“I can still carry your pack,” Jayme said, even though it was already slung across her back.
“I can manage.” Vi held out her hand. “I’m certainly not going to be attempting to hunt anymore.”
Jayme just shrugged, starting into the forest, Vi’s pack still over her shoulder. Ellene and Vi shared a look, a non-verbal agreement that sometimes it was best not to even attempt argument when Jayme had made up her mind. Ellene started first behind their friend, and Vi followed.
“At least now we have a good excuse for why we’re taking the whole four days,” Ellene mused, clearly trying to gild the tension with a silver lining.
“I’m sure they expected us to take the whole time regardless.” Jayme glanced over her shoulder, as if making sure they were still following. “You two will always run to the end of whatever leash you’re given.”
“I think I should take offense to that.” Ellene’s tone clearly conveyed she didn’t.
The two continued on talking, but Vi stayed focused on her feet and the ground below her.
What had happened in those ruins?
Small tremors still shook her hands, and she wished Jayme had let her carry her pack so she’d have something to hold on to. Instead, she balled them into fists, trying to use the tension to still the shaking. The embers within her were now an outright blaze.
She stared down at her fists as if waiting for them to ignite with the raw power that was steadily filling her.Fists. It reminded her of her father’s motion in her vision.
“What is it, Ellene?” Jayme had stopped walking. Vi had been so lost in her thoughts that she almost went face-first into Ellene’s back, who had also stopped dead in her tracks.
“What’s wrong?” Vi rested her hand on Ellene’s shoulder to jolt her from her thoughts.
Ellene gazed eastward, the same direction the bird had when it’d been initially spooked. The movement was so similar, so instinctual, that Vi knew instantly the correlation was not by chance. Whatever the animal had sensed then, Ellene sensed now.
“What is it?”
“Something big.” Ellene crouched down, digging her fingers into the earth. She closed her eyes. There was a quiet pulsing of magic rippling out from her. “It’s odd…”
“What is?”
She seemed startled, as if she’d somehow not realized she’d spoken aloud. “There’s an odd feeling in the trees around us, all of them.”
“Oddhow?”
“As though the earth itself is shuddering.”
“How can the earth shudder?” Jayme asked
“I don’t know.” Ellene’s tone matched Vi’s thoughts. A flight of birds took to the skies in the distance, punching through the canopy of trees with chaotic squawking. The branches of the trees swayed and Vi wondered if the rumbling she felt was only in her mind, brought on by Ellene’s words.
“What do you think it is?” Vi was almost afraid to ask.
“Nothing good.” Ellene went from perfect stillness to motion. She sprinted past them, calling over her shoulder. “We need to go, now!”
They didn’t question, running immediately behind her.
A rustling in the distance grew to a cacophony of snapping tree branches and crunching undergrowth. With a roar, a hulking noru cat burst into view. Vi turned, and froze with a mixture of fear, fascination, and stomach-churning recognition.
The beast oozed white globs from open sores thatploppedsickly to the ground. It was as if every drop of blood in its veins had been replaced by the grotesque liquid. Its eyes were glossed over and pale, with familiar red streaks bulging in them. In fact, the magic-filled veins pulsed upward from its fur across its body, casting an ominous glow on the tree bark around it.
“The White Death,” Jayme uttered from behind her.
It suddenly made sense. What Vi had seen in her vision, what she was confronted with now. They’d said the plague was in the North. But it hadn’t seemed real until the moment she stared it in its unnatural, white eyes.
“Grandmother,” Ellene whimpered, her voice nearly as frozen with fear as Vi’s feet.
The beast slammed into a tree, as though it were drunk. A new wound burst open in the center of its head, as though its skin had gone brittle; chunks fell off like chips from a sculptor’s chisel. It shook its head, swayed, and picked itself back up slowly.
