Chapter 29: Jomin

Twenty minutes. That was how long they’d spent fighting their way through a stretch of forest that had taken them barely five or ten to cross the first time through. And it had been, without a shred of exaggeration, a bloody affair.

Kren grunted, halting mid-stride to let a Lyndwyrm’s claw rake empty air in front of him. He answered with a boot to the side of its skull, drawing a yelp of pain before he pivoted on the same motion, longsword coming down with everything he had behind it, cleaving clean through the head of a second Lyndwyrm that had been sliding in low from behind. He didn’t stop there — the same overhead arc carried through, finishing the first one off with a decapitating strike before it could recover.

He snarled, already hunting his next target, only to realize the pack was thinning. Peeling off. Whatever remained of them, anyway. Kren genuinely couldn’t say how many of these things they’d cut down at this point — his arms burned from the sheer volume of swinging, and his Aura reserves felt scraped nearly to the bone.

Fifty. Maybe sixty of them dead, easily. Which was, frankly, insane. He’d never once heard of a clutch this size. For all their similarities to true dragons, Lyndwyrms shared enough of that same reclusive, solitary nature to make a gathering like this almost unheard of — regardless of how powerful the alpha commanding them might be.

But that was a problem for later. Survival came first.

The Storm Eagles finally led them clear of the trees, having doubled back in a completely different direction than the one they’d entered by — further west, well clear of the ravine they’d originally come through. The mountain’s stone flank still rose close on their right, close enough that Kren could tell more paths threaded through it somewhere out of sight, while the forest continued to sprawl darkly to their left. Ahead, maybe a kilometer or two out, the ground rose in a long, gradual slope, climbing toward a plateau that crested somewhere out of view over a distant ridge.

"Our first outpost’s just past that ridge. My sister can help us — we just have to reach it." Jomin managed between labored breaths. Kren caught Aki’s eye, the older man already back in his human shape. These Storm Eagles weren’t cultivators. They had neither the pace nor the stamina to keep this up much longer, and their arrows were spent — no way left to offer support if the Lyndwyrms caught up again. A short rest, all things considered, was the smarter play.

"We stop here. Everyone — five minutes, then we move again. They’re still on our trail." Kren gave the treeline a baleful glare as he said it. Now that he knew what to listen for, the vibrations feeding back through True Earth Resonance told him exactly where the remaining Lyndwyrms lurked.

The art still unsettled him, if he was honest — mostly because he’d realized it never fully switched off. There was no shutting out that low, constant hum of awareness the earth fed him now, not entirely. He spent half his focus just tuning most of it out, and the other half sorting through whatever slipped past that filter.

Uncomfortable or not, it told him what he needed — the numbers still hunting them had dropped sharply, down to less than half of what they’d already slaughtered clearing the forest.

He glanced over the rest of his party. Not a scratch on any of them, so far as he could tell beneath the layer of blood and gore coating them all. Somewhere in the last twenty minutes, the quiet arrogance the surviving Storm Eagles had carried toward outsiders had evaporated completely — especially once their last arrow was spent and they’d had nothing left to offer, nothing left to defend themselves with, if Kren’s party had turned on them instead. He imagined they made for a fairly intimidating sight, drenched the way they were. He didn’t mind that one bit. Fear, in the right dose, was excellent motivation.

"So you’re the king?"

Kren blinked at the sudden question, turning to find Jomin had drifted closer, the boy’s dog now tucked quietly under one arm, finally settled. Kren looked down at him and shrugged. "More or less." He turned his gaze back to the treeline, done with conversation for the moment. Jomin apparently hadn’t received that particular memo.

"You were trying to hide it, weren’t you? Are you here to challenge the alpha too? To marry my sister, like the rest of them?" The boy didn’t wait for an answer before barreling on. "You really shouldn’t bother. Everyone else who’s come through here has either failed and gotten eaten, or failed and gotten stuck living in our village instead, because the Lyndwyrms won’t let anyone leave the mountains anymore. Not us, not the other tribes we used to trade with."

Kren blinked, several times over. In his peripheral vision, he caught Aki, Ruhu, and Fima all shift, subtle and near-simultaneous — their postures sharpening, ears angling just slightly toward the boy. Jomin was handing them free intelligence on both their destination and its political situation, and not one of them intended to let that slide past unused. Every scrap of information mattered right now.

"So no one’s managed to bring the alpha down at all?" Kren asked, neither confirming nor denying Jomin’s guess about his status. The boy, for his part, seemed almost delighted that Kren was engaging with him at all — which was, if Kren was being honest, faintly unsettling. There was something sharper hiding under all that cheerful chatter. Jomin was turning out to be far more of a puzzle than his age suggested.

"They’ve tried. None of them got anywhere close, though. The cave they nested in could swallow our entire village a few times over — easy. There have to be hundreds of them packed in there, more than enough room to pick off anyone stupid enough to walk in, one at a time."

Kren dragged a hand through his hair. The more he heard, the more he understood exactly how underprepared he’d walked into this — and worse, how close this might actually sit to impossible.

He ignored the pointed looks Aki and Ruhu were both sending his way, deliberately. Acknowledging it now meant admitting all of this might be for nothing, and that wasn’t a luxury a wise king allowed himself. Not that he had much choice regardless.

The Ale were already gathering to bring war down on his people, and the Storm Eagles held the ore, the forges, and the craft required to arm an army worth the name.

Whether it came down to defense or the fight that would inevitably follow, this alliance mattered too much to walk away from — even if felling the alpha turned out to be the smaller of the problems standing in his way.

"So, Jomin — going by all this, I take it you’re the tribal chief’s son. And your sister’s the princess?"

Jomin waved the question off without a hint of discomfort. "Please, Your Majesty, that’s a lowlander word. Chief’s kin get a little privilege up here, sure, but whatever you actually hold onto, you hold by your own strength. Get weak, and even that privilege disappears fast. There are no princes and princesses in these mountains." Then, just as fast, his mouth snapped shut.

Kren caught it instantly — the flicker of realization on Jomin’s face, the sense that he’d said more than he meant to. Maybe a good deal more. The boy’s shoulders dropped a fraction, something sad crossing behind his easy grin as he turned to look toward the distant ridge, arms curling tighter around himself and his dog.

"My sister left me to die back there." he said quietly. "But that’s not really why you’re here, is it? Prince Kren N’kora Blackmane. Or is it King, now? I’m not sure how to address you, seeing as the coronation hasn’t happened yet."

Kren’s eyebrow shot up, genuinely caught off guard — impressed, even, despite himself. Fima growled low, already shifting her weight forward, but Toa beat her to it entirely. His hooked blade moved with startling speed, the curved edge coming to rest a bare inch from Jomin’s throat before anyone else had finished registering the threat.

Jomin clicked his tongue, unbothered. His allies lunged forward on instinct, only for Aki and Ruhu to step neatly into their path, cutting them off before they’d covered half the distance. Fima flanked Toa’s other side, murder plain in her eyes, tail lashing once behind her. Jomin hissed a soft breath through his teeth, glanced at the blade at his neck, then back at Kren.

"All this over a name?" he said, almost fond, like he was chiding a group of children. He reached up with two fingers and calmly pushed the flat of Toa’s blade aside, guiding it away from his own throat without so much as flinching. Then his eyes found Kren’s again, sharper now, all trace of the cheerful teenager gone.

"You and I need to talk, Your Majesty. Alone, ideally — because if we don’t, we’re both walking straight into our graves the moment we reach my people. And I promise you, the Lyndwyrms are the least of what you should be worrying about right now."