friend a weak smile. “Just wondering if this trip was really worth it.”
“No use to worry about that now,” Cass said encouragingly. “You sought your goal and followed that path with single determination. Even should you fail, there is no shame in that.”
“Even if others have to pay the price for my path?” Bren asked looking at his friend worriedly.
“We each had a choice, and we all made it,” Cass said, shrugging his shoulders. “When I was young, my mother often said that I should always strive for perfection but wallow in sadness when I didn’t reach it. There is no point in life if you can’t find happiness, even if it is in failure.”
“I don’t know if I can live a life like that,” Bren replied honestly.
“Then I pity you, my friend,” Cass said as he looked down at the forest below.
Chapter 7
As the light began to fall, Bren shut off his normal sight and hearing and used his magic to search for his friends. Brenda and most of the guards waited near the hidden entrances to the village while Faye, Jin, and Phena moved among the woods below. Bren could understand Faye. She grew up on a small farm and seemed at home among the trees, not to mention that she could make herself completely invisible to the naked eye. He still worried about her safety, but it was Jin that truly worried him. As far as Bren knew, Jin had no great magical power. He had grown up among the merchants of Rane and had not spent much time outside of the large cities of his country. Why he would be among those foraying into the forest, he didn’t know, but Bren found himself following the young man with a sense of dread in his chest.
From his count, slightly less than fifty people had moved out among the woods to strike at the enemy, and that number seemed incredibly low given the number of soldiers the Brotherhood commanded.
Bren was surprised when Jin’s aura changed. It wasn’t a dramatic thing, like when Faye used her magic, but a very subtle thing, so much so that had he not been watching the young man, he wouldn’t have noticed it. Using his magic Bren allowed his eyes to focus on where Jin’s aura was coming from, but what he saw was far different than he had expected.
Instead of the young man he had left with from Rane, Bren saw a large mountain lion, twice the size of a man with fur the color of the night sky. A part of him knew that the cat was Jin, but Bren still looked around for his friend;however, when he found nothing, he went back to following the large animal as it stalked through the thick underbrush. “What is that?” Bren asked himself as he watched the beast.
You didn’t notice. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you haven’t met a shifter yet. Jin and his father are shifters. They are a type of internal mages who can change into beasts when they feel threatened. From his aura, I would guess that the young man has not used the ability much. I would suggest that you keep your distance for a few days.
“Why?” Bren asked Thuraman as his eyes were glued to the large black cat as it moved toward a small encampment of Brotherhood soldiers.
Shifters are different that other magic users. They don’t just change their form, but their minds also shift once they change, and some of those changes become more pronounced the more often and the longer they stay shifted. Your father once said that shifters were neither human nor animal but a mixture of the two, so they should be treated with the same caution one would use with a wild beast.
“Weren’t father and Jayden friends though?” Bren asked, watching as the cat crouched behind a large bush only a few feet from the resting group of soldiers.
He treated Jayden as a friend, though in honestly, he was one of the few people that your father was truly afraid of. There was a reason that your father seldom visited Rane and that Monique rarely visited Farlan with her husband and child. Thad might not have voiced his dislike of the man, but it was obvious to anyone who knew your father.
“I see,” Bren said as he continued to watch the large cat below.
Jin could smell the men, he could hear their hushed conversations about the mage they were looking for.