if that was what she sought. Perhaps she would have returned to the medic wing, in search of the recovery room and the bed she had awoken in.

From the back of his mind, where the dragon rested when it wasn't free, he felt a sense of growing concern that matched his own. An instinct of sorts, and it told Cillumn that Lis was gone. Not just from the bathhouse, but from the Aerie.

With that fear edging its way beneath his skin, he strode out, once more, through the solid doors that separated the baths from the rest of the Aerie. He paused in the street outside, unsure which direction to go.

But he froze at the sight of a simple piece of parchment fluttering at his feet. It was folded neatly and obviously had been left for him to find.

But why parchment? Who would seek to communicate with him thus? Why not just head into the bathhouse and have a conversation face to face?

He scanned the street and subsequent alleys, but none held any sort of activity, recent or otherwise. Satisfied that he could not just run down the parchment's deliverer, he bent down and picked it up.

It unfolded in his hand as he did, a tiny red flower falling forth. He caught it in his hand before it could tumble to the stones below, his fingers trembling. The same flower he had found in the alley.

The lettering within the parchment was simple and precise, but it was the words that slammed into him.

*The Shifter Illaise has taken the crystal.

Despite all our attempts to prevent calamity, it now heads toward the very being that will help it choose its host. You will not stop it now.

*It would be best for all if you forgo the woman you favor to her end. Darkness is rising. The enemy gains strength. Seek purity in your actions...and relations. There will be no room in this war for disorder and chaos. No room for you should you entangle yourself in such impurity.

*Take heed of this warning and you shall receive the answers you seek. All in the perfect timing of Valarious**.*

***

The wolf mouthed Lis' hand, tugging hard enough to pinch the skin, but not enough to break it. His ears twitched nervously, but she did not follow, not yet. Something dark had settled in her chest. Her Alpha, it would mean that the pack had been compromised. No. No. No. It didn't make sense, she removed the glyph, they should have been safe. She had sacrificed her membership, her life, to ensure it.

Illaise's warning rang through her head, the urging to kill the Dragon Lord that had been bitten. What if one, or several, of her pack had been injured before she lured the creatures away? But still, Illaise had said it took time for the injury to progress. Lis had only been gone for two...or was it three days now? The question was, was he out of his own mind already? It begged to reason that he was, what else would he be doing so deep in the forest...tracking the pack?

She should shoot him now, and hope that the poison would have enough effect to put him from his misery. And she intended to. She raised the dart shooter, tramping down the thought that she had done this before, with disastrous results. The feathery green fronds of a fern blocked her view, she pushed them away slightly with her free hand, prepared to fire...and froze. She couldn't do it, to sentence the man who was her Alpha to death...she shook her head, confused at what would be right in this situation.

In the end, she lowered the dart launcher. He might be dying, or maybe the man that he was was already dead, but it wouldn't be by her hand.

The wolf tried once more, grasping her elbow in his jaw, on the verge of breaking skin, insisting she follow.

Trying not to feel defeated, and terrified about what this revelation meant for her pack...for her mother, she lowered the launcher and followed.

She slipped behind the tree and watched the gray fur disappear beneath a tangle of thorny vines. Cissiac hydiacia in particular, the vine with the thorns that made a good poison base, she hoped. She still hadn't had a chance to test the poison she had created for the Archon, the poison that would be...or would have been...placed on the weapons. With her concentration focused on an airborne method of distribution, she hadn't managed to find a test subject for the poison goop. The thought that each and every one of her defenses was untried and possibly subject to failure was not a comfortable one. What if none of them worked? They would be running into the enemies camp basically unarmed.

With that grim thinking, she pressed forward, following the hints of gray fur through the undergrowth. They passed through a patch of swampy ground where mud sucked at her legs. The stench of bog gasses was enough to cover their scent, a planned move by her escort, she was certain. She couldn't say she appreciated it, though, not with the insects that swarmed her naked flesh. Half way through the mess of vines and mud, she could have sworn that something brushed her leg beneath the surface. It took a lot of inner strength, and the threat of certain death, to withhold the squeamish noises she felt like making. In general, slimy things didn't bother her, as evidenced by her willingness to work with the poisonous tree frogs, but slimy things she couldn't see...well, she had an active imagination and it was not being kind to her.

