Total pages in book: 362
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
After the meeting, I’d asked about the Shadowlands’ forces—how many we had, how they were trained…
Instead of giving a vague answer as Ash had done in the past, he’d offered to show me. There was no wild dash through the Dying Woods like the last time I’d been this close to Lethe. We’d left through the Rise gates, joined by Rhain and Lailah, and I saw that the once-bent, crooked trees that crowded the shadowstone wall had sprouted buds and even small, glossy leaves. As we traveled, I spotted tiny white flowers in some of the burgeoning meadows. There was green everywhere I looked—so much more than just a day before.
That was until we neared the Dying Woods. They had remained as such, heavily shadowed and even more somber. My skin crawled as we skirted them, traveling a narrow path along the bluffs. I’d seen the gray, shadowy forms of the Shades moving in and out of the dead trees several times. Eather had pressed against my skin upon seeing the souls who refused to pass through the Pillars of Asphodel out of fear of judgment for their sins while alive. It was almost as if they were tracking us.
Tracking me.
I’d exhaled the moment we cleared the Dying Woods, and the Black Bay, along with the tall Rise surrounding Lethe, appeared. I wasn’t looking forward to passing them again, and I wasn’t exactly sure why, beyond the fact that the Shades were incredibly creepy. But thoughts of Shades fell to the wayside as the path we traveled diverged from the fortified city, followed the widening contour of the bluff, and opened to the valley.
Rows of squat, one-story buildings faced the Black Bay, built in a semi-circle. There had to be hundreds of what looked to be dormitories. Towers flanked them, taller than the Rise, and clearly used to keep an eye on what lay to the south and the east. My gaze shifted northward to where an utter sea of soldiers dressed in black and red trained. It would be hard to pick them out from the environment from a distance, but I saw them. All of them.
“How many are there?” I asked.
“Approximately forty-two thousand,” Ash answered.
“Forty-two thousand?” I whispered.
“I know that sounds like a lot.” Ash’s thumb traced an idle circle on the flare of my hip.
“It’s not?” I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Lasania only had about half that.”
“And Vathi has three times that number, equally spread between Attes and Kyn,” Rhain commented, his head tilting. In the sunlight, his hair was a burnished auburn.
“Oh.” I swallowed as I watched what appeared to be archery training.
“And they have far more gods than we do,” Lailah chimed in.
I looked to where she sat upon a deep chestnut horse. “How many do we have?”
“About forty percent of our army are gods,” she said, shifting on her saddle. “The remaining numbers consist of godlings and mortals.”
Mortals.
My gaze shifted back to the valley. Several of those who had been working with swords had stopped and clustered together. They had clearly noticed us.
“They volunteered,” Ash stated. “And they know the risks.”
“They are the bravest among them,” Lailah added, pride filling her voice. “But they are far easier to wound and kill, which I’m sure you’re thinking about. Because of that, most are auxiliary units of longbowmen, trained on foot and horseback.”
Archers. “Makes sense.” I toyed with the edge of a fang with the tip of my tongue, thinking about what I’d seen when Kolis had brought me to the rooftop of the Sanctuary. “I never saw any soldiers while I was in Dalos, unless the guards pull double duty.”
“For some of the Courts, the guards and soldiers are one and the same, but you wouldn’t have seen soldiers like these there,” Ash said. “Dalos does not have its own army.”
“What?” I exclaimed, surprised as Ash looked down at me. Then I got it. “Because the Primal of Life has the armies of all the Courts.”
“Supposed to.” His gaze shifted to the soldiers below. “That is how it has been since my father. Not even Kolis openly defies that rule.”
“But that doesn’t mean he follows it.”
Ash nodded. “I imagine his creations make up a portion of his defenses.”
I thought that over. “I’m sure his creations serve a dual purpose—continuation of the balance and as defense. But the ones he calls the Ascended? They can move about during the day—I saw them in the atrium of Cor Palace—but they cannot go out in the sunlight. That’s a weakness. But the Revenants?”
“They will be a problem,” Ash stated.
“Revenants can be momentarily killed, and based on what I saw, the type of wound determines exactly how long they stay down,” I shared. “But it’s not that long. I got Callum under the chin, and within fifteen minutes or so, he was back on his feet.”