‘Look closely. You will see them,’ Lovett said, her voice taught with exertion.
The land cut off in a neat line, creating the perfect precipice of a cliff that fell away into murky darkness below. Fletcher could see that the cliff line stretched on far into the distance, almost imperceptibly curving as they faded out of sight. He realised that the disk must be enormous, larger than a thousand Hominums. This would not be a good place to get lost, he thought grimly.
His line of thought was broken as he saw something stir in the abyss. As the beetle demon’s eyes adjusted to the dark, a seething mass came into view. It twisted and writhed tortuously, a tangled chaos of tentacles, eyes and jagged teeth.
‘Ceteans,’ Sylva breathed in quiet horror.
‘Aye, Ceteans. You’ve done your homework, Sylva,’ Lovett uttered darkly, wiping sweat from her brow. ‘Some call them the Old Ones. They starve down there, cannibalising each other as they wait. The Ceteans will snatch any demon that wanders this far, usually the sick or the injured trying to find somewhere to recover. That is why we must fly so high. This is the one and only time I will risk coming near them, so learn this lesson well. Stay away from here.’
Valens turned and flew back the way they had come. This time there were no questions as the group mulled over the nightmarish creatures they had just seen. The giant monsters were grotesque and tortured beings, of that Fletcher was certain. Though he could not hear anything, he could imagine their tormented screams in his head.
The blue orb that was the portal hovered beneath them, but Valens flew over it. With his current height, they made good time, the land rushing underneath like fallen leaves in a river. Fletcher wondered what it was like for Lovett, riding on a Griffin over the battlefield, then felt a pang of jealousy when he realised he would never be able to ride Ignatius.
‘I will quickly show you where the hunting grounds begin, then I must get back,’ Lovett spat through gritted teeth. ‘Normally I can go for much longer, but I am not yet recovered from the capture of Atlas’s Lutra a few days ago. I was lucky that Provost Scipio was there to harness it.’
‘Harness?’ Rory asked. Lovett ignored him, instead pointing at the gemstone.
The world had turned green. Valens was looking over a forest, though the vegetation was not one Fletcher recognised. Above it, he saw flocks of flying demons in the distance, swooping and turning like starlings. A swarm of tiny Mites flew low above the trees, before scattering as a large Mite not unlike Valens snatched one of them from the air. Far in the distance, ash clouds stained the sky. Below them, lava-tipped volcanoes spewed pillars of smoke, hanging in the air like columns supporting the heavens.
Something hit Valens with brutal force, knocking him out of the sky. Lovett cried out in pain as the image spun like a kaleidoscope, trees rushing up to meet them.
The stone turned black as ink.
35
The group stared at the black stone in horror, holding their breaths. Lovett was clutching her tether with a white knuckled grip as the pentacle spat violet sparks, sizzling and smoking on the leather around them with the stench of burning hair.
The Oculus flickered into life. The image was fuzzy and unfocussed, but it panned slowly as Valens looked at the iridescent treetops above. The little demon was alive!
‘I was afraid of this,’ Lovett muttered. ‘This is the time of year that the Shrikes migrate across our hunting grounds. In previous years I would wait until next month to begin with your lesson in the ether, but with you first years taking part in the tournament I had to move it up. Damn Scipio and his rush to get you on the battlefield! In his day, there were five years of study before graduation. He should know better!’
She cursed long and hard, her tirade blacker than a Vesanian sailor’s. Fletcher’s ears reddened at her colourful language, but he smiled to himself. Lovett could swear with the best of them!
He tried to picture a Shrike from his studies, but could only remember that it was a dangerous, birdlike creature that visited Hominum’s hunting grounds in the ether seasonally.
‘The Shrike will be coming back, but I can feel Valens has hurt one of his wings. He’s going to have to race to the portal. There’s no way he can fight a Shrike; it is three classes above him. Maybe five if it’s the matriarch in their flock.’
The last sentence meant little to Fletcher, but he wondered what class ranking Ignatius would fall under. As the Mite buzzed into life and jerked into the air, his thoughts turned back to the task at hand.
The poor demon flew slowly, hampered by his injured wing. He skimmed over the barren desert, buffeted by the low winds that spun the dust across his vision. As the minutes ticked by excruciatingly slowly, Fletcher noticed something ahead of them. It was a shadow, though of what he was not certain.