“Help me,” the woman cried, wrapping her fingers around his ankle.
He raised his gaze to the branch-covered canopy, only to find the nocturnal creatures gone. They’d fled.
The woman wept harder.
His nostrils flared with the urge to kick her away. It was clear she was only a soul. Her touch felt like a wet feather, despite the grip she had on his leg. Her fingernails were like pricks of straw against his skin.
Finnian had also used this spell several times, accustomed to the black-and-white filtered view it provided. Within it, bodies were solid, tangible. The same could not be said for the woman. When he looked at her, she appeared grainy and transparent, almost wraith-like.
Her wounds were not real in a physical sense. Whatever had attacked her was not after flesh to sate its hunger. It had intended to devour hersouluntil there was nothing left but a memory. He needed to think fast before it?—
A beast on all fours stepped out of the shadows behind her, its spine curled and hunched like a hairless, mutated werewolf. Its thin, elongated legs, and pale gray skin stretched thin over bone, every vertebrae beneath it visible.
Fuck me.
He recognized the creature as an Achlys.
Souls who disturb the realm’s peace ended up in the Serpentine Forest, where they would eventually devour one another and become beasts who feasted on more souls—a macabre cycle.
Its small eyes glowed white, and its mouth, shaped like a pear, exposed folds of teeth that reminded Finnian too much ofthe executioners. In the grasp of its twine-bone fingers was the woman’s leg.
It moved at an unreliable speed.
One blink, a step.
Another blink, four steps.
Its form flickered in and out of focus until it was an arm’s length away from Finnian.
The woman at his feet screeched, the sound piercing his temporary shock.
He flexed his fingers. The silent command of his magic slung the half-eaten soul a few feet away as he ripped his other arm up, throwing the beast backwards and against a nearby tree trunk.
It let out an ear-piercing cry that quivered the ground beneath Finnian’s feet.
His stomach dropped. It was calling the others.
Finnian took off in a sprint. The tunnel of branches did not relent and the further he went, strewn body parts greeted him.
Voices of the souls cried out all around him, muffled and distorted without his hearing aid.
H—l—p m?—!
D—leave—e?—!
Ta—m—wi—you!
He came to a stop at an intersection of tunnels, spinning to gauge each one, crushingly aware of the malevolent presence behind him.
It chilled his spine. He ducked before the monster could grab him in its clutches.
He brutally flicked his hand, throwing the horrid thing against the tunnel walls. The interwoven limbs moaned against the Achlys’s weight as it slunk down onto the ground.
Finnian’s breath went shallow. He gave the tunnels another look, casting a double take to the one on his right, quickly noting the peony standing sprightly in its mouth.
An elated sense of relief burst like a blueberry in his chest.
Without looking back, he fled towards it.
