by H. D. Gordon
And I hoped like hell that he made it. I hoped like hell this was not the last time I would see him, that I would get the chance to apologize for thinking ill of him, and thank him for the kindness he’d shown me, for the kindness he showed the world.
Clutched to my back, her arms wrapped around my neck and knees digging into my ribcage, Asha stole her own final glance at Adriel as well. “Let’s go, Moonborn,” she whispered. “There are people depending on us.”
I knew she was right, that they both were right, but that didn’t make it any easier.
I turned and ran, praying that it wouldn’t end up being a decision I regretted for the rest of my days.
16
Asha knew how to navigate the forest, and I zipped through the trees with the last bit of energy I had left.
The sounds of battle and destruction going on in the town behind me faded with each step I took. The Hounds had set some of the buildings ablaze in their invasion, and the smell of smoke lingered, tapering only as we journeyed deeper into the trees.
The Emerald Forest was uncharacteristically silent, as though even the woodland creatures were aware of the horror befalling the neighboring town.
I was beginning to think we would never find the others, that I would soon collapse if I didn’t get to rest, when a familiar scent struck my nose.
I slowed in my movements, raising my head slightly and testing the air as my ears swiveled on my head.
“What is it?” Asha whispered, still clutching my back.
I didn’t respond, because she wasn’t a Wolf, and we couldn’t speak mind-to-mind. Instead, I lowered my body in hopes that she would take the hint and climb down off me. I could hardly hold myself up, let alone the both of us.
After a huff, she did. I released a heavy breath of relief.
Deciding that the ability to communicate would be worth it, I used the last of my reserves to switch back into my mortal form. I chose boots, black pants, and a black hooded sweater as my attire, for obvious reasons.
“The others are close,” I said, ignoring Asha’s obvious distaste. “They definitely came through this way.”
“Look,” Asha said, in a voice small enough that I glanced over at her. She’d taken a few steps forward, and was staring into the trees ahead of us as though in a trance.
Slowly, holding my breath, I moved to stand beside her. As I came shoulder to shoulder with her, the scene bled into a new setting.
The emerald canopies of the trees became bare, reaching branches that seemed to be gesturing madly at the sky. The ground, damp and full of greenery only moments before, decayed into a rotten tangle of vines and twigs that snapped underfoot like the bones of small animals. The sky darkened into the angry gray of a thunderstorm, and when I exhaled, my breath hung in the air in a cloud.
“The Dead Forest,” I mumbled, more to myself than to Asha.
“After you,” she replied.
I told myself that smacking her would be an overreaction, and resisted the urge.
More than anything, the idea of looking weak in front of Asha was what made me take a step forward. I made it two more steps before a familiar voice spoke in my head.
“Are you sure you want to go in there?” asked Goldie.
I retreated back toward Asha, the Emerald Forest reappearing around me as I did so. Asha opened her mouth as if to say something, but shut it when a large, red-gold Wolf stepped out of the trees to our left, her eyes glowing in the darkness.
Goldie was much, much bigger in her Wolf form. I closed the distance between us and threw my arms around her neck, burying my face in her thick fur while speaking mind-to-mind.
“Thank the Gods,” I told her.
“Those bastards have nothing to do with it,” she replied in typical Goldie fashion. Her ears swiveled on her head as she raised her snout at Asha. “I’m surprised you two didn’t kill each other.”
I let out a huff. “I came close.”
“Um, I know you Wolves are talking in each other’s heads,” Asha said, interrupting us, “but we need to be on our way, and also, that’s just rude.”
Goldie released a low growl, to which Asha only smirked.
Eyes began to appear all around us as the people from Mina that Goldie had led here began to emerge from their various hiding spots in the thick brush. Adriel had instructed her to gather the elderly and children, as well as anyone else who didn’t wish to stay and fight. There were so many of them, all different races, shapes and sizes, that I couldn’t get a count.
Amara slipped out from behind a nearby bush. She’d also taken her Wolf form, but I would’ve recognized her either way. She licked at my face once before speaking in my head.
“Where is Uncle Adriel?” she asked.
Suddenly, it felt a little tougher to breathe.
I wet my lips and swallowed, rubbing the spot between her perked ears to buy me some time to find words. “He’s doing what needs to be done,” I told her, and looked away before I could glimpse too much of the worry that leaked into her eyes.
After an exaggerated sigh from Asha, I spoke loudly enough for everyone present to hear me. “Adriel told me to take you all into the Dead Forest,” I said. After a pause, during which people gasped and looked at me like I was insane, I added, “The town is probably going to fall to the Hounds. The portal they used to get in was closed, but too many got through before that.”
“We might as well go back to the Hounds!” called a voice from somewhere within the crowd. “We’re as good as dead if we go into that cursed place.”
There were several nods and mumbles of agreement from all around.
To my surprise, it was Asha who backed me up. “Rook is right,” she said. “We can’t go back to the town right now, and if we just stay in the Emerald Forest, the Hounds will find us.”
