by Aaron Ehasz
Slash!
She beheaded the colossal leech. It crumpled to the ground, where it thumped and moaned a few times. Then it was still.
Rayla leaned over with her hands on her knees and tried to catch her breath. That was too close. If it had been a split second faster, she would have been toast. She wiped the sweat from her brow. At least it’s over now.
Aaaaiiiieeeee! Aaaiiiieeeee!
A cacophony of ear-splitting squeals erupted from the direction of the leech.
“It can’t still be alive,” Rayla said, turning back around.
And she was right—the colossal leech was dead, but thousands of baby leeches were squirming out of its severed head, swarming the ground. In no time at all, they had slithered over Rayla’s legs and were climbing up her body.
“Help! Help me!” Rayla shouted.
Callum sprang into action. With self-assured hands, he held the primal stone out and traced the wind-breath rune in the air.
“Aspiro!” he shouted. He took a deep breath, then blew all the tiny leeches off Rayla.
“Yes!” Callum said when the spell died down. “How ’bout that? I knew ‘Whoosh’ should have been part of the plan!”
There it is. That’s our tree,” Ellis said. They had continued their climb toward the rim and the mist had lessened a bit. In the distance up ahead, a large lone tree stuck out from some craggy rocks. Moonlight lit up its lush leaves and wide trunk.
Ezran was tired—more than tired—but the sight of the tree gave him a burst of energy. Callum apparently got one too.
“We’re almost there. We can do this, team!” Callum said. “We can make it to the rim. We’re going to find the healer and save the egg!”
Just then, Ava whined and looked at Ezran with downcast eyes. Ezran put his hand on the wolf’s soft fur and listened closely. But his heart broke when he heard what Ava had to say.
“Oh no,” Ezran said.
“What is it?” Callum asked.
Ezran shook his head. “I have really bad news.” He walked a few feet away from the group and then turned to face them. “Even if we make it to the rim, it doesn’t matter. There is no miracle healer.”
“What?” Rayla said. “What are you talking about?”
“Of course there’s a healer,” Callum said.
“No, there isn’t.” Ezran didn’t know how he could say it more clearly.
“Why are you saying this?” Rayla asked.
Ezran looked at Ava, then back to the group. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Ellis and Rayla stared at Ezran with a mixture of sadness and confusion, but his brother glared at him coldly. After all this time, Callum still didn’t understand.
“There is no miracle healer. I’m sorry,” Ezran said again. He knelt beside the dimly flickering egg and stroked its shell. They had been so close.
“Stop being mysterious,” Callum said. “If you’re going to make a claim like that, you owe everyone an explanation.”
Ezran paused. He was pretty sure his brother didn’t actually want him to share his secret with the others, but since he’d brought it up …
“Okay,” he said. “Ava told me—”
“Oh, here we go,” Callum said, rolling his eyes.
“What, what is it?” Rayla asked.
“I can understand animals,” Ezran said. He gave Callum a look.
“Well, did you consult Bait about the healer?” Callum asked. “Bait might disagree. Or maybe we can find an opinionated squirrel around here somewhere?”
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” Ezran said. His voice had an I-told-you-so tone but he didn’t care. He plopped down on the ground and crossed his arms.
“Ezran, I’m listening to you,” Rayla said softly. She knelt down next to him. “But it is pretty hard to believe. How is it that you understand animals?”
Ezran relaxed a little; Rayla sounded like she actually wanted to know. He turned and spoke only to her. “I’ve always been different,” he said. “I don’t really ‘get’ other kids, and it’s … so hard for me to fit in.”
“Eh. That’s okay. Fitting in is overrated,” Rayla said.
“But with animals? Somehow, I have this … connection,” Ezran continued. “And a few years ago, I realized I could understand what they were saying.”
Ellis had come down off Ava and was listening intently now too. Callum had walked a ways off and was kicking pebbles.
“Can you believe this?” he yelled.
“Why would Ezran lie?” Rayla shot back.
