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mortis had not yet set in. The lines in her forehead cut deep motes of pain in her skin, conveying more than words could of her internal feelings.Holding the weapon by its hilt, Moira extended it to Aiden and said, “Go. This sword’s duty is not done tonight. Take it. Go.”
    Aiden resisted for only a moment.
    “Go,” she insisted.
    He sheathed his own blade, nodded and said gravely, “Aye, my Lady.” Taking the weapon forged of Jarwynian steel, he arose and hefted it. The sword felt lighter and more lethal than any other he had ever held, much more so than his own blade on his hip. The rage swelled larger within him. With every second, the assassin was gaining valuable distance. The hurried sprint he felt through the ground was amplified by the Triarch leafling he held. He did not know if he could catch this enigma, but he was going to try. He thought he heard a faint, low humming of some create but it faded. He dismissed this; time was fleeting.
    With grim determination he withdrew his own sword and handed it to Moira, then sheathed Thannuel’s sword.
    “All of you stay here.”
    Aiden ran. Fiercely ran. The rain slammed against his face and felt like sleet, such was his velocity, as if a hurricane was blowing frozen rain horizontally. The wood-dweller guard, however, was the storm itself as he bolted through the forest. It was
he
who blew into the rain. He abandoned all concern for sure footing and pressed himself forward. When his muscles burned in protest, he canceled the feeling. No, not canceled, but
rejected
it? He felt it
leave
him. Almost sucked out of him. Physically extracted. A feeling came into him like a wave of power surging through him, renewing his energy, as if he were borrowing strength. It was strange but quickening and he tried not to fixate upon it, but to rather just use it.
    Friction
, he recalled. Was he actually capturing it? Recycling it? The lessons Thannuel had tried to teach him were mostly lost on him, seeming so esoteric. He was never able to experience what Thannuel described. But now, he
did
feel something.
    The man was inexplicably fast. It was inhuman, unlike anything Aiden had ever before sensed or encountered.
Faster!
he inwardlychided himself, but no matter how much he coaxed himself or how determined he remained, the man was still widening his lead.
    Opting for a higher path, Aiden jumped and bounced off one tree, caroming into another, repeating the move and propelling himself higher each time until he crested the treetops and began to launch himself great distances, from one treetop to the next. He hoped his new vantage point would give him at least a glimpse of his quarry once the man broke free from the forest’s covering. Aiden realized he was not going to catch this perpetrator within the forest and would have to take his chances on the open fields of the rolling hills that marked the border of the Eastern Province.
    He gained upon the man, making up ground as he glided through the air. Sensing that he would shortly come face to face with this foe, he drew his sword. No, Lord Kerr’s sword. He felt a slight vibration coursing through the sword like a current and thought perhaps it was the vibration lingering from the force with which he drew the blade from the scabbard, but then he again caught the sound of a low hum that he swore was emanating from the blade itself.
    He barely touched the apex of each tree before launching himself forward again, the length of dozens of men each time. At the eastern most part of the forest’s edge he landed at the top of a giant, thick Ayzish tree that stood like a sentinel at the forest’s entrance. Over one hundred paces below him, the enemy darted forth from the forest as a bolt shot from a crossbow. Against belief, Aiden felt the gait of his prey increase as he broke free from the forest into open ground. Notwithstanding the rain marring the amber moonlight of the second moon, the wood-dweller thought he saw—yes he did see it.