As the questions plague me, I come to an abrupt halt several feet away from the shadow as Thane rushes around to face me. “It isn’t real, Zaira!” He points sternly toward the silhouette behind him. “It’s a trick of the mind! Delchester Forest is notorious for it! It preys on the vulnerable so the creatures living here stay fed. It steals your thoughts, your worries, yourfears, and turns them into something it can use to consume you!”
“But I—I swear I thought it was him.” I can still feel that heaviness in my stomach, the words echoing in my brain tocome closer,tosave him. Something is continuously urging me forward, demanding that I keep moving. “I don’t know what’s happening, Thane. I’m sorry. It’s like…like I can’t control my body.”
Help your friend. It’s the right thing to do. Just take a few more steps. A few more steps,it repeats.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying my hardest to ignore the voice, but my feet move anyway. One step followed by another.
Thane presses a firm hand to my chest to keep me still. “What do you mean you can’t control your body?” His voice is laced with confusion.
I hear footsteps behind me and open my eyes again as Rynthea and Algar approach. They left Zephra and Pearl where it was safe. “We need to get back on the middle pathright now.” Rynthea glares at both of us, clearly irritated.
“Zaira, let’s go.” Thane wraps a large hand around mine. It’s the first time he’s touched my hand and held it in a protective way. I look up with a quickening heartbeat, wanting to see if he’s aware of it, too, but I gasp instead because the shadow is closer to us now. My heart booms as the silhouette grows larger,larger, until it towers right behind Thane.
“Thane, look out!” Algar crows.
But it’s too late.
The shadow forms into something else entirely, and the glow of the light fades, wrapping us in thick, foggy darkness.
Releasing my hand and turning, Thane swings his sword, but the shadow rapidly descends to the ground and fastens around his ankle. That’s when I realize it isn’t a shadow at all but a tentacle—slimy, gray, and barnacled.
“Fuck,” Thane mutters as he looks down, as if he half expected this to happen.
With a yank from the tentacle, Thane falls to his stomach. And in the blink of an eye, he’s dragged away, disappearing into the darkness.
Chapter 19
“Thane!” I scream.
“No!” Algar roars.
“Zaira! Get back!” Rynthea grabs my arm and tugs me aside just as another tentacle comes flying out of the darkness. She cuts it in half with her scythesword before locking eyes on Algar. “Take her and hide!” She stomps past us and runs into the fog after Thane.
Algar catches my wrist and runs, guiding us between a thick cluster of trees and boulders. He aims for the middle path where Pearl and Zephra are, but something slams into the tree in front of us. I scream, and Algar ducks as another tentacle blocks our way.
“This way!” Algar releases me, running in the opposite direction. The ground starts to turn to mush beneath my feet the farther we run. When we reach a large boulder, Algar tugs me aside so we can hide behind it.
“What the shadows is that thing?” My breaths come out swift and heavy as my heart hammers against my rib cage.
“I don’t know!” Algar scans the perimeter with frantic eyes. “Gods—see, this is why I hate this death forest!”
In the distance, Rynthea unleashes a battle cry. As the fog begins to clear, I peer around the edge of the boulder to see if I can spot Thane and Rynthea. I shouldn’t have, though, because what I see causes fear to swallow me whole.
Sickly, glowing yellow eyes burn through the remaining wisps of fog. Attached to those eyes is a monster that emerges from the cloudy waters of what appears to be a marsh or swamp stretching beyond it. Its skin is a thick, blotchy, grayish green. With broad shoulders, it’s built like a giant, and its arms are the size of tree trunks. Worst of all, it has tentacles coming from all areas of its body, even its head. Some of the tentacles end with claws. Others don’t. One of the clawless tentacles has Thane wrapped up tight by the midsection. He dangles upside down, grunting as he continuously swipes his sword at the tentacle but misses each time.
The monster gnashes its overly sharp teeth at Thane’s face, but Thane prevents the incoming bite by hurling a blazing gold sphere at its head. With a deafening screech, the monster drops him, sending him plummeting into the swampy water.
While the monster is distracted, Rynthea lunges into the air and cuts several tentacles off with her scythesword. The monster roars as the severed tentacles create loud splashes and sink into the water. She darts around the border of the swamp, slicing at several more.
Breaking through the water’s surface, Thane swims toward the nearest edge and catches his breath. When he manages to climb out, he’s covered in swamp weeds and slime. He shoots to his feet, then snatches out his other sword with a scowl. The monster attempts to grab him again, but he dodges each tentacle, cuts at the ones in his way, and doesn’t stop until he mounts a boulder and flies toward the beast with a whisper of gold and shadows guiding him. He lands on top of the creature’s shoulder.
One of the monster’s tentacles slaps down on the boulder Algar and I are near, and as if it can sense us, it reaches in my direction. I scream as the tentacle unfurls, revealing bumpy, undulating suction cups. Algar grunts as he stabs it with a dagger, and the monster screeches again.
I jump over the gushing tentacle, fleeing with Algar. There aren’t many places to hide, though. The swamp extends in all directions, each path blocked by random tentacles, and the other boulders are much smaller. The tree trunks are too thin to hide behind, but something tells me if we keep running in random directions, we’ll encounter monsters much worse than this one.
How the shadows do we get back to the main path from here?
We stop behind a tree that barely hides us and listen to the unnerving sounds of the monster squawking, Rynthea hollering, and Thane yelling as he fights.
