Chapter 30 The Legendary Hero of Therador
The Legendary Hero of Therador
I guarantee you’ll be in his arms by the end of tonight.
Ary’s promise sent a little quiver through me, and I shoved a heaping bite of sky-blue mystery fruit into my mouth in an effort to hide my embarrassment. The fruit was sour with a surprisingly nutty aftertaste.
“You don’t have to look so petrified,” Ary said. “Trust me, it wouldn’t take more than a nudge.”
“I’m…” I swallowed and tried again. “I appreciate the offer, really, but…”
“Say no more. I won’t push it.” I could tell she was disappointed—and that it took a great amount of effort on her part not to press the issue—but she let it drop.
And I quickly took the opportunity to change the subject.
“Do you know how he and Talon know each other?” I asked.
She brightened again immediately. “Talon said they grew up together,” she said.
“Talon knew him before he was the Lion Warrior, so even when Oak disappeared and people claimed he’d abandoned Therador, Talon never lost hope.
He knew his friend and hero would return someday.
” She grabbed what looked like a shiny orange grape from the bowl of fruit and popped it in her mouth.
“I only joined his crew a couple of years ago. They wouldn’t take me before I turned seventeen. ”
“What exactly is this crew?” I asked, looking around the room.
It was a rather ragtag group of people—both men and women, ranging in age, build, and pretty much all identifying characteristics.
Ary was clearly the youngest, but there were also at least two people with full heads of gray hair.
Some were slender, others muscular, still others soft and round.
“We’re Talon’s crew,” she replied, as if that explained everything. She then clarified, “He likes to call us his Sentinels. Because we’ve been watching for the return of the Lion Warrior and doing our best to protect Therador in his place.”
That reminded me of something she’d said earlier that still confused me. “You knew Octavian—Oak—had returned. How?” I was assuming she and the others hadn’t just been wandering the streets, hoping one of them would bump into him.
“Because everything pointed to it,” she said.
“Talon has been collecting every prophecy, divination, and legend he could find about the Lion Warrior for years. Anything that might be a clue to where he went or when he might return. And one thing kept coming up again and again—that Therador’s great hero would return when this world needed him most, when the Circle was fractured and the beasts followed the moons across the sky. ”
That sounded ominous, even though I only understood bits of it.
“There have been rumors about the Circle for months,” she said.
“Talon assumed the part about the beasts referred to the Mythic Ones, of course, but when we heard about the reports of roving monsters in this region—basilisks coming down from the mountains and such—some of us hoped that was the sign we’d been waiting for.
And we were right.” She gazed down the table at Octavian, her eyes full of affectionate reverence.
I was pretty sure I’d worn that exact same expression more than a few times during a couple of years in my late teens when I’d been embarrassingly obsessed with a K-pop band.
Octavian glanced up, as if sensing our attention, and his azure eyes met mine, setting off a fresh round of warm flutterings inside me. I quickly looked away again.
“I’ve waited for this day for so long,” Ary said dreamily. “We all have—Talon especially. We knew we could never replace him, but we did our best to honor him while we waited and watched for his return.”
“What did you do, exactly?” I found myself suddenly curious about this strange, bubbly girl who’d devoted her life to this—and to a man she’d never even met, a man who hadn’t even been in this world for years and who, up until a handful of days ago, had no idea how or if he’d ever return.
“We all have different gifts,” Ary explained.
“Talon’s talent with essence allows him to speak with birds.
Ivo can hardly use essence at all, but I’ve never met anyone who’s better with a bow.
” She popped another one of those orange not-grapes in her mouth.
“Me, I can move clouds. Well, cloud. One at a time. But I’m getting better at it.
And I’m practically a perfect shot with my throwing knives.
When we cleared out that serpent nest a couple of weeks ago I hit one in the eye from fifty paces.
It was brilliant.” To my shock, her smile had turned positively bloodthirsty, and there was a devilish flash in her eyes that suggested she was reliving that moment in her memory even now—and loving every second of it.
Remind me to never cross the perky one, I thought, frankly a little terrified.
“Of course, even all together we’re not as impressive as the Lion Warrior,” she said, slipping easily back into her chirpy girlishness. “Especially when he’s in his beast form.”
