Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
“Feels good to dance the demon’s dance with you again, freyin!” North howled to me as he blasted a hole in a tree and the baying of Avanis warriors chased after us.
“What is this feeling?” I demanded as a manic smile stitched itself onto my mouth.
We climbed a rocky ridge then sprinted along its length, blasting fire in every direction to cause as much noise and destruction as we could.
“Elation, invigoration, exhilaration!” he shouted to me, blasting fire from his hands with every word.
Arrows and spears were launched at us but I burnt them up in the heat of our flames before they could ever come close to touching us.
North leapt from the ridge to a treetop ahead of me and I jumped after him, the foliage slipping through my grip as I started to fall, but he caught my arm and yanked me up, grinning from ear to ear.
“You feel it now, don’t you? All these years you lived our wildest moments with your emotions muted. Do you adore it as I always knew you would?” he asked.
“This is fucking everything.” I turned sharply as the whistle of something metallic came shooting after us.
I unsheathed my sword and knocked the silver arrow off course so it embedded itself in the tree trunk.
A few more silver arrows tore our way, but it would take the Stonebreakers longer to cast them than wood and that stole us a moment to run while they made more.
We climbed down from the tree then sprinted away from them, thud, thud, thud of the arrows hitting the trees at our backs sending another bolt of adrenaline through me.
I leapt over a fallen log and crouched behind it with North. He grabbed my face, squeezing it tight. “This is called having fun.”
“We must do this every day,” I said and he laughed before running toward a row of supply carts parked ahead of us, climbing on top of one and setting them all on fire.
Then he back flipped off of the cart and landed on his feet.
We’d found this supply train close to Stone Castle and had caused enough havoc to cause the distraction Vesper had wanted.
“You’ll have to teach me that,” I demanded as I ran to his side and shoved him out the way of a flying arrow.
“That’s a promise I intend to keep.” He clapped me on the arm then pointed to a large wagon filled with barrels of whiskey further down the track that wound through the forest.
“Yes,” North growled keenly.
“Fuck yes,” I added as we stalked closer, hands raised and hellfire tearing from our fingertips.
The whiskey was consumed in the blaze and North caught my wrist, dragging me away into the trees with a yell to move fast. The explosion that resounded set my heart racing and laughter fell from my lungs as I sprinted from the chaos alongside my brother.
A line of Avanis warriors came into view ahead, cutting us off with swords in hand.
One of them blasted tiny splinters of wood at us, hundreds of them shooting this way and I cast fire with North to burn them.
A few made it through, slicing into my arms and legs, but I could hardly feel the pain at all.
If anything, it only spurred me on with my blood spilled and the promise of violence on the air.
I shoved North between two trees to our right and he cried out as he fell out of sight.
I barrelled after him, righting him and realising we’d just stumbled across an old supply tunnel. The steps dropped steeply below ground, but it didn’t look like the tunnel had been in use recently from the amount of cobwebs that covered our path.
An arrow pinged off the stone doorway above us and I shoved North into a run.
“Arghh,” North snarled as he charged ahead of me, taking the brunt of all the cobwebs as I cast a ball of fire in my hand to guide the way. He was soon coated in white fibres as he spat to try and get them out of his mouth.
“Stars be damned! There’s a fucking black widow in my ear!” he bayed.
I snatched the spider in question from his ear, the thing definitely not a black widow which weren’t even found this far north and tossed it to the ground.
“I thought you were afraid of snakes, not spiders,” I commented.
“I have a reason to be scared of snakes as you know very well. It takes a traumatic event to cause a phobia and if this isn’t a traumatic event then I don’t know what is.” He clawed at his hair and I saw many little legs running over his hand but decided not to mention it.
The tunnel began to tremble around us and I realised our mistake in heading below ground as dust crumbled from the ceiling onto my shoulders.
“North, go faster,” I urged.
He put on a spurt of speed, so many more spider webs covering him that he was blinded, waving his hands out and a doggish whine leaving him.
“I can’t see,” he cursed and I grabbed a fist of his clothes, wielding him like a battering ram to take down all the cobwebs in my path and force him into a sprint.
“You bastard!” he yelled but I could see steps up ahead. A way out so close as clumps of dirt and rock started crashing to the floor around us.
“They’re going to cave it in,” I growled and North gave up any resistance as I shoved him ever faster, keeping him upright when his feet stumbled onto the steps.
“Go,” I demanded as huge rocks smashed down into the tunnel behind me.
Somehow we made it up the steps to a hatch and I blasted it clean off its hinges with a fireball. We stumbled into a forest glade just as the whole tunnel caved in behind us.
North turned to me, his face mummified by spider webs, just the vague shape of his features visible beneath it. I laughed, a roaring belly laugh that made him growl at me then I swiped the worst of it from his face and shook them free.
“You owe me,” he hissed then reached for his hair in horror. “Tell me straight, are there many spiders on me?”
I looked him over, seeing a lot. More than a hundred probably. I remembered what he’d told me about it being okay to lie to people sometimes if it would make them feel better and lifted my chin in pride as I answered. “None at all.”
“That was the worst lie I’ve ever heard,” he grouched then he looked to a small stream close by, ran over and launched himself into it.
He came out shivering with plenty of spiders still clinging to him, but the worst of the cobwebs had gone.
I tried out one of the gestures he’d taught me to use when I didn’t have the right response to a situation.
I gave him a thumbs up.
He scowled at me. “You’re useless.”
“Did I do it wrong?” I looked at my thumb but a roar of shouts carried from the trees behind us and we took off running again.
I shut my eyes to steal a look at Everest through Calcifiend’s eyes and found her bickering with Bastian where they stood inside a lavishly furnished room. She seemed well enough so I returned my focus to the forest ahead and the game of drawing the Stonebreakers’ attention away from our allies.