Exiled Prince and Hi Chapter 47: Bones

Chapter 47: Bones

He was upright before the pain arrived properly. Rolled his shoulder. Adjusted his grip. Looked at the last remaining nace across a stretch of broken road, both of them breathing hard, both of them still deciding.

He spat to the side.

"Alright then."

Kaede stood over the body of the first nace and breathed.

The thing had stopped moving, its skull caved in, dark blood spreading slow and thick across the road beneath it. She looked at it for a mont the way you look at sothing you worked hard to put down, making sure it understood it was finished. Then she straightened, rolled her sword wrist once, and turned back to the others.

Rei was kneeling beside Renji with both hands pressed to his shoulder, her face pale and drawn tight with focus. Her fingers trembled slightly. She had been healing continuously since the fight started and it was showing — the faint glow beneath her palms was thinner than it should have been, the light unsteady.

"That one’s deep," she murmured, more to herself than anyone.

"I’ve had worse," Renji said.

"You’ve had worse because you keep blocking claws with your body instead of your sword."

"I blocked with my sword."

"Your shoulder is not your sword, Renji."

"It felt like a sword in the mont."

Rei pressed harder and he went quiet.

Ayra stood a few feet ahead of them both, chest still heaving, eyes fixed on the tree line. She had co back to herself slowly — the cold thing that took over in battle retreating the way water recedes, leaving her quieter, more deliberate. Her arms hung loose at her sides. Her gaze did not.

Through the mist, between the trunks, sothing was still moving.

"It’s circling," she said.

Renji exhaled through his nose and got to his feet before Rei was finished. She made a frustrated sound behind him.

"I wasn’t done—"

"Log it for later." He gripped his sword and looked at the darkness between the trees where the second nace had retreated to pace, watching them with its burning eyes. "One oversized mutt left. Fantastic."

It ca out of the dark before they had a full breath between them.

No warning. No hesitation. It crossed the distance in two strides and hit Renji like a moving wall, claws raking down toward his center, and he caught it with both hands on the hilt, blade braced horizontal, and the impact drove him back four steps before he got his footing under him. His arms scread with the effort.

Then the others were there.

Kaede ca in from the left, low and fast, essence lit along her legs the way it always was when she’d stopped holding back. She carved a line across the beast’s ribs and spun clear before it could respond, landing in a loose stance that made it look easy, which it wasn’t, which was the point.

"You’re dropping your left elbow," she said to Renji.

"I’m a little busy."

"You’re always busy. You’re always dropping your elbow."

The beast swung at her. She stepped sideways without urgency and the claw passed close enough to move her hair. She didn’t acknowledge it.

"That’s embarrassing," she said. To Renji, not the beast.

"Kaede, I will deal with you after I deal with the creature currently trying to remove my face—"

It lunged again and they split, Renji drawing it straight ahead while Kaede circled wide, and the beast committed too hard to one direction and left its flank briefly open and Kaede hit it twice in the gap before it reoriented. More wounds. Still moving. Still burning in the eyes.

Rei stayed behind them all, and the word stayed didn’t capture it — she was anchored behind them, hands moving from one person to the next the mont anyone ca close, finding cuts before they worsened, knitting edges back together with a focused desperation that had long stopped looking like calm. Her own hands were bleeding from where she’d been gripping too hard. She didn’t seem to notice.

"Ayra—" she started.

"I see it."

Ayra walked forward.

Not ran. Walked. With the flat, deliberate energy of soone who had made a decision about fear and left it behind sowhere. A stone the size of a head ripped itself off the road and launched into the beast’s jaw with a crack that echoed through the trees. The creature staggered sideways. Ayra raised her other hand and the broken axle from the carriage ca spinning out of the wreckage and hit it across the face from the opposite direction.

"Stay down," she said quietly.

It did not stay down.

She grabbed the base of a fallen tree with her mind and swung it. The thing hit the nace across its flank with a sound like a thunderclap and drove it three feet sideways and she followed imdiately, walking into the dust and debris, calling the trunk back around for another strike, her face completely still, her eyes completely fixed.

