Into the Forbidden Lands
Kieran POV
The dawn air was crisp, biting at the exposed skin of my neck, but the courtyard of the Royal Wing felt warm. Mostly because Lyra had shoved enough fresh-baked goods into our packs to feed a small army for a week.
“I packed savory meat pies for the road,” Lyra said, bustling around Torin like a hummingbird circling a mountain.
She tightened a strap on his leather harness, then patted his massive chest.
“And there are dried apple slices in the side pockets for energy. Don’t eat them all at once, Torin. You get sluggish when you have too much sugar.”
“I am a weapon of war,” Torin rumbled, looking down at her with eyes that were absolute mush. “I do not get sluggish.”
“You took a three-hour nap after the lemon tart incident three days ago,” Lyra countered sweetly, standing on her tiptoes.
Torin didn’t argue. He just leaned down, enveloping her in arms that could snap a tree trunk, and kissed her. It was a gentle, lingering thing that made Kael pretend to gag in the background.
“Come back,” she whispered against his lips, her voice fierce.
“Always,” Torin promised.
I looked away, giving them their moment, and found Elian standing next to me. He wasn’t wearing armor or travel gear; he was in his usual ink-stained tunic, holding a rolled-up parchment.
“Here,” Elian said, handing it to me. “I cross-referenced Vane’s patrol reports with the pre-war topography maps of the Central Lands. If she’s living out there, she needs fresh water.”
I unrolled the map. It was a masterpiece of deduction. Elian had marked three specific locations deep in the Forbidden Lands, hidden springs and aquifers that hadn’t been mapped in a decade.
“You think she’s at one of these locations?” I asked.
“Those are the cleanest water sources, if my calculations are right,” Elian nodded, adjusting his glasses. “And this one, The Mirror Lake, is elevated. defensible. If I were a rogue trying to avoid detection while maintaining hygiene? That’s where I’d be.”
“Good work, Elian,” I said, rolling the map back up and tucking it into my belt. “Truly.”
“Alright, break it up, lovebirds!” Mara’s voice cut through the air. She strode over to Elian, looking every inch the Vanguard in her fitted leather armor, her dual blades strapped to her thighs.
Elian straightened up, a small, proud smile touching his lips as he looked at his mate. “Try not to stab anything that doesn’t need stabbing, my love.”
“No promises,” she grinned, stepping into his personal space. She grabbed the front of his tunic, yanking him up to her level. “But you keep that big brain of yours safe here. Because when I get back...”
She leaned in, whispering something in his ear that made Elian’s eyes go wide. His face turned a brilliant, sunset red, but he didn’t pull away.
Mara pulled back, grinning like a wolf who had already caught the rabbit. “I’m going to make it up to you. Thoroughly.”
She kissed him then, fierce, possessive, and hungry. Elian melted into it, his hands finding her waist, completely unbothered by the audience.
“Get a room!” Kael shouted, throwing a dried apple slice at them.
Mara broke the kiss, breathless and beaming, giving Elian one last smack on the chest. “Keep the bed warm.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Elian managed, looking dazed and very happy.
“Alright, pack,” I called out, shouldering my own gear. “We move out. Human form for now, we need the dexterity and flexibility for the mission, and I want to be able to talk without projecting every thought. We push hard to the perimeter, then we track.”
The subpack fell into formation behind me. Torin gave Lyra one last squeeze, Mara winked at a flushing Elian, and Kael finally stopped eating the supplies.
I looked at the map in my mind, visualizing the path to the Mirror Lake.
I’m coming for you, little rogue, I thought, turning toward the open gate. And this time, I’m not leaving until I get a name.
The Forbidden Lands had a reputation for being a graveyard, a place of rot and sulfur where the air choked you and the ground tried to swallow you whole.
And while the Sunken Gardens and the other ring where we normally patrolled certainly lived up to that grim billing, the rest of the territory was... unexpectedly breathtaking.
It wasn’t a wasteland. It was a cathedral of life, amplified and untamed.
Towering Ironwood trees, their trunks as wide as houses, wove a canopy so thick it turned the late afternoon sun into dappled, shifting mosaics of gold and emerald on the forest floor.
Bioluminescent moss clung to the rocks, pulsing with a soft, rhythmic blue light, and flowers the size of dinner plates turned their heads to watch us pass.
It was a jungle in the truest sense, vibrant, humid, and lethally beautiful.
“It’s actually kind of nice,” Kael commented, ducking under a fern that dripped with a sap that looked suspiciously like liquid neon. “If you ignore the fact that the flowers have teeth.”
“Focus, Kael,” Silas warned from the rear guard, his hand resting on the hilt of his short sword. “Beautiful things are usually the deadliest.”
We were moving in human form, cloaked in travel leathers and light armor. It was a calculated risk. In our wolf skins, we had speed, senses, and natural weapons that could shred steel. But in human form, we had dexterity. We had strategy. And most importantly, we had Mana-Forged steel.
