Forest of Spirits

by S. J. Sanders

  He turned to look at her. “Abilities?”

  She glared as she slipped down the side of one massive boulder. “I’m supposedly not human anymore and yet here I am, practically falling off the side of the mountain.”

  “I did offer to carry you,” he reminded her.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t want it to seem like now that things are… you know… bonded and all between us that I don’t need to carry my own weight.”

  A shiver ran up her spine as she glanced toward the creatures. If she wasn’t mistaken, the misshapen creatures were keeping pace with them.

  Silvas’s lips twisted slightly, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes. If anything, he seemed hyper focused on her now, his expression tight. She felt his concern as he prodded along their bond. It was the only sign of just how unsettled he was.

  “Is that issue of your concern that I am sensing?” he asked softly, his head canting to the side. “You are doing a remarkable job if your plan is to slip off the side of the mountain as you’ve nearly done thirty-five times, or, at the rate we are going, to camp out on the rocks tonight,” he murmured.

  “Ouch. No. My point is, shouldn’t I be scaling down the side of the mountain looking sexy and perfectly at ease like you do?” she stated impatiently. “Or at least have good enough vision to figure out what the fuck those monstrous rock things are over there, because they are creeping me the fuck out,” she nearly shouted. She gestured in their direction with a wave of her hand. She was definitely certain that they were staring at her now, if the reddish glowing pinpricks of light reflecting in their eyes was anything to go by.

  As Silvas jerked his head around in their direction, the one at the front suddenly stretched up twisted arms raising to the sky, jagged, sharp ends hooked menacingly as it slashed through the air in her direction, a bellowing, blood-curdling howl raised in the air. What the actual fuck?

  “Mountain trolls,” Silvas snarled.

  His lips curled back from his teeth as he hissed loudly in fury. Turning in place, Silvas took two bounding steps toward her as she watched the creatures tear large rocks from the ground. Strong arms ripped her up off her feet. She was flying through the air as he skidded off the side of the rock before spinning and leaping for another foothold as a giant boulder whistled by them. The impact of it crashing against the ground nearby vibrated through Diana as the rock burst into hundreds of pieces. She cried out as several stung and abraded her skin painfully.

  “Trolls? What the fuck… They don’t even remotely resemble Raskyuil!”

  “Mountain trolls are different,” he growled as he effortlessly leaped again, neatly evading another massive, plummeting rock. “They are large, aggressive, and possess limited intelligence.”

  “Can’t you use your kingly influence to scare them away?” she demanded. She ducked her face against the protective shelter of his body as another rock exploded around them.

  Silvas chuckled dryly as he sprung lightly from stone to stone. “What influence? Unlike the forest trolls, they don’t form any sort of recognizable social organization. They won’t acknowledge my authority. You see the larger one in the front and the two smaller in the back?” he asked as he gestured with his chin toward them.

  Diana risked another glance in their direction and nodded weakly. Though they were too far away to see much in the way of clear details, their size difference was easy enough to make out.

  “That is the only sort of social unit you will ever see mountain trolls in,” he stated as he dodged behind a wall of rock. “The larger troll at the fore is the female, the two others are the males in her harem. I am guessing she is a younger troll, since on average an adult female will have anywhere from five to seven males in her harem. They protect her and any young that are born and follow her direction.”

  “So why the hell are they attacking us? We pose no threat to them. We aren’t even anywhere fucking near them!”

  He chuckled humorlessly, his arms briefly squeezing her tighter to him as he picked up speed. “Because, while they are usually scavengers, they won’t hesitate to kill anything that looks like it may be easy prey. Apparently, your manner of descending the mountain attracted their attention,” he informed her wryly. “The males will attempt to kill you from a distance with the hope I will abandon your corpse so they can safely approach with their female to eat at their leisure. Normally they would turn to stone when touched by the sun, but it seems they are able to move under the cloud cover to hunt. But we are about to disappoint them.”

  With several more leaps, they were safely within the jutting rise of rocks that began to ascend to the second peak, the trolls left far behind them.

  Silvas set her on a flatter stone with lanky pale green brush clinging to some loose soil crumbling around it. Fishing out some dried meat from their supplies, he pressed it into her hands and gave her the waterskin. Diana scarfed it down, grateful for the nourishment, her hands trembling despite their current safety.

  “Will they follow us over here?” she whispered.

  He shook his head, his eyes narrowing as they fixed on a point behind her. “No. The strix’s nest will keep them away. Your nose isn’t strong enough to pick up the smell now, but you will as we get closer. The smell of rot, death, and the bite of magic is not something that you will miss.”

  Diana turned her head so that she too looked up at the ascending slope of the peak. Her stomach bottomed out nervously. A thick gray mist clung to the stones as it appeared to roll down the slope of the mountain. The stones—what little she could see pushing out from the mist—appeared to be splashed with black in some places as if so many bodies bled out over them that it permanently stained the rock. As she stared, she watched the mist roll on itself. At times, with the shifting of a breeze, it seemed to coil back, exposing a portion of bare rock, but it never lasted. Within minutes it would roll back over the spot, and it never once dissipated.

