Aidan knew that, in the absence of food, a griffin could survive on pure magic, and so he had periodically given the creature a burst of power from his staff. As he got off, he gave the creature one last stream of magic.
I wish Timothy was here. Aidan thought. The spell he was using was far too basic, most of the magic was lost into the atmosphere, leaving Aidan completely drained and the griffin still hungry. Aidan was sure his friend would know how to conserve energy and still feed the beast. I wonder where he is now.
“What trees do you want for your hammock?” Aidan asked Aaliayah, who was sitting on a rock overlooking the ocean.
“I don’t care,” the girl answered, her voice barely audible.
Aidan sighed and went to sit down beside her. Neither spoke for a few minutes as a warm breeze blew from the ocean.
“You knew that wizard, didn’t you,” Aidan said. Aaliyah didn’t respond.
The mage looked at the amogh and was surprised to see tear tracks streaking from her eye, following the path of the scar down her face.
Aidan closed his eyes.
“I know you like to be strong,” he said, “I know you don’t want to show any weakness or anger. That you feel if you do show weakness then you won’t be contain it, that it will flood out and consume you, I-“ Aidan had to stop and steady his breath. “I have the same burn in me. But if you hold it in, then it will just keep building up until you explode.”
For a moment, Aidan felt a rush of red hot power run through his chest.
“I know it’s hard. But you don’t have to do it alone.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Just when Aidan was about to stand to set up the hammock, Aaliyah began to speak.
“My parents passed away when I was a baby…”
Eric and Leonor Brennon trudged through the forest, the latter bearing the most precious thing a person could hold. A human life. The child was small, but already strong, as all amoghs were.
“Are you sure we are doing the right thing?” Leonor asked her husband.
“Yes,” Eric said, helping his wife over a log that had fallen on the path. “Borin may be a little rough around the edges, but my older brother is brave and strong. I trust that he will care for our girl, with the help of Camp Ward. Besides, our life is far too dangerous for a little girl, and far too important to abandon now.”
“I know,” Leonor said, “but I’m just not sure if he’s the parenting-“
She was cut off as a large man wearing a tattered, dusty deerskin stepped onto the path. Eric’s hand immediately fell to his sword.
“Who are you?” he asked, as Leonor unsheathed a dagger under her cloak. Neither saw any weapons on the man, but that meant little if he knew how to hide them.
“Just a traveler passing through.” the man said with a large smile full of rotting teeth.
Eric’s eyes narrowed. “Why would a traveler be going on an old side path through a forest in the middle of nowhere?”
The strange man laughed. “I could ask you the same thing, friend. I’m a hunter, and I find it easiest to find the deer when no one else is around. Is it a boy or a girl?”
Eric didn’t remove his hand from his sword, but he did let the hunter see his child.
“Her name is Aaliyah,” Leonor said.
The man smiled. “Aaliyah. She’ll fetch a fine price.”
A slower man would have pondered the hunter’s words or at least taken a moment to register what had been said, but not Eric. The amogh had drawn his sword and thrust it into the hunter’s side before he had time to react. But the small family had no time to rest, for at that moment ten more men stepped out from the brush, completely surrounding the amoghs.
Eric managed to stab the first one before three more pinned him down, but his actions gave his wife the time she needed to roll away from her would-be captors.
“Stop!” one of the men restraining Eric yelled. Leonor whipped around, as the baby started to cry. “All we want is the child. If you give her to us, your husband will live.”
Leonor stared at Eric, his face pressed to the ground and blood leaking from his nose. If she had been older, maybe she would have ran. As it was, the girl was only eighteen, and her husband one year older.
She stepped forward one grueling step at a time until she reached the first of the ambushers, who snatched the baby from her hands.
The man who had spoken last laughed. “Stupid girl,” he said, and brought the sword down. Eric never blinked.
Leonor screamed a moment before she was impaled by different sword. The last thing she remembered was her screaming child, held upside down by a ruthless amogh slaver.
Borin ran into the clearing from which he had heard his sister’s in law distinct echoing scream. By the time he got there it was too late. Eric’s head was held up by a spike in the center, and Leonor sat propped against a tree, blood leaking from her stomach.