I couldn’t help it. I yelped.
Immediately Alastor’s eyes went wide, and he grabbed me and clamped his hand over my lips again, trying to muffle the sound. But he was just making it worse, causing more agony with every touch, and even though I tried to swallow down my whimpers they escaped anyway, spilling through his fingers as I shook against his grip.
He released me, finally realizing he wasn’t helping, and spun around, scanning the forest on all sides of us. In the distance, I heard voices call out, but I had no idea if they belonged to friends or foes.
Alastor yanked his sword out of its sheath, positioning himself to swing at anyone who came from the direction of the voices.Foes, then.
“Run,” he said in a low voice, without even looking at me. “South. As fast as you can.”
I had no idea what directionsouthwas, but even through the haze of my pain I assumed it wasaway from the voices.And I hurt too much to question his command. I just obeyed.
I turned and sprinted through the trees, keeping to the edge of the forest without exposing myself in the wide open of the plain. Branches whipped me in the face as I ran, and shrubs and undergrowth kept catching me by the ankles, but the main thing that slowed me down was theshiver. My legs were shaking so much that my knees collapsed beneath me more than once, and my vision was so cloudy that it felt like I was trying to see underwater—which might not have been too far from the truth, because I think I was crying.
I ran until I couldn’t run anymore, until theshiverenveloped me completely, drowning out everything else. I might have run ten yards or a thousand, I couldn’t have said—all I knew was that my legs no longer wanted to work at all, and my skin felt like it was falling off, and I fell.
I didn’t have the strength to get back up. All I could do was lie on the ground and scream in agony.
This time it might actually kill me.I hadn’t even considered that this might happen when I jumped through the portal—I’d been too intent on saving my own life at the time—but now I realized I’d done something very stupid. Even though Iknewthat I experienced a strong, painful reaction when overexposed to the essence of Therador, I’d stillleaped right into the world itself.This place wasmadeof that essence, and I’d offered myself up as a sacrifice without even realizing it.
My skull was shaking now. My skin might as well have been completely peeled away. There was only suffering—and the madness that lay on the other side.
I want to die.At least in death, there’d be some reprieve. In death, I could escape. I could—
Wait.
Something about the wordescapetriggered something in my mind, inspired a glimmer of hope even through the pain.
If I’d made a bridge to this world, I might be able to make oneback.
Desperate, I tried to reach for whatever “power” I’d tapped into back in my own world. I couldn’t remember exactly how I’d done it the first time. Something about going deep inside, below the pain…
I was in too much agony to think straight. It was building up inside me, pulsing through me, filling every little crevice in my body. Pretty soon there would be nowhere else for it to go. It would split me from the inside out.
I screamed.
And then something…exploded.
At first, I thoughtIhad blown up, that theessenceor whatever had finally blasted me into a million bits. It would have explained why the pain was suddenly gone—I was clearly dead.
But when I opened my eyes, I was alive and in one piece. That was more than I could say for the forest around me, though.
About ten yards in every direction, everything—trees, underbrush, even stones—had been blown to smithereens, like a bomb had gone off. Some of it still glowed with a faint, greenish light.
And the zone of destruction radiated from me.
What the…?
I scrambled to my feet. The pain had gone, but I was shaking for an entirely different reason now. Even my welts and cuts had stopped burning, and when I looked down at my arms I was shocked to see that my injuries were mostly gone, with only a few mild reddish patches to show where they’d been. The cuts on my hands were pale scars, freshly healed.
A twig snapped behind me, and I swung around, expecting to see Alastor. Instead, I found myself facing half a dozen people, men and women, all on horseback. All—except one—wore various shades of brown and green, and each had the same strange symbol stitched into their clothing right over their heart. The final rider was completely covered by a hooded cloak of smoky gray.
I stared at them, unsure of what, exactly, I was supposed to do in this situation.
And then the cloaked figure raised their arm, pointing toward me.
Run.
I didn’t know what was going on, but my instincts took over. I turned and ran, as fast as my wobbly legs could take me.