  With a particularly strong gust, she nearly gagged as a rank, sour smell filled her nose. It contained the sharp metallic scent of blood and of something unfamiliar, like the acidic bite of ozone after a storm.

  “We are going there,” she murmured.

  “Yes,” Silvas replied unhappily his eyes scanning over the mist, looking for any sign of weakness.

  “Fuck.”

  He turned an understanding look upon her, his lips flattened as they pressed tightly together. She could feel the coil of tension and the rush of hostility and apprehension that filled him when he looked once more upon the shrouded stone.

  “Indeed.”

  Chapter 24

  Silvas hopped up on a narrow rocky ledge, his chest expanding as he scented the air. The pungent smell filled his nose unpleasantly, but he didn’t detect any movement from the strix. That wasn’t surprising. So long as they didn’t attract her attention, she was unlikely to emerge from her cave before sunset.

  Diana glanced up at him quizzically, but he waved her on to keep to the more stable path as his eyes narrowed at the distant figures of the mountain trolls. They’d given up the pursuit and were ambling back to whatever cavern they were holing up in. It was peculiar. Normally mountain trolls would never come anywhere near the territory of such a dangerous being as the strix. Not even a mature female with a large harem would risk her family so recklessly. His ears tipped as he listened to the female howl miserably, his mouth turning down in sympathy.

  His mate stilled as another louder howl pierced the air. “You feel sorry for them? They wanted to eat me,” she whispered furiously.

  “I would never have allowed that. I would have killed them if I needed to. Truthfully, it probably would have been a kindness. I believe they are starving,” he replied as he dropped down once more to her side, satisfied that the trolls were retreating.

  “Starving?” she murmured, her brow furrowing as he felt a soft tug on their bond. Despite her words, Diana had a compassionate heart, a rarity in his world. He found himself instinctively reaching for her, wanting t
o hold her close and lose himself in their bond. Instead, he nodded, keeping his attention on their surroundings, searching for any sign of danger.

  “That would explain why they are risking a hunt under cloud cover in the daylight. Not to mention in a strix’s territory, of all places, where they could easily be killed in a territorial clash. As I said, normally they are scavengers, feeding on game brought down by predators, although they are known to eat copious amounts of fish in the lower mountain rivers.”

  “Like bears, then,” she observed as if comparing them to a common predator made all the difference in the world.

  Silvas found it charmingly naïve, but she wasn’t wrong when it came down to their roles in the balance of nature in the different realms. Still, he understood the sentiment behind the correlation. Mountain trolls were unpleasant to tangle with and generally would be inclined to eat anyone they encountered if they could, but they were doing as they were designed to do. He didn’t wish to harm them if he could avoid it.

  “An apt enough comparison, although a mountain troll would eat a bear without hesitation if they felt they could overwhelm one,” he observed with a humorous twist of his lips. He immediately sobered, his ears twisting to catch the slightest sounds around them. Things were worse in the mountains than he imagined even after their visit earlier that day. “If something is causing such huge disruptions in the ecosystem, enough to send Aquilo from his great house to scour his mountains, and oreads hunting, we do not want to be caught up here where we are at a disadvantage. I am not without defenses, but my strength lies mostly in the forest,” he admitted as he reached down to assist her up the steep incline.

  As they climbed higher, the weather steadily grew grayer and more oppressive with the electric weight of magic stirring in the air around them. As the hours passed and the sun began to drop in the sky, a strong gust picked up, drawing in black clouds around the peak. Silvas pulled the length of his hair back and quickly bound it with a cord. The stench of the strix’s nest was getting stronger, and even Diana wore an expression of disgust as she made a noticeable effort to breathe solely through her mouth.

  He could feel the pulse of power through the atmosphere like a crack of lightning. The strix was beginning to awaken. He gritted his teeth as he bowed his head against the wind. It dragged uncomfortably against his antlers, but he hoped that it cut the wind enough to provide some minimal relief for Diana who now, at his insistence, clung with one hand to his belt as she climbed.

  As the wind increased in strength, he worried about his uxorem losing her grip on him and falling from the mountain. He was tempted to pull her up into his arms again and carry her the remaining short distance to the cave entrance, though it meant subjecting her to the full force of the wind. Silvas reached behind him, one hand clamping around her wrist to hold her securely to him as they increased their rate of climb. Just behind him Diana gagged and moaned.

  “Fuck… That smell! I’m going to puke.”

  He turned slightly, releasing his grip on her wrist to frown with concern at his mate, his shoulder’s hunched to continue shielding her as much as possible. Her face did look unnaturally pale. His concern raised another notch as he reached forward and rubbed his palm against her cold cheek.

  “I know,” he murmured. “If you need to get sick, there is no shame in it. Tell me and we will stop.”

  She gagged again and took a deep shuddering breath. “No. I think I’m alright. It’s just awful. You weren’t kidding about how bad it is.”

  He nodded his head in understanding as he faced forward. Firmly wrapping his hand once more around her wrist, he continued their upward progression as he squinted against the rapidly increasing gloom.

