Page 3179 -- CCLXXI.

Chapter Two Hundred Seventy-One: ‘Beware the Doormen...’
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Hector sensed a change immediately. He couldn’t tell why or how. It wasn’t his eyes that alerted him. Nor the Scarf. By all accounts, Banda was just sitting up there in the air, flapping his smoky wings and biding his time.

But there was something very off. Hector could just feel it in his mind and in his gut. Banda was suddenly different, somehow. Not in any visible way.

Was it aura? He might’ve asked Pauline if there’d been time for it.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t.

Up to now, Hector had been hoping against hope that the guy would just fucking leave already. It hadn’t looked likely at first, but with the way that Banda had been edging farther and farther away from Warrenhold, Hector had slowly been starting to believe that all these silly tricks and mind games might’ve actually been working on this monster. Slowly but surely, perhaps.

This new feeling changed all that. And when the Raptor of Kortan loosed such a thunderous, inhuman cry that the iron walls of the decoy castle shuddered, Hector knew for certain that he was right.

This fight was not yet done.

Banda surged back downward, an arrow-like cloud of smoke and flesh, coming straight toward him this time.

Hector still hadn’t revealed himself, but that probably didn’t matter at this point, did it? Banda could sense him, couldn’t he? There was something in the Raptor’s disposition or aura that made that so obvious.

Banda was coming for him. The intent might as well have been a shimmering blade for how apparent it was.

Alright.

The very thing that Hector had been trying to avoid this whole time was now happening. He couldn’t stop it, anymore.

So he had to face it. There was no choice.

A direct fight with an enemy that he was not at all a match for. An enemy that he stood no chance against, quite frankly.

There were other ideas in the back of his mind. Of course there were. He could try to buy time. Maybe Abbas would show up and save him. Word should have gotten to the Sunsmith by now, surely. It wasn’t impossible.

Hector wasn’t rejecting that plan totally. It sounded pretty great, honestly.

But there was something else at play, too. These auras, he supposed it was. His and Banda’s. They were throwing a wrench into everything. He didn’t understand them, but he knew they were affecting him. Threatening him. Trying to consume him.