There was only silence from the others, and despite the physical differences between all of them, the fear on their faces was universal. I understood it well. The thought of entering that dreadful, dead place was hard for me to swallow as well.
But it had to be done.
As if to punctuate Asha’s most recent statement, the howls of Hounds roaming in the forest rose up into the night.
I cleared my throat and met the gazes of all those surrounding me.
“This is what Adriel instructed us to do,” I told them. “You don’t know me well enough to trust me, but something tells me you trust him.”
The people of Mina blinked back at me. The mothers clutched their little ones to their sides, the elderly couples and comrades squeezed each other’s hands, and the pups in their Wolf forms huddled together in small packs. In that moment, looking at all of their scared but hopeful faces, I felt very much like the blind leading the blind. I made sure to keep my expression free of this, though, lest they glimpse the fear in my own heart.
Another round of howls, closer this time, resounded through the trees, and people began to mumble their agreement. With that settled, Asha waved an impatient hand at me.
“After you, Moonborn,” Asha repeated.
Without being fully aware of it, I wrapped my hand around the red stone hanging on the chain around my neck.
I moved toward the invisible boundary of the Dead Forest, but was nudged out of the way by a red-gold coated Wolf.
Goldie gave me a Wolfish grin over her shoulder before forging forward, leaving me to follow on her tail.
Twigs snapped like finger bones under my boots. The silence was deafening, the kind of silence that made it impossible not to listen to the pounding of your own heart. I almost preferred the howls of the Hounds to the extreme quiet of the Dead Forest, and was beginning to regret my decision to enter it with all these people on my heels.
With my strong ears, I could hear their heartbeats as well, but I tried to tune them out.
Blocking out the stench of fear was even harder, particularly when my own was nearly palpable. It was so dark and gloomy in this place. And cold, like the inside of a grave.
My breath hung in front of me in foggy puffs, same as every other warm body around me. The group from Mina was large, but we were huddled together, a pack of mixed races and terrified faces.
Time seemed to slow, as though it moved differently here, or perhaps stopped altogether. Mina, and the recent havoc that had taken place there, seemed a lifetime away.
Except for Adriel. Thoughts about how he was faring kept floating back up to the forefront of my mind. Each time, I shoved them away. There was only room for the task at hand.
Because something was watching us, had been watching us since we entered this dark place. I could feel it as surely as could all the others around me. Being here felt wrong, like we were trespassers in a designated space, aliens in a foreign world.
I pitched forward when the ground began to rumble, the dirt and dead brush shuddering beneath me. There were squeaks and squeals of surprise, and panic from my companions. My arms made circles in the air as I tried my damnedest to stay upright.
Then, the people I’d led into this cursed place, who I’d convinced to come here, began to scream.
I released my own horrified gasp as I glanced down at my feet to see them being swallowed up by the ground. Vines were snaking up my ankles, and the floor of the forest was literally opening up as if to gulp me down. A frantic glance around me revealed that the same thing was happening to the others.
Goldie, still in her Wolf form, snarled and snapped at the vines with her powerful jaws, but the ground was sucking her in as well. Asha was slashing at the ground with her curved blade, but this was similarly to no avail.
I sank. We all sank.
The sharp, dead vines crawled higher; up my shins, over my knees and up my thighs. The ground continued its pull, swallowing us up as though it were a living thing. An instant sweat broke out over my forehead, rolled down my back. I didn’t want to look weak, but I was going to scream. I was going to scream my head right off my shoulders along with the rest of them while the wretched ground of this place gulped me down whole.
“The stone,” Asha gritted out, struggling with enormous effort on her own part to keep the utter panic out of her tone. “The Gods damn stone, Rukiya.”
For a moment, I had no idea what in the hell she was even talking about. Then, I remembered, and I gripped the stone around my neck, having no idea in the slightest what I was supposed to do with it.
I was not ashamed when my voice came out a bit shaky. “The Erl Queen!” I shouted out like a total maniac as I held up the scarlet stone. “We’re here to see the Erl Queen!”
This got absolutely no reaction; if anything, the ground sped up in its process of swallowing us. I struggled with renewed energy, ripping at the vines crawling up me like snakes with enough force to make my fingers bleed.
The harder I struggled, the faster it pulled.
My heart pounded furiously as I came to the sudden realization that I’d led these people right into a trap, and now their deaths would be on my hands, just like the deaths of those thousand slaves in Marisol, the ones that Ryker had burned alive in their huts at the supposed bequest of the other Pack Masters…
I cast one final look at Goldie, and wished like hell that I hadn’t. She was shoulder-deep in the ground, the vines creeping over her back and tugging on her red-gold tail. Her eyes glowed Wolf-gold, not with the usual lust of the beast, but rather, the panic of a trapped animal.
I looked away because I could stand to see no more.
