As Ethan was about to ask another question, Darren suddenly looked panicked and said, “Too much, sorry Ethan,” and he collapsed.
The lady looked curiously down at the body of Darren slumping almost parallel to the table, while Mara grabbed the arm of Ethan, pulling him towards her and said viciously in a low voice, “Our cover is blown, wake up you fool.”
Ethan finally noticed that Darren was on the ground, and as he was about to reach for him, a passing soldier shouted, “So, you got him after all my lady.”
The lady looked puzzled to the soldier as Ethan went to the ground to check on Darren, and she asked the soldier, “Got who exactly?”
The soldier pointed excitedly towards the kneeling down Ethan, “The green boy, of course, my lady.”
Mara dropped to the ground beside Ethan, and as they were trying to haul Darren up, who started to come back to consciousness, they heard the lady scream at the top of her lungs, “Seize them.”
A dozen or so soldiers ran to the spot where Ethan and his friends stood, and as they brandished their swords while advancing on the three, Ethan felt a strange drag on his soul, coming from the ends of his toes to the tips of his hair ends, he felt it gathering at the core of his body in pulses, and as he gazed dejectedly to the men advancing with the bare swords, he released the wave outwards at them.
Ethan used his most powerful Vrill without even knowing that he did it. The Chaos Vrill ran amok through the entire camp in moments. Pandemonium hit the entire occupants of the camp and turned them into confused simpletons, some soldiers threw their gear and ran in panic, while others started to fight and slay their own comrades, gangs of soldiers fought each other in every corner of the camp.
Ethan and Mara supported Darren as they tried to navigate the chaos of the confusion Vrill which hit the camp, they tried to avoid all knots of fighting men as they progressed from the middle of the camp to its exit.
At some point of their slow progress, ten men suddenly charged them, Mara looked at the bloodied swords in their hands coming fast for her own neck, she held tight to the hand of Ethan and closed her eyes, she hoped that death would be swift.
But death didn’t come, as Darren growled and suddenly pushed both Mara and Ethan back into one of the shacks and charged the men.
Mara saw the physical change in Darren, he was bigger, and his mouth looked strange, elongated with sharp teeth jutting from it, but what really fascinated her was that after he charged the men and broke their ranks, he stopped to throw his head back and howl.
It was amazingly primal and primitive, it was a call to fight and a challenge which Darren had thrown to the world in general, challenging even the gods in their heavenly seats. Yet, it was blood curdling and scary, far scarier than anything Mara ever witnessed before this moment.
Ethan pulled her to the darkness of the shack away from the fight outside and he told her with a steady voice, “When Darren’s blood lust is gone,” he softly led her to the single chair in the shack, “he will revert to his normal self and come to find us.”
“He was not human.” She shook involuntarily as she looked at Ethan for an answer, one that she was eager yet afraid to hear, “Is he?”
“Not entirely.” He sighed, “I doubted it for some time, but as he had shown today, Darren is a shapeshifter.”
From The Green Boy