A Feast of Dragons - By Morgan Rice Page 0,30

looking at him, seeing the depth of his evil, gave him a chill.

The others stared back at him, flabbergasted.

“We should all kill you right now,” Elden answered.

“Then do it,” Malic said. “Give me a reason to kill you.”

Elden took a step towards him, scowling, drawing his sword—but suddenly, the twins stepped between them.

“Don’t waste your time,” Conven said to Elden. “He’s not worth it.”

Elden stopped, scowling, then finally turned away.

Krohn, beside Thor, clearly did not like Malic either. He growled quietly in his direction, the hairs standing up on his back whenever he looked at him.

“Let’s get out of this place,” Reese said. “Can you walk?” he asked O’Connor, who stood between them, breathing hard and clutching his arm.

O’Connor nodded back.

“It hurts like hell. But I’ll be okay.”

The group continued on, marching through the wasteland, all of them on edge, looking out for more lava springs. Finally, after an hour, Thor felt confident they’d passed them, and began to lower his guard.

As they walked and walked, as the sun grew longer in the sky, Thor began to wonder how long this would go on, and whether they would ever find the Kavos. How lost were they?

“How do we know we’re even going in the right direction?” William suddenly called out to the group, echoing what was on everybody’s minds.

He was met with only silence in return, and the whistling of the wind. That was answer enough—no one knew.

Hour followed hour as they marched through the wasteland, dirt and stones crunching beneath their feet. Thor was getting tired and hungry, and above all thirsty. The cool morning had morphed into a hot day, and the wind that whipped through only brought dust and more hot air. He licked his lips and realized he would do anything for a sack of water.

Thor looked up and blinked as he thought he spotted something scurrying in the distance. He’d thought it looked something like an ostrich, though it came and went so fast, he was unsure. Could it be? An animal in this place, in the middle of nowhere?

He squinted into the light, the morning mist now mostly burnt off, and thought he saw a small cloud of dust.

“Did you see that?” he asked Reese.

“What?” Reese said.

“I saw it,” Conven said. “It looked like some kind of animal.”

Now Thor wondered. As they all continued to march, suddenly, another animal sprinted right for them. They drew their swords, but the animal moved too quickly, and veered away at the last second.

“What the hell was that?” Conval asked.

Thor had definitely seen it this time—it had a bright yellow and black body, a round belly, long, skinny legs, at least ten feet high, with short, thick wings for arms, and a huge head. It looked like a bumblebee on stilts.

Suddenly, another one came darting out of nowhere, charging right for them. This one screeched as it went, flapping its wings with a buzzing noise, and seemed to charge right for Thor. Thor, his sword drawn, dodged out of the way at the last second, as the beast brushed by him. He swung his sword, but the beast was so fast, he wasn’t even close. He swung at air. Krohn snarled and snapped at it, but also missed. He didn’t know how something that big could move that fast. The brush with the beast left a bruise on his arm.

The others look baffled, but Reese nodded knowingly.

“Hemlocks,” Reese said, relaxing his guard. “They’re harmless, unless you provoke them.”

“Harmless?” O’Connor said. “That didn’t seem harmless.”

“Provoke them like how?” Elden said. “You mean by, like, going into their territory? Because that is exactly what we are doing.”

Thor studied the horizon and suddenly there came into view hundreds of hemlocks, scurrying every which way, their wings flapping and buzzing, gathering in the distance and making a great noise like a hornet’s nest. They zigzagged left and right, and all eight boys stopped in their tracks. They stood there, frozen, unsure what to do. It was clear that if they continued to move forward, they’d be attacked.

“Backup slowly,” Reese said. “Don’t take your eyes off them. They’ll take it as a sign of weakness.”

They each backed up slowly, one step at a time, and after several minutes, they gained enough distance to be safely out of range.

“We can’t continue in that direction,” Conval said.

“Let’s turn this way,” Conven said.

They made a sharp turn to the right, taking a narrow trail between two mountains. As soon as they were safely out of sight,