“No. You told me that they were death, that they have not been seen for centuries, and that’s about it.”
“That is all you need to know.”
“If you want me to go after these creatures with you, I need to know more about them.”
She wasn’t sure if he was going to elaborate. There were times when Benji withheld information she thought would be beneficial, though he seemed to think otherwise.
He breathed out, his brow wrinkling. “They are as dangerous and deadly as I say. Every bit of it.”
“What is it that you fear from them?”
“I fear their presence here.” He paused and leaned down, tracing a pattern in the dirt before standing again. “The branox feed on blood. They were last seen centuries ago, long ago defeated and presumed destroyed. They are a dark power that has not been seen in the world for a long time, the kind the world has done well in removing.”
“Removing?”
“The branox are one type of creature that the sorcerers, the El’aras, the Asharn, and others of power were able to unify behind in destroying.”
Imogen frowned. She had not heard of the Asharn, but that wasn’t the most important part of this conversation. It was the unification in destroying these creatures that interested her most.
“Why are they back?” she asked.
“I do not know.”
“Something must’ve happened. If they have suddenly reappeared, it seems to me that something has released them.”
He looked over to her, and a darkness glittered in his eyes. “Yes. Something has.” He crouched down, then pushed his hands into the dirt.
For a moment, nothing happened, but then the ground began to tremble. The earth arced up over the stream, solidifying and blocking the water flow.
Lilah stiffened, watching Benji, but she didn’t say anything.
“The crypt,” Imogen said. “That’s what you fear. Timo did something there.”
“Probably.” Benji’s voice sounded strained. “He shouldn’t have been able to do anything there, but it was a different time. Now hurry. I do not know how long I can hold this.”
Imogen motioned for Lilah, and they approached the small earthen bridge he had formed. Lilah stepped across and gasped. Imogen hurried across, holding her blade ready to flow into a pattern, and she realized immediately why Lilah had reacted that way.
The air was considerably colder than it had been on the other side, as though they had passed through some transition point, some buffer the stream had formed.
Benji jumped, clearing the stream, and when he landed, he hurriedly slammed his hand down on the ground. The dirt parted, removing the earthen barrier he had made.
“Well,” he said to himself, shaking his head. “That is most unpleasant.”
“What did you do?” Lilah said. “Are you a sorcerer?”
Benji straightened and dusted his hands on his shirt, then looked at her. “Something like that.”
Her eyes widened, and she turned to Imogen. “And you are his protector.”
Benji barked out a laugh. “I like this one.”
“It’s not like that,” Imogen said.
“What is it, then?” Lilah asked. “If you are with him, and if you are his protection—”
“I am not his protection. And he is not a sorcerer.”
“I saw the magic he used.”
“It’s a different kind of magic than sorcery,” Imogen said. “I’m not sure he wants me to share anything more than that…”
She figured it was good enough to leave it like that. It would be up to Benji how much to reveal, though Lilah would have probably understood if Imogen explained that he was a Porapeth. It was easier than explaining sorcery, especially with how revered the Porapeth were.
“What now?” she asked Benji as they moved through the forest.
His head darted from side to side, and he was far more on edge than she’d ever seen him. “Now we must find them,” he said softly.
Once again he wanted her to go after a dangerous creature. Not sorcerers, like she’d been trained to do. But as she thought about her patterns, both traditional and sacred, maybe that was for the best. She didn’t want to use her patterns against sorcerers. Toral and Sul’toral perhaps, but members of the Sorcerers’ Society were different. Not all of them were evil the way her people believed.
“And how do we find them?”
“What brought us here?” Benji asked.
“You did,” she said. “You were the one guiding us. Then again, you were guiding us to follow Timo but claim you weren’t really following him, so I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m not sure how much to believe you when you said you weren’t paying attention to my brother or where he was going.”
He pressed his lips together, his silver eyes flaring for a moment, and then he nodded. “Perhaps that is all it is.”
Imogen let out a frustrated sigh, and she motioned for him to go.
Benji started deeper into the forest. With every step he took, his head twisted and turned as if he were seeing something she could not. And she suspected that was true. Benji was aware of things in the forest—and power that existed—that she did not know about.
She followed him through the trees and flowed through her sacred patterns. “I feel… something.”
“Good. You should feel something.”
Imogen focused on that sense. She was using Petals on the Wind, which allowed her to glide between the trees, and doing so seemed to generate much the same presence and power as she managed to accomplish with Tree Stands in the Forest. It didn’t press out from her like the roots beneath the ground, but she was aware of the crackling energy all around her.
She leaned toward Benji, lowering her voice. “It might’ve been a mistake bringing her here.”
Benji glanced behind him. “There are no mistakes.”
Imogen paused in the middle of her sacred pattern. “Is that something you see?”
