Sin Of Greed (Greedy Fox Book 2)

~~ TWO ~~

The dusting of dawn light on the horizon hurt my raw eyes. This was my fourth break since starting and I felt like I was neither here nor there. The scent never drew any closer and the landscape never changed. Running in circles would have been faster.

Quaint, emerald green fields of long grass wavered in a gentle breeze. The trees had started to thin out now, opening up the land of rolling hills. If I wasn't in such a hurry, I'd stop and roll around in the grass a bit. But nothing around me looked remotely like anywhere I'd been before.

Wherever Leraj had sent me, it was as far from Liones as you could get. There weren't many houses around; I'd passed a few but they had been still and silent. There'd been no travellers either which I counted as a blessing. They might have tried to kill me and I had no time to play cat and mouse with humans.

The storm had rolled over some time in the late night to early morning. I'd caught food before then and managed to find shelter in the roots of a fallen tree. The flashes of lightning in the sky had been a spectacle to behold, the thunder an angry chorus from the heavens. The downpour of rain, I feared it had washed away the scents, but when it finally passed, the stench of demon still clung to the air. 

That had been stop number three. Since then, I hadn't stopped running for several hours until now. Hollowed out, I strayed into the bushes and laid down. The last time I felt this tired was running around in Liones after throwing up that demon heart. The sting of the memories bit sharp, a physical pang in my chest.

Power surged with a sudden urgency to the forefront of my mind.

My eyes snapped open, the flames that had danced behind my eyelids fading in the light. The strength and ferocity of the magic I'd wielded against Hendrickson called to me again. I reached for it but it slipped away. It felt like the magic I'd wielded as a Holy Knight except a hundred times stronger and frustratingly too far away to grasp.

Whatever that power had been, it had been strong enough to cause a Grey demon to falter several times. If only it had lasted out longer, I thought bitterly, and I would be resting in some castle bed all snug.

The soft breeze sent water droplets plummeting onto my head. Time to move. I heaved myself off the leaf litter, shaking water and dirt from my fur. I could dwell on all these head-hurting mysteries later.

With the coast clear, I trotted my way down the lane. The gravelly ground beneath my paws was rough but well-worn which gave me hope that it led to a large town at least. My stomach gave an almighty rumble. Hopefully food, maybe some Vanya ale. It took all my effort to stop salivating all over my paws.

The path split then and in one direction I smelt woodsmoke. A town hopefully. The other way lay demon. My stomach growled again but I ignored it and followed my nose. The ground started sloping upwards and I quickened my pace as the wind brought a stronger smell of demon. It only passed my mind when I breached the crest that the smell of demon was much too strong for just Meliodas.

In the near distance, a castle sat, like nothing I'd seen before. The sun brought out the colours of the strange adornment, like frozen waves or exotic flower petals extending in every chaotic direction you could think of. The greenery ended abruptly not even a hundred metres away.

Every fibre of my fox being screamed that this was a bad idea. The stench of demon - for it couldn't even be counted as just a scent anymore - permeated the air so thickly that I found it hard to breath. Erring on the side of caution, I slunk off the path.

The path I'd just left continued to snake towards the strange castle, a strip of brown against the harsh black. My nose crinkled. Whatever had happened here, it hadn't been a human's handiwork. I tiptoed my way down to where black and green met. Curious, I pressed a paw onto the blackened side. I thought it would be ash beneath my paws but I left no footprints on the hardened earth.