A breath of wind carried to her and stopped such thinking in a heartbeat. Who needed a dark imagination when the Quatori were out there, close enough to smell? These were true Quatori, too, not the possessed creatures. These were impossible to see, but their smell, even to her human form's nose, was distinct. Her guide sensed it, too. He waited at the edge of the muddied ground, staring back into the trees behind her, as though, if he looked hard enough, he might be able to spot the creatures.

With practiced silence, she climbed from the mud, the feeling of being watched...stalked, urging her to hurry forward. A second wolf, this one a similar color to the gray, but with darker tips to his fur, joined them. And then a third. They maneuvered through a series of twisted trunks until a shadow fell across their procession.

Lis looked upward. Tall, ragged cliffs topped with oddly shaped and rounded stone protrusions towered above them. They would definitely be an impairment to the pack's movement, but they continued forward anyway, pushing past an ever tightening path between rocky outcroppings.

Soon, Illaise joined the procession, taking the lead. Lis watched, with relief, as her lead warriors joined her, each with an intact bundle around their neck. She halted more than once to study the sky, often enough that Lis took to studying it, as well. What was it she looked for?

Oddly, though she could still scent the Quatori infrequently, after Illaise joined them, they seemed to retreat. It made little sense since, they were not traveling any faster. Indeed, the difficulty of the pass had forced them to slow considerably. Lis was forced, however, to forgo speculation when they reached an opening between cliffs and peaks, a natural-walled fortress stretching at least a mile into the distance and twice as wide before narrowing into cliff sides once more. It was as though it had been scooped out by the great hand of a giant. None of the side walls looked particularly passable, a few cracks appeared as though they might provide similar passes as the one they had just come through.

In the center of this natural pit was a conglomeration of wood and stone, too disastrous to be anything naturally made. Well, it did look rather like a great landslide, except that the placement was wrong, it was too far from any of the walls to be such a thing. Around it swarmed moving bodies, they came and went into a cavity, barely visible from the pack's distance.

Shifters. Lis couldn't tell from where she stood if they were possessed or not, and Madion had indicated that there would be both. She watched them speculatively. There must be some form of passage within, or more likely beneath, that rubble.

Adda was there somewhere. The pull Lis felt toward her, the need to get closer, had intensified through the rocky cliff side. Now, she nearly bursting with it. Adda was in there, and she was alive. Hope flared within her, a wild and reckless urge to storm forward and do what she could to rescue her. The feeling was not mutual, however. On Adda's end of the bond, there was little hope; it was there, but very much muted from Lis' own. She knew Lis was there, but mostly, she felt a deep tiredness, and now fear. She didn't want Lis to approach...in fact, she didn't want her there at all.

For many long seconds, Lis stood still, trying to separate Adda's emotions from her own. She was disappointed that her sister wished to see her go, but that was Adda, always the protector. Always her protector. It would concern her to her core that someone would risk themselves on her account. With a tinge of regret, Lis closed herself off from Adda's feelings, blocking her sister's growing desperation that seeped into Lis' wellbeing. Illaise was using her hand signals again, giving orders to her men. She needed all of her wits about her; she couldn't afford to be distracted by Adda now.

She sensed Lis' closure, she thought, for never before had the bond transmitted words, only emotions. But as Lis withdrew her focus and forced her awareness away from their link, Adda's voice echoed within her mind.

“No.”

***

Cillumn paced. Unlike when he and Lis had met with the Archon and his council, the audience chamber was full. And no one appeared happy. Both the Archon and his council stood upon the dais, debating and arguing with several members of the Aerie. Wasting his time. Wasting Lis' time.

What had she been thinking, running off with Illaise of all people?

Actually, he didn't have trouble answering that. Her sister. Illaise had offered a direct, if reckless, path to her sister and Lis had taken it. And he was left behind. Where he couldn't protect her. Even now, she might be in danger.

The beast rattled inside of him, demanding to be let free, to pursue her. It, at least, had no concerns over the content of the letter that had been left for him.

He had concerns, however, and, surprisingly, a fair amount of anger. A lifetime of searching and meeting nothing but silence in his desperation, only to have information offered now and attached to terms he simply would not, could not accept.

