"You think we should go back there?" I asked.
"Even if there's anything left, we're not going back down until you've rested properly," Kaiden answered sternly. "But honestly, I doubt there are more hidden messages down there. Though the bunker itself is certainly... interesting."
We reached the forest by dusk and vanished into the shadows of rain-drenched trees as night fell. Kaiden set up camp himself, seating me on a fallen log riddled with mushrooms and beetle holes while he raised a rain shield. I wanted to lay protective wards, but the moment I reached for the knife, he sharply caught my wrist, gently took the blade, and shook his head.
"Rest first."
My thoughts kept circling back to the words and symbols in that strange diary, my fingers itching to pull it out and keep reading. When Kaiden practically shoved me into the tent, I didn't even protest. Once settled in relative warmth and dryness, I unwrapped the bundle of documents and lit the lantern by channeling a spark of power into its stone base. Curiosity gnawed at me to uncover the remaining secrets.
The stiff leather folder contained my father's schematics. There were complex sigils combined with those ancient symbols from Oliver's diary. I quickly flipped through the journal searching for matching symbols from the diagrams, but found no explanations of their meaning. The purpose of such an elaborate alchemical circle remained unclear. The sparse notes mentioned something about a hypothetical "transfer of power."
Transfer where?
Requires mutual connection.
With whom?
Side effects of bonding??? Loss of energy control.
Energy of the entity? The Bearer?
Symbols and words swam before my eyes. The flood of disjointed information refused to coalesce into a coherent picture, and a dull ache bloomed at the base of my skull. I rubbed my eyes, dragged fingers through my hair, massaged my temples, then set the papers aside on the sleeping bag.
The mouthwatering scent of frying sausages seeped through the tent flaps. My stomach growled. I hadn't realized how ravenous I was until that moment. Outside, Kaiden moved about the campfire, his mood darker than the stormy sky glimpsed through the gaps in bare branches and pine boughs.
"Kaiden," I began, settling near the fire, "What exactly were you working on with my father?"
"Various things," he answered vaguely.
"Could you be more specific?"
"It doesn't matter now."
I poked at the fire with a long stick, stirring the embers that had rolled to the side.
"Is power transfer possible?"
Kaiden's shoulders tensed.
"I don't know."
"You're lying."
"Anna, I *don't* know," he bit out, spacing his words deliberately.
"What were you working on?"
"Why are you asking this now?"
I shot to my feet, ducked back into the tent, and grabbed the sheets with the schematics. Fumbling my way back out, I shoved them into Kaiden's hands. The papers crumpled under the rough treatment. He had to sacrifice his makeshift skewer with a sausage—it tumbled into the mud—to keep the documents from falling into the fire.
"What the hell?!"
"What is this? These are power transfer circles... but... Where? Why?"
Kaiden carefully smoothed out the crumpled pages, his eyes first narrowing as he studied the symbols, then widening in recognition. An unconscious nod, then an almost imperceptible shake of his head - denial.
"Talk."
"I don't know..."
"You know everything!"
A sudden realization hit me, and a nervous laugh escaped my lips.
"So that's why you came back."
"Anna..." He hesitated, his gaze darting between my eyes and lips.
I'd struck a nerve.
"I can't believe this."
"It's not what you think. Don't jump to conclusions, please."
"Why did you return then?"
"Because I care about you," his voice sounded hollow, as if the forest had stolen its warmth.
I stepped closer. His hand holding the documents fall to the side.
"Why, Kaiden? For this?" I asked, pointing at the papers clenched in his fingers.
He neither confirmed nor denied.
"Fine," I exhaled in resignation. "What is this?"
"Something that must never fall into the Inquisition's hands."
"Well that much is obvious."
"To be honest, I don't fully understand what this is or how far your father got with his research. But I know for certain he had good reason to hide these documents."
I was about to press him further when a distant sound cut me off.
"Do you hear that?"
Kaidens' body tensed instantly and it was not just alert, but he coiled like a fighter before a strike.
The sound came again.
A child's cry. No—a wail. The raw, desperate sobs of a starving infant.
We exchanged glances. Kaiden thrust the papers back into my hands.
"Hide them. Take the backpack."
I scrambled back into the tent, stuffing the documents into the pack with trembling fingers before slinging it over my shoulder. Kaiden killed the fire with a brutal swipe of his hand, draining its energy in one violent pull. He motioned for silence and gestured for me to follow.
We moved toward the sound, the rain soaking us instantly outside the shelter's dome. The cold precision with which Kaiden led us made me see him differently. For the first time I saw a prepared operative, acting with lethal certainty. When had he become this? Had he always been? Was the awkward boy with clumsy courtship just a convenient facade? Or had something changed him during his absence?
The crying grew louder.
And wrong.
There was metal in it. An unnatural reverberation. No human voice could sound like that.
"Kaiden—"
He pressed a finger to his lips again. We took another dozen steps and emerged onto a dry clearing. Here, raindrops floated upward from the ground. The air stole my breath, it resisted being drawn into my lungs. Gravity had fractured: my feet barely touched the earth, pebbles and twigs hovering centimeters above the soil. Kaiden yanked me back violently, dragging me out of the anomaly. I nearly tumbled headlong into the underbrush before he caught and steadied me, then pointed toward the far end of the clearing.
Gasping, I finally saw it.
A sickly green glow pulsed through the tangle of branches and dead leaves.
A stag.
Its antlers twisted in impossible directions. Jaws gaping wide, lined with rows of needle-sharp fangs—no herbivore's teeth. One foreleg... human... Bile rose in my throat. Its flank bulged with a pulsating mass of organs, throbbing in that vile light.
The stag was crying.
With a human infant's voice.
I dug my fingers into Kaiden's arm hard enough to bruise bone. He signaled retreat with a sharp nod, and we crept backward as silently as possible. The stag's massive head snapped up at the rustle of our movement, but it didn't pursue. It only tilted its grotesque muzzle skyward and wailed, the sound vibrating through my ribs like a struck bell.
We'd moved far enough to no longer hear that horrific crying. Then my body gave out and my stomach twisted violently. I doubled over, retching. Kaiden caught me before I collapsed into the puddle.
"You okay?"
I spat out bitter saliva, took the canteen Kaiden offered, and gulped some water. A fine tremor still ran through my body.
"Why did it look like that?" I asked weakly.
Kaidens had no answer.
"I thought etherials resembled humans. But that... that..."
"Don't look at me like that. I've no idea what that creature was or why it was crying like a baby," Kaiden shuddered as he spoke.
"Should we go back to tcamp?" I asked, somewhat calmer now.
Fear and shock still pulsed through my veins.
"Rather not. It might track our scent or footprints. Let's head toward the city."
"At night?"
"You want to be that thing's dinner?"
I had no choice but to agree. We struggled through the wet forest, slipping and falling into the soggy mud time and again. We only reached the homesteads with vegetable gardens by evening the next day. We were too exhausted to even exchange a few words. While I lay sprawled on a roadside bench by the dirt path, Kaiden negotiated with a local farmer to give us a ride to the city. Sleep overcame me the moment I, filthy and reeking, settled onto the hard seat of the modest cargo wagon.
It took us a long hot bath and a hearty, greasy meal to recover from such an eventful trip. Finally, we settled on the couch before a lit fireplace, ready to delve into the details of days gone by.
"Well then, Mr. Williams," I demanded, intercepting his hand as it reached for Oliver's diary, "it's time you started talking."