Page 94 of Warrior of the Wild
With a grin, I turn to Soren. “It’s real.”
CHAPTER
19
“Don’t just stand there,” I say. “Let’s go. It went that way.”
Soren still stares at the last point he saw the bird before it disappeared. I wave a hand in front of his face. He blinks and finally turns his head away.
“I didn’t think we’d actually find it!” he shouts. I step back at his loud exclamation, one composed of sheer shock. “Sorry,” he adds.
“We did. And it’s getting away.”
“It’s already gone.”
“But the trail is fresh, you idiot. Let’s go!”
He finally finds his feet and starts upward again, trailing along to the right, the direction the bird went off in. It was definitely going toward the peak, but from a slightly different angle.
Soren leads this time, his motivation escalated by the sight ofthe bird that could be his salvation. I trail behind, not saying anything. My excitement grows as I watch Soren’s grow. He picks up the pace, his breathing frantic, but knowing how close we are seems to give him more energy.
I’m staring upward, trying to guess how much farther until we reach the top, when I hear Soren stumble.
He must have fallen onto his back, because by the time I see him, he’s moving himself to a sitting position.
“What happened?”
“I must have run into something?”
He says it like a question. Up ahead, clumps of enormous boulders lie about the area as well as some trees, but they’re too far away for Soren to have stumbled into.
I step past him, thinking perhaps he stepped into a hole in the ground and stumbled, but I can’t see how that would have sent him falling backward rather than forward.
I connect with something solid and teeter backward, but I manage to catch myself. I look back at Soren on the ground, whose expression is just as puzzled as mine. He watched me the whole time, saw that I ran into… nothing.
I reach out my hands in front of me.
They connect with solid air at the wrists.
“It’s just like the god’s lair,” I say. “This is exactly what it felt like when I tried to enter.”
“Could he be close?” Soren whispers, eyes flitting about our surroundings.
“Or he doesn’t want us approaching this part of the mountain. Perhaps it’s part of his domain.”
We wait, not daring to move, in case the god is nearby.
But after a few minutes of not being struck down by inhuman forces, we relax.
“You said the barrier keeps out metal?” Soren asks.
“Yes, but we can’t very well leave our armor and axes behind to climb the peak. Not after our mountain cat attack. We’ll circle this area. Maybe there’s a break. Peruxolo’s power can’t encompass the whole mountain or else we wouldn’t have made it this far.”
With one forearm pressed against the invisible wall, I start walking in a direction parallel to it, Soren trailing behind me.
Only about twenty feet later, my arm falls through the nothingness with no resistance.
“It’s gone,” I say, turning toward the peak once more.
