“Maybe.” He shifted slightly, sitting straighter. “Or maybe you’re challenging me because you know I’m right.”
Vi shifted, caught between wanting to pour out her soul to him, and bolt from the cave to avoid his scrutiny. She’d spent so much time trying to get to him that Vi hadn’t really thought about what it would be like when they were together… all the time. When she couldn’t dismiss him with a thought or wave of her hand. When his eyes continued to bore into her soul long after she wanted the relief of hiding from things she herself wasn’t yet ready to address.
“Vi—”
“I should get to foraging, while there’s still plenty of good light.” Vi pulled away quickly. Fleeing from her problems would be her choice.
“Wait—” Taavin leaned forward, started to get up, then stopped mid-motion with a wince of pain. His back rested heavily once more on the wall behind him as he grabbed both of his sides. “Vi, I’m just trying—”
Vi ignored him, pretending she couldn’t hear. Once more, she squeezed out into the sunlight, promptly starting upstream.
He was just trying to help. She knew he was. She paused to look back to the rocky entrance of their cave, briefly debating whether or not to return immediately and make amends.
Would it feel good, or terrible, to expose the angry darkness that swirled around in her now? What would he think when he learned of how she’d usedjuth calt?
Vi turned, continuing on, her back to the cave mouth.
At first, she wasn’t very active in her foraging. It was more of a walk to try to clear her head. But the more time that passed, the less clear-headed she felt. If anything, things got murkier.
Mirroring her mindset, dusk fell.
“Twilight in the Twilight Forest,” Vi muttered. Her feet slowed once more.
The world had certainly taken on an unnatural quality. The ashen trees looked even more devoid of color. Their leaves had become pale—not a fiery red as one might expect with the fading sun. And they cast long shadows on the forest floor, turning it dark gray. It was as though the whole world had been expunged of color and steeped in drab.
The trees in the distance seemed to waver briefly. Vi rubbed her eyes and squinted. Had she only imagined the ruler-straight trunks wobbling?
She stepped away from the rocky stream, scrambling up a large boulder, and started into the trees.
Her first thought was Fallor and his strange magic—the shift. Perhaps he had followed them into the forest despite being exiled? Vi balled her hand into a fist, curling the spark under her fingers.
Taavin had said they couldn’t use Lightspinning without risking detection. Would her fire be all right? It would have to be, because she wasn’t about to fight Fallor bare-handed.
The forest was uncomfortably silent. Nothing but gray sameness as far as the eye could see. She turned, glancing over her shoulder—
The stream was gone.
Her heart raced in earnest now. She couldn’t hear the stream over the deafening stillness of the woods. She couldn’t see it between the countless trees that seemed to close in on her. Vi spun in place. All she had to do was turn right around and go back the way she came.
It wasn’t Fallor, anyway—it couldn’t be. Perhaps it was some other morphi. Though Taavin had cautioned her to stay away.
As she spun in place, something caught her eye—another bit of wobbling, this time over the split trunk of a fell tree.
“What is that?” she whispered, slowly drawing near. The leaves crunched under her shuffling footsteps, but Vi could barely hear it. There was a murmuring buzz at the edges of her hearing, the closer she got to the oddity.
It was a tree trunk, split from the inside out. The smell of rot suddenly filled her nose, as though the tree had let out a dying breath. But the aroma was not deep and earthy as one would expect. It was rank and choking, like carrion. She would’ve long fled were it not for an unnerving fascination with the anomaly—as though she were looking at something she shouldn’t.
Tiny sparks of red lightning jumped between each gaping crack in the bark, leaving black spots in their wake. Above it, the air seemed alive, shifting and writhing, distorting the trees beyond. There was a snap, a pop, and Vi could nearly make out lights where there had been none. It was as if the air were tearing open to expose the darkness that existed beyond the veil of her reality. A whole city of darkness, waiting.
Vi squinted and leaned closer in an effort to make out more details before the air shifted again and the city was gone.
She leaned too close.
A tiny bolt of lightning extended upward, striking her fingertip. Though it couldn’t have been more than a pin-prick, it felt as though it darted under her skin, crackling across her muscles from finger to shoulder to brow, all the way down to her toes.
She must’ve let out a scream, but Vi couldn’t be certain, because the murmuring in her ears magnified with the cracks of lightning that struggled to break through her flesh. Suddenly it was as if a thousand people were talking over each other at once, all trying to get to her. They said countless names, rapid fire, over a thousand muttered conversations Vi couldn’t make out.
She gripped the sides of her face, trying to cover her ears and mute the excruciating, deafening noise. Slowly layering atop them all was a terrible rhythm, a singular repeated word, louder by the moment.
