Chapter 208: You are pregnant!
Time had stretched into a quiet torment. Each day crawled by like a year. And when the leaves started changing hue to a fiery orange, she felt it even more. Without Kai, life had dulled to a pale shadow of what it once was. The Southern borders trembled with unrest, minor rebellions flared like sparks on dry wood, and Kai’s generals and butler Siamon were left to extinguish them alone. With the devil prince gone, greedy eyes turned not only toward the gold of Thegara but toward his wife as well.
Ren stood on the top of a golden plain, fingers tangled in the thick feathers of Ogain’s neck.
"Ogain," she whispered, her voice carried by the wind, "why did you linger in the Cave temple, in the Veil Valley? Did you sense something there... something strange that was u know to me? I felt your suspicion."
Her palm was dwarfed against the beast’s neck, once small and downy, now layered with massive plumes as thick as her Gamma Orgeve’s arm. Ogain had grown grotesquely majestic with sharp features and a black beak pointy. Towering over her, he was nearly ten times the size of Viva, her horse.
Ren had flown with him a few times, but it was harder than it had been in the dream world. The biggest issue was the wind and the cold, lashing her face. Beta Coran and Calisa had ground out her a light leather saddle, so the young beast wouldn’t struggle under its weight, but it was their hearts that bore the true burden.
In these three long months, Ren had lived only to keep herself from falling apart. She trained every morning with Arkilla, and by night, she sought every possible path to reach Kai, to bring him back from the gods’ prison.
She wrote letters to her Fae grandfather, clinging to hope with each inked word. He still replied swiftly through Agara, though her uncle hadn’t fully recovered from Phoria’s ambush. Whatever poison had been given to that vampire lord had nearly unraveled him. Sigaros had intervened, poring over ancient tomes and distilling antidotes in silence until he proved the venom’s origin, and that his hands bore no treachery. Gladly, the antidote worked well, and Agara wasn’t coughing blood anymore, though his heart had gotten weak.
On the other hand, Still, their plan to dismantle the Sorcerers’ Council had been suspended. As Sigaros warned, the high sorcerers were no ordinary foes. Rail couldn’t simply strike them down, not with weapons. He couldn’t even cross the barrier protecting their hidden stronghold. Therefore, to breach the enchanted castle, deception was the only path.
"I sensed something strange," Ogain said, his voice a low vibration in her mind. "An aura... but no one was there. Only a rift with warm aura exuding up."