Chapter Fifteen
My heart pounded against my chest again, and my breathing turned rapid and uneven as I stared up at the bloodied shard.
Its entire purple form was covered in crimson liquid, and droplets were still dripping off ?its surfaces and onto my bed.
“What happened?” I asked quietly to avoid Ellyn waking up and seeing this nightmare.
The shard let out one low pulse, and I carefully extracted myself from the bed and threw on the closest clothes I could find. As soon as I was out of the bedroom, I raced for my boots by the door and pulled them on haphazardly.
Fang stirred at the commotion, and as soon as he saw the shard floating behind me in its current state, he let out a low growl.
When I threw open the door and bolted out, my wolf was right behind me, and so was the shard.
My mind was running at a thousand miles a second. Could something have gotten onto my farm? Had someone slaughtered all of my animals while we slept? Were they still here? Were we the next target?
At ?first glance, everything seemed normal. The sun was rising beyond the vine wall, and even though I couldn’t see it directly, the warm oranges were bleeding into the blue sky.
I climbed into my side-by-side and sped toward the barn without a second thought. Even though the door was slightly ajar, looking inside proved that my animals were safe and sound.
They were just beginning to stir, and the sound of their tired bleats and moos settled something in my soul that had been rattled ever since I’d seen the shard.
I stepped inside and did a quick check on the sheep and cows just to make sure no one was hiding anywhere, but the shard lingered by the door. If someone were in here, it would have surely pointed them out to me. So, after a thorough search, I headed back outside and locked the door behind me.
The Emberhorn Goats in the pasture beside the barn were grazing happily on their thawed patches of grass, and I could hear the chickens clucking from the coop and the pigs snorting as they woke up with the sunrise, too.
My animals were safe. But that didn’t explain where all that blood had come from.
I turned to the shard, which had been hovering behind me like a shadow, and crossed my arms against my chest.
“Where did that blood come from?” I asked. “Did you leave the farm?”
The shard pulsed a little more violently this time and drifted back toward my side-by-side. Fang and I hopped in without another word, and the shard floated in front of us to lead us.
I followed it down my farm toward my crop fields, but even they looked untouched and unmarred by anything that could have snuck onto the farm.
How something could have gotten inside was beyond me, because just like the gate in Gladewood, nothing could enter without the expressed permission of the occupants inside.
But as we got closer to the furthest field on my farm, I felt a sense of dread brewing inside of me. It twisted my gut and made me want to puke out a breakfast I hadn’t even eaten yet.
When we pulled up to the barren field that I’d sectioned off in order to downsize my farm, that dread squeezed my belly tighter.
There was a large hole in the ground, with chunks of mud and stone strewn all around it, as if something large had burst through the earth.
Worst of all, there were a handful of bodies scattered around it, all mangled and disfigured.
Limbs stuck out at odd angles, and some of them had been split in two.
I couldn’t believe they had managed to get onto the farm, or that they had even thought of digging underneath the vine wall that surrounded it.
“You stopped them,” I said in quiet realization as I glanced up at the bloodied shard.
It hummed and floated toward the giant hole ruptured in the earth. Fang climbed out of the passenger seat and sniffed the dead bodies lying around, and after I managed to take in a deep breath, I joined him.
I counted six men the shard had dispatched. They must have been digging through the night, maybe even before that, in order to get so far onto my property.
Maybe the cave we’d come across in the Mist Woods was an entry point for them, but I couldn’t help but feel that what was going on there was way bigger than just getting onto my farm.
No matter what the plan with the cave was, Shaar’s men had managed to get onto my farm without me even knowing. I’d been trapped in the strange dreamscape, and if the shard hadn’t been there to protect us, I dreaded to think what might have happened.
“We need to seal this up,” I said as I tiptoed closer to the crater on my land. “And we need to deepen the roots of the vine wall. We can’t let this happen again.”
The shard hummed and floated closer to me. I grimaced as I placed my hand on its wet, sticky surface, but I forced my attention to the matter at hand.
Fang scurried back as the earth beneath our feet churned.
Bright green tendrils snaking out of the ground claimed the chunks of mud and stone that had been spewed up from their digging, as well as the bodies strewn around.
The tendrils pulled them back into the hole and out of sight until the bottom half of it was filled with sediment.
