Trials of the Hunt

Chapter 63

Dusk descended on the palace. Knights and mages changed their cycles like clockwork. The day's light rain was enough to muddy the garden and leave the flowers bent at their stems as if bowing to Gaia. Gannon returned from his communion naked, dirty, and everything smelled of mud and wet leaves to him. He tracked mud through his abode from the garden doors to the bathroom where he rinsed off in the tub.

There won't be a bath in here for some time. He thought.

When he emerged, wrapped in a towel and shaking his hair dry, he inhaled and smelled something other than mud. Smoke had filled his bedroom and a figure sat in the darkness.

He stopped in his tracks.

"Don't be alarmed, I'm only here to take you to your father. He's called a meeting with the house before supper." Naois smoked a long handled pipe, and wisps of smoke escaped his mouth as he spoke.

Gannon relaxed immediately. "Sorry about that. I've been on edge for a while now. I wasn't expecting company."

He stood in front of his closet looking for something to wear.

"Nothing formal. I would imagine he's ready to inform us officially of what will happen now that Padraig's ruined the treaty with the sidhe."

Gannon slid hangers across the bar in the darkened closet and a lamp behind him illuminated the room.

"Thank you, by the way."

"For what?"

"I never got to thank you for leaving that night without waiting for me to ask. You saved me a huge argument with your mother."

Gannon stopped at the gray suit and stared. He scarcely knew how to respond to him.

He took the gray suit out of the closet and turned to face his uncle. "Gray or black shoes?"

Naois took a puff from the long pipe, "Black. I'll wait in the sitting room."

The awkwardness had subsided for the moment as Naois left the room and shut the door behind him. Gannon got properly dried and dressed in his best military uniform. House Lupuna had already suffered embarrassment and humiliation at the hands of its children. He would dress appropriately for this official announcement, whether it was expected or not, and even buckled Orion to his hip just for show.

He met Naois in the sitting room and they exited together.

"I thought you were wearing the gray suit."

"You said official announcement... there was a herald, a proclamation... I thought I should reconsider."

They walked in silence, Naois' guards leading them, and proceeded down narrow, winding halls to the large domed ceiling just before the administrative wing. The guards stopped walking as soon as they reached the large entryway. Gannon and Naois stopped on their heels.

"The mages... where are they?" whispered one of the guards as he drew his longsword.

It was a recent development, but mages had been guarding the administrative wing and the dome leading to it since the first whispers of rebellion filled the halls. The mages were expected to be on guard at all times.

Gannon and Naois exchanged a look as the second guard unsheathed his sword. Gannon drew Orion, but Naois hesitated.

"I didn't figure we'd be without the mages," he whispered watching sheepishly as his nephew wielded an ancient weapon of immense power.

"The three of us are armed and you have your summoning. We should be alright if we have to fight."

The two guards walked slowly into the domed entryway, looking high and low for any threat. Gannon remained in the hallway with Orion at the ready. A strong gust of wind blew through the hall behind them and extinguished the sconces. Naois turned his back to Gannon and began to chant slowly and quietly.

Orion's blade lit bright blue and another gust of wind blew through the entryway. The guards turned around and around, searching for someone - anyone - to whom they might lay challenge.

This is not their fight, Lord Warrior. It had been a while since Orion 'spoke' to Gannon.

Gannon stepped into the entryway and the gust of wind became a light breeze that blew around the circular room. The guards moved over to Naois and stood ready to defend him. As Gannon approached the center of the large room, the mages came running, all looking disheveled as if they had faced battle.

Gannon waved them all away. "This is not your battle," he whispered.

"No, but it is yours, my lord." The voice came from high in the large room and from all around them as if on the air itself.

The mages surrounded the domed room, and Gannon could feel a lot of magic at the ready. His eyes began to glow yellow and Orion glowed brightest blue.

It will kill them if they interfere. Orion warned.

"As a prince of this realm, I order you not to interfere, no matter what you witness here." He spoke the words, but did not sound like himself.

The mages looked around the room at each other and collectively decided to stand down. They remained as if waiting to intervene.

Shadows fell upon the domed room and the wind picked up. It blew all around them, and then centered on Gannon, until the wind stopped and a creature, an air golemn, appeared before him.

It was dark gray storm clouds intermingling with white fog, its body swirled and churned like a funnel cloud beneath armor made of hail. Thick chunks of white and gray armor covered its torso and head and it carried a heavy shield and spiked sword of the same material.

Gannon could feel it moving through the air. He'd felt it almost every night riding on the wind to their nightly hunt. It was air, but it's body was made of dirt and ice particles, sand and gravel, whatever it could pick up in its surroundings to give its body mass.

They stood face to face, both of them ready for battle. Neither of them moved.

He is conflicted, Lord Warrior.

"The others didn't hesitate, and yet... here we are." Gannon's voice sounded like growling.