As quickly aswe’d ascended, we were descending with the rapid speed they’d exhibited in the tunnel. The wind whipping my hair back stung my eyes and brought tears to them, but I refused to close them again, as I wanted to drink in every second of this.
When we were above the trees, Indon soared over their tops. At times, he was so close that, on occasion, my boots grazed their limbs. I’d adjusted to his speed and the way he tended to push the limits of nearly flying into things, but my heart still lurched every time he swerved at the last second to avoid hitting something.
I gawked at the land as I flew over it. I didn’t fly with the same grace as Indon, but I was still soaring over it as I drank in all its wild beauty. I wondered what it would be like to fly over the towns with all their lights, homes, and amsirah, but I hoped he wouldn’t do so.
While the residents of Tempest would soon learn gargoyles were far more than legends in Tempest, we had to keep theirexistence hidden from the duke for as long as possible. They were our secret weapon, and it had to stay that way.
I didn’t bother telling him to stay over the woods and away from the towns; the wind would snatch my words away. Instead, I kept my attention on the beauty of the land and sky until Indon stopped to rest at the edge of the Revenant Woods.
He set me on top of a tree like it was a perfectly normal thing to do. He also didn’t seem to think I’d mind being three hundred feet in the air and perched precariously on a branch that bowed a little too much for my liking.
I clung to the branch with my arms and legs as I gazed over a sea of treetops. This wasn’t the view I was used to having, and while it was pretty, I would have preferred my feet to be back on the ground.
Indon didn’t have the same preference as he settled onto the tree beside me. It groaned beneath his weight, and the branches sank lower, but he perched there with amazing grace, given that the tree looked about to fall apart.
I almost asked him to take me down, but the look on his face stopped me. He’d tilted his face to the sky again as he smiled.
The smile didn’t make the gargoyle look any less intimidating as it revealed his fangs and teeth, but joy radiated from him. I couldn’t take that away, no matter how much I hated the branch swaying with every breeze.
All around us, the other gargoyles settled into the trees overlooking some of the scorched earth the duke had left in his wake. Their smiles vanished as they took in the scene below. Bodies of the fallen remained, their charred remnants were a blight on a land once full of lush vegetation and countless animals.
Here and there, hands poked out from the burnt land. They stretched up like they were trying to pull themselves free ofthe death capturing them; their bony fingers, glinting in the moonlight, reminded me that Ryker’s was in my pocket.
My hand fell briefly to its outline, but when my branch bowed beneath another gust of wind, I returned to clinging to it. Here and there, charred trees rose from the blackened earth.
Those trunks were the skeletal fingers of the Revenant Woods seeking to break free from the destruction the amsirah unleashed on it. Except, unlike the men and women who’d fallen here, the forest didn’t have a choice about what happened to it and couldn’t run.
Scattered amid the other remnants were the bones of the animals that also died here. The woods had called them forth to help save it and, in doing so, some of its creatures also fell because of the greed of a few.
“We’rethe monsters,” I whispered.
Around me, the gargoyles remained unmoving as they gazed upon the land. Though their skin and eyes retained that gray, stonelike coloring, they moved with the flexible ease of me or any other creature.
Their wings sounded leathery, like a bat’s, and the sharp, pointed tips on top of their wings stuck up over their shoulders when folded against their backs. They had more pointed tips at the bottom of them, but they were less noticeable in the trees.
In the cavern, I hadn’t realized they blinked, but occasionally, a gray lid would descend over their eyes. They didn’t blink as often as me, but they did have that bit of normalcy at least.
The gargoyles looked as menacing now as they did in the cavern, but they still hadn’t tried to kill me. And it would be so easy for them to do so.
“Not all of you,” Indon said with a pointed look at me.
“Oh, I can be a monster too. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to save this realm and free Ryker and the children. By the time allof this is over—if it’s ever over—I’m not sure what it will have turned me into.”
“You brought us the stone; that proves you’re worthy.”
I snorted with laughter, but I wasn’t amused. “Proving one’s worth is so simple a thing, then?”
“Yes. The stone possesses a lot of power; you felt that when you picked it up.”
“I felt itbeforeI picked it up.” I shuddered as I recalled the stone’s effect. “It was impossible not to feel it. Ryker did too.”
“I’m sure you both experienced it, but instead of keeping it, you returned it to where it belongs… with us. Not many are capable of such a thing.”
“That stone has been buried for hundreds of thousands of years. No one knew it existed for all that time. There haven’t been many lightning bearers over the years, but someone else might have returned it.”
“Perhaps, but the ones who knew about it kept it for themselves and paid the ultimate price. The Revenant Woods, and all of Tempest, has been waiting for you. So have we. No one such as you has existed before.”
Sadness filled me as I gazed over the blackened land. I was an oddity for an amsirah, and as the first female lightning bearer and the first to possess all five weathers, they all expected great things from me.
