The father reacts just as quickly. He grabs the woman’s arm and hurls her and the child to the ground as the stallion launches past them in a blur of motion.
It’s a near miss. We clear them by inches, and I mutter a grateful prayer to the heavens under my breath as we race forward.
When we reach the tree line, and I’m sure we’re beyond the sight of those at the city’s border, I let some of the fragile mask of humanity slip away.
Most of my true form remains hidden, but my sight shifts and my senses improve. The stallion’s panic spikes beneath me because he feels the shift.
I push deeper into his mind and calm his frightened state. Then I resume my hunt.
I track the woman and Cali through the devastated forest as best as I can.
Cali breaks into a thinner stretch of dead woodland. The Ravage Plains lie just ahead. There’s a large crack in the earth that she jumps and clears. Upon landing, her knees lock up, her hooves sink deep into unstable soil, and the force pitches the rider clean over her head.
She flies forward in a tangle of white hair and dark fabric, lands hard, and rolls through brush and dried branches. She continues to tumble until her body slams against a massive tree trunk with a final thud.
She does not rise.
For a heartbeat, I wonder if the impact killed her.
Calixis keeps her distance, ears pinned, watching.
As I break through the last of the trees, the woman groans. Her fingers drag through dirt. She pushes herself up onto her hands and knees, shoulders trembling.
Then she throws back her hood. For the first time, I see her. Not all of her, but more than ever before.
White hair spills free—wild, ghostlike. Her green eyes flash with fury as she glares at Calixis and spits, “You horrible beast. You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
My attention fractures for half a second at the sight of her. Enough so that in my distracted state, I nearly get taken out, impaled by a jagged branch spearing toward my chest. I twist in the saddle just in time, bark scraping against my armor. In the nick of time, too, as the stallion lunges over a fallen trunk soon after. Dead limbs whip across my shoulders and strike my cloak, snapping in the air behind me.
I refocus and search with my true sight now.
The woman calls my horse a few more choice words. My awareness of it is all I allow myself as I look across the forest for them. While fisting the reins tightly, I imagine it’s the woman’s neck under my grip. She may not be dead from that fall. But by God, when I get my hands on her, she will be.
Chapter Ten
Not A White Knight
Pollock
There. To the right. I sense Cali. Steering the stallion, I veer in that direction, weaving through the trees and over the dead earth of The Felled Fields, that part that butts up against the dry plains.
There is clear evidence of earthquakes here. The land has shifted and split apart. Gaping wounds have torn open the ground. Most are narrow enough for the stallion to vault, but at times the earth crumbles at the edges and falters beneath his hooves. Thankfully, the speed we maintain keeps us from slipping into one of the fractures.
Through the trees ahead, Cali’s ghostly figure stands against the backdrop of dark, scorched trunks. She hasn’t ventured any closer to the woman, but they face one another. The woman is back on her feet, dusting herself off.
The moment the little witch hears my approach, she bolts toward Calixis.
This is when my longtime companion decides to let the female see her for what she truly is. Her visage changes. Her coloring and hide brighten, as do her eyes. Her divinity, which grants her the ability to move through planes of existence, manifests. As an Aetherion, her wrath-like essence billows off her more solid form, insubstantial wisps of ether trailing from her like smoke. Her eyes are remnants of the unearthly holy fire from which she was created and the vapor from the waters she was birthed from. The same fire in which divine weapons are forged, which are then cooled in the same sacred waters that gifted my brothers and me new life by God’s will.
The transformation stops the woman short.
I leap from the stallion’s back. Landing in a crouch, I plant both boots into the cracked earth as I draw Luxor, my great blade, from its sheath at my side.
As I stand, I allow the facade of my human form to fall away. Not my wings, but the rest emerges. With a single thought, the black shirt and leather vest dissolve, replaced by a white cloak embroidered with silver symbols and the divine armor that settles across my shoulders like remembered skin. The crown I wear is weightless physically, but the burden of it is as heavy as the task before me.
A token from God. And an indication of my station in the order of Heaven. Not merely one of his soldiers, but a commander of His army, and one of four Chosen to deliver man’s final day of reckoning.
Overall, the change is a welcome relief.
