As Rory and Adalric took the lead in their flight and Corson and Rhoderick followed after Lancaelad and Tovrunn, now both perched on Ogre's mighty back, positioned themselves in their pursuer's paths. Passing into a trance, eyes almost rolling back in her head, and with tallow, brimstone, and powdered iron clutched in her fist Tovrunn reached out to Erik to grant her power to fulfil one prayer. To ask the God of the hunt and harvest to lend her power to destroy and foul the land ran against everything her patron stood for, and yet... Erik had once been a man, a man foremost amongst the Rjurik and unlike the gods of old Erik knew what it was to fight a foe.
It was Tovrunn's only hope. And so she reached out. Out beyond the mantle. Out to the heavens.
Lancaelad felt Tovrunn go limp, as if the life were draining from her body. He skin paled, her breath shallowed and she grew cold - so cold that without her armour he could feel it radiating off her meanwhile the riders behind them drew closer and closer and closer. Just as his nerve was threatening to break his betrothed drew in a shuddering gasp of a breath and went through a sudden, jerking range of arcane motion while chanting a prayer in the ancient Rjurik dialect, and with a roar a ball of flame exploded at Ogre's back.
A voice that was not Tovrunn's came from he throat, and it commanded "RIDE" and Lan whipped at his reigns and began the hasty diamond that the druid had instructed, the roaring orb at his heels.
Riding hard ahead, Corson chanced a glance back and saw a trail of flame the height of a man's waist trailing behind the shape of his companions, sending oily smoke billowing into the sky. The riders at their back vanished behind the cloud, and Lan and Tovrunn became nothing but a wavering silhouette against the flames.
For a moment Tovrunn felt it - the edges of a god. She felt blood call out in communion, felt it intermingle for a moment with the font that was its origin. The old father of the forests. At once she sensed the stern disapproval of a father, the protective care of a mother and she felt the roots of her soul begin to loosen from her body. She could see the field, feel the heat of the fire, but it felt like it was at a great distance down a dark tunnel. And somewhere in the fathomless blackness of that dark tunnel the silhouette of a mounted figure, darker than the darkness, turned and watched her.
It was all she could stand. Tearing her eyes from the watcher her awareness burst from the tunnel just as Ogre hammered down the last side of the arrow Lan had scored into the field. Behind them, not far off she could hear the screaming of horses and the shocked cries of men. The flames leaned away from them in the cool winter breeze that rippled the field and whispered to the fallow grass in a voice that sounded somehow familiar - almost like words in a language she'd forgotten.
Them with a snort of frustration and wide-eyed stomp Lan wheeled the massive warhorse and hammered after the vanishing shapes of Corson and Rhoderick.
