The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 504

Chapter 504: The Baying of Hounds

ARTHUR LEYWIN

“There, get it!”

One of the young phoenixes let out an animalistic crow as he sent a fiery shape like a bird of prey scorching through the trees. A large mana beast with a green and brown mottled hide bolted from where it had been concealed within the undergrowth. The phoenix’s spell curved in the air, flew in between the beast’s six powerful, churning legs, and burned straight through its muscular chest.

The mana beast bellowed as it crashed to the ground, but the sound was short-lived. After a single twitching jerk of its powerful limbs, it went still. The creature had a long face with large eyes on either side of its head beneath the antlers, each of which had twenty or thirty prongs that spread out in a wide antenna from its skull.

Riven Kothan and one of the other basilisks hurried to the corpse alongside the phoenix who’d struck the blow. “A clean kill,” Riven announced, gripping a prong of the beast's huge branching antlers and twisting its head around so I could see it more clearly, revealing a third eye staring blindly from the middle of its head. “A beautiful ah’tule. Well struck, Orrin.”

The phoenix who’d killed the elk-like mana beast grinned. “It’ll feed us all this evening. Maybe I’ll prepare its hide and offer it to your sister as a courting gift—” He suddenly grunted as Riven struck him on the arm, making everyone laugh.

Riven looked around for his sister, who had come as one of the four basilisks representing Clan Kothan, but she was elsewhere on the mountainside. “You’re lucky Romii didn’t hear that. You’d be wed before we return to Featherwalk Aerie.”

“Unlikely,” the other basilisk said, still laughing. “Until Arthur claims one of these women as his wife, none of them will spare a glance for any other man.”

Regis gave a bark of laughter as he and Boo searched the forested mountainside dell for any other signs of movement. “He’s always had a way with princesses. Don’t take it personally.”

Beside me, Ellie’s lips pressed into a thin line as she struggled not to laugh along with the others. I gave her a gentle push, and she snorted and swatted my hand away.

“So, that beast was not our prey?” Chul asked, frowning as he watched the phoenix and basilisk work together to begin dressing their kill. The rest of us continued on up the slope.

“We’ll know it when we see it, apparently,” I answered. My senses were extended outward beyond the limits of my physical body, feeling for every disturbance in either aether or mana.

Chul’s brow furrowed in concentration as we walked.

Sylvie was with the other dragons, about half a mile back. Vireah, representative of the Intharah clan, walked with us instead. She stayed at Ellie’s side, keeping up a constant litany of advice and instruction. Most of the phoenixes and basilisks were nearby, but Zelyna had taken the leviathans up a separate path through the dell.

Ahead of us, the mountain seemed to keep climbing endlessly.

“I forgot to ask, but did you and…” I leaned in close, speaking so only Chul could hear me. “Did you and Mordain hash things out?”

Chul grunted, looking at me in confusion. “What does this mean? To ‘hash’ things out?”

I felt myself frown. “I just meant, did you clear the air? Get on the same page?” I hesitated, realizing I wasn’t helping. “Come to an understanding?”

Chul made an ‘ah’ face as he finally understood. “He faced the woman who wore your lady love’s form to save me. He needed me home to get the full measure of you. He sent me away because he trusted me and knew it was what I needed. He explained this as I healed, and I felt foolish for doubting his motivations.”

I blinked at him, still stuck on the “lady love” part of what he’d said. Slowly, my mind caught up with the rest. I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Well…that’s good.”

Ahead of us, there was a cracking like breaking wood, and the ground gave way beneath one of the phoenixes. Naesia shouted, and the ground seethed. Five trees closed in like the fingers of a giant fist. Phoenix flames and soulfire leapt into the boughs of the trees, bright orange shot through with black.

I flashed forward, pressing out in every direction with a bubble of aether to push back the curling trees. Naesia jumped into a black pit in the ground, grasping a writhing root at the hole’s lip to keep herself from plummeting into the bottomless dark. Flames flashed within the hole, then the fallen phoenix reappeared, arcing through the air as if tossed. Naesia reappeared just behind him, flipping out of the hole to land on her feet.

I shoved outward, expanding the aetheric barrier. The trees shattered with a noise like cannonfire, bone-white kindling exploding in every direction.

“Wood wights,” Riven mused, looking down into the pit as Naesia bent down to check on her companion.

My own gaze followed Riven’s; the pit was no longer black, and no deeper than ten feet to the soil-and-root covered bottom.

“Suck you in and trap you,” Riven continued, turning away from the hole. “Then slowly digest your mana. Nasty way to go.”

Ellie gave the pit a wide berth as she caught up. “That was crazy. It happened so fast.” _{freёweɓnovel.com}

“The mountain has many ways to kill the unwary,” Naesia said, standing and pulling the other phoenix to his feet.

He ran dirty fingers through his bright orange hair, chagrined. “Sorry Naes. Should have noticed,” he mumbled.

Novis’s daughter rolled her citrine eyes. “At least you didn’t forget not to fly.”

We continued on, eventually catching up to Zelyna where her leviathans had brought down an enormous titan bear. The serious leviathans—a trait more related to their proximity to Zelyna and not necessarily their race in general—were in good cheer following what they said was a “battle worthy of many campfire tales to come.”

When we reached the point where the forested dell gave way to rocky slopes pocket with snow, Naesia called an early afternoon halt. Cook fires were lit, and meat from the Epheotan beasts that we’d hunted throughout the day was prepared and spitted. Soon, the entire mountainside was rich with the scent of fire-charred meat.

I found a mossy rock in the sun and took a seat, enjoying the sounds and smells as the asuras cooked.

“It is a pleasant reprieve,” Sylvie said, arriving to sit next to me and share my thoughts. “I can see why these rituals have survived the test of time.”

