Chapter 22 Sage
Sage
Sage ran. The woods were doing their best to hide him in the wake of his spell, but the loup-garou was behind him, the huge beast crushing saplings and tearing at the soft ground with steel-sharp claws.
He can smell me. Sage’s fear ramped up.
“Rose and bluebell, peppermint and pine, hide this smell, this smell of mine.”
The magic worked its way all over Sage’s skin, but magic itself had a scent for some shifters, and there was nothing Sage could do to hide that. At best, the confusion would slow the beast down, or so Sage hoped.
He crossed a small stream and scrambled uphill over a fallen tree trunk from which he collected scratches, splinters, and mud all over his clothes. The fucking loup-garou was still behind him.
A sliver of light caught Sage’s attention from his left, and he turned his head. A glass charm had been placed against the bark of a tree, and with time, the charm had grown into the tree. It was an Elven marker.
“Thank fuck.”
Sage ran for the tree and slammed his palm onto the marker. With a small dash of magic, the marker activated and pointed Sage in the right direction, although where precisely it was pointing him to, Sage could only guess.
There were many places the Elves in the region visited, and there were also places where Elves and humans interacted. The section of woods Sage had explored as a kid during the Easter Egg Hunt was one such area, but he doubted he’d run in that direction by some lucky twist of fate.
The loup-garou behind him seemed to be enjoying himself, if the heavy breathing was any indication. The beast tore through the woods and dragged his claws over rough bark, just so the sound could add to the terror. And it worked.
“I’m not made for this kind of shit.” Sage crawled under a trunk that was too large to climb. “I should stick to spelling cushions to grope and rubber gloves to have a libido. This just sucks.”
The loup-garou jumped the trunk, and all of a sudden, the beast was right there, a mouthful of teeth grinning down at Sage, separated from him only by a few brittle branches.
“Fuck.”