Chapter Twenty

Farren

W ith one last glance behind me, I step back through the door, making sure that all of my creatures make their way through with me and that I have not left any behind. A quick glance toward the tapestry shows that no one is looking through it at the moment, so hopefully, that means that the girl has told everyone that the castle is safe, the princes are dead, and that they can all go home.

Shit, I hope they haven't released the horses or something. From what I can remember, it's a long walk to the nearest village, and it would be a lot easier and safer on horseback. I can cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, I need to find all of the princes' bodies and break their gems. It only takes me a moment to orientate myself and I realise that the closest prince to me is actually Dagon, the room that I tortured him in is not too far from here.

It takes me very little time at all to get to Dagon, I have to admit that I'm kind of relieved that his body is still where I left it, and he hasn't started to do something disturbing like grow a replacement head or something equally ridiculous. I'm actually really hoping that the vision that I saw was an accurate representation of the past and that they are all wearing the bracelets because that means that I can help Hades get his magic back. Thankfully, I glance at Dagon's right wrist and find the gemstone bracelet looking exactly like it did in the vision, except, to my surprise, it's broken and covered in cracks.

I take it off his wrist anyway, just to make sure, but it's not a trick of the light or anything. It really is broken. That's got to be a good thing. I start to drop it on the floor before I think better of it; it could need to be broken more in order to give Hades his power back. I mean, Azreal and I completely destroyed his one, and this one is just cracked. I don't sense any magic from it, but just in case, I want to take it with me. Maybe if I show Hades he will recognise the craftsmanship or something and be able to identify who made them and then figure out who is behind all of this and stop them before they make another move against him and the Underworld.

With this in mind, I put it in my pocket that's not containing Xerxes and head out of the door to find Yeal and Jomieal, for some reason I don't want to put the bracelet in the Void, preferring to keep it close to me. I guess it might have something to do with the fact that it's got another god's magic on it, and a bad one at that. I don't want to alert him somehow that I have them and that something is amiss. Of course, that's assuming that he doesn't know already.

It takes me a little bit longer to get to the princes that I killed in quick succession, but once I'm there, I quickly nab their bracelets, too, realising that, like Dagon's, they're both broken and cracked. I really hope that's a good sign and not something that we need to be concerned about. Now, the only one that I need to get the bracelet back from is Hiromu. Fortunately my sense of direction is playing in my favour for once instead of leading me astray and I only need to be corrected once by a sharp bark from Poca to stop me from going the wrong way.

"Ah fuck," I curse as I reach the open door to the gardens where Hiromu's body is and see that the sky is looking angry as fuck, I'm just hoping that I can get the bracelet off Hiromu before the rain starts.

I quickly rush through the hedges, following the path that I remember from before, and I'm once again immensely relieved that he is where I left him out of all of them and what they're capable of. I hate Hiromu's gift the most, it's his magic and illusions that leaves the most internal trauma that I have to heal from. Logically, I know that none of the things that he showed me are true, and they didn't really happen, but his illusions are so strong that the non-logical part of me struggles to believe that, and it's like a constant war between the two parts of myself to reconcile what actually happened and my very real feelings about fake events.

I hate his magic, and I would've loved to have given him a taste of it before I killed him, but unfortunately for me and luckily for him, illusions are not a part of my skill set.

Kneeling down beside his body, still in the middle of the fallen Helliers headless bodies, I grab his arm and shift his shirt sleeve so that I can see the bracelet. What I reveal promptly has my cursing. The sick fucker has pulled and stretched his skin over the top of the bracelet and has stitched it in, it looks angry and uncomfortable, and the only part of the bracelet that's still visible is the broken gemstone. I don't want to leave the bracelet behind, especially since it's Hiromu's, but I don't have the time or stomach to cut the bracelet out of his wrist. I quickly realise that there's only one thing for it and using my newly acquired axes I swing downward, effortlessly slicing through his wrist just above the embedded bracelet.

