The Demigod Proving Read Online Free PDF Page A

impact, but bounced and continued to roll toward him.
    Strangely, what he imagined would be his last thought, was that he wished it could have at least been the cheese wagon.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 5: Seeking Safety
 
As unpleasant as the task may be, there is no excuse for not considering another’s point of view.
-Wrend
     
    Wester intervened.
    He leapt in front of Wrend, ducked under the upside down wagon, and extended his hands over his head so they touched the red-tiled roof. His face contorted in effort, and he pushed.
    The wagon lifted into the air, still spinning, and passed over Wrend’s head. It soared into a cluster of pines. Branches cracked and broke as they caught the wagon. Wrend gaped. His blood thundered in his head.
    Wester turned toward him. “Don’t just stand there!”
    All thoughts of defending the Master disappeared from Wrend’s mind. He turned and bolted for the forest. Ahead of him, Teirn had already passed from the flagstone to the dirt beneath the trees. Wrend followed, pumping his arms and legs as fast as he could, ignoring the continued sound of wood shattering and bones breaking behind him.
    “Hurry!” Wester said. “We need to get to safety!”
    Wrend followed Teirn into the forest. He didn’t look back. His breath burned in his lungs. He hardly saw where he ran, for in his mind the wagon loomed before him, about to crush him. It filled his head, made his heart pound and his legs weak. As he ran past the trees, pushing branches out of his face, he saw it over and over. The wagon nearly flattening him.
    Before he knew it, the sounds of the draegon, kiranas, the Master, and the demigods had all faded, absorbed by the soft dirt and the pinion pines and blue spruces. Wester had passed him and Teirn, ahead, and led them through the dried pine needles.
    “Where are you leading us to?” Wrend said, thinking he knew.
    “To safety,” Wester said.
    “To the Chapel in the Forest?” Teirn said.
    Wester nodded. “It’s far enough away from the courtyard that it should be safe there.”
    In another ten seconds, they reached a wide stone path that stretched perpendicular to the course they’d been running, and turned left to follow it through the forest. In another thirty seconds, they reached their destination.
    Wrend had always liked the Chapel in the Forest. He’d first seen it in the winter, after a blizzard. As he’d approached it, he hadn’t even seen it because of how the ubiquitous white stone blended with the snow.
    The pure stone blanketed the ground as it rose in steps up the canyon slope. On each step, a row of white benches stretched in a half circle, so that from the front of the courtyard, where Wrend and his brothers entered, concentric half rings of white bench on white ground stretched up the canyon wall, broken in places by flights of stairs. It took a thousand people to fill the Chapel, and it happened every day. Here, the oldest Novitiates, serving girls, and priests gathered to worship the Master daily, in the shadow of the Enclosure.
    Wrend had never climbed over the Enclosure, though like all Novitiates, he’d been tempted to. A few years before, five demigods somehow got over the Enclosure, spent a night outside the Seraglio, and returned. They’d subsequently perished at the Master’s hands.
    The Enclosure surrounded the entire Seraglio. It stretched from the Wall at the canyon’s front, up both sides to the very top of the canyon. Constructed of gray and brown stone, it stood forty feet tall and actually leaned inward at an angle that would prevent anyone from climbing it from the inside. Wrend had never seen the opposite side of the Enclosure, but understood that thick thorn bushes grew all along its base and even up its side. Along the top, metal spikes protruded straight up.
    Beyond it, steep canyon walls stretched high into the air. They towered over everything. Wrend had never known a day without their presence, watching over him with their swaths