Free Mrythdom: Game of Time by Jasper T. Scott Page A

as thick and muscular. A line of spines ran all the way down the creature’s back and tail, ending in a vicious nest of spikes at the tip. Aurelius gaped at the sight. He’d never seen something so incredible in all his life. The monster passed out of sight behind a group of trees, but Aurelius waited until the creature’s lumbering footsteps had faded to a mere shiver in the frozen ground before he dared to move. Another roar sounded, now just at the edge of hearing, and the phalanxes shuffled into motion again, now marching at a more subdued pace.
    Aurelius whispered, “What was that? A dragon?”
    “No, a leviathan.”
    “A what?”
    “The largest and most fearsome predator in all of Mrythdom. Just one of them could wipe out this entire hunting party, but fortunately for us, they are nearly oblivious to the smaller creatures in their world.”
    “So it won’t try to attack us?”
    “Not unless we get in its way or appear to be threatening it or its young.”
    “Well, that’s a relief.”
    Gabrian turned to him with an amused look. “Yes, it is.”
     
    *   *   *
     
    The wolf’s fangs dripped with saliva as he watched the serried ranks of men pass his hiding place. He lay flat on his belly beneath a fallen log, golden eyes piercing the gloom to search the phalanxes for but one man. There, marching a few ranks up in the rearmost phalanx was a man with wavy blonde hair and a smirk on his lumpy human face. His coat was a rare cobalt blue, shot through with streaks of pure white. It was difficult to tell the true color of the coat in the dim, colored light of the forest, but Reven knew the patterns and colors of that coat intimately. Its previous owner had been his mate, his precious Doana, and the only good thing to have ever happened in his long, miserable life.
    Now she was gone. Slaughtered like an animal for her alleged crimes, skinned to keep an evil man warm during the long, frigid winters.
    A rivulet of moisture trailed down from Reven’s running snout, making his nose itch. He could smell the stink of those humans a mile away. Even though their numbers were in the hundreds, their fear was a palpable, sweaty stench that stirred the still, pine-scented air of the forest until it was churning with their nauseating odor.
    Reven growled softly, his lips peeling back from long, dagger-like teeth. He’d kill them all, one by one until he reached the man wearing his mate’s coat. Then he’d skin the man alive and see how he liked it.

Chapter 7
     
     
     
     
     
    Apart from the appearance of the leviathan, the forest had been deadly quiet for the past hour. Aurelius was starting to get tired of the endless marching, and he began to wonder how long it would be before they came upon their prey.
    Hydrons. What was a hydron anyway?
    The hunting party slowly rounded a massive tree trunk that looked just like all the other massive tree trunks. It was as wide at the base as any skyscraper, though considerably less uniform, knobbed with shadowy holes that spoke of small woodland creatures making their homes inside the ancient wooden structure. The mighty roots stretched out from the base like girders, some reaching a dozen stories up from the ground. The roots left deep curtains of shadows around the base of the tree, and Aurelius found himself obsessively checking those shadowy crevices to see if there was anything hiding between the roots, but his eyes couldn’t pierce the gloom unless the lichen and moss were particularly dense.
    There seemed to be too many places for something to hide. Aurelius unconsciously began walking a little closer to his phalanx, sometimes nearly stepping on the feet of the man in front of him. He was overly aware of his ears; they were burning from listening keenly to the silence for so long.
    Or possibly just from the cold.
    Yet the air was curiously warmer inside the forest, as though the canopy overhead provided some type of insulation. By his reckoning the canopy should have