Just try! Pick a spell! Any spell!
Amara slipped in front of him. She prayed silently that her powers would come through for her at least once. “Pruina! I call forth the power of the frost!”
The power of the frost swept through the Minotaurs, freezing them where they stood. The flying axes lost their momentum and dropped to the ground.
He grabbed her arm and swung her around. “Never,” he seethed, “attempt that again.”
“I’m not promising anything,” she replied sternly. He left her side and slashed at the frozen Minotaurs.
“Your wounds…” she looked on worriedly.
“Minor scratches,” he said arrogantly.
She could see his bones through the torn flesh. “They’re not minor scratches!”
“They’ll heal,” he said, his voice stubborn.
She swallowed in nervous anticipation when the second gate opened. This time, the echoing footsteps were loud enough that they felt the vibration in the earth. Something big was coming. Something very big.
“Are we really going to wait for the other two gates?” Amara asked in a shaky voice.
They earth shook more violently as whatever was in the tunnel came closer.
He was contemplating.
“No.” He took her hand and hauled her toward the left tunnel. She ran with him down the dark tunnel. “If he is controlling everything then it doesn’t matter which tunnel we choose. We’ll end up where he wants us to be.”
“Ah hell!” Amara turned her head back to glance behind. “It’s chasing after us! Whatever it is, it’s chasing after us!”
The loud roar from behind them was deafening. Amara had heard a roar like that before. She could recognize it anywhere. In her younger days when she was somewhat fearless, she climbed high mountains scavenging for her collection. She had caught glimpses of them very briefly flying above the clouds.
“It’s a wyvern…” she informed him.
A bright light was spreading, trying to catch up to them. A heat wave followed.
“A fire-breathing wyvern.”
“Just run,” he ordered.
“Don’t worry; I’m not stopping for anything. It’s catching up to us!”
She ran with him as fast as she could, but quickly ran out of breath and stumbled. He pulled her up from the ground and urged her to keep running. The flame was coming at them like a grenade explosion. Seeing that they couldn’t outrun it, he pulled her to his chest and dropped to the ground. They tucked and rolled to the end of the tunnel and down a grass-covered hill. The fire blast vented upward and dispersed at the end of the tunnel.
Chapter Seven
“Are you hurt?” Amara heard him ask after they came to a full stop. She wasn’t sure if she was fine or not, but there was a dull, pressurized pain in her chest. Breathing had become so difficult that she could only intake air in small, rapid breaths. She shook her head anyway to keep him from worrying. If his hand hadn’t guarded her head as they rolled down the hill, Amara was certain that she would have a major concussion.
He pushed to his feet first and then pulled her up from the ground. Amara bent forward and covered her ears when she heard a loud roar amplified by the tunnel. The loud roar petrified her for several seconds.
“We need to keep moving,” Noctis said after the roaring ceased. He took her by the wrist and led her into the dense cluster of trees. He didn’t need to tell her twice. She wouldn’t stay if she were paid all the money in the world to.
Noctis was moving at a pace she could barely keep up with. She almost tripped a couple of times, but he didn’t seem to notice. The only thing that seemed to be on his mind was to keep moving.
She finally said something when she felt like she would drop to the ground in the next few seconds. “Please…”
He glanced back at her and she did just that.
“Five minutes,” she pleaded between her uneven breaths. She felt so ashamed when she realized that everything that he had said in the past was true. They were running for their lives and here she was asking for a five minute break to catch her breath. She couldn’t even prove to herself that she wasn’t weak and useless.
Another ear-piercing roar shattered the quiet atmosphere. Noctis glanced over his shoulder to the direction of the roar and then dropped his gaze to her. He bent down to pull her up and over his left shoulder. With a blade on one arm and guarding her on his shoulder with the other, he continued to move forward.
It was already difficult for her to breathe, but with all of her weight shifted to her belly, it was twice as difficult. The dull pain in her chest was sharpening and becoming even harder to bear. She was beginning to suspect that she may have fractured her ribs when they were rolling down the hill. Amara gritted her teeth and refused to utter a word of complaint. It wasn’t the time for that. They couldn’t do anything about it anyhow.
Suddenly, a strong gust of wind came down from above, followed by the presence of a flapping shadow that blocked out a large area of sunlight. Amara turned her neck and looked up to see what was happening. She stopped breathing when she saw a large winged wyvern just above them. The wyvern was a dark gold color with wings that spanned several times the size of its body. From its head to its spine down to its long tail, it appeared to be a giant reptile. Its powerful hind legs were equipped with deadly sharp talons.
It was preparing to land.
Noctis had no choice but to let her back down on her feet. “Run,” he gave a solid command with no intention of repeating it twice. He turned his back to her to face the wyvern.
Amara knew better than to linger when he asked her to run. So she dashed away as fast as her legs could carry her. The pain in her chest was starting to feel unreal, but she didn’t allow herself to stop. She held on tight to her ribcage and fled as far as she possibly could before her body recognized its limit.