“What do you mean, his beast form?”
She looked at me like I was messing with her. “I don’t know what else to call it… You know, when he turns into a manticore.”
Wait—what?!?
“He can turn into a manticore?” I couldn’t keep the absolute shock out of my voice.
I was familiar with manticores from many of the fantasy books I’d read, and though no two stories described them exactly the same way—some gave them wings, or a human face—there were some things most depictions had in common: the body of a lion and a viciously barbed tail.
And they were always considered brutally cruel and dangerous.
I looked down the table at Octavian. I had no trouble believing he was a fierce warrior, or that he was one of the strongest, most ferocious fighters in Therador, but it was hard to picture someone so loyal and protective as a violent beast.
“Where did you say you were from again?” Ary asked, and I realized my ignorance had given me away once more.
“I… I’ve just never seen him change,” I said. “We never… I mean, I guess he had no reason to. Our time traveling together has been relatively uneventful so far.” I prayed she couldn’t hear the lie in my voice.
“I guess that makes sense,” she said. “Talon says it isn’t just Oak’s body that changes.
His mind goes all feral, too. When he shifts, he stops thinking like a man and starts thinking like an animal.
He’s faster and stronger and more ferocious than any beast you’ve ever seen, able to conquer any threat he encounters, but it comes at a cost—he can’t tell friend from foe.
” She leaned closer, keeping her voice low.
“See that scar on Talon’s face? That’s from one of the Mighty Oak’s manticore claws.
And the scars on his chest are even worse. ”
“He hurt Talon?”
“He nearly killed him. Talon doesn’t like to talk about it much, for obvious reasons, but he’s never hidden the truth from us, either.
” She sat back. “He says that it’s a reminder of just how strong the Mighty Oak truly is—not just because he has access to such ferocity, but also because the human side of him remains so steadfast and good even though that beast is contained inside him.
Talon says that after the incident where he was hurt, the Mighty Oak vowed to tame the beast, but he could never get it fully within his control.
So now he only changes when absolutely necessary. ”
“Oh.” That explained why he’d never changed in front of me. I could only imagine the guilt he’d felt after what he’d done to his friend. “How old where they when it happened?”
“Not much younger than me now, I think,” she replied. “Seventeen, maybe eighteen? It was the first time Talon had ever seen him shift, the first time he realized his friend even had this ability. He doesn’t know when it really started, or where it came from. The Mighty Oak didn’t want to tell him.”
I was still having a hard time wrapping my head around this, trying to imagine the handsome, charming man I knew as some sort of creature. “What does he look like? As a manticore, I mean.”
“Talon says he’s as big as a horse. With the body and head of a lion. And these big, beautiful wings covered in bronze feathers.”
Something tickled at the back of my mind, and I suddenly remembered one of the murals we’d passed on our way here—the one depicting a winged, lion-like beast standing on a rocky mountain peak.
I’d paused to stare at it, drawn to that brutal, majestic creature, but Octavian had quickly moved me along.
“Wait—was that him in the mural we passed before? The winged lion on the mountaintop?”
Again, Ary gave me a weird look, her eyebrows raised.
“No, that was Leonaris,” she said slowly and with exaggerated patience, as if she were explaining something obvious to a seven-year-old. “The Mythic One?”
I was afraid to say anything else, afraid that any of the hundred questions I had would further reveal me as someone who definitely didn’t belong here. So instead I gave a little laugh.
“Of course,” I said lightly. “I knew that. It’s just been a long couple of days and I’m running on practically no sleep and…” I didn’t have a good way to finish that sentence.
Fortunately, I didn’t need one. Any suspicion or confusion in Ary’s eyes disappeared immediately.
“I didn’t even think of that. You must be exhausted.
” She rose, gesturing for me to do the same.
“I can take you to one of our spare rooms. That way you can rest up and have your energy for the Festival tonight. Let me just tell Talon.”
The thought of getting a few hours of uninterrupted sleep sounded too good to pass up. Now that I’d admitted it out loud, my exhaustion weighed down on me, and I was honestly surprised I could hold myself upright.