“Not since I’ve been around you.” He frowned. “Like I’ve told you,” he went on, irritation entering his voice, “my vision has been cloudy ever since you joined me. I have found that everything is different, almost as if it is obscured from me in a way that it should not be. I don’t blame you, but I do feel as if your presence has shifted things for me.” He shook his head as he turned toward the trees, touching one after another, even leaning down and running his fingers along the vine that crept across the ground.
Imogen chuckled. “I’m glad you don’t blame me, then.” She turned to Lilah. “Do you have any way of protecting yourself?”
Lilah glanced down at her hands, and Imogen followed the direction of her gaze to the necklace still clutched in her fist. The band of silver curled around her fingers. “I have something.”
“What is it?”
She opened her hand. “It’s something I took from my parents before we left. It was a protective charm, but…”
Imogen leaned forward. A circular pendant adorned with a pattern of a star hung from the chain. Several circles were set within the angles of the star.
If a sorcerer had placed this enchantment, then it would be a powerful one.
“Where did your parents get this?”
“You can’t do anything to them,” she said.
Imogen chuckled. “You’re right. I don’t care. I’m just trying to understand. Where would your parents have gotten this?”
Lilah shook her head. “I don’t know. They didn’t tell me.”
Imogen sighed and squeezed her palms together as she focused, thinking about the power within her, thinking about the way she could summon energy. Would this enchantment be enough? It would be helpful at least.
She reached into her pouch, touching the enchantments she had brought with her. She hadn’t given too much thought to them since leaving Yoran, but she was thankful she had them on her. Although she hesitated to use them, she was glad she had something more powerful to access if it came down to it. When she had been tr
aveling with Timo, Imogen had not wanted to use those enchantments. Then when she had faced the Sul’toral, she’d known they would be useless. The few she’d tried had failed because they were meant to protect her, not fight on her behalf. She had never expected to need anything like that, and perhaps she should have planned better.
Benji crawled across the ground, his head lowered as he sniffed the earth. Imogen glided toward him while sweeping her blade around, and she could feel something radiate in the air everywhere around her. It seemed like the energy she detected was designed to press in on them, to squeeze, to constrict, to force them to acknowledge its presence. All she needed to do was to close her eyes, and she could feel it…
A tree in the forest.
Imogen paused in focus and pushed her power downward, using the sacred pattern and letting that energy flow out from her. In doing so, Imogen recognized that there was something directly in front of them.
She snapped her eyes open and raced forward, moving through her pattern, and she caught up to Benji as something crackled in the air. Like the forest itself suddenly snapped around her.
A blur rushed by in front of her at impossible speed, and she couldn’t see what it was. She twisted from Petals on the Wind to Stream through the Trees, her blade moving quickly as she swept it through the blur.
She stepped back, continuing to hold the Petals on the Wind pattern near Benji, and she glanced behind her briefly to make sure Lilah was still there. Thankfully, the girl had stayed close to her.
Two creatures lay dead on the ground.
“Creatures” was the only way Imogen could describe them.
They were scrawny with pale skin and unusually thin arms that ended in long claws. Faint hair covered their bodies, but their heads were their most disturbing feature. They were oblong, with deep hollows for their pitch-black eyes, which were unnerving even in death. Massive fangs stretched out from open jaws. As they lay unmoving, an energy came from them—something that left Imogen troubled.
She stepped forward, but Benji held his hand out to stop her. He crouched down, touching the forest floor, and the ground trembled and swallowed the creatures.
“They should not be here,” he said.
“I didn’t know anything could move quite like that.”
“What was that?” Lilah asked, coming close to her.
“That is the branox,” Benji said. “That is death.”
Imogen had been lucky. She had trained her entire life with the traditional patterns, working to become the skilled fighter that she was. Even those would not have been enough against creatures like that. She had used her connection to the sacred patterns, and had she not, she would’ve died. Lilah would’ve died too.
Maybe even Benji.
She looked over to him. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“Other than what I have done? I think not.”
“You have to be able to talk to the forest.”
“Talk to the forest?” Lilah asked, looking over to him.
Imogen ignored her and kept watching Benji. “The trees have to be able to offer us a measure of protection.”
“The trees can tell me where the branox are, but they are unwilling to interfere.” He sighed as though he were disappointed in the trees, and maybe he was. Maybe it was more than just that, though. Maybe anger and irritation filled him too. “They have chosen a side,” he said. He straightened, and he swept his gaze around the forest. “We should keep moving.”
“How many more of those will be out here?”
“Many,” Benji said softly.
“Then we should get out of the forest. Across the stream, where it seemed like there was a natural barrier that was designed to keep them in, and then—”
“The stream will not do anything. Not for long.”
“How do you know?”
Benji’s eyes looked haunted, almost as haunted as the creatures had looked before he had trapped them under the ground. “I know.”
“How are we to stop them?”
“We must find the hive. That is the core of these creatures. If we find the hive, we can find what they are feeding on, and perhaps we can destroy it before it spreads too far.”
He started forward but moved slowly. He rested his hand on a tree for longer than he usually did, as though it were harder for him to get information out of it. Then he crouched down, tracing his hand across the dirt before straightening and continuing onward.