My hand drifted to the hilt of Storm-Breaker, the longsword strapped to my back. The blade was etched with runes and set with a raw Thunder-Stone from the peaks of the Storm Mountains. It hummed against my palm, a low vibration of contained power.
We had made good time, pushing through the outer perimeter without incident. But the deeper we went, the heavier the air felt. The magic here wasn’t background noise; it was a physical pressure.
Then, the jungle went silent.
The birds stopped singing. The rustle of small prey in the undergrowth ceased.
“Contact,” Torin grumbled, stopping dead in his tracks. He reached over his shoulder, unhooking his massive war-hammer. The head of the weapon was embedded with a Grav-Stone, making it strike with the weight of a falling boulder.
The bushes to our right exploded.
A Verdant Razor-Back burst into the clearing. It was a feline nightmare, easily the size of a horse, covered in scales that shifted color to match the foliage. Its spine was lined with crystalline quills that crackled with green energy, and its tail ended in a scorpion-like barb.
It roared, a sound like tearing metal, and lunged straight for Kael.
“Too slow!” Kael laughed.
He didn’t shift. He didn’t panic. He side-stepped with a fencer’s grace, drawing his twin sabers in a fluid blur. The Wind-Stones set in the pommels flared white, and he became a gale force. He parried the beast’s massive paw, the wind magic deflecting the blow that would have crushed a normal man.
“Torin! Anchor!” I barked, drawing my own sword.
“With pleasure,” Torin grunted.
He stepped into the beast’s path as it tried to turn on Kael. He didn’t dodge. He swung.
The Grav-Stone in his hammer pulsed purple. BOOM.
He caught the Razor-Back in the ribs. The impact was sickeningly loud. The magic increased the mass of the hammer at the moment of impact, stopping the charging monster cold and sending it stumbling sideways, wheezing.
“Mara, roast it!” I ordered, sprinting forward.
Mara was already in the air. She had vaulted off a tree root, her dual daggers glowing with the angry red light of Fire-Stones. She landed on the beast’s back, driving the blades into the chinks of its armor.
The fire magic didn’t just burn; it exploded into the wound. The beast shrieked, thrashing wildy to dislodge her. Mara backflipped off, landing beside me with a grin. “Little crispy around the edges now.”
The beast, hurt and enraged, turned its glowing green eyes on me. It opened its maw, preparing to spit a stream of corrosive venom.
I didn’t give it the chance.
I channeled my will into the sword. The Thunder-Stone screamed.
“Down,” I said calmly.
I slashed upward in a clean, vertical arc. A jagged whip of blue lightning extended from the blade, cracking through the air like a gunshot. It caught the beast under the chin, slamming its jaw shut with a deafening clap of thunder and electrifying its entire nervous system.
The Razor-Back convulsed, smoke rising from its scales, and collapsed. It twitched once, then went still.
The fight had lasted less than thirty seconds.
I exhaled, the ozone scent of the lightning mixing with the sweet perfume of the jungle. I spun the sword once to clear the static charge and sheathed it.
“Clean,” Jax noted, stepping out from the shadows where he had been covering our flank with a crossbow loaded with ice-tipped bolts. “Though a bit noisy.”
“It’s a jungle,” Kael said, sheathing his sabers and inspecting a scuff on his boot. “Everything here is noisy. Did you hear that frog earlier? It sounded like a foghorn.”
“Gear check,” I ordered, ignoring Kael.
“All good,” Torin said, resting his hammer on his shoulder as if it weighed nothing. “These weapons that Elian sourced are high quality. I am impressed with how fast he got us these.”
“Mara?”
“Blades are hot, but cooling,” she said, checking the edges. “Ready for round two.”
I looked at the map Elian had given me, then at the path ahead. The sun was dipping lower, casting long, stretching shadows through the trees. We were efficient. We were deadly. But we were still human right now, and night in the Forbidden Lands was a different game entirely.
The jungle canopy finally broke, giving way to a twilight sky painted in bruises of purple and deep indigo. The air grew cooler, heavy with moisture and a sweet, cloying scent of night-blooming lotus.
“Water ahead,” Silas whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the cicadas. “The Sapphire Basin.”
According to Elian’s map, this was the first major aquifer on the route to the interior. It wasn’t the heart of the lands, that was miles deeper, but it was a critical waypoint. We needed to refill our canteens and wash the Razor-Back’s blood off our gear before the scent attracted something worse.
We moved with practiced stealth, stepping heel-to-toe to minimize sound, pushing through a wall of fern fronds that were taller than Torin.
I reached the edge of the tree line first and froze.
My hand flew to the hilt of Storm-Breaker, the instinct to draw and strike nearly overwhelming my brain. Behind me, I heard the distinctive click of Mara unlocking her daggers and the heavy intake of breath from Torin.
“Steady,” I breathed, holding up a hand. “Do not draw.”
“But, Alpha...” Kael started, his whisper tight with panic.
“Look,” I commanded.
We weren’t looking at a serene, empty watering hole. We were looking at a zoo.