It was more than anger; a deep pit of rage filled him. Rage for the lost child he had been, for the years of wondering why. Rage for the wasted time seeking answers. Answers that once he had thought simply didn't exist, but now he realized were being kept from him.

He clenched and unclenched his hand, wanting nothing more in that moment than to hit something. Hard. Battle was awaiting, and for once he almost didn't mind, except for one thing.

*Lis*.

The rage fled and a different ire filled him, this one driven by fear. He would not lose her.

A hand clasped on his shoulder. Dynarys, and he looked to be in a similar temper. Sometime during Cillumn's agitation, the council had come to a decision. Only the Archon was left upon the dais, the council were gone from the raised platform and from the room itself, leaving Cillumn to wonder what he had missed.

“Let us go and seek your woman and my mother. Pray to the Six this doesn't cost us both deeply,” Dynarys growled out his words, sentiments of emotion Cillumn agreed upon, and he added a silent vow of his own.

He would not be a puppet to whomever held the keys to his past. The only way to retain control over his life was to forgo all aspects of his history. Forever.

He pulled out the parchment from the pocket where he had placed it. Without another thought, he crumpled it, along with the small flower within, and dropped both into the top of a burning torch sconce on his way out of the chamber and toward his future.

***

Illaise's plan seemed to be a simple and direct hit upon the camp's forces. She did not give directions beyond that, and Lis had no way to ask. Suspicion flowered within her, however. Infiltrating the mouth of the passage, the route to Adda, would take more than a direct attack on the milling mass of creatures down there.

The group slunk around the cliff walls and protrusions. Two warriors had been left near the crevice the pack had entered at, to dissuade anything from following them in. Lis felt a flash of sympathy for her Alpha, he might very well be one of the creatures that the sentinels had to dissuade.

More signals and the rest of the wolves spread out, creeping along the edges and walls. There was a predetermined plan, Lis decided, watching the warriors move with precision. They knew exactly where they were going, and they had the focus of wolves with purpose.

A purpose she had not been included upon. The most that Illaise did was to gesture Lis was to follow her before dropping toward the ground and shifting. As a wolf, she hunched against the stones, scooting and shuffling forward as wolves might stalk prey. But she wasn't aiming for any animal, she was aiming for the opening. Anticipation, and something darker, a fear and a certainty that Lis could not handle what was to come, settled upon her. She frowned at Illaise's silver fur crawling in a direct line toward the camp's center. Even with Lis' dart launcher...and the satchel, they stood no chance. So what was the crazy fool of a woman doing?

Lis followed, with much more difficulty. There was not much cover away from the canyon walls. In fact, the entire area within the camp's boundaries had been stripped of foliage, if indeed much had ever grown there. She hunched toward the ground, careful to shuffle forward only when it seemed as though the working men and women at the camp were suitably distracted.

Dusk crept its dark fingers out upon the evening sky, but light from the sun had long ago left the hollow. It appeared, from the angle of the cliffs, that the camp would avoid direct sunlight for most of the day. Only at noon would the sun's course take it to where it might shine directly down. It was an ideal location for the Quatori and the monsters they were creating, especially since a great deal of the camp appeared to be underground. Lis supposed that Illaise had known this; it explained why aiming for an approach in bright daylight was pointless. But it still felt off, a little too suicidal on her part.

Lis shuffled forward again, careful not to dislodge the loose stones on the ground. They were a long distance from the busy center still, but the incline was such that a stone might topple downward and land at one of the creature's feet. There was movement, too, along one of the other banks. Another member of the pack, one of the wolves that bore a bundle around his neck, crept in a similar manner toward the opening. From her height on the slope, Lis could see him clearly. She tried not to think of the implications of what that meant for her own visibility. Maybe from the pit of the valley they were less obvious.

Illaise had outpaced her, her silver fur peeking out from behind one of the few shallow undulations in the rock and dirt. And it was because Lis was so far behind her that she saw the attack as it took place. A Shifter, one of the possessed monsters, leaped from a half hidden pit a distance away, ramming itself into Illaise's side before she had a chance to react.

An eerie, wailing cry rose through the encampment. A warning...or maybe a signal. From all around the walls, possessed Shifters appeared. Lis had no opportunity to mull over where they were coming from, only that they had been greater fools than she believed...because this was a trap.