It was through those fingertips that they drew out magic from another person.
“This is madness—wraiths?!”someone cried.
“We don’t even have weapons!”
No, we weren’t given weapons this time around at all.
“Do not use magic against them,” I said, more a reminder to myself than anything. But these creatures would only grow stronger if we attacked with magic, and it was bad enough that they werehere.We didn’t need them to be stronger.
Right now, they were dragging their feet, holding ontothe tree trunk with those strange hands as they slowly made their way toward us.
“What else is there to use?” This was Anika. “What in the Everstill are we supposed to do?!”
“Run,” Russ said. “Everybody, run!”
As if on cue, the wraiths charged for us from all sides, all at once.
We ran.
39
The wraiths didn’t follow.
We ran back where we came from, made it all the way to the beginning—and the timewraiths just…disappeared. One second they were running after us, and the next they were just shadows.
“They’re gone,” Mimi whispered when we stopped—we were almost to the doorway that led to the cage. “They’re not following us anymore. They’re gone.”
“See? You woke them.”
A few people screamed as we jumped—could have been me as well. The voice was familiar now—it was Blue, the flower, but it still caught us all by surprise.
Eyes and mouths and teeth on the flowerheads of both of them, Blue and Yellow. They’d awoken again, and they weretsk-tsk-tsk-ing us as they shook their petaled heads.
I kept expecting them tonotbe there each time I blinked.
“You could have just told us, you know?” said Anika with her hands on her hips. “We would have been prepared!”
“Wedidtell you,” Yellow insisted, and though their voices were slightly strange, they were both undoubtedly female.
“We said to keep your mouths shut—you didn’t listen,” Blue insisted.
“Are they really timewraiths?”
“Who would bring actual timewraiths into a confined space like this tokillus?”
“Do they really not care about us at all?!”
“Hello?!Somebody must be seeing this—they have timewraiths in here with us!” This from Seth who was spinning around and looking about as he screamed, hoping the casters who projected this whole thing to the audience outside caught him.
But even if they did, they wouldn’t care. That two of the Hands were already dead proved it—nobody out there cared whether we lived or died.
“Guys, focus,” March said, and he was right beside me, but I’d been watching the shadows so intently I hadn’t even noticed.
“We can figure out another way,” said Mimi. “We can just go…another way.”
“Yes,” said Russ. “Let’s just avoid that dark tunnel and go another way.”
It seemed like a decent plan, and I’d have approved, but…
