by T.M. Nielsen
***
Trox was the last of the three to unfreeze. They were already in camp when the spell wore off. The knights had followed when the king took off, and they caught up just in time to see Kyrin shift out of the dimension. They then carried the three frozen men back to camp to wait out the spell.
“Oh she did not just do that!” Trox roared. He flexed his hands to wake them up and then looked around, furious.
“Yes, she did,” Alric said, looking around. “I want to know what spooked her.”
“Azimeth is pretty upset,” Finn told them. “She’s blaming herself for Kyrin running. She thinks it’s because she was afraid of Kyrin’s rat.”
“It’s not the rat. I saw her eyes. She was terrified,” Alric said with a sigh. “Something scared her badly enough that she shifted.”
“Maybe she saw something in the trees?” one of the knights asked, looking into the dark forest.
“She doesn’t run from that type of thing.”
“What does she run from?”
“I don’t know,” Alric said.
Finn sat down. “Well, I damned well am not going to chase her any more. I don’t like the freezing thing.”
“What do we do now?” Trox asked, joining Finn at the fire.
“Nothing,” Alric told them. “We do absolutely nothing. We have no idea where she shifted to.”
“So now we wait.”