(Path of the Dragon Mage: Exiled) 53. The New Path (Patreon)

A/N: Loved all the comments and reactions on the last chapter. Thanks all. :)

"I don't see anything." Corvus glanced to Gwen who stood at his right shoulder, peering out of the thick sagebrush along with him. "Do you?"

She was quiet moments, her blue eyes narrowed on the land ahead. After some discussion, they had decided to check the remains of Solt's estate before heading to the village or reconnoitering with the Horse Folk.

It was risky, but they had both wanted to discover what had happened to Solt. Corvus still felt some loyalty to the man, even though he had dropped him as his apprentice. Gwen must have had her own reasons, but she didn't share them.

In fact, she had been unusually quiet since choosing her Path.

A cat-size lump in the front of Corvus's closed jacket stirred. Charm poked her head out from between two buttons. Feral dragons had short, wide necks due to the musculature of their wing-arms. Charm's neck was longer and graceful as she swiveled her arrow-shaped head to look around.

Beyond, past the short road and cleared area lay what remained of Solt's estate. The wooden shingle-shake roof of the house had fallen in on itself over the night, taking a large part of the stone along with it. Now, only a pile of ash and debris remained. The broken beams smoldered with a thin tracing of smoke reaching to the sky. The stable was in worse condition considering how much straw had been packed inside.

If any of Solt's neighbor's had noticed the smoke or seen the flames, it looked like they hadn't come to offer assistance. He wasn't sure if the soldiers from last night had warned them away or if it was years of dealing with Solt's sparkling personality.

In fact, even though it was late morning, there was zero indication anyone had come by the estate.

"The bodies haven't been moved," Gwen said as if she heard his inner thoughts.

I smell meat, Charm agreed. Her nostrils flared and she wiggled eagerly, tail tightening where it wrapped around Corvus's waist.

He grimaced. "You can't eat that meat."

"What?" Gwen asked then looked down at the very interested baby dragon. She shook her head. "No, she can't. But she will need to eat soon."

And with that, she stepped boldly out from the line of brush.

"Gwen!" he tried to stop her, but she easily avoided his grasp, striding out to the field as if daring an enemy to stop her.

Behind them, NightShade snorted and walked forward to join his rider.

Corvus sighed, unbuttoned his jacket, and pulled Charm out to settle on his shoulder. The only reason he'd kept her there was she had been very tired after the exhausting business of hatching and kept slipping off on their ride over.

She was wide awake now, and he could feel her interest in the surroundings with a young predator's intent. Gwen was right. She would need to eat, soon.

Too bad what was left of Solt's kitchen was hidden under a pile of rubble.

No one came out to greet them. The only sound on the estate grounds was the slight buzz of noon-day insects. Most of those were flies around the bodies.

Gwen, who was several paces ahead, stopped at the first body. He was a soldier wearing the palace colors, which meant he was under his father's employee. The stump where his wrist had been told how he bled out. There were likely more cuts too, but he had died face-down.

His sword lay near his left side. Gwen bent to pick it up.

"What are you doing?" Corvus asked.

She gave him a fierce look. "Arming myself." Then she stuck the sword, somewhat awkwardly, in her belt.

NightShade gave Corvus a significant glance as if to say, 'I blame you for her mood right now'.

He couldn't necessarily disagree. Something had changed in Gwen, and he wasn't sure if it was discovering her Paths, almost dying, or him carrying around a live dragon.

Not meat? Charm asked, looking down at the dead man.

"Not meat you can eat," he said and reached up to pat her. Now dry, the pearlescent scales were shockingly smooth. Like running his hands over the finest gold-worked chain.

She arched her back under the touch, but he sensed impatience and growing hunger.

"Why hasn't anyone come by to check on them? Or collect their dead?" Corvus asked, walking past one man after another. All had various cuts and slash marks. These were Solt's kills.

His own were blasted into chunks near the crater not too far away. Swallowing, he picked his way over trying not to step on the remains of... anyone.

He had seen what the blast had wrought last night with his Night Vision and largely without color. Now it was splashed red all around the blackened crater. Six men dead in less than a second. No wonder Solt had thought he was a demon.

There seemed to be less... parts than there should have been. Had the mana consumed them in a flash?

All that was left of some of the dead were their weapons. Those were warped and twisted with the force of the blast.

Charm looked on curiously. Corvus wondered if he should shield her eyes. She was newly hatched and shouldn't see this, but her emotional state wasn't disturbed. She was interested and mostly hungry.

Steeling himself, Corvus stepped to the crater.

His new rune sight led him immediately to what he was looking for: There in the middle of the depression lay the mana needle.

Perhaps I should call it a boom needle, he thought, picking it up. The metal had returned to its blue-steel, uncharged state. Aside from a bit of dust that had been kicked up from the blast, there wasn't a mark on it. No indication it had been damaged in the explosion at all.

