The Horned Guardian by C. M. Alongi

Author:C. M. Alongi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: C. M. Alongi

CHAPTER EIGHT

ONTIKU ALMOST—ALMOST—prayed to the gods he hated so much that they would find Aketa the next day. He was too damn old to be sleeping on rocks.

And reuniting the long-lost siblings. He supposed that was also a priority.

“Aketa!” Hylas called, over and over and over again into the morning sky as they walked. They stayed near the stream, which gradually grew wider into a proper river the closer they got to its source. The forest seemed to be of the same mind as them, since every tree, shrub, and flower meandered in the same general direction. Ontiku supposed a reliable water source was too practical for even a spirit to give up.

They stopped for a break around midday, Hylas drinking his entire waterskin and refilling it after losing his voice again. Ontiku stretched his arms, wincing as several things cracked that probably shouldn’t have. Jinua looked at the swaying trees above them and hummed. “This is taking too long. We need to ask for help.”

“Ask who? There’s no one else around,” Ontiku pointed out.

“No ghosts?”

Ontiku shook his head. He could sense a hundred dead things beneath their feet, animals hunted or struck by illness or just collapsing of old age since time immemorial, but no ghosts.

“We are surrounded by a nature spirit,” she said. “We should ask them.”

Ontiku snorted. “Nature spirits as a species are eons older than gods, older than Primordials. They’re not likely to answer the calls of petty mortals, even if they are paladins.”

“We should still try,” she insisted. “Besides, this forest is relatively young, isn’t it? Only a few centuries. So the nature spirits tied to it can’t be that old.”

True. But they still held most humans in contempt.

“How would you go about this?” he asked. “We don’t even know how many nature spirits there are here.”

“Isn’t it just one?” Hylas asked. “The stories only mention one spirit here, usually with horns.”

“Sometimes there’s just one. Other times, enchanted forests will have multiple nature spirits, each one tied to a specific aspect of its ecosystem. A spirit of a specific animal or type of beast. A spirit of the stream. Another spirit of the trees. Another of flowers. And while sometimes they’re all distinct entities, other times they’re all interconnected, meaning they’re both many separate spirits and also one single spirit.”

He had completely lost Hylas, who looked at him like he’d gone mad about halfway through. But Jinua nodded along. “We’ll still ask.”

“What do we even sacrifice to get their attention?” Hylas asked.

Ontiku shook his head. “Spirits aren’t like gods. They don’t need worship or prayer or sacrifices to gain power. Whatever we have to offer means next to nothing to them.”

“No, but…” Jinua handed Athos’s reins to Hylas and knelt next to the stream, sticking her hand into the water.

Hylas looked at Ontiku, confused. The elder necromancer shrugged. He had no idea what went on in that paladin’s head.

Jinua’s hand in the water flared with pink fire that lit the stream from within, as if she’d placed a sun among the stones.

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