11
PRIA FLITTED BACK AND FORTH, her belly turning gray blue to blend with the sky and her top half a mix of broken greens to blend with the canopy—ideal should any predators flying above look down.
Othello brushed the large scrying stone against her tail, then she shot into the sky, much faster than Fletcher had expected. He had been lucky to catch her.
At first they saw a crystal-clear picture of the forest, then Othello grunted and the image flickered in shades of red, yellow and orange as the Pyrausta glided on the wind, high above the trees.
“She can see heat,” Othello said proudly. “It’s like a switch in her mind. Hang on, let’s see…”
The stone changed again. The forest turned ghostly, replaced by a strange mass of rippling black-and-white shapes.
“Sound and air movement, like that bat demon.” Othello scrunched up his face as he tried to remember the name. “What’s it called…?”
Fletcher remembered the giant, hairy bats that some shamans would use as mounts, and shuddered.
“It doesn’t matter. Be quick,” Fletcher said. “A Pyrausta would rarely venture above the safety of the trees. If she’s spotted, it might look suspicious.”
Othello nodded, and soon Pria was skimming just above the tree line, occasionally flipping her vision to check for predators. Above, the red mountain range stretched into the horizon, devouring the graying sky. Fletcher found himself searching for a sun that he knew would not be there—the ether’s light source was yet to be determined.
“What’s that?” Othello murmured, slowing Pria as the base of the mountain neared. The trees stopped abruptly where the red rock began, as if the rusty sediment repelled them. Up close, it looked like sandstone, rough and covered in a thin layer of dust. It reminded Fletcher of the ether’s deadlands. But that was not what had caught Othello’s attention.
There was a crack in the rock, so narrow that they had not seen it in the distance. It appeared as if an earthquake had once split the impenetrable sierra down the center, leaving a thin trail into the heart of the range. It was barely wide enough for Sheldon to pass through, but it appeared well used; generations of hooves, claws and feet had worn a clear path along the ground.
“I told y—” Fletcher began, but suddenly Othello held up his hand, his eyes widening with panic.
“There’s something coming,” he whispered, as if he were there with Pria.
The screen flashed red as the Pyrausta darted onto a nearby boulder, the largest and tallest in a pile of rubble that lay scattered around the crack in the mountains. She flipped her vision to the strange, shadowy view of the world and turned her eyes to the horizon above the trees. There were ripples high in the air, as if there was a great disturbance in the sky.
Her view returned to normal, revealing a flock of V-shaped black shapes in the distance, still too far off to make out. At first, Fletcher thought they were bird demons, perhaps Shrikes. But as they drew closer he realized they were too large for that.
Wyverns. Fletcher could count seven of them—great, reptilian beasts with jointed wings and horned heads—that spiraled down toward the mountain pass. They were as large as a stack of three horses, and they landed in deep, juddering thuds that made the boulder tremble and the image on the crystal shake. Furrows were scored in the ground as they skidded to a stop, the hooked claws of their feet and wings tearing through the earth.
Othello shuddered as their riders came into view: orc shamans, resplendent in gaudy, feathered headdresses, their chests and limbs painted in whorls of bright colors. Each was armed with a quiver full of javelins and a macana, a flat war club with shards of obsidian embedded along the sides.
Other demons landed among them, lagging behind the Wyverns. Vesps, bee-wasp hybrids as large as pigeons. Strixs, four-legged owl-demons with red-tipped feathers and fearsome beaks. But it was another demon that caught Fletcher’s eye, still circling above as if reluctant to give up the search. It was smaller than a Wyvern, but his heart seized as the beast finally descended. It loomed large in the crystal as it landed on the boulder above Pria. The Pyrausta remained perfectly still.
“Crap,” Cress muttered.
It was an Ahool, the name Othello had been searching for earlier coming unbidden to Fletcher’s mind. It was much like an overgrown bat with the musculature, fur and wide mouth of a silverback gorilla, snorting at the air through a piggish snout and twitching its pointed ears. Twin fangs poked from either side of its mouth, sharper than hypodermic needles but long enough to skewer a human through the chest and out the other side.
Then its rider leaped from its back to land in a crouch on the ground below.
The white orc. Khan.
“Heaven help us,” Cress breathed.
Khan seemed to be shouting, his pearlescent skin bright against the gray sky. His long mane of hair tossed in the air as he strode back and forth, ordering the shamans down from their mounts in what Fletcher knew would be the guttural barks of the orc language.
The shamans were soon prowling about the clearing, examining the ground by the mountain pass. It did not take long for the orcs to determine there were no footprints, though they did seem excited by the hoof marks left along the dust. The white orc clapped his hands at the sight of them, then shooed the shamans away to examine them himself. They returned to their Wyverns and fed them red slabs of meat from baskets strapped to the demons’ backs.
“Hey … they’re not leaving,” Cress said, pointing at the crystal.
The shamans were not setting up tents, but instead sheltering beneath the wings of their Wyverns and starting small campfires with the fire spell symbols tattooed on their fingertips. Khan joined one of them, crouching on his long haunches and warming his hands by the flames.
“Why is Khan here?” Sylva shuddered, horrified at the sight of the tall, white orc. “There’s a war on in our dimension, and he’s wasting his time hunting us here. It doesn’t make sense!”
Khan wore nothing but a plain loincloth, a stark contrast to the colorful shamans, with their multicolored feathers and garish body paint. His body was composed of lean, athletic muscle, and his long hair seemed almost feminine alongside the shamans’ cropped mix of topknots, shaved patches and bowl tops.
“What do I do?” Othello whispered, pointing at the image of the Ahool on the crystal. It was standing sentry, its head swinging slowly left and right. “As soon as Pria moves, it’ll sense her. Hell, I’m surprised it hasn’t smelled her yet.”
“Ahools have poor eyesight,” Sylva said. “It probably can smell her but can’t see where she is.”
“We need her there anyway,” Fletcher suggested. “If they’re still there by morning we could run right into them. She can keep watch.”