  Up ahead he could see the dark crevice from which the terrible smell emitted. Even from their short distance away he could make out sun-bleached bones scattered outside. Mingled with them were those that were black with rotting flesh belonging to various species. Some were animals, but most were noticeably children. He couldn’t tell offhand what the species was since outside of coloring patterns, most children of the different species looked similar structurally until adolescence. This was a sight he hated for his mate to see.

  He considered waiting to full nightfall to spare her. But to keep their advantage, they needed to make it the rest of the distance before the strix fully awakened and was alerted to their presence. He was unable to shield the one person that he wanted nothing more than to protect. Gods above forgive him.

  The daylight had waned considerably from the sky as he finally pulled himself level to the crevice. He had to break Diana’s hold and transfer her grip to a secure handhold so that he could leap up to the flat rock that jutted out from the side of the cliff, no doubt worn down from centuries serving as a roost for the strix. Kicking the foul mess of bones out of the way as much as he could, Silvas leaned down and lifted her up.

  The moment Diana’s feet touched the stone, she glanced around, her face filling with horror as her eyes rested on a small skull. She grabbed a protruding rock and leaned over the side, her body spasming as she vomited. He closed the distance between them, gently drawing back her hair before stroking her back with one hand until she ceased heaving. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she straightened, giving the entrance a dark glare.

  Inside he could hear the low creaking sounds of the strix stirring as his ears turned toward it. Pulling his sword free, he reached back instinctively to grab ahold of his mate, anchoring her to his side. They couldn’t fight that way, but as they entered, he felt better having her in his grasp for as long as possible.

  The sound of brittle bone fragments was loud underfoot as they entered the cavern. Silvas immediately concentrated on the flow of power through his body and pulled at a thread of it, drawing it through him. His magic was typically limited to his influence on the forests, but summoning light was a skill that most immortal races possessed, and all gods could accomplish with minimal effort. While he didn’t need light to see, he wouldn’t leave Diana so impaired. He felt a crackle of warmth around the crown of his head as his antlers sparked, releasing a burst of light between their inner spikes. The glow didn’t cast its illumination far, but it served their purpose.

  The light cast its glow on tall pillars carved from the natural cave formations as detailed carvings and paintings graced smoothed walls gilded in many places in gold and adorned with precious stones. In the distance, he could see a giant tripod brazier. An angry sound drifted through the cavern—a muffled, shrill snarl.

  Bones skittered loudly as something moved heavily in the depths of the winding cave system. A raspy flutter of huge wings echoed around them. His eyes slid to Diana, feeling her anxiety rippling through their bond. She kept pace at his side, her movements fluid despite her unease. An arrow was already notched in her bow, the string pulled marginally back in preparation to fire. Reassured that she was prepared, he crept forward, taking care to make as little noise as possible.

  The resonance of an unmistakable scrape of large claws dragging against stone was followed by the loud clatter of falling stones as the strix drew closer from within the heart of her nest. She was still too far away to see accurately, even with his superior eyesight, except for the brilliant yellow eyes that appeared like a pair of glowing sparks, flashing at them as a raspy chuckle filled the spaced.

  “Strangers to whet my appetite?” she queried. He could hear the click of her teeth, and her wings appeared as looming inky shadows within the dark. “I think so,” she hissed to herself, each vowel drawn out in her aged voice.

  There was a rush of air and a loud thump that sent billows of dust and dirt toward them. Silvas gestured to Diana to hold her position as he warily stalked forward. His eyes narrowed. He was able to see much further beyond the glow of the illumination than Diana. A slim silhouette moved, and an ethereally beautiful woman emerged from the shadows. Her dark hair hung in a wave down her back and large golden eyes peered at him, a tiny smile tugging on red lip
s. A gray gown ghosted around her legs as she drew closer. She exhaled a strange perfume that rolled through the cave. It glittered briefly, thickening into a curtain that seemed to surround him, confusing his senses.

  He blinked his eyes as everything blurred and tilted around him, godly power surging through the air. There was something almost familiar about it, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. Where was he? What was he doing? His eyes refocusing, Silvas smiled in welcome. His mate smiled as she walked toward him, the fragrant flowering vines crawling up the walls slid against her skin as she brushed by him. His body hardened eagerly as he watched her drawn nearer, her hips moving seductively with every step. His smile slipped a little in confusion. Since when did Diana walk that like? For that matter, how did he arrive there? Last he recalled he was searching for something… He strained to recall what, but shook his head as rosy perfume rose around him, seeping into his senses.

  His smile returned. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was home with his uxorem. Diana’s hair was loose around her shoulders and a gray dress clung to her body. Her fingers toyed with the lacing at the front and he watched as one side slipped down, baring her shoulder. He took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to capture her scent. To his frustration it eluded him. A low growl escaped him in his frustration as he stalked forward. He needed his mate, now. He needed her under his fingers and her cunt beneath his mouth.

  She grinned in invitation and her eyes trailed over him as he stalked closer to her. The robe fell away, revealing her lush figure. He licked his lips, his lust surging through him in need to claim his mate. He reached down to loosen his pants and frowned as his hand encountered armor. Dropping his gaze, he glanced in confusion at the dark belt that protected his loins. Why would he return to his chambers in armor?