He returned the boom needle to his bag of holding with the two others. All told, he had his three needles, three double-bladed Wild Collection, and two single blade kunais of the Deadly Bouquet. He wasn't going to be getting the one he left behind back any time soon. And after what he had seen it do to Gwen, he wasn't sure he wanted to use it for that purpose again.

She had returned his Trophy Tooth necklace to him, but he still had spare scorpion tails. Perhaps he could make her a necklace of her own to shield her from future poisoning.

Where was she, anyway?

He looked around until he spotted her, standing so still over a large downed figure he felt the hairs raise at the back of his neck.

He walked over. "Gwen?"

She didn't turn. As he approached, he felt the blood drain from his face.

Gwen stood beside four beautiful horses, each with its throat slit. Their riders lay not far away. They wore the colors of the Shield house — his mother's men.

These were the five that had stayed behind to "help" Solt. He had fought them, slain them, and then methodically slit the necks of all but one of their horses. The last, Solt had presumedly taken for himself.

"He didn't have to kill the horses," Gwen said.

The dead men didn't bother her, but the slaughter of the horses clearly obviously did.

She continued, "They didn't do anything to him. They couldn't have followed him. They weren't Mountain Heavies — they aren't smart enough to bond. There's no point. Why did he do this?"

"I don't know—" Corvus started.

She turned to him, accusing as if she knew he wasn't telling the full truth.

Corvus winced. "You saw Solt at the end. He wasn't... right in the head. It was like a part of him was stuck up in the mountains."

"Do you think he thought they were demons?"

"I don't know," he said again. "Maybe. Or maybe he just wanted to kill something."

With a scowl, Gwen turned back to the horses. She bent, and with quick efficiency she removed the bridle and bits from each of the beast's mouth before tossing it away.

Corvus stood back and let her do it. Her movements had the air of a ritual, and he had noticed that the horses of her own clan wore only hackamores without the confining bits in their mouths. Perhaps they offended her.

At last, she stood back. Her eyes were red.

Corvus nodded to a small pile of weapons stacked nearby. She had been pillaging the men before she came up on the horses. The swords were bundled together, but two bows and a full quiver of arrows sat purposely to the side as if she were saving them.

"You know how to shoot?"

"No," she said. "But I will. I..." Her face scrunched and it looked like she was trying not to cry.

He stepped to her, and she stepped back, shaking her head. "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"What do you think? I was so useless last night. And today... I couldn't do anything when that horrible woman was torturing NightShade. Then I was stupid enough to get caught up in that gas—"

"Gwen," he said, "That was my fault, not yours. I should never have released that gas in an enclosed area—"

He should have activated the Wild Garden. Meat eating vines would have caused enough chaos to escape...

... Only his mother's Air Talent might not have been fast enough to safe herself. Deep in his heart he'd known she would have kept herself safe against gas. Though he had not guessed which form that would take.

Gwen shook her head. "You got us out. NightShade, too. He was wonderful. Even Solt lied for me, damn him. I was useless dead weight." Her eyes hardened. "That will never happen again."

"Which Path did you choose?"

He had asked that before, back at the lake, but she had brushed him off.

Now she looked at him and her face crumpled. "You'll hate me."

"What? No I won't. There aren't any bad paths." At least, he hoped not.

She rubbed at her eyes. "I got a lot of choices. Some were ridiculous."

"Yeah," he said. "I was offered Blacksmith." He held up his arm. It wasn't quite so skinny as it had been before, but a blacksmith he was not.

Gwen made a strangled sound in her throat somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "You?"

"You don't have to sound surprised," he grumbled.

The ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. "See to your dragon," she said. "I'll go collect the rest of the weapons."

He looked at Charm who's delicate head was pointed directly down at the closest horse body, not caring a wit about the conversations of the people around her.

Gwen might have removed their confining bridles, but horsemeat was horsemeat. In her heart, she was a practical girl. She just didn't want to see it.

Corvus had no idea how to butcher an animal but Charm stared fixedly at a point in the horse's ribcage. That was probably a good place to start. He knelt, taking out a sword Gwen had collected from one of the dead men. It had a sharper edge than his rune daggers.

Then he made his first awkward cut.

The well had not been choked by ash, thank goodness. Corvus pulled up a third bucket of water to wash the last of the gore off his dragon. He could not believe a creature that tiny could have so much blood on her.

As soon as Charm had made the first cut, she had leapt upon the carcass and dug in with gusto. Literally. She had been up to her shoulders at one point.

It was disgusting, but she was fully sated now. After being washed up, she crawled back in under his jacket where she sat like a warm scaly lump against his sternum.

"Are you comfortable?" he asked.

I can feel your heart, she said which he did not know was comforting or disturbing considering how excitedly she'd gone after the horse vitals.

Wait, had she been eating the horses's heart?

Before he could ponder this, Gwen stepped out from the sage brush and waved him over.

"NightShade said there were riders coming in from a couple miles down the road," she said. "He doesn't know if they're merchants or more soldiers, but we should get outta here."

