){-<>-}){-<>-}){-<>-}){-<>-}(

CHAPTER 117
-
Zenryth Hail

){-<>-}){-<>-}){-<>-}){-<>-}(

By the time the man had gone silent, the night had deepened, and I found myself dozing off. I inhaled the crisp air, forcing myself to my feet.

The others sat or stood around in silence, looking just as exhausted as I felt. The prisoner was exactly as he'd been left, head down, face covered, legs crossed, arms bound.

I paused beside him, and when he didn't move, I poked his leg firmly with the point of my boot. "Get up," I said, my voice low, quiet, and like it couldn't be bothered.

The man lifted his head slightly, as if in response to my voice, then lowered it again. I sighed at his defiance, grabbing him by the shoulders of the shirt and hoisting him to his feet. My right arm felt like it was stabbed anew, but it did the job, and the prisoner was standing, head down.

His grey eyes, now visible through his hair, were somehow both empty yet sharp as they watched the snow -- not absently, but like he was seeing something else.

I pushed him forward, the others standing or shifting to continue the walk. Perhaps due to the heat of the battle wearing off, Thyra Thorne was now containing her shivering, rubbing her jacket-less arms.

Aeryn Thail stood up before anyone could offer him a hand, leaning forward slightly before he caught himself with one firm step. He only had until morning before certain infection if we didn't find ripper antiseptic in time.

"Stop staring at me and pay attention to Mister Hood over there," he grumbled, glancing at the prisoner whose face was covered by his hair. The three of us, excluding the prisoner, who had, indeed, all been looking at him, turned our attention to the road ahead.

As we moved, Murkai, who had been circling the area within a certain radius, began moving forward again. I wished I could push him further, but the mental strain would be too much to bear. Especially now, I knew I had to pace myself.

The night went on in silence for some time before Thyra Thorne spoke, her voice try. "Did you two find anything in the Monastery?"

I raised my brows. I had almost forgot. "More on the Quincentenary theory. The book suggested that if there are more rippers, they might start working together, making them more unpredictable. Forming packs."

Thyra Thorne pursed her lips slightly. "Let's say that's true. We haven't seen any ripper packs."

I nodded. It was true. But it was a warning for the potential future we faced. It was a suggestion that rippers are more intelligent than simple cunning animals.

Aeryn Thail spoke now, his voice a quiet drone. "If they're smart enough for that, we can't know how much so. Maybe even smart enough to fake tamness."

I thought of the ripper we had just killed acting docile in its cage back in Thirilin, before it suddenly broke out with ease to attack us.

"Maybe smart enough to recognise," Lylock Rin muttered. I frowned slightly. Smart enough to recognise we were Reapers? Smart enough to recognise we were its attackers and follow us across the world?

"It hunted us," I stated. "That's no coincidence. That's intelligence and cunning we can't ignore."

Nobody denied what I said. The caged Thirilin ripper had followed us this far. It had hunted us. The knowledge that the Coveners may have been, in a way, correct about their intelligence was unsettling. Yet it made the Quincentenary theory seem that much more plausible.

"And you?" Thyra Thorne asked, glancing at Lylock Rin, who walked beside and in front of her. "Did you find anything?"

Lylock Rin shrugged. "Nothing useful. The only thing that caught my attention was their mentioning of the ancient traps."

"Like the ones that caught the ripper outside the Thirilin Monastery?" Thyra Thorne asked.

"And caught you," Aeryn Thail added in a mumble, walking some paces behind Thyra Thorne.

Lylock Rin ignored him, saying, "yeah, those ones. It mentioned their failure was due to them lacking any kind of effective bait. Human sacrifices were placed inside the traps some thousand years ago, but that went out of practice when it failed to capture anything."

I glanced back at Aeryn Thail, who was still stumbling along, focusing on the snow in front of his boots. Human sacrifices did work and we both knew it. But the important detail was that the ripper had to have already been in the vicinity, and the sacrifice was merely an easy kill presented to them.

"They never mentioned finding bait that worked. Only that the traps were left there, disabled, for hundreds of years."

Thyra Thorne nodded, considering his words. "The fact that they were not only enabled, but successfully caught a ripper, means they've found bait that works."

I hummed thoughtfully to myself as their conversation continued in a quiet drone of thoughtful theorising behind me. If that were true, and they had found a way to lure the rippers into the traps, that was a dangerous tool. What could lure a ripper into a trap could lure them anywhere.

Yet there were no clear signs of what was used. There was no remnants of herbs or smell of something more than snow and metal. The red blood on the trap suggested animal or human blood. While my first assumption at the time had been an animal's, perhaps there had been a ripper already in the area, and the blood was the evidence of a human sacrifice.

As I mused, the prisoner walking in front of me shook his head, his hair shifting on his face. I raised a brow at him, giving his shirt that I held a slight twist. "Have something to share?"

Apparently, he did, because he spoke under his breath, the words hardly audible yet sounding almost grimly amused. "By the time you're all done speculating, we'll all be dead anyway."

"Who's we?" I questioned, deciding to engage with this spontaneous and willing interrogation.

The prisoner, however, only gave a small, slightly humourous, "hm", before responding. "Everyone. The Covenant is being ignored, and if we left things in your hands, nobody would be spared. At the end of the day, without the pact, we're all ripper food."

I opened my mouth to ask what his great plan was that would save humanity, but then I heard an extra pair of footsteps in the snow behind us.