“They are a necessary outlet,” Zelyna said as she approached from the direction of the other leviathans. She had a scratch on her neck that looked almost healed. In both hands, she carried a wooden tray laid out with fresh cuts of salted meat. “No, it is not the titan bear,” she said with a smirk, catching my look.

She laid down the tray between Sylvie and me, then took a seat herself on the other side. “Without a way to challenge ourselves, the asura would wither. Or worse, go to war with each other.”

Ellie bounded up and flopped into a thick patch of grass at our feet with a jaw-cracking yawn. “Ugh, I’m still exhausted from that climb. Am I the only one who feels like they can’t breathe up here?”

“I don’t know how things like that work in Epheotus, but in our world, the higher you climb, the thinner the air gets.” I took a deep breath and considered. “I don’t feel it yet, but—”

“But you’re not normal,” Ellie said, rolling her eyes. She rested her hands behind her head and kicked her heels against the soil. “Although, I guess if I’m the only normal person here, then that makes me the weirdo.”

“Sorry to break it to you, El, but you’ve always been the weirdo,” I teased.

“The oxygen does grow thinner here, but so does the mana.” Zelyna scanned the forest as if watching the motes of elemental manic flow around us. “The aether replaces it. We asura feel this like a tightness in our chest.”

“So…we’re back to Arthur being the weirdo,” my sister said after a moment’s thought. “Good.”

Nearby, Boo was chomping on the leftovers of a mana beast carcass, which he’d been gifted from one of the asura. He looked up from where he gnawed his lunch a healthy distance from the rest of us. There was a pause, and then the great bearlike guardian beast let out an almost human sounding guffaw.

“Thanks, Boo,” Ellie said, smiling at her bond. “I knew you’d have my back.”

Boo snorted and stuffed his face back into the carcass.

Regis appeared from the undergrowth, turned in a circle, and then plopped down next to Ellie, resting his chin on her shoulder. “I hope Mama Leywin’s okay with all those asuras. It feels kind of weird that we just left her down there with no protection.”

“She’s as safe with the Avignis clan as anywhere else,” I said. “More safe than with us, definitely.”

Ellie sucked her teeth thoughtfully. “I bet she’s lounging in the hot springs drinking some spicy phoenix brew. I swear, everything they make smells like cinnamon—”

A cacophonous braying drowned out the end of Ellie’s statement.

We all froze, each of us staring in a different direction. The sound had seemed to come from everywhere at once, as if a thousand ghostly hounds suddenly filled the mountain woods.

“Our prey!” Chul shouted, bounding toward us from the direction of the phoenixes’ cooking fire.

I knew he was right. I didn’t know how, exactly, but every instinct in my body burned with the certainty of the hunt.

The braying came again, louder and more condensed. All our heads turned simultaneously in the direction of the noise. “Go!” I barked as I jumped up and bolted out of the clearing. Chul, Sylvie, Ellie, and Regis were right behind me.

“The hunt is on!” Riven shouted from somewhere behind me. In an instant, the mountainside was alive with the sound of excited calls and bodies crashing through the undergrowth.

The thundering howls shifted to the right, leading us back down the mountainside. King’s Gambit and Realmheart glowed with golden light as I empowered them both. Time seemed to slow as the overlapping layers of my consciousness searched for any and every sign of our quarry.

The mountain dell was alive with noise and mana. Threads of asuran spells crisscrossed through the air ahead of me as each of our twenty-strong hunting party sought our prey. Among these spells, I felt Ellie channeling her beast will, her connection with Boo bright between them.

The source of the braying focused as King’s Gambit helped me push through the echoes and noise-swallowing effect of the forest.

It sounded as if all that noise came from a single point.

Without slowing, I scanned the undergrowth for any sign of movement. The howls were so loud that it was difficult to tell exactly how far away their source was, but I knew it had to be within the range of my sight.

Movement in my periphery drew my gaze briefly to the right: Zelyna was sprinting parallel to me, a shortsword held in each hand. Her storm-blue eyes met mine for an instant, and one corner of her lips turned up. She planted her left foot on the stump of a fallen tree, sprang into the air, pushed off a different tree with her right foot, and flung the sword in her right hand.

It cut the air with enough force to leave a visible ripple in its wake.

Through a gap in the undergrowth, I saw a flash of white. The sword was going to strike—

But the next instant, the sword impacted the ground with a dull whump, sending up a shower of soil.

The braying was suddenly off to our left and moving away at impressive speed.

As our hunting party turned to pursue, Naesia and Vireah ended up in front. Boo and Ellie were flagging behind, so Sylvie slowed to stay with them. Chul’s heavy footfalls shook the ground with each step as he sprinted beside me, smashing through the thick undergrowth and the occasional fallen tree like a rampaging spiked aurochs.

More spells and attacks flew, but I never saw more than white flashes in the green and brown.

The mountainside blazed orange, and a wall of fire engulfed the slope ahead of us. I slowed, every sense focused on the braying.

Just ahead of me, two bushes moved aside. A small white creature sprinted through the gap. It had overly large ears, a pointed face, and a huge, bushy tail. Fur mixed with scales to cover its body, while white feathers grew from wings that were pulled close to its back. Its clawed, webbed feet hardly seemed to touch the ground as it ran.

Its sides pulsed in time with the cacophony of howling and braying, which seemed to be issuing not from the beast’s mouth, but from inside its body.

Time seemed to slow, constricted by Sylvie’s aevum aether arts, as Chul’s round-headed maul swung down at the tiny creature. The very ground shattered, toppling nearby trees, but the braying was behind us now. Spinning around, I watched as if in slow motion as the creature sped between a startled Ellie’s legs. Boo swiped at it, but it was as if the guardian bear was moving in slow motion while the little beast continued to run on unabated.