26. Kaedric
KAEDRIC
The first defensive line is two hundred meters inside the forest edge.
Torin finds it before it finds us, which is the only reason we don't lose people in the first thirty seconds.
He signals the halt and we take cover and assess, and what we're looking at is organized in a way that confirms everything Brennan's research suggested about this faction's resources.
Twelve positions, interlocked fields of coverage, a mix of physical and magical defense that would take significant time to dismantle correctly.
We don't have significant time.
"Through or around," Torin says, low, beside me.
"Through. Brennan's flanks will draw their attention east and west. We hit the center the moment he engages."
Torin nods and signals the point team.
Brennan's voice in my earpiece thirty seconds later. "Eastern flank is engaging. Western is thirty seconds out."
"Move," I tell Torin.
The center push is fast and loud and exactly as costly as I calculated it would be when I made the calculation at the staging point and accepted the number.
Three pack members take injuries in the first exchange, none fatal, all of them waving off assistance and staying in the fight because they're mine and they know what this is.
The faction's center line holds for approximately ninety seconds and then Brennan's flanks compress from both sides and it folds.
We push through and keep moving north.
The second defensive line is thinner, a rearguard rather than a primary position, placed to slow pursuit rather than stop it.
Torin takes it apart in under a minute and we go through it at speed and the shrine's energy is perceptible now, not just the mark's frequency through the mate bond but the ritual itself, the ley line under my feet running hot and pressurized in a way that the ground has never felt in fourteen years of running this territory.
Whatever they're doing at the shrine, it's started.
"Brennan," I say into the comms.
"I hear it," he says. The ley line spike is perceptible to anyone with enough sensitivity to the territory. "How far out are you."
"Four minutes."
"The eastern flank is through the second line and moving to encircle. Western is engaged with a third position I didn't account for, they're working through it." A pause. "Kaedric. The ritual energy just spiked."
I feel it at the same moment he says it. The ley line under the forest floor surges and the mark's signal through the mate bond changes quality, still present, still Elowen, but overlaid with something vast and old that is pressing against it from the inside.
I stop calculating and I run.
Torin keeps pace for thirty seconds and then I'm faster than him and I know it and I don't slow down. The forest here is dense and the roots are enormous and the light from the ritual is visible now through the trees, a deep gold that pulses with the ley line's rhythm and has nothing natural in it.
Something steps out of the trees to my left and I deal with it without fully stopping, a half-second engagement that leaves it behind me and costs me nothing but the half-second, and then I'm through the last belt of dense growth and the shrine's hollow is below me and I can see the ritual.
The circle is blazing. The four anchor points are columns of light now rather than the thin lines from Elowen's description, and the altar stone at the center is fully active, the carved symbols burning through the moss and root growth that covered them as if the centuries of concealment are being burned away by what's moving through the ley line.
The Forest God's power is visible in the air itself, a pressure and a light and something that makes the back of my skull register wrongness.
Elowen is at the center.
Standing. On her feet. Her left arm raised slightly with the mark blazing white gold from wrist to shoulder, brighter than I've ever seen it, and her face set with the concentrated inward expression I know as the one she wears when she is doing something at the absolute limit of her capacity and refusing to acknowledge the limit.
She's fighting it.
Of course she's fighting it.
Between me and the shrine's inner ring there are six of the faction's people and Cyris Vantrell standing at the outer edge of the stone ring watching the ritual with satisfaction.
He turns when he hears me come through the undergrowth.
"Alpha Voln," he says. "You're faster than the timeline suggested."
I look past him to Elowen.
Her eyes find mine across the hollow and something moves through the mate bond that isn't a word and doesn't need to be, a recognition and a signal.
She's not broken. She's waiting.
I look back at Cyris.
"Move," I tell him, "or don't."
The six faction members between us close in and I go through them, and the ritual blazes at the center of the hollow, and somewhere behind me in the forest I can hear Torin and the pack breaking through the tree line, and I keep moving toward the altar. I don't stop for anything.