He nodded and hurried to follow. Someway back, there was a small glen where she had piled the weapons: Swords, daggers, arrows, quivers, and a few scatterings of coins.

There was even a small stack of knives so tiny they hard to be darts. None of them had runes on them, though they all seemed to be cast of well-made steel.

It felt uncomfortably like loot to him, but he was too emotionally exhausted to complain. None of the bodies of the men came up as lootable, neither had the chunks left of his kills.

"How much can you fit in that magic bag of yours?" she asked.

"All of it, as long as there aren't too many different types." He set about moving them into stacks and only paused to take out some stale bread when he ran out of stacked space.

Gwen made sure her bow and two full quivers of arrows went in as well. That done, they both remounted NightShade's back.

Corvus turned to give one last look back at the remains of the estate, just visible through the brush.

It had seemed small and dumpy, especially compared to the grandeur of the palace. But it had been his home. Due to his mistakes, it was destroyed.

He promised himself he would not let that happen again.

Gwen clicked under her tongue and NightShade trotted forward. Their next destination was the village, but it would be foolish to go there in daytime. Either his father’s soldiers, his mother's, or both factions might be there.

They would have to sneak in under cover of dark, and only with Larissa's help. If she let them in at all.

Corvus hadn't forgotten about those essences.

NightShade followed the winding wildlife paths through the thick brush, going deeper and deeper in. His ears were up for any indication they were not the only ones hiding there. The brush shielded them from the wind and a normal search by foot, too. It was the safest place they could be for now.

Gwen started to speak, unprompted.

"Have you seen glass before?"

"Of course," he said, caught off guard. "Why?"

She snorted and mimicked him. "Of course. I guess it's common in fancy people's homes, but it's rare around here. I've always loved the look of it — especially the stained glass. How artists can create their open pictures with colors shapes." She sighed. "That was one of my paths: Stained glass crafter. I really wanted it."

"But you didn't choose it?" he guessed.

She shook her head.

"I really wanted to choose Scholar," he admitted. "But that would have meant giving up on Charm." He patted the lump lightly. She cheeped and shifted in her sleep.

"Yeah, I would've had to give up NightShade," she said.

He sensed she was waiting for him to ask. "What other choices did you get?"

"Horseman — it said that was my default class, but I was allowed to change it this once."

"Did you?"

She paused. When he leaned forward he saw she was worrying her bottom lip in her teeth. "Yeah."

A pause. "Gwen, what did you choose?"

"Wind Runner," she said in a rush. "I got to keep NightShade, and if there's any chance we can get our lands back... I had to do it, Corvus. I couldn't live my life with the best I can hope is being a Horseman's wife of some other clan. I had to!"

She was desperate for him to forgive her, but he didn't understand why.

"What's a Wind Runner?"

She stiffened and turned away. "It's what they used to call our people, before the Kingdom took our lands."

Finally, he thought he understood.

The Kingdom's early history was full of subjugation and eventual adoption of various barbarian people into the lands that made up the Kingdom today. He couldn't remember Horse Folk mentioned specifically, but they must have been one of those people.

"What's the apex of your path?" he asked. "The highest rank? You must have seen that."

"Queen Wind Runner," she said and as hesitant as she as before, she seemed proud. "They say the last Queen Wind Runner was as fast on a horses's back as the wind itself. She could speak to all the clan's horse. She would shoot one arrow and a hundred would rain down in its place. She spoke for all the clans, and the Kings and Queens from other lands looked to her as equals."

She glanced over her shoulder, belligerent, at him. "Tell me you didn't pick some kingly Path."

"Mine is the Dragon Mage," he said, realization hitting hard. "And yeah, Dragon King."

Unsaid between them was that no king would allow a horse folk queen their own sovereignty.

He was silent for a long moment thinking.

Some of her bravado seemed to leave her. She turned back as if she couldn't bear to face him. "Do you hate me?"

"No," he said.

"But we're going to be enemies."

"We don't know that. If there's one thing I learned... there's no straight line to the throne. We'll figure something out."

"What do you mean? You hatched a dragon. You're the king now."

"Not yet," he said, though he had kept pieces of Charm's shell for proof, should he need it. "Probably not if my father has any say in it. Or my aunt. She has a daughter with an egg of her own." His only ally would be his mother, and he couldn't trust her.

A thought struck him and he laughed. "Besides, I'd make a terrible king right now. I'm completely unprepared. King Orpheus is healthy right now. There's no rush." He shook his head. "I told my mother that I'm not going back to the palace, and I mean it. I intend to get to know my own Kingdom, first."

"But you will be King. Eventually."

"Gwen... I'm a long ways away from that, and you're just as far from Queen, right?

She nodded. Then abruptly, she turned completely around on NightShade's back and gripped him in an awkward hug.

Charm squeaked a protest, being squished between them.

Corvus huffed a laugh and pulled back to hug her more gently.