“Follow me!” I took off, running in the direction Finn’s rope guided me.
After that, it became a nightmare of which Hell Gate could only dream.
The only thing that saved us was the darkness. I sprinted from under the avalanche of depraved souls. Justice and I fought side by side, while Luvic roared and batted the depraved back. Gerald stayed in Luvic’s wake, darting out every now and then to jab and then retreat. But the darkness led to confusion, and the gluttony for cruelty led the depraved to turn on each other.
The Den was a riot, and the thunderous black clouds pressed closer, urging more depravity.
“Don’t look!” Justice shouted. “Don’t look! Just keep going.”
I wouldn’t. I couldn’t look. Even the quick, running glances I had would haunt me for the rest of my life.
We burst through the gate and sprinted across the field, passing the freestanding columns. The golden rope led toward the forest. I veered across the grass, aiming for the darkened trees.
“That’s the forest! That’s where the beasts are!” Gerald yelled, yanking on my arm and tugging me to a stop. “We can’t. We’ll die. We may as well go back to the city! Idiot! You’ve killed us. I should’ve handed you to them as soon as you fell from the clouds. I should’ve left you clueless and pushed you into the arena. Idiot! We’ll all die?—”
“Shut up!” Justice grabbed his shirt and leaned two feet down to face him, breathing hard. “Shut up.”
Luvic snarled. Behind him, I saw at least a hundred people rushing out the gates after us.
“Justice. Come on!”
He dropped Gerald’s shirt, gave him a disgusted look, and then sprinted after me.
The closer we got to the forest, the hotter it became, until I was so covered in sweat I felt like I was dangling in the steam above a pot of boiling water. Above, the clouds were so close that if I jumped, I’d be able to scrape my fingers through them.
The clouds hung over us like a black silk sheet covering a colony of things. We couldn’t see the things, but we could discern their shape and their movement and the way they hungrily followed us.
The rope led into the forest, and I followed it, sprinting into the dark woods. The trees were old, with gnarled gray bark and gray moss that hung from their branches like moldering funeral clothes on a skeleton. The ground was covered in rotting wood and a creeping orange fungus that sneezed every time I stepped on it, sending up noxious spores.
Unfortunately, the leaf mold and rotten-woods scent wasn’t masked by green apples and mint. Instead, I could detect a hint of star jasmine. Every now and then, the trees flickered from bare-limbed skeletons to beautiful, full-leafed oak trees, and the orange fungus morphed into daisies and black-eyed Susans.
I jumped over a rotting log and ducked beneath a branch. Next to me, Justice swiped through a cobweb. I glanced over at him.
“The juice is wearing off.”
He nodded, his jaw clenched. “Yeah. You really got a way out of here?”
I pointed. “Just ahead.” Then I turned to Gerald. “Can we have another shot of your juice?”
The slipshot spat on the forest floor. “Thanks to you idiots, I dropped it. We have about five minutes before we think it’s all rainbows and daisies in here. The forest slug’ll eat us, and we’ll like it. Or, heck, those depraved chasing us will tear us apart, and we’ll laugh like we’re being tickled. Or maybe the clouds’ll get us and?—”
Luvic snarled and bared his teeth at Gerald, and he finished with, “Friggin’ Bard monsters.”
We ran further in. I ignored the fluttering of the blue-winged butterflies and the clusters of wildflowers.
“Here!” I pointed to a tall tree. Unlike the rest of the forest trees, the clouds didn’t touch this one. In fact, they made a vortex around it. The tree stretched at least two hundred feet into the air, as tall as the Merchant’s apartment building. It wasn’t malevolent feeling like the rest of the trees. Instead, it had a strange humming energy.
“This is it.” I pointed up. “We have to get to the top.”
That was where my rope ended. Which meant the other half of the rope was outside the Den.
Luvic nudged my hand with his head.
“Jackaltooth can’t climb,” Justice said, and I didn’t know if he was happy about it or not.
Luvic dropped Last to the ground and sat down on his haunches. He stared at me with wide orange eyes. An itch crawled down my neck. If the brooch made it so Luvic did what I said, then . . .
“Luvic?”