Huh, that was pretty impressive; I think I'm going to like these axes. Even though my words were just a thought, the axes hum happily in my hands, and I feel my eyebrows raise; that was weird, but I'm just going to go with it. I look down at the hand still on the floor; there is no way that I'm going to try and put that in my pocket; one, it won't fit, and two, I would find that incredibly weird on so many levels. Instead, I open up a pocket of the Void, making sure it's nowhere near Hiromu's head just in case, and kick it in. I'm going to have to risk the god who created them finding out that something is amiss. There's no other way that I can move it, and that urgency to leave has picked up again. Looking around, I try to get my bearings about where I am on the castle grounds in relation to the stables. I need a horse, and I hope the staff haven't taken them all in their escape. I quickly realise that it would be better to cut through the castle again than it would be to stay outside and work my way around the perimeter to the stables.

So back inside I go; as I jog through the castle, it occurs to me that as soon as I leave, this place will be abandoned entirely apart from the beast in Hades half, and it makes me wonder whether it will expand its territory and how long it takes other people to realise that it's been abandoned.

When I exit out of the castle on the side where I know the stables are, I'm pleased to see that the clouds seem to be holding out for the moment and the rain still hasn't fallen. With all of my creatures following me and my axes still in my hands, just in case there's a rogue Hellier hanging around, I race across the courtyard to the stables. They're worryingly quiet, and all of the stalls appear to be empty. I start to worry that the staff has used them all to leave this place. I can't begrudge them that since the girl that I spoke to made it clear that no one was here willingly.

Sighing, I start to turn around to head out, resigning myself to a long and uncomfortable walk, when a sound from one of the furthest stalls catches my attention. Striding down the aisle, I see a black horse, or the Underworld's equivalent, casually munching away; when it hears me, it gives me a look as if to say, what took you so long? He's all tacked up and ready to go, and there's a note pinned to his saddle. Putting my axes in their magical harness to keep them out of the way and not appear threatening to the animal, I unlatch the door and greet the horse calmly; as he nuzzles my shoulder in greeting, I pull the note off the saddle and read it out loud.

"I figured that the least we could do is leave you a horse if you've managed to survive the beast. Thank you for releasing us."

I'm guessing that it's from the girl that I met outside of Hades part of the castle and it makes me smile. There's no more time for any extra pets as the sense of urgency to get out of here peaks again, urging me to move faster than I currently am. I climb up onto the horse with ease, Meri leaving Poca's back and curling up around my shoulders; I guess she's decided that's where she wants to ride for however long this trip is going to take. I urge the horse to move out of its stall and toward the exit as I double-check that Oryn and Poca are close by. Once I'm outside, it takes a moment to orientate myself, and I realise that I don't know where to go.

I need to get some rest, catch up on some sleep, and allow my wounds to heal and my magic to recuperate, although, for some reason, my magic doesn't feel in the least bit tired despite the amount that I have used it over the last few hours since I escaped. I'm worried that I'm about to have a massive adrenaline crash and that someone is going to use that opportunity to take me out. To get this far and then to have my life ended would really fucking piss me off. Especially since I have no idea what happens to all the things that I've stored in the pockets in the Void and whether they'll just stay there or disappear or it's like a return to sender kind of thing and they'll go back to where I got them from, because that would be bad, and a hell of a lot of wasted effort.

Shaking my head slightly to get myself back on track and refocusing on the task at hand, I turn my thoughts to finding somewhere sheltered that I can rest for the night, out of the inevitable rain. The problem is that I have no idea where that could be, and even if I do manage to find a tavern or somewhere that I can stay for the night, I don't have any money to pay for it, and I look like I've been murdered several times over, covered in blood, some of it mine but some of it not and I stink, I haven't had a shower in god knows how long. My point is I'm likely to draw unwanted attention to myself if I head to a village.

Now that I've got everything that I need from the princes, I wonder if the Void will work for me; if it does, then I could zap to the nearest door out of here and get back to the Shadowlands, assuming the door isn't guarded. I already know from my last visit here that I can't zap out of the realm even though the first time I was here, I could use the Void to travel through the Underworld, just not out of it.

Taking a deep breath, I let my magic flow over me and use it to step through the Void and to the door that will get me to the closest exit to the Underworld that I know of. Frustratingly, I hit the proverbial brick wall again, and I sigh as I come back out sitting on my horse, who hasn't moved a muscle or blinked an eye at my antics; that's a no, then.

