Page 260 of The Mortal Trials

I push off the ground. My stomach catches the branch, and Hazi grunts as he grabs the back of my bodysuit and hauls me up. I wrap my arms around the wood and swing my leg over to straddle it, raising my legs out of the path of whatever is chasing me.

A creature darts under me, screaming and bucking as I catch my breath.

It’s a wild boar.

A boar the size of a pony.

Now I understand my mother’s warning. I feel like I might vomit on the gnarled and knotted muscles of its back, like the buckled roots of the trees knitting this forest together. Dark spikes line its coarse coat. Its tusks are long and yellow, sharp and bloody at the end. Foam leaks from the corners of its mouth.

Hazi yells and snaps a finger in front of my face. “Callalie!”

I snap out of the daze, refusing to let the horror of this trial in and focus on getting out of here. I push my body upright. “Sorry. Thanks.”

Hazi nods once.

I’m not sure why he helped me. The other members of his alliance – namely, Torsten – won’t approve. “Who else is here?”

“I don’t know, but the boar targets anyone who touches the ground.” He crouches on the swooping branch, perfectly balanced and still. “It infects whomever it gores.”

“Infects?”

A nod. “One of the unchampioned men landed just after I did, but he didn’t make it to a tree in time, and the beast tore into him.” His brows knit. “It could have killed him, but it didn’t. After it gored him, the boar ran away. I climbed down to help, but before I left this limb, the guy got up and started stumbling that way, through the wood.” He points behind us. “His leg was shredded, and he just walked away like he felt nothing. He passed under the tree again just a while ago with foam built in the corners of his mouth, like the boar.” Hazi’s amber eyes dart toward every sound, watchful. “So, yes. Infected.”

He’s quiet for a moment, holding up a finger to his lips. I don’t hear anything.

The boar can’t reach us if we’re in the trees, but an infected mortal who can walk despite his wound might be able to climb. “Where’s the portal?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Have you seen anyone else? Do you know if Koda’s here?”

He runs a hand over his shaved head. “I haven’t seen anyone else other than that man. I tried running between the trees, but every time I sprint to another, the boar charges me. I don’t know if that means most contestants aren’t here yet, or if its ability to hunt is preternatural.”

A gods-blessed, diseased boar that infects the people it injures.

If Koda’s not here, it would be for the best, but what if he appears and the boar finds him before I do? Or before I can reach him? “We have to kill it.”

Hazi’s brow arcs. “We?”

I shrug, thinking of Daedalus. “That’s what ended the last trial.”

“I only have this dagger. And Koda has your spear.”

I pull out the black glass shard. “I have this.”

“What is it?”

“Obsidian. It’s probably sharper than your knife.”

He shakes his head, unconvinced. “Using short blades will require us to get close to the beast. If the boar bites or gets his tusks into us, we’ll be frothing at the mouth, wandering these woods until we die. We’ll try to harm our friends, and I don’t want to do that. And I certainly don’t want to be left behind for that boar to eat us down to the teeth.”

“To the teeth?”

He nods. “Swine will eat every inch of a human body. Bone. Sinew. But never the teeth.”

I don’t ask how he knows that. I don’t want to know. I look up, wondering what to do. And see the answer.

“We can make spears with smaller branches.” Mamá had cut her shirt and used it to bind the end of the obsidian shard. “We could tie this and your knife to longer sticks. Or sharpen the ends of some of them with our blades.”