Page 13 of Rebel's Fated Mate
My feet found the familiar path toward the surface world, each thundering stride leaving further behind the discordant chorus of Sylvanaar's death knells.
I could taste freedom, feel the caress of the crisp air just ahead. One final, desperate burst carried me through the shadowed egress...and out into the forest above. .
Dozens of soldiers in their crimson regalia moved with cold, impersonal efficiency. I skidded to a halt, chest heaving with exertion and eyes blown wide in abject horror at the devastation before me. The forest I had known and loved all my life was overrun, each tender glade and whispering thicket cruelly violated by the Emperor's marauders.
I was frozen only for a heartbeat, allowing the bleak realization of my isolation. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to run except deeper into the unknowable expanses of the untamed wilderness. Away from the only refuge I had ever called home.
As smoke stung my eyes, I could no longer hold back the racking sobs that tore from my very core. I doubled over, retching tormented wails into the loam, every cherished memory bleeding from the lacerated wound left by Sylvanaar's desecration.
It was too much. The atrocities witnessed, Marek's broken body lying discarded like some butcher's remains, the callous dismantling of everything I held dear.
Distantly, I became aware of the Imperial scouts fanning out, catching sight of my crumpled, kneeling form through the obscuring haze.
They unleashed a pack of their savage wolfhounds from the reeking confines of a makeshift kennel, spurring me into frantic motion once more.
My heart hammered against my ribcage as I fled deeper into the forest's tangled embrace. Brambles clutched at my tattered skirts with thorny fingers, scoring lines of crimson across my calves. But I dared not slow, not with the baying of those drooling beasts rapidly closing the distance.
A gnarled root snagged my ankle, sending me crashing forward. I rolled onto my back, chest heaving, as the fore-runners of the hunt broke through the underbrush mere yards away.
Cruel laughter erupted from the crimson-armored throats of my pursuers. Their wolfish grins and lustful gazes stroked far older, more primal fears than those of mere bodily harm. I tried to scramble backwards, scrabbling against the loam in vain as two of the soldiers moved to flank me.
"Well now, what have we here?" one of them sneered, raking his eyes over me in a way that made my stomach churn. "A pretty little wood sprite, all alone and defenseless."
The other barked a contemptuous laugh. "Not for long, Jrak. Soon as we get our sport, the Emperor’s witches will bleed her and put that heathen blood to good use for their potions."
Their voices faded into the background as a torrent of energy surged through me with the same intensity of those first moments a few days ago. It built within like an inexorable tide of furious, primal zeal, blotting out all but the purest essence of my ancestors' deepest resolutions.
With but a focused inhalation, I unleashed that torrent through outstretched arms, directing that fearsome flow like a deity of the elder days. The earth itself shuddered and shifted in response, rending wide a chasm that hungrily devoured the screaming Imperials where they stood.
Their savage hounds turned and ran, howling in sheer terror. But the gaping rifts kept opening wider, swallowing entire groves of trees and thrusting jagged pillars of rock up from the torn earth.
Those grotesque stone spires impaled any lingering Imperial soldiers, suspending their mutilated bodies in mid-air like broken marionettes, dangling helplessly from nature's merciless grasp.
The rumbling and crashing finally subsided as quickly as it had begun, leaving me swaying weakly, my knees trembling in the midst of the devastated forest clearing.
The immense power receded for the moment, but it no longer felt dormant within me. Instead, a vast, insatiable hunger had awoken, ravenous in the void this unleashed force left behind.
It would be so easy to simply release that primal energy again without restraint, allowing myself to be consumed by its unstoppable, impersonal currents.
However, in the stillness after the upheaval, I became aware that there might be survivors, some of my people who hadn’t been killed but had been captured by the Imperials.
I circled back, my heart pounding with dread and hope. The familiar landscape blurred as I sprinted, the adrenaline propelling me back to the heart of the Kingdom.
I almost fainted with relief when I caught of several subjects, huddled in terror yet mercifully unharmed by the soldiers.
The sight of their frightened faces stirred both relief and sorrow within me. They had endured so much, yet they were still here, still holding on.
It was a small solace in the midst of the devastation, a reminder that even in the darkest of times, there was still hope to be found.
I sank into the moldering detritus, that hollow yearning for something, anything beyond this mantle of abject solitude nearly driving me into blessed madness.
"Ancient guardian," I rasped into the plume of rising dust, my throat raw from my exertions. "If you can hear my call, shade my path as I seek the means to stand against this storm of atrocity."
Just as the darkness closed in, his presence stirred in the veil of my sight. The massive, benevolent figure from those cryptic dreamscapes. The dire bear seemed to materialize from the drifting wood smoke, shaggy and implacable yet radiating an aura of profound comfort.
He approached, unhurried despite my dire straits, before crouching low to study me at eye level. Those deep brown depths held no demand or judgement, only a soulful inquisitiveness as ancient as the foundations of this very realm.
Unable to voice my turmoil, I reached out, gripped the coarse fur of his powerful neck, and surrendered my final fractures of composure. The great beast simply rumbled a low, contented burr, the sound reverberating through my very marrow as he brought his titanic muzzle to nuzzle my brow with paternalistic tenderness.