"Farren, do you know of a place to camp for the night?" X's muffled voice comes from my pocket, and I pull him out hopefully.

I shake my head, "No, I don't. That's what I was just trying to figure out before we leave, and I end up heading in the wrong direction because my sense of direction sucks."

X's pages flick open, and sure enough, there's a map, "It's like before; if you say the word on the page, then it should help you find a safe place to sleep."

"Well okay then," I reply and repeat the spell word on the page.

Instead of a string of magic, this time, there's just a wisp of light that appears in front of my horse.

"I guess you just follow it," Xerxes says.

I shrug, "I hope so. Do you want to go back in my pocket or in one of the saddlebags?"

"One of the bags, please. They are a lot roomier than your pocket." He replies, a smile in his voice.

"You got it," I reply as I put him in the bag.

"Thanks, just don't forget that I'm in here," he replies.

"Don't worry; I won't forget you."

I stare at the wisp, unsure how it works and kind of wishing that it came with instructions of any kind; even if they were super brief, it would be more helpful than the nothing that I've currently got. I urge the horse forward just to test a vague theory I have, and sure enough, the wisp moves further ahead. I don't really have a choice but to trust that it's going to lead me somewhere safe, and the only reason why I'm just going to follow it without any further questioning is because Xerxes hasn't steered me wrong yet, and he stayed with me when I'm almost sure that he could've left if he had wanted to.

He's earned my trust.

There's a sudden spike in urgency, and I encourage my horse to move into a canter as we leave the stables, chasing after the wisp that is now going as fast as we are but far enough ahead that we can see where we need to go next. So long as it stops when we need to stop, it's a handy way to travel. I don't know how long it takes us, but my butt is starting to ache, which means I've been riding for a while now.

My creatures don't show any sign of being tired or slowing down, which I'm grateful for because I don't think that I'll be able to get them up here on the back of the horse with me. Not only is there not enough room, but I highly doubt that the horse will take kindly to having a hellhound on his back and whatever creature Oryn is. The only creature that isn't pushing itself hard is Meri. She's still curled up around the back of my neck, and her little snores are even audible over the wind rushing past me. It's cold too, and the night brings a chill with it that quickly makes my whole body tense.

Well, at least it can't get much worse; I mean, I escaped, or I'm escaping, and the princes are dead, so at least there's that, there's also . . . ah fuck . . . my sentence stops midway as the first drop of purple rain lands on my hand. Fantastic, it's now raining as well. My horse clearly doesn't want to be in the rain any more than I do, and it kicks its speed up a notch. Thankfully, it's not long until we race through a break in the trees and come to a small clearing and a tiny dilapidated one-room cabin with a lean-to shelter on the side that should be just big enough for my horse. The wisp, having done its job and led me to shelter, simply fizzles out, leaving the rainy night even more miserable than it was moments before.

The horse heads straight for the shelter without any prompting or guidance from me, and I glance at Poca, he seems to understand what I want without me saying a word as he races toward the cabin. I watch as he does a simple perimeter check before nudging his way through the door. It takes him less than five minutes before he's standing back at my side and nodding that it's safe to enter.

I waste no time in grabbing Xerxes out of the saddle bag and patting my horse, telling him that he's a good boy.

Damn, I miss Revel; he better be behaving himself in the Fae realm, although since he's my horse, I know better, and I have a feeling that he's causing mischief somewhere.

I've been away from him for a while, but he's used to me disappearing for long periods of time. He's always equal parts pissed and happy when I finally reappear.

"If there's any danger whatsoever, you take off, got it?" I say to the horse, I'm unsure how they've been trained, but I am aware that some are trained to stay put even if they're under extreme threat, and doing so means they're going to die. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the princes have their horses trained this way.

Like Fae horse he has a high level of intelligence and nods once to let me know that he's understood. I decide not to take any risks and quickly take off his saddle and bridle, they're a hazard if he does need to escape. It seems that was some kind of signal to him because he suddenly takes off.

Fuck.

There's fuck all that I can do about now. I'm just going to have to hope that he's back by the morning.