Imogen followed, saying nothing. Lilah was quiet as well. For that, Imogen was thankful. She didn’t think there was anything they could say, and she couldn’t explain anything to the girl, at least not now.
“Keep moving,” Benji called.
“I am,” Imogen replied.
He shook his head and glanced over to Lilah. “Not you.”
Lilah didn’t meet his gaze and instead looked down. “I’m scared. Maybe this was a mistake.”
“It was definitely a mistake,” he said, a question in his eyes. Was Benji blaming the girl? That wouldn’t make any sense, but perhaps he was.
They hadn’t gone much farther before Imogen felt that distinct crackling sensation again. She didn’t know if her pattern was helping to trigger it or if it was something else—perhaps something intrinsic to the branox—but she darted forward regardless, flowing through Petals on the Wind to create a barrier.
When another blurring movement rushed toward them, she swept her blade down, flowing from one pattern to another. She had to make a complete circuit around Benji and Lilah before she brought all the creatures down.
There were five this time.
Imogen breathed heavily, panting, as she looked at the bodies. They were disgusting in death, and terrifying in life.
Benji knelt in front of one of them, tracing a pattern just above its chest. He pressed his hand down as if trying to compress the air above the creature. The air crackled, and then a pattern formed on its chest, a different one than what Benji had traced in the air. Whatever he had done, whatever pattern he had created, had amplified that.
“What is it?” Imogen asked, heading over to Benji and crouching next to him.
He motioned to the new pattern on the body. “I recognize this. This is one of the great branox clans. And it should not be here.”
“You have already said that about them.”
“Seeing an occasional branox would be surprising enough, but a clan marker like this…”
He lifted his head and sniffed at the air, looking much like some creature of the forest himself. He moved to the center of the creatures, then pressed his hands down. Once again, the earth swallowed each of them.
Benji straightened, shaking his head. “I do not know how many more of those I will be able to handle.”
“There has to be another way to dispose of the bodies.”
“Disposal is one thing, but we do not want to attract more.”
“What do you mean?” Imogen asked, and she looked over to Lilah. The girl still clutched her hands together, squeezing the enchantment in one fist and holding the fabric of her white dress in her other.
“I told you that they were attracted to death,” Benji said.
As he walked forward, the air thickened around him, or so it seemed. Imogen followed, feeling the energy in the air that flowed around her—something that troubled her. Again, the energy crackled.
“How do you even see them?” Lilah asked, her voice a whisper. “When they attacked, I didn’t see anything.”
“I can see the blurring movement,” Imogen replied.
“You see movement?” She studied Imogen for a long moment, shaking her head. “How are you able to? All I saw was their bodies once you cut them down.”
“I can feel something before they attack.”
Lilah nodded but said nothing.
What was it that Imogen detected, though? That was what she needed to understand. Even as she continued to sweep her blade around in the sacred patterns, the troubled thoughts kept pressin
g in on her. She tried to stick with Petals on the Wind or Stream through the Trees, but each time she focused on the patterns, a nagging worry plagued her in the back of her mind. These creatures had been impossibly fast. Could her sacred patterns continue to protect her?
Something Master Liu had said to her came back: the sacred patterns were not about speed.
He had defeated her easily when she had used the speed and precision of the traditional patterns. He had used only Tree Stands in the Forest against her one time, deflecting any blow she attempted to land.
Perhaps it really wasn’t about speed—it was about the power of the techniques.
Benji paused at the next tree and held his hand up against it to trace a pattern. This time he did so with the same compression of wind he had used on the branox. He waited for a moment, but nothing happened.
Imogen leaned forward. “What did you think you would find?”
“Some indication of its passing. If there is a hive…”
He walked ahead without saying anything more. Benji reached another tree, pressing his hand toward it, but before he had a chance to touch it, the air crackled.
Imogen saw the blurring movement as it streaked toward Benji, but she wasn’t fast enough this time.
There were at least seven of them.
Benji froze, standing motionless in Tree Stands in the Forest, or something similar enough. The creatures battered at an invisible barrier around him, and he remained fixed in place.
Without turning toward her, he spoke. “I will need your assistance.”
Energy radiated from Benji. His magic. Imogen found it surprising that it was so similar to what she could use.
She pushed that thought away. He needed her blade. He needed her sacred patterns. The Leier, and Master Liu in particular, had trained her.
Imogen flowed forward and swept her blade in a sharp arc using the sacred patterns. She started with Petals on the Wind to cut through one of the creatures. She twisted, then transitioned into Stream through the Trees, then shifted to Waterfall down the Stream and Axe Falling. Each one carved through the blur that swept around her.
She was filled with the power, the understanding, and the knowledge of what she needed to do. She spun, making sure that no other branox were behind her, and she found a creature that was swiping at Lilah but unable to get to her. The girl clutched the enchantment in her fist, her eyes wide, sweat streaming down her brow.
Unseen (First of the Blade Book 2) Page 7