Chapter 791: Real Monsters
At the edge of the forest, Ashlynn stood next to Constable Daithi, silently watching the assault on the Summer Villa unfold. Captain Ipiktok’s men had already broken the gate portcullis, but they were too large to easily batter down the inner gate on the far side of the gatehouse.
Rather than attempt to squeeze through, Ipiktok’s team of Tuscans were hurling the ram at the inner gate before dragging it back with heavy chains, only to hurl it yet again. The inner gate wouldn’t break as quickly as the portcullis had, but Ashlynn estimated that it would still only be a matter of minutes before the Golden Eyed skirmishers of the Black Wolf Brigade would charge through the gap. Already, they had gathered at the gate, ready to charge in as soon as there was a large enough break in the gate.
Suddenly, a deep anguished roar sounded from within the walls of the Villa, shaking the trees of the forest and startling several birds into flight.
All around Ashlynn, the red cedar trees began dropping needles in a slow, steady rain like tears sliding down their trunks. Around the trunks of nearby oaks, the acorns laying on the ground exploded in gouts of flame like hundreds of candles flickering to life before dying on the breeze. High above, the boughs of the towering hemlocks shook and trembled as if they were caught up in a storm that only the trees could feel.
"My, my lady," Daithi said, backing away from the nearby cedar tree that had begun to ’bleed’ thick, resinous sap. "What’s happening?" the confused constable said as he glanced at the men from Commander Bassinger’s first army who had come to help bring the villa’s servants back to the vale. Most of them were natives of the Vale of Mists but even they seemed spooked by the sudden outburst from the trees around them.
"Virve was right," Ashlynn said as she set a hand on her chest, feeling an outpouring of intense desires for violence, retribution and destruction from within her coven. "Sir Cathal must have had something to do with her father’s death during the War of Inches..."
After so many years, Ashlynn and Virve both understood that her chances of finding the man responsible for her father’s death were very small. At the same time, few people who weren’t knights were capable of killing a member of the Clan of the Great Claw, which meant there was a chance that one of the surviving knights from that war would be the guilty party, or at least know who was.
Virve claimed the right to capture and question the knights who had fought beside Bors Lothian in that war in the hopes that she would find an answer one day, and Ashlynn freely granted it. After all, Ashlynn understood all too well the need to find answers to resolve the scars on her heart. But to see results so soon...
"Tell your men to gather around the hemlocks," Ashlynn said as she surrounded herself with a soft, nurturing green the shade of mint leaves. "Even if their boughs shake, they will not fall and they will keep you safe from anything... dangerous," she said softly, grateful that the force of Virve’s emotions only affected the trees in the surrounding forest and not the weather itself.
If Virve’s anger called down lightning and thunderstorms the way Ashlynn’s had, she would have had to step in for Virve the way Nyrielle had stepped in for her. As is, however, she limited herself to protecting the soldiers while Virve fought to resolve the feelings in her heart with her own claws.