Chapter Seven
The horses push themselves hard and although Kysen warned us it was that it was at least an hours ride into town somehow the horses make it in twenty minutes. I’m guessing that we had some divine intervention from somewhere.
This town is a lot smaller than the last one closer to a large village than anything else.
We all keep our hoods up not wanting to deal with any fights to the fucking death.
We don’t have time, just inside the entrance gates is a stable block, much smaller in scale than the last one but the stable hand comes out just as quickly.
He takes the horses without looking at us twice or studying us any closer than really necessary.
Sage get’s off of Dave mechanically and watches the surrounding area like a hawk. I move towards her saddle bag and take out one of the gold coins handing it the guy.
“We’ll be back swiftly.” I tell him gruffly before turning to the others, although they’re all slightly subdued obviously worried about Levi they are all focused.
I watch as Sage pulls herself from the edge and push it away so she can focus. Hopefully now that we’re actually doing something physical in order to help Levi it will help us all focus on the now and not the what ifs.
“Ok I think in order to get this done quicker we should split up into pairs. Kai with me and Jax with Sage.” I say carefully ripping the list that Kysen gave us in half.
Next the bizarre list of ingredients that he’s written, he’s also written the names of the shops where we can find them, which is going to save us an incredible amount of time.
“Alright meet back here as soon as you're done. Try not to draw attention to yourselves and remember to keep your hoods up. Everyone here already seems to keep to themselves better than the last town.” I add.
“Got it.” Jax says, taking their half of the list and threading his fingers through Sage’s.
“Lets get this shit done!” She says firmly.
Me and Kai watch them head off into the direction of the town square and start to follow, I’m aware of our surroundings but I’m also keeping a close eye on Kai.
He has a tendency to become utterly ruthless when one of us is hurt and none of us have been as badly hurt as Levi is now.
There’s a reason why I split us up like I did.
One Jax is good at distracting Sage and trying to keep her upbeat and B Kai and Sage seem to encourage each other especially now that they have their complimenting fire gifts.
I can just see one of them getting pissed off and it turning into an all out brawl when the other joins in.
“Come on Dude.” I say slapping his shoulder.
Thanks to Kysen’s list the first two things, calendula and lavender are easy to find and actually familiar to me but the last two are definitely not.
We find them easy enough but I honestly never thought I’d be searching for tail scale of an Ignis dragon and the poison from a Rebdium.
I have no fucking clue what that is and if I’m honest it seems slightly counter productive to add poison to a salve that’s trying to cure a poisoning but at this point what the fuck do I know.
“I think that’s everything.” I mutter, Kai’s been mostly silent this entire time.
“Yeah I felt like an absolute idiot asking for Rebdium poison in the last place. Didn’t help that we had the hoods of our cloaks up even inside the shop. It’s the same as people wearing sunglasses inside. . .” He starts to rant and I interrupt.
“I know, I know. They’re either hungover or dickheads.” I chuckle.
Actually having the ingredients that can save Levi makes me more hopeful and obviously has the same effect on Kai too. I just hope that Sage and Jax have had as much luck as we have getting all of them.
“I Cha . . .”
Before the dickhead can get another word out though Kai has spun, dislodging his hood with the speed of the movement and has one of his swords against the guys neck and the other against his friends. Kai’s eyes are flickering with actual flames as he stares them down in fury.
The poor fuckers stare wide eyed as they start to shake. I can smell their fear permeating the air around us and it makes my wolf want to hunt. I feel my teeth elongate and a warning growl build in my chest.
“Don’t even fucking finish that goddamn mother cunting sentence.” Kai growls his voice full of dark promises. A ball of flames ignites between his horns just like last time he got incredibly pissed.
I get a brief flash of him doing it just to scare the crap out of people and make them jump when he’s got control over it.
Their eye’s widen in fear and the sour stench of piss permeates the air making my nose wrinkle in disgust.
It has always fascinated me how even when we were human Kai was the most deadly of us but the one you’d least expect of being so.
“I could fucking kill you in an instant and I would enjoy it. I don’t have time for all the pomp that goes along with the words you just uttered though. Not only that but I like to play and we don’t have time for that. So you have one chance to fuck off or he will end you in seconds.”
