He sobbed as he ran, but could not stop. Ares’s voice was a command that sent fear straight into his spinal cord. Fear kept him going, fear made it impossible to think of anything but running, watching the ground in front of his feet so the roots and rotting trees didn’t trip him. One of the dogs was running alongside of him and for a second one thought broke through the sound of every frantic survival instinct screaming RUN RUN RUN at him - and for a second Kaden saw the dog that thought that’s Nikkos, Ronan showed me pictures, that's the puppy he was training-
Nikkos snapped at his heels and Kaden yelped, darting sideways and smashing his shoulder into a thin tree - he screamed and so did the baby, and Kaden spun and looked back at Ares -
At the towering beast of a man, impossibly huge, twice the size he should have been. A man dressed for war, the sky red behind him, his armies amassed behind him. Kaden could hear war drums, Kaden could hear bloodthirsty cries. All the air left his lungs as his knees gave out and he grabbed a tree to stop himself falling, wrapped his other arm around the baby, palm curled over his tiny head.
He blinked - or his vision blacked out for a moment from fear, and when he looked again Ares was just Ares, huge still, but not huger than a normal man. Yet the vision of the warlord in the war helmet, carrying a sword the length of Kaden’s leg, that stayed superimposed onto Kaden’s vision.
The feeling of being pursued by an army, thousands strong, that stayed with him. He did not know if the war drums were real or if the terrifying sound was just his heart beating for his life in his chest.
He could not stop fleeing, but now he was moving backward, both arms wrapped around the baby, both eyes petrified and stuck on Ares, his feet groping for solid ground behind him as he moved but not stopping, because he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t stop, Ares would kill him if he stopped and he didn’t want to die like this -