Then the same tendrils snaked their way through the filled bottom and wove themselves together until the hole was resealed. Thankfully, I wasn’t using this field anymore, otherwise, a giant chunk of it would have been useless when it came down to planting crops.
“Now, the roots,” I ordered the shard. “Make them as deep as you can. I don’t care how much energy it’ll take out of me.”
The shard vibrated against my slick palm as I felt the ground rumble again. This time, it was more intense, like a small earthquake was happening right beneath our feet.
I heard the sound of vines squelching as the roots went deeper underground, and the vibration of the shard traveled up my arm and rattled my bones.
I could feel the energy it was siphoning out of me, and even though I’d only just woken up, any semblance of restful sleep was quickly being washed away like ink in water.
My jaw clenched unwillingly as my arm ached, but I bore through the pain. This was a necessary task because I wasn’t going to let Shaar send his men onto my farm like rats burrowing for scraps.
This was my safe space, my haven, and it was where I was going to raise a family. No one was going to jeopardize that. And I protected what was mine.
The ground shuddered again, and I felt a wave of nausea come over me, but then it suddenly stopped.
The shard pulled away from my hand and drifted lower to the ground, and even though my body felt like it weighed a ton now, I knew the job had been done.
I let out a quiet sigh of relief and patted the top of the shard’s form as a thank you.
There wasn’t much more I could do, but deepening the roots and filling the hole was more than enough. It wasn’t like I had eyes under the soil, and I had a farm and a town to focus on.
Life had to go on. Hopefully, Shaar would rethink sending his lackeys over here in a pathetic attempt to catch me off guard.
I didn’t think anyone had survived the shard’s attack to relay its existence to the sniveling Lieutenant, and if he didn’t know by now that I wasn’t some weak whelp, then he had gotten what was coming to him.
I had things to do today, and Shaar wasn’t going to stop me from doing them. So, I climbed back onto the side-by-side with Fang and drove back to the barn.
I gave the shard a rinse with my hose to wash off the remaining blood and gunk. Then I settled it back into the barn with the animals to keep it hidden.
Even though I was always grateful for its presence on my farm, today was one of those days where I realized just how lucky I really was. I felt bad leaving it tucked away, but it was for both of our safety, and evidently, if it needed to leave and protect our land, it could.
I wasn’t going to scold it for coming out of hiding when that was the thing that had stopped an attack on me and my animals. So, with one last grateful nod, I headed back over to my house so I could fix up some much-needed breakfast.
Ellyn was already awake by the time I re-entered. She had been pacing in her nightgown in the kitchen, and as soon as I walked through the door, she threw her arms around me.
“Where were you?” she asked as she clung to me like a koala. “What happened? I woke up, and you were gone, a-and there was blood on the sheets--”
“I’m sorry,” I cut her off and held tightly to my chest. “It’s not mine. It came from some of Shaar’s men. The shard killed them.”
“W-What?” Ellyn pulled back and blinked up at me. “The shard killed them? Where?”
“On the farm, El,” I revealed. “They burrowed underground and breached one of the vacant fields.”
“Hells,” my wife whispered as she pressed a hand to her mouth. “Are they all taken care of?”
“I suspect the shard got rid of every last one of them,” I said with a comforting squeeze of her hips. “We’ve resealed the hole and deepened the roots of the vine wall so they shouldn’t be able to dig under it again.”
“I can’t believe it,” the blonde elf mumbled. “Why are they getting so bold?”
“They think I have something their master wants.” I shrugged. “Looks like they found it.”
“But at a heavy price,” Ellyn added. “Good. They’re where they belong now.”
“You’re damned right,” I agreed. “I’m hoping when they don’t return to Shaar, he rethinks his methods.”
“You said he’s been watching through every fight, right?” Ellyn asked. “Maybe he’s trying to test your weaknesses. Hopefully, he realizes that sneaking onto your farm isn’t as easy as he first thought.”
“Exactly.” I pressed a soft kiss to her forehead and pulled away so I could get started on breakfast. “I’m going to cook up some grub and then get started on the greenhouse.
I’ll need to give Alaek my varmint rifle at some point, too, so he can start working on making me more bullets with the yuriel we found. ”
Ellyn’s soft chuckle made me pause in my fridge raid, and I turned around to see her looking at me with a fond smile on her face.