Chapter 13 | Part 4

Elion was already at the bars when Drusniel reached him.

“You came.” The words were quiet, wondering. “You actually came.”

“I’m opening your cage. Don’t make me regret it.”

Drusniel pressed his hand against the lock. The metal was older here, more corroded, but also more complex. He fed a needle-thin thread of air into the keyway and held his breath, feeling each pin catch and drag inside the mechanism.


“The third tumbler sticks,” Elion said. “Push harder on the left.”

Drusniel didn’t ask how Elion knew that. He shifted the pressure left and sent one precise burst through the stuck tumbler. Something clicked.

The door swung open.

For a moment, Elion didn’t move. He stood in the cage’s opening, grey skin catching the dim light, and breathed like he’d forgotten how.

“Later,” Drusniel said. “We need to move.”

“The fourth wagon. Oil.” Elion was already moving, his body flowing past Drusniel with a fluidity that was deeply wrong. Joints bending at angles they shouldn’t, limbs extending just a fraction too far. “I know where.”

They reached the wagon together. Drusniel found the oil containers while Elion kept watch, his head swiveling in ways that human necks couldn’t manage. The guards were still at the perimeter, still focused outward. They had seconds.

Elion yanked a hooded travel lantern from the wagon hook and shoved it into Drusniel’s hands. Drusniel tore a waterskin and the nearest ration satchel from the cargo, caught a rolled blanket under his arm, and kept moving.

Drusniel upended the oil across the wagon’s cargo. The smell was sharp, overwhelming.

“Can you make fire?” Elion asked.

“Air and water. Not fire.”

“Then we need—”

A shout from behind them. A guard had turned at the wrong moment, seen two shadows where there should have been none.

“Run,” Drusniel said.

They ran.

Behind them, chaos erupted. More shouts, orders barked, the sound of boots on rocky ground. The oil-soaked wagon wouldn’t burn on its own, but the distraction had worked—the guards were confused, scattered, unsure whether to pursue or contain.

Drusniel ran with everything he had. Elion ran beside him, and then ahead of him, moving faster than any person should. His limbs pumped in wrong rhythms, his body low to the ground like a predator rather than prey.

“This way,” Elion called back. “I know where—”

He didn’t finish. He just knew.

They plunged into the twisted stone formations that bordered the road.

The rocks rose around them like teeth, casting strange shadows in the eternal twilight. Behind them, the caravan’s lanterns grew smaller, and the shouts faded into distance.

Drusniel’s lungs burned. His legs ached. His magic was spent, that trickle of power exhausted by one lock and one desperate gamble.

But he was free.

They ran until running was all there was—until the caravan was a memory and the strange landscape closed around them like a maze. They ran until Elion finally stopped, pressing against a rock formation and breathing hard.

“Here,” he said. “They won’t find us here.”

Elion crouched, set the lantern between them, and cracked the hood just enough for a narrow strip of warm light. Drusniel let the waterskin, satchel, and blanket fall beside him, hands shaking from the run.

Drusniel collapsed beside him. His body shook with exhaustion, with adrenaline, with relief tangled into terror.

“How did you know?” he managed between breaths. “The path through the rocks. The direction.”

Elion’s eyes caught his in the darkness. Red markings. Grey skin. Something not quite human looking back at him.

“I just knew.” The words were soft. “I always just know.”

Behind them, very distant now, something caught fire.

The fourth wagon, finally. Flames licked at the twilight sky, and Drusniel watched them burn with cold satisfaction.

Merrik had sold him to that caravan. The guards had called him merchandise. The other prisoners had feared him.

But Elion had waited for him. And Drusniel had chosen to open a cage instead of saving himself.

Every reason said to go alone, he thought. Two escapees, running into hostile territory.

But sitting here, alive, with someone who had chosen to trust him, none of it seemed to matter as much as it should.

End of Chapter 13.4 —> 13.5: The One Who Walks Free: The Aftermath