Chapter 404: Over The Mountains We Must Climb
The sky had never looked so black to Ferro before.
Not at night, and not now when it was supposed to be the middle of the day.
The rending of the sky had left a perpetual stream of little motes falling like stars amidst the ash-choked sky.
Following the compass, the girls and he had ridden as high as they could before their mounts refused to take them any further. His eyes had been so fixed upon it that had Malz not mentioned it, he would never have known that it was no longer leading them toward Chainsfree.
"The city is over there!" Malz gesticulated emphatically. "See the glow on the underside of the clouds?"
"I can’t. I need to follow the compass." Ferro looked up the mountain ridge, following the thin beam, which seemed even brighter in the dark.
"We should just leave him," Anko hissed. "He can always catch up to us later."
"No!" Malz said. "We don’t have enough food or light to mess around. We need to stick together."
The angel was having the roughest time of it, now that they were on foot. Ferro wanted to go to the city, and not just for her sake. He needed to await his sister. To steer her away from life under the Syndicate... And to warn people about the army supplies hidden in the desert.
So many things pulled on his worries, but with the sky gone black, the compass was not only the most immediate concern, it - and he - were their only consistent source of light. Malz needed to conserve her mana, and Anko simply couldn’t cast spells as a maven... which left him.
I’m their beacon as much as the compass is mine...