By this ti, Elion and Alexander had long since departed from the base, completely unaware, and since they were riding on mounts, they were already quite a ways off.
As expected, they were not flying in the sky, but rather riding beneath the cover of the forest.
The birds and Alexander’s wyvern moved quickly using their feet and fins, and Elion had been concerned about the pace at first, but it seed he had been worried for nothing. They were rather quick and agile, almost like he was riding on a horse.
He also noted that since they had arrived in this forest, no beasts had dared to attack them. Apart from the distant howls at night, he had not heard or seen any other signs of them. Now that they were moving quickly, though, he did see the occasional beast running away from them as soon as they ca within its view.
It seed beasts had good senses, and evading predators was a way of life for them.
They didn’t want to beco the hunted.
And so, the whole journey went by without incident.
That aside, Elion was actually a bit nervous for once. The scale of this war was far above his pay grade, and yet he was sohow the focal point of this little excursion. It was tis like these that he missed the mundane life back at the academy.
He sighed for perhaps the hundredth ti in the last few hours.
"Quit whining," Alexander said, giving him a look.
Elion raised a brow. "Well, soone grew a big mouth. Maybe we should do so training at our next stop."
Alexander paled a little before deciding to stand his ground.
He scoffed. "I am not as scared of training as you think I am, you know."
Elion smiled. "We’ll see about that."
Then he thought to ask another question.
"Are you sure leaving camp was smart? With the possibility of a traitor and all?"
Alexander shrugged lightly.
"What could I have done? Tristan and the others will be of more help there. The faster we move, the faster we end all this."
His expression grew a little more serious.
"I already received word from my father. In two days, they will probably be embroiled in battle with the Demon King. During that ti, you will use this to quickly reach the Demon Lord’s territory."
Alexander threw Elion a formation talisman.
Elion caught it between his middle and index fingers.
"It doesn’t have accurate coordinates on it," Alexander explained. "But it will teleport you a certain distance in a certain direction. We can only hope you don’t get thrown directly into trouble."
Elion scoffed.
"I’m not going to keep my hopes up. Most likely, that is exactly what’s going to happen."
"Well, you have a disguise, so you should be fine."
The prince was half right.
But when Elion thought about how that powerful demon seed to be able to sll his human scent, he could only hope he didn’t imdiately run into that kind of demon.
’Fucking hell...’ he thought quietly.
His only reassurance was that the Demon King would need to take quite a large number of powerful demon mages and warriors with him just to match the many Saint Mages the coalition would be investing in this battle.
So there was a good chance that when Elion finally arrived, the castle would be largely unmanned.
Elion held the formation talisman between his fingers for a long mont before putting it away.
He didn’t like relying on things with vague descriptions.
Teleporting a fixed distance in a fixed direction sounded useful until one rembered that "distance" and "direction" ant very little inside a place like the Great Forest.
For all he knew, the talisman might throw him into a demon barracks, a sealed chamber, a pit full of monsters, or worse, directly into the Demon Lord’s bedroom.
He grimaced.
’Knowing my luck, it might be the last one.’
The next few hours passed in a tense but uneventful rhythm. They stopped only twice, once to water the mounts and once to check a route marker carved into a moss-covered stone at the edge of a narrow gorge.
Alexander explained that these markers were old elven guides, used to identify stable paths through the fringe and middle regions of the forest. They could not prevent the forest from shifting entirely, but they helped travellers avoid the worst of it.
Elion crouched briefly beside one of the stones, studying the faint green lines carved into its surface.
"Can these be tampered with?" he asked.
Alexander’s expression shifted. "In theory, yes."
"That ans yes."
Gareth stepped closer, adjusting his glasses. "It would require knowledge of elven ward-script, route magic, and forest mana behaviour. Not impossible, but very difficult."
Elion looked at him. "So if soone knew enough to mark demon paths, they might know enough to do this too."
Gareth’s face tightened slightly. "Possibly."
By late afternoon, they reached another stretch of old forest where the trees grew so close together that even the mounts had to slow down.
The air here was thicker, the light dimr, and Elion noticed that even the usual distant calls of birds and beasts had grown faint. The mounts seed uneasy too.
The birds kept shaking their heads, their claws digging harder into the mossy ground, while Alexander’s wyvern occasionally raised its head and tasted the air with a flick of its long tongue.
"Sothing feels off," Darin would have said if he were here.
The thought ca unexpectedly, and Elion frowned slightly. He barely knew the retainer, yet his absence was suddenly noticeable. Darin had been the one with the sharp eyes, the scout, the one who would have read the forest better than most of them. He was with Aeron and Zenovia now, investigating the marked route.
Elion hoped they were fine.
He really did.
But hope was a fragile thing in a forest like this.
Alexander slowed his mount slightly. "We should be reaching the forward command route before nightfall."
"Should?" Elion asked.
"The forest makes exact estimates difficult."
"I hate this place."
"You said it looked impressive earlier."
"It can be impressive and hateful at the sa ti."
Peter nodded solemnly from behind them. "I agree with Sir Elion."
Everyone looked at him.
He imdiately panicked. "Respectfully."
Elion laughed, and even Alexander could not quite suppress a faint smile. A faint sound rolled through the trees. It was so faint that for a mont, Elion thought he had imagined it.
But the mounts were actually the first to react to it.
The birds jerked their heads toward the west. Alexander’s wyvern stopped moving entirely, its fins spreading slightly while a low growl vibrated in its throat.
Alexander straightened atop the beast.
"What was that?"
A second later, it ca again.
It wasn’t a roar or a howl but the sound of a horn far behind them. It was incredibly faint, distorted by distance and forest, but unmistakable.
An alarm horn.
They all froze.
Peter’s face drained of colour, and Gareth reached for the communication device at his belt. Lukas tightened his grip on his spear.
Alexander’s expression changed instantly.
"That ca from the camp."
Elion looked back through the trees with a light frown on his brow.
Another horn sounded.
They were too far away from camp by now, but they had passed a few smaller checkpoints, and ssages were passed quickly in such fashion.
If you have many small checkpoints all over the forest, and with instructions to blow a horn once a certain sequence of horns cos from the back of your line, you could quickly send a call for help or distress.
Several more layered horns sounded as the signal was passed quickly; they grew faintly louder with every passing breath. Most of these smaller camps certainly had no idea what the hell was going on, but they didn’t have to know to make the system effective.
Alexander’s knuckles tightened around his reins. "What could have possibly happened?..."
Gareth activated the communication device in his hand and spoke in a sharp voice. "Forward camp, this is Prince Alexander’s escort. Report status, repeat, report status."
There was nothing on the other end but static for a few seconds.
Then a broken voice crackled through.
"—under attack—western fringe—too many—help—"
The signal dissolved into noise.
Peter swallowed. "What does he an by too many?"
Elion’s gaze darkened. If they were under attack, it could only an one thing. Demons. But it couldn’t be that a lot of them had made it that far back using whatever thod they were using before.
The reason these sudden demon infiltrations had been taken so lightly, apart from having just been discovered, was precisely due to the reason that it was impossible to move a large group of demons without them noticing.
They had assud that was the reason why the demons always appeared in small numbers, or sotis, nothing but tracks would be found.
So what did this communicator an by too many?
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