Noctis briefly glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Amara did as he asked and fled out of sight. Letting her run ahead worried him deeply because he had no way of knowing what other dangers were waiting for her, but he didn’t have the confidence to ensure her safety if he allowed her to stay. She would be in immediate danger and he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted from the fight. He was running short on time. He needed to finish this creature quickly and take his bride back to the realm of the living before the wagered time or risk losing her forever.
He wasn’t going to allow that to happen. He never liked losing at anything, wager or not. He didn’t come all this way just to fail and no one could fail harder than a man who couldn’t protect his female.
He admitted that he made that mistake once when Rion was killed. He couldn’t save her in time and had to witness her execution. He never had any affection for the woman, but she was still his wedded wife. Even when he felt nothing for her death on a personal level, his failing to save her life left an ugly scar on his pride. He would never allow same thing to happen to Amara. There would be more than just his pride at stake should any harm come to her.
Noctis felt that uneasy at the thought that he had almost forgotten about the large wyvern staring him down like a true predator. It hunched low and approached him predatorily. It launched itself at him, but he slashed at its face as he leaped and rolled out of the way. It abruptly swung it body around to whip him with its tail. That one was a little trickier to dodge. The move landed and launched Noctis several meters away. The wyvern released a fireball from its mouth toward him while he was down.
Noctis rose from the fire that barely did any damage to him and smirked. Fire was his element. Realizing that it wasn’t going to be an easy meal, the wyvern roared ferociously. It took to the air and attempted to blow him away by flapping its massive webbed wings. Noctis set his feet firmly on the ground and waited for the beast to strike. The wyvern dived down from the sky in an aerial attack. Noctis sieged the opportunity to slash at the wyvern’s soft underbelly and then again at the tail. The sharp blade severed the tail in one smooth blow.
The wyvern dropped to the ground and cried out in pain.
It became enraged. Its movements went wild and unpredictable. The wyvern struck at him with its sharp teeth, and when he managed to dodge, it swung around and slammed its entire body at him. Noctis lost his balance and hit the ground. The wyvern was an opportunist. It leaped at him and attempted to trample him underneath its powerful hind legs. Noctis rolled out of the way in time and slashed at its belly multiple times. Blood was seeping out from the opening of the wyvern’s hide. The wyvern backed up a few steps, carelessly exposing its head to its enemy. Noctis slashed at its face, scattering broken pieces of scales on the ground. Severely injured, the wyvern retreated and took to the sky.
Noctis hissed inward. The wyvern’s sharp talons had left a wide wound in his chest. His blood soaked through the black dress shirt he was wearing, making the color look even darker but not very noticeable. He ignored it and followed the direction his bride ran off to.
He found her half an hour later lying in the dirt. He rushed to her side and could only breathe easy again when her teary grey eyes stared back at him.
“I tripped on a log as I was fleeing… and I couldn’t get back up,” she explained and then she panted. “I think my ribs are broken.”
Noctis frowned when he heard her assumption. He carefully turned her over on her back. He slipped both hands under her shirt and gently inspected her ribs one by one.
“They’re not broken,” he assured her. He was even more relieved by that fact than she was.
“Really? Are you sure? It hurts so badly and it’s so hard to breathe.”
“Your ribcage is intact. Perhaps you are suffering from internal injury. In that case, we’ll rest here for a little while. We’ll have that treated immediately after we get home.”
“Only a little while?”
“We have to keep moving,” he said. “Time is running out.”
His bride was looking at the bright red blood that dripped onto her fingers from his chest. “You’re… bleeding!” She pressed both of her hands against his chest as though she really thought it would help stop the bleeding.
“It will heal.”
She worriedly looked into his eyes and asked, “Don’t you feel pain at all?” She gasped, alarmed at how much blood was pouring out.
“I do feel pain,” he gave her an honest answer, but then he added another fact to lessen her worries, “but I can heal.”
She looked like she was about to cry again. Her grey-blue eyes were like two mirror lakes that had collected all of the sadness in the world. She was most probably crying because of the pain in her chest, but he conceitedly reserved the possibility that those tears were for him. That possibility made him feel warm inside, but it also made him wonder if he was a bit sadistic.
“It’s all my fault…” she muttered. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“I came all this way for you and the only thing I get is ‘you shouldn’t have come’.”
“You really shouldn’t have come. I’m here because I’m supposed to be here.”
“You are still alive,” he reminded her, “and even if you weren’t, haven’t I said that if you died without my permission, I would come here to drag you back to the land of the living? Don’t take my words so lightly.”
She sniffled. “I thought… I thought you were through with me. I didn’t think you would come to get me.”
Was there even a possibility of that happening? He had a what-was-mine-I-keep philosophy, but he wouldn’t go as far as diving head first into the Realm of The Dead to retrieve something he was ‘through with’. He was angry with her – enraged even – but he could never be through with her. His being here was proof of that.
She sunk her pearly white teeth into her bottom lip. “How do I stop the bleeding?”
“The wounds will heal in a matter of hours. Just ignore them.”