"Ayra, that’s not—" Rei began.

"It’s fine."

"That tree is the size of—"

"It’s fine, Rei."

The beast found its footing and threw itself at her and Renji crossed the distance in a dead sprint, intercepting it from the side, and they crashed together in a ss of claws and blade and essence and ca apart again with new wounds distributed between them. He reset his grip. He could feel the bottom of his reserves. Not gone yet, but visible.

One more good hit. Maybe two.

He let the essence build, slow and deliberate, feeding it down through his arm, into the blade, waiting for the beast to commit. It charged. He stepped into it instead of away, which was the wrong instinct by any sensible asure, and cut — once, twice, three tis, each slash overlapping the one before it, essence burning white along every line — Triple Sword Slash — and the wounds opened across the creature’s chest deep enough that it finally, actually staggered.

It went back two steps. Three. Its legs were wrong beneath it.

Kaede appeared at his shoulder.

He didn’t tell her. She was already there. They looked at each other for a half-second.

"Together," she said.

"Obviously."

They moved forward.

The forest exploded.

The growls arrived before the shapes did — a low, layered sound that ca from multiple directions at once and vibrated in the ground beneath their feet. Then the tree line ca apart. Enormous bodies burst through the dark, branches snapping, mist scattering, the sounds of sothing massive crashing through undergrowth multiplied by three, four, five tis over.

More naces. Several more. Moving fast and certain, as if they had been waiting.

Renji stopped walking.

One of them hit the carriage.

It didn’t damage it. It didn’t knock it over. It destroyed it — one impact and the whole fra ca apart into scattered wood and spinning tal and supplies that had been theirs this morning and were now just wreckage distributed across twenty feet of road. The horses were already gone, the sound of their screaming growing thinner in the distance until it wasn’t there anymore.

Renji stared at the wreckage.

"No." He blinked. "No, no — all our supplies were in—"

A nace lunged at him from the right.

"Renji!" Rei scread.

He ducked, barely, and felt the wind of the claw across the back of his neck, and the thought about the supplies died where it stood.

They fought. For a short while, they fought, because stopping wasn’t a decision the body makes easily. Kaede held two of them off alone for longer than she should have been able to. Ayra threw everything she had left without hesitation, stones and wood and dirt and the sheer force of her will, and it bought seconds that they needed. Rei grabbed Renji’s arm and poured the last of her healing into him without being asked. He looked at her face and understood the math imdiately.

"Run," he said.

"We can still—"

"Run."

They ran.

The forest received them without kindness. Branches at face height, roots at ankle height, the ground uneven and the mist thick enough to hide what was coming until it was already there. The naces ca behind them and did not tire — their footfalls heavy and rhythmic and getting no further away no matter how hard the four of them pushed.

"Left!" Renji shouted.

"There’s a drop left!" Kaede shouted back.

"I know!"

"You know and you’re still—"

The ground ended.

There was a slope that the mist had hidden entirely and they hit it running which ant they hit it wrong. The world went sideways.

Renji had a single disorienting mont of sky and branches and rock before the hillside took over, and then it was just falling — crashing through roots and loose earth and rocks that had no interest in getting out of the way, rolling when rolling was possible and colliding when it wasn’t, the sounds of the others sowhere nearby in the dark.

He hit the bottom and lay still.

Everything hurt. He took inventory of the hurt — thorough, quick — and determined that he was alive, which was the threshold that mattered.

Around him he could hear the others moving. Groaning. The slow, miserable process of checking whether you still worked.

He pushed himself upright.

The mist was heavier down here, thicker, settled into the low ground like it lived there. Enormous trees rose on every side, older than the ones above, older than any he had seen. And between them, half-buried in the earth, pale and massive in the dark—

Bones.

Not small. Nothing down here was small. Ribcages the size of structures. Skulls half-swallowed by roots and moss, eye sockets wide enough to walk through. They ringed the basin in every direction, layered over one another, decades of them, maybe more. The remains of things that had co down here and not left.