“Oh, I don’t know. Because he’s a kid? Because it’s fun? Because he’s afraid to go up the mountain?”
“I’m not afraid,” Ezran said. And it was true. He knew Callum understood that too.
“Come on, Ez, tell the truth.” Callum turned to the group. “Ezran made this same claim a few years ago and I asked him to prove it. He told me that a group of raccoons had told him about a treasure behind a secret waterfall. So, we followed their ‘directions’ perfectly.” He looked at Ezran. “But when we got there, was there a treasure under the waterfall?”
“No,” Ezran admitted.
“But did my underwear get soaked?” Callum asked.
“Yes,” Ezran said.
“Case closed.” Callum kicked a big rock.
“The raccoons were being mischievous,” Ezran said. He’d told Callum that a million times. “I have since learned you cannot trust raccoons.”
Callum threw up his hands. “This is ridiculous! See, Ez, this is why you can’t make friends.”
A lump formed in Ezran’s throat. He had friends, and they were standing right here.
“Callum, back off,” Rayla said firmly.
“Do you believe me, Rayla?” Ezran asked.
“Does it matter?” she said.
Ezran considered this. Yes, he decided. It did matter.
“I believe you, Ez,” Ellis said. “But I also know the miracle healer is real. Because I have my Ava.” She hugged the four-legged wolf.
Ezran turned to his brother, but Callum was already moving up the hill. “We need to get to the rim,” he said without looking back. “We’ll find out whether there’s a healer when we get there.”
Some while later, Callum turned the rune cube over and over in his hands as they walked. He felt a little bad he’d been so harsh on Ezran, but the stakes of their mission were high; they couldn’t afford to make decisions based on little kid games. Ezran hadn’t said a word to him since their fight.
He flipped the cube to the side with the Moon rune and just as he expected, it glowed.
“Huh. The higher we walk up this Caldera, the brighter the Moon rune glows,” he said. He held up the cube so everyone could see.
“Here’s a theory,” Rayla said. “The higher we walk, the closer we are to the moon.” She pointed at the sliver of moon above them.
“I don’t know. Something seems different to me,” Callum said. The glow was more intense than when he held it up to Bait or Rayla.
oooooOOOOOOOOooooooo.
Callum jumped. “Ezran, cut that out,” he snapped. “It’s not funny.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Ezran said.
Ellis and Ava stopped in their tracks. “Well, I heard something too,” Ellis said. “Did anybody make a scary, haunted ghost sound?”
Rayla shook her head. “I didn’t make it. But I definitely heard it. And I’ve decided I’m ignoring it. Everyone keep moving.” She started back up the hill and the group followed.
oooooOOOOOOOOoooooooo.
“I heard it again,” Ezran said. “Maybe we should find out what it is.”
No, we should not, Rayla thought. Was it too much to ask to just get to their destination? Her bad hand was throbbing more than ever.
“I’m going to share an old elven proverb with you,” Rayla said, continuing to move up the slope. “When traveling up a mountain trying to save a dying dragon egg and you hear a spooky sound, just keep walking.”
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br /> “Wow, that’s a really specific proverb,” Callum said.
Despite herself, Rayla grinned.
“What if someone needs help?” Ezran asked.
“Ez, you have a good heart,” Rayla said. “It’s super annoying.”
But then Ezran batted his lashes and gave Rayla a wide-eyed, innocent stare.
Uggggggh. The human pipsqueak was probably right.
“Fine, but we shouldn’t all go up there. I’ll check it out. The rest of you stay here and keep the egg safe.”
She unfurled one blade with her good hand and headed off in the direction of the moaning.
Rayla wove her way through the trees, her blade poised and her ears perked. The closer she got to the sound, the stranger the forest became. The rocks and trees around her were shrouded in sticky, weblike strings. Soon, she had to cut through the thickening web with her blade. She slashed the white mess, her good arm getting more tired with each swing.
She cut through a particularly thick mass of web and then suddenly, the moaning was louder than ever.
oooooOOOOOOOOoooooooo.
