[This post is from Seamus’s point of view.]
Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, Seamus began to walk. He moved along the length of the walls, walking north toward the collapsed arch that once marked the gateway to the small Midwestern university whose ruins had somehow become home. The tent city that marked the Wild Hunt encampment on the norther edge of the fortifications was relatively quiet. There was only a little movement, a few of the Hunt moving amidst the tents. It was between patrols; all was quiet.
For now, anyway.
His gaze lingered on the Hunt’s camp. In his gut, he knew that they wouldn’t stay forever, they wouldn’t keep protecting this place forever. That wasn’t the way they were made.
That wasn’t what the Powers intended for them. At the end of the day, it usually didn’t matter what the Hunt wanted. What mattered was what the world needed, what Fate decreed. There were likely some among them that thought that he never should have been released from his duty to them and there had been moments when he himself had begun to wonder if perhaps they were right. He had been apart from the rest of the world for so long, freedom from the Hunt was still surreal.
A shiver crept down his spine as he recalled Leinth’s soft-spoken words.
You can still feel them, can’t you?
He could and maybe—just maybe—he always would. They were still a part of him whether he liked it or not.
There were days he wasn’t sure which was the case.
His steps carried him beyond the encampment, down to the broken asphalt of the roadway, down toward the arch and the roadway beyond. Broken bridges lay to the east and not terribly far to the west he could see the new shoreline of the lake, glittering in the afternoon sun.
Something was out there. He could see it, could feel it.
It made is stomach knot, turn sour. His hands curled into fists.
“Gods and monsters,” he breathed, planting his feet and squinting into the sun. “Now what?”
