Golden thorns chapter 46
Their journey was tiring. They would walk for an hour, stop for five minutes so that they could catch their breath, then carry on. He used his glaive as a crutch as they slowly moved through the jungle. Normally, this hike wouldn't have seemed like much to them but with Coran's injury and the constant fear of Grimm attack, their progress was slow. The thick canopy blocked most of the suns light. They fought their way through the thick underbrush that seemed to claw at their ankles. Great burrs the size of Coran's fist got stuck to their clothes and refused to be removed without a fight. Creeping vines had to be brushed aside and the branches of the gnarled, twisted trees always seemed to be in the way, meaning that they had to be hacked through or prised apart.
Coran's leg continued to throb and took less and less weight as time when on, meaning that they made less progress between each stop. Eventually he gave out, collapsing against a tree. He wiped the sweat from his blanched face and tried to control his shaky, shallow breath. Marie jogged over to him and draped his arm over her shoulder, taking some of his weight.
"He cannot keep going like this." She said, turning to Azura, who stopped midstride, turned and walked over to them, her face like thunder.
"What would you suggest? What else can we do? You want to carry him? Because the only other alternative is leaving him to be picked apart by scavengers." Her voice burned with venom. Marie looked somewhat humbled but refused to back down.
"If we keep pushing him then he'll die anyway."
"I don't think you kids quite understand the situation here. This isn't some fairy tale. You can't just act heroic and expect things to work out okay. We need to keep moving. We may have gotten off easy so far but these monsters are dangerous, got it?" Marie's jaw clenched. Her lips pursed. She slowly reached down to the hem of her shirt and lifted it, revealing her abdomen. The ragged, white scars were stark against her skin, running from the base of her ribs down to her pelvis. The three thin lines silenced the huntress.
"I know better than most." Marie said, eye to eye with her. Azura sighed.
"You are so not worth all of this trouble." She said, turning to face the rest of them, who were standing wide-eyed at this altercation. Coran himself could not believe his ears. It may all have been one long hallucination for all he knew but there was a fire in his partner's eyes that he hadn't seen before. This was a tension that he had to defuse.
"Umm… before we all bite each other's heads off, does anyone actually want to listen to what the person in question has to say?" they all faced him expectantly. "We've been stopped for about five minutes now and I'm already feeling a lot better. Give me another five and I'll be able to walk solo again. Since I woke up this morning I've been listening out for any movement that isn't ours and so far I've picked up nothing."
"That's what worries me." Azura said, "We should have been jumped by now but we haven't seen so much as a fleeting glimpse of a Grimm crest. Haven't you wondered why that Nevermore got the best of us so easily? I'll give you a hint. It's because it shouldn't have been there. It was moving towards the city but it had no reason to. Unless it was forced to leave its normal territory. Something else is at work here and its freaking me out."
"Well we'd best go find out what, hadn't we?" Coran said and hobbled on.
"What are you doing?" Jo asked, finally entering the conversation. "Don't you realise that you can barely stand?"
"If I stop for much longer I doubt that I'll ever be able to get going again." He grinned, and limped on.