Rayla shivered at what she saw. There was a human-sized figure wrapped in webbing from head to toe, suspended in a giant net of sticky strings.
Rayla’s heart was in her throat, but her fear gave way to compassion. Whatever was making that sound desperately needed their help. She approached the massive cocoon.
“Turrrrrn baaack,” the unfortunate creature called out.
Startled but undeterred, Rayla stepped closer. “What did you just say?”
“Before it gets you tooooo,” the voice moaned.
Rayla’s heart skipped a beat, but she was not about to leave someone suffering in this state. “I’m not leaving you,” she said. “Don’t worry. Just hang on, I’m going to help.”
Very carefully, Rayla placed her blade against the sac and cut a small slit in the webbing. She was careful that her blades would only penetrate deep enough to cut through the webs without harming whoever was inside.
But to her utter shock, the entire sac collapsed into a pile of dust. Rayla gasped. Whatever had been inside was so fragile, the moment it was exposed to air it perished. She turned and ran in the direction she had come.
As she sprinted back toward the group, she tried to shake the image of the disintegrating creature from her mind, but it played out over and over again. The voice was gone, but whoever it had belonged to, Rayla was sure she had killed it.
Get yourself together, Rayla, she thought, slowing to a jog. At least nothing had attacked her. But what would she tell the group?
By the time she joined the others, Rayla had made a decision.
“So, what was the sound?” Ezran asked.
“It was too late to help it,” Rayla said. “We should get moving.”
Ellis, Ava, and Ezran started up the mountain ahead of Rayla, but Callum lingered.
“Are you okay?” he asked Rayla.
The image of the sac flashed in her mind again, and for some reason, she found she wanted to share what she had seen with Callum, even if she didn’t tell anyone else. “It was horrible, Callum,” she said. “It was barely alive. Crumbled to dust right in front of me. Whatever it was … it was the prey. It’s the predator we need to watch out for.”
Callum nodded—that did seem to be a pattern up here. He felt a sense of dread in his stomach, but he was glad Rayla had told him the truth.
Meanwhile, Ezran had become distracted by a rustling noise. There was the shadow of something in the trees he couldn’t quite make out.
He strained his eyes to see in the darkness, gazing up into the branches. Slowly, the shadow came into focus.
“Arrrrggg!” Ezran screamed. There was a huge glowing face in the trees. It was fierce and skeletal and seemed to drip with slime.
“Ez! What’s wrong?!” Callum yelled, running over to him.
But by the time he reached Ezran, the face had disappeared.
“I … I saw something,” Ezran stammered. “But it’s gone now.”
Ellis nodded; she’d been in Ezran’s shoes before. “Something’s watching us,” she said. “If you guys want to turn back, we can try to find another way to the tree.”
“There’s no turning back,” Callum said. “The egg doesn’t have much time. We press on, no matter what.”
And so they pressed on. Soon, the forest became dense with the white webs Rayla had encountered earlier. Rayla sliced a path through the stickiness but it had become harder and harder to see, and the muscles in her good arm were beginning to shake.
When they ran up against a solid wall of webs, Rayla stopped.
“Can’t you cut through it?” Callum asked.
“Probably better if we can go around it,” she said, wary of laying waste to some monster’s home.
But the web stretched far in both directions. Ava ran up and down its length, sniffing at its base.
“I don’t know if there is an ‘around,’ ” Callum concluded after a moment. “We just need to punch through.”
“All right,” Rayla said, seeing they had no other choice. “Let’s find out what made this.” She swiped through the thicket and the group entered a webbed area where everything was sticky.
“Be careful. Do not touch those webs,” Rayla ordered.
“Ugh, they’re everywhere … It’s too dark,” Ezran said.
CLICK.
“Everyone stop moving,” Rayla said. The group froze.
But the forest was silent.
Rayla motioned for them to begin walking again.
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. The sound came from behind them.
The hairs on the back of Callum’s neck stood up. He slowly turned around.