“But you’re in pain.”
“When I was a child, I was trained to acquire a high tolerance for pain in the event that I was captured by the enemies and tortured in interrogation.”
“…How?”
“We used species of non-toxic ants that can deliver mind-numbing pain if bitten.”
“Oh!” She cringed at his description. The memory was as distant to him as a dream he once had, but her reaction made him recall all of his childhood training as if it was happening. His lips curled upward and formed an amused smile.
“My older brothers made fun of me during my training, and years later, I made fun of my younger brothers during their training.”
“Kind of like hazing or a rite of passage?”
He shook his head. “We were just being men. It wasn’t mandatory to go through the training, but we all wanted to compete with each other. In those days, all boys dreamed to become great warriors.”
“Yourself included?”
“My brother, Liven, is one of the greatest warriors throughout the land. He was the biggest and he was the strongest. My father takes pride in having him as a son. My goal had been to surpass him as a warrior. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. I lost to him countless times before I won my first fight against him. I’d fought him so many times that I learned all of his strengths and weaknesses. Liven may be strong as a bull and as built as a tank, but he’s not flexible enough or fast enough. That was when I realized, it all comes down to knowing your enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. I never lost to anyone since.”
“Do you miss your brothers?”
He sighed at her question and then changed the subject. “Do you feel better now?”
She nodded and sat up on her own. “I can breathe easier now. I think my lungs were just temporarily upset.”
“Good,” he pushed to his feet and pointed at the snowcapped mountain in the distance. “We need to cross that mountain before it gets dark.”
Chapter Eight
The higher they climbed up the mountain, the colder the atmosphere became. There were fewer and fewer trees too. There were thin layers of grass between the rough terrains at the foot of the mountain, but now everything was covered in a blanket of snow. Amara was in no way dressed for the weather. Worse yet, she was damp from head to toe. It was not enough that she had to fight through a foot of snow, but she also had to fight the high-speed wind blowing in her face. Her body heat was escaping fast and she grew seriously worried.
Noctis, however, had no sense of the cold. He continued to lead her forward. When he looked back to check on her, she smiled at him. Complaints would have gotten her nowhere. They needed to make this journey, and they were running out of time. She didn’t want to be the boulder chained to his ankle. No, never that. She didn’t want to slow him down more than she already had.
But she had never been colder in her life. She gritted her teeth to stop them from chattering. The wind felt like razor blades against her damp skin. The snow invaded and melted in her shoe. Wet and heavy, they were only slowing her down so she shook them off and walked with her bare feet.
Countless steps later, Amara could barely feel her limbs. Her limbs weren’t the only thing that had given out on her. Her mind wanted to abandon her for sleep. She felt much warmer, much more comfortable than she did before. So warm that she just wanted to curl up and sleep.
No! It’s a serious sign of hyperthermia! Your body is tricking you!
She fought herself and lost. She dropped to her knees. Their connecting hands tugged at him. He turned around, and Amara gave him an apologetic look.
“I can’t go on,” she finally admitted. “I’m sorry.”
He unstrapped the blade from his back and then got down on one knee. “Get on,” he instructed.
She used the last of her strength to get on his back and wrapped her stiffed arms tightly around his neck. He got back on his feet and moved forward. Their combined weight forced each step to sink further into the snow.
She rested her head on his shoulder and he shook his entire body.
“Don’t fall asleep,” he clipped o
ut.
“I’m not going to sleep… I’m just going to rest my eyes a little.”
“Stay with me, Amara. Endure a few more hours and we can go home.”
“Can we really go home?” she asked, doubts leaking from her voice.
“Yes. I just need you to hang on for a bit longer.”
“I don’t know if I can…” she confessed weakly. “I’m not like you.”
“You can. You are much stronger than you realize. Use the same fiery spirit you’ve used against me. If you can handle me, you can handle anything.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “That’s true. If I can handle you, I can handle anything… Can I close my eyes for a moment? Just a moment…?”
“Don’t,” he warned.
“Just a moment…” she pleaded as she leaned her head against him.
“What happened, Amara?” He inquired hastily.
“…What happened what?” She murmured softly.
“How did you lose our child?”
Grey eyes flew wide. Her heart began to race frenziedly inside her chest. The question left her in a state of shock.
“…Must you ask that now? I don’t think this is a good time for…”
“Tell me,” he said quietly.
“That is…” she stammered, her mind frantically searching for the right thing to say. But there was no right thing to say. The truth and the lie were both equally horrible. She let out a soft cry and hid her face behind his neck. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry… the truth is…”
“…I lied.” He interrupted her. “I’m not prepared to hear it. I don’t think I will ever be prepared to hear it. I didn’t know what else to say to keep you awake.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to know the truth?” she whispered into his ear. “I would tell you. I would…”
He heaved a deep breath. “I can’t face the truth yet.”
“Why don’t you want to know? I’m offering you the whole truth.”
“Give me a little more time, Amara. I’m afraid I won’t be able to handle the whole truth.”