The guy’s, demons like Kai from the look of it but far less impressive, although they still have more pronounced attributes that make them supernatural.
“I’m more like to play than you are.” I admit through a growl as I feel my eyes start to glow and snap my teeth in their direction making them flinch and Kai’s sword cut their necks making me grin viciously.
It turns out I’m pretty fucking volatile myself.
I watch with satisfaction as they both start to back up slowly with their hands raised before they turn tail, one of them literally since he has a short stumpy looking tail, and disappear from sight.
“That was kind of fun.” Kai mutters as we rush back towards the stables where we left our horses.
“It was. It would’ve been more fun if we could’ve played for a bit.” I grin.
“You guys ok?” Sage asks as we appear in the courtyard already sat on her horse.
“Yeah we’re good. Did you guys run into any trouble?” I ask, climbing on my horse.
“Nah it was fine. You?” Jax asks eyeing Kai like he already knows the answer.
Kai winks at him, grinning widely and Jax smirks as we all nudge our horses and start the ride back to Levi. Hopefully as fast as we got here.
There’s a new dynamic brewing between those two and I am all for it. In all honesty its been going on for years. They’ve always been close but there’s also always been an extra layer of just something more.
I’ll be damn happy for the both of them if they finally acknowledge what’s happening between them.
I try to think about inane and useless things on the ride back, to distract me from what we could be riding into. It’s been maybe an hour since we’ve been gone now. Far quicker than we thought we would be, thanks to our horses and whatever extra help they got.
When we finally do get back to camp, I’m relieved to see Levi’s chest moving up and down in harsh breaths.
He looks worse than he did when we left sweating buckets and even with the stasis spell that Kysen cast the black lines have spread further from the wound and the wound itself looks like its somehow gotten worse.
“Holy fuck. How are you guys back already?” Kysen asks.
“The horses went fucking quick.” Jax says as we all watch Sage stumble off of Dave and rush over to Levi sitting down by his head and placing it gently it in her lap.
Maverick kisses the top of her head gently, then him and Kysen make their way over to where we are gathered by the horses pulling out the ingredients. None of us have really taken our eyes off of her though.
“She was fine in town. Well not fine obviously but I even got a smile out of her at one point. I guess it had something to do with the distraction.” Jax says quiet enough that she won’t be able to hear us.
“I know she’s strong enough to deal with this but I’m worried she’s going to shut down like she did when Brent took her. She almost died because she’d put it all away and locked it up. If she could do that then, when she had no gifts. I’m terrified what she’ll be able to do now.” Maverick admits.
“She’s already said several times that she couldn’t come back and we’re the only reason that she did.” Kai replies his voice filled with even more worry.
“What does she do?” Kysen asks sounding confused.
“She can lock her emotions and her pain away. So she knows she should be feeling an emotion or she knows that what just happened should really hurt but she doesn’t feel it.” I explain.
“Fuck. That could be really dangerous.” He agrees understanding immediately.
“We’ll just keep talking to her and offering her support and comfort. Hopefully that will be enough to stop her from retreating until Levi wakes up.” I say hopefully.
“Alright lets get this on. You guys were a hell of a lot quicker than you should’ve been so that’s bought us a bit more time but I still don’t want to push it.” Kysen says and we follow him over to the fire, which he’s relit.
He rummages around in his bag which is placed by the fire and pulls out a large reddish brown stone.
He says something in latin and the stone disappears, crumbling into dust but now above the fire is a tepee style contraption with a large, round and flat cast iron dish suspended from chains attached to the tepee and only about two inches deep.
“I have never need that spell before. I normally just buy simple stuff that doesn’t need cooking and hunt.
I never do anything that requires me to actually use a cooking pot.
My mother is ever hopeful that I’ll at least attempt to try to cook though and follow in my brothers footsteps.
She doesn’t understand why I want to protect the realms and thinks that I’m just doing it because that’s what my friends are doing.
” Kysen speaks as he starts making the salve.
“My mother was the same when I joined the army straight out of school.” I chuckle.