A giant spider, easily as big as the colossal leech, stared down at them with penetrating red eyes. Its legs were as wide as tree trunks and covered in purple fur. Its abdomen was covered in a bright green pattern—the “face” Ezran had seen before.
AAAAAIIIEEEEEEEEE! the spider shrieked.
Don’t scream, don’t scream, don’t scream, Callum told himself. They’d defeated the leech; they would defeat this monster too. He quickly pulled out the primal stone and drew the lightning spell rune in the air. “We can do this,” he said. “Fulminis!”
A lightning bolt crackled to life in his hand and he released the energy toward the monster.
But the instant the lightning touched it, the spider disappeared into thin air.
“Ah! Did I get it?” Callum asked, though he was pretty sure he hadn’t. “Where’d it go? Is it in my hair?!” A shiver coursed through his body.
“Really?” Rayla asked. “It’s a two-ton magical spider; you’d know if it was in your hair.”
“Shh … we need to listen,” Ellis whispered.
Callum brushed off his head one last time then began looking around every which way. He couldn’t see anything, but he heard … scurrying? It was hard to tell. What would a two-ton magical spider sound like if it scurried? he wondered.
AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE!
The tremendous spider suddenly dropped down from above. Callum and the others took off running and found shelter behind a hedge. The spider loomed ahead, directly in their path to the tree.
“How are we going to get past that thing?” Callum asked.
“Even if we manage to get past it, one misstep and we’re caught in those crazy webs,” Rayla said. “And trust me, you don’t want to know what happens if you get caught in a web.”
“There has to be a way. We have to get through,” Callum said.
“Wait a second,” Ezran said. “Something’s not right.”
Callum glared at his brother. There was a ginormous spider in their way. Many things about this situation weren’t right.
But a smile slowly spread across Ezran’s face. “Something’s not right in a very good way,” he said. “It’s going to be okay, guys. We can just walk right past it.” Ezran stepped out from the hiding spot, holding Bait in his arms.
“What are you talking about?” Callum said.
Ezran stood up taller. “That monster’s not real, I’m sure of it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Rayla said.
“Exactly. All those crazy chitters and screams—they don’t make any sense! That’s not how spiders talk.”
Callum sighed. “Ezran, you’ve lost your mind.”
“I’m going out there to prove it,” Ezran said, and made a move toward the spider.
Callum grabbed his arm. “Don’t.”
But Ezran pulled out of Callum’s grasp and ran toward the spider.
“Ezran, no!” Callum cried. He stared in horror as Ezran marched straight up to the monster and waved his arms at it. The giant spider lunged but stopped before reaching Ezran. Then it opened its grotesque, slimy maw and let out the most bloodcurdling scream Callum had ever heard. He raced toward Ezran.
Ezran looked the spider right in the face and unleashed his own most terrible roar just as Callum came up next to him. The spider didn’t react.
“It’s fun! Try screaming at him,” Ezran said, giggling.
Callum wasn’t so sure about screaming, but he held his hand out toward the spider. It roared but didn’t move any closer.
“See, it won’t do anything,” Ezran said.
“You’re right,” Callum admitted. He turned to the others. “Ez is right!”
“Let’s see if we can get it to turn around and show us the creepy glow face,” Ezran said.
While Ezran tickled one of the spider’s legs, Callum hung his head. If Ezran was right about the spider, that meant Callum was wrong about Ezran. He tapped his little brother on the shoulder. “Ez, I owe you an apology.”
“Well, at least one,” Ezran said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” Callum said. “I promise I won’t ever doubt you again.”
“If you really mean it—”
“I do,” Callum said, looking his brother in the eye.
“Then you have to do the thing,” Ezran said.
Callum’s eyes went wide. “Here? Now?” It was one thing for him to do the thing at home … but in front of their new friends? In front of Rayla?
Ezran nodded and Callum couldn’t help himself; he smiled. The dance was actually pretty fun. Callum took a deep breath then began to dance.