Perhaps this was exactly what I deserved, but it didn’t make being eaten alive by the forest any less horrifying. I began grasping for those black, twisted branches that scraped at the sky as the vines crept up over my neck, as earth and dirt surrounded me, as first my chin, then my cheeks and forehead, and finally the top of my head, sank down into the throat of the Dead Forest.
The last sounds I heard were the screams of the people of Mina, mostly children and elderly, their cries different because of their varied races, but the same in the manner at which they tore at my soul.
Then, the darkness swallowed me up, and the world became nothing but all-encompassing blackness, as if the very stars in the sky had winked out of life, and the duel moons of the Between Realms had gone into hiding.
17
There was the sensation of being squeezed as though in a mighty fist… and then I was falling.
I had only enough time to flail my limbs, searching for any kind of purchase and finding none. One moment, I was being suffocated, and the next, I was being dropped. The rapid change was too much to process immediately.
When my body collided with an unforgivingly hard surface, it took several seconds for my vision and mind to clear enough for me to survey my new surroundings.
The razor sharp tip of a spear was shoved so close to my face that had I sneezed in that moment, I would have impaled myself through the eye. My body went still, and only my eyes moved as I looked past the weapon at who was brandishing it.
A mountainous male wearing black armor from top to bottom stared down at me with a gaze of hostile onyx. He grunted and gestured with the spear for me to rise. Slowly, I began to climb to my feet, and then, I realized something.
“Where are my friends?” I asked, surprised at how even and somehow aggressive my own tone sounded. “What did you do with them?”
In answer, I was shoved forward, stumbling a step or two before I regained my balance. My eyes lit up Wolf-gold as a deep growl rumbled up my throat. But a better look around me revealed two more mountainous, fully armored males with spears. None of the others I’d just been with were anywhere in sight.
In fact, the entire setting had shifted.
Where I’d been in the Dead Forest only moments ago, being violated by vines and swallowed by the ground, now I stood on a massive bridge. The bridge spanned a gap so deep it could have very well been bottomless. On one side of this enormous gorge there was a cliff face of jagged, dark gray rock, and beyond that, the black branches of the Dead Forest.
On the other side of the gorge loomed a structure unlike any I could’ve ever imagined. It stood independently on an island of that same dark gray rock, and jutted up into the sky so high that the clouds obscured the tips of the towers. Those clouds were dark also, like thunderheads that rolled and roiled. It was preternaturally bleak, as if no sun had ever or would ever shine in this place. The smell of burning things and the invisible electricity of endless chaos rent the air.
In all honesty, it was exactly what I’d expected of the Between Realms, similar to how the stories had painted the place.
I swallowed hard before I was able to find words again. “Where are my people?” I asked, letting my Wolf shine out through my mortal eyes.
The male who had shoved me raised an arm as if to strike, and I prepared to dance out of the way, but something over my shoulder had him returning to a position of attention.
“Your people?” trilled a voice behind me.
Casting a final bold sneer at the male with the spear, I turned on my heels to see the one who’d spoken.
My breath jammed up like a rock in my throat. It was all I could do to keep my expression neutral, not to gawk at what I saw.
The creature was obviously female, though exactly how this was obvious was hard to say. The bottom half of her was made of slick, long, muscled tentacles that easily spanned the width of the bridge. These tentacles flopped and curled as she stood there, the movement not unlike the unconscious tapping of one’s fingers on a tabletop. The center of her was shaped like an emaciated ribcage, each bone draped with gray flesh that clung to the surface. Connected at her sides were four arms that led down to long, spindly fingers. The top half of her was worst of all; a head shaped like a diamond with eyes on either side, and shorter, slick black tentacles sticking out in every direction like electrified hair. In the middle of this tangle of tentacles sat a large, jagged, and glittering crown.
Seeing that she had my attention, the female grinned, and I found my jaw clenching involuntarily.
“Since when did they become ‘your people,’ moon child?” she asked.
My mouth opened and closed twice, like a fish. I wet my lips to try again. “I’m here to see the Erl Queen,” I managed.
The female spread her four hands. “You’re looking at her… and being rather rude in your gawking, if I’m not mistaken.”
I jerked my gaze away from her, but somehow that seemed worse. She cackled a bone-tingling laugh before releasing a sigh.
“Where are my friends?” I asked, trying to ignore the blush creeping into my cheeks.
“I’m considering letting the forest Ogres eat them,” she replied. “You know, as reparation for the family you killed when you foolishly wandered over the border.”
I had no idea what to say to this. I was caught completely off guard, and her appearance was still so damn distracting. Some part of me knew that was a crappy thing to think, but I couldn’t help it. In fact, the entire scene was difficult to digest. It was so other that it quite honestly scared me out of my wits.
But like a proper Wolf, I tried my damnedest not to let it show.
“I’m… sorry about that,” I said, though it came out sounding like a question. “I was pretty sure they were going to eat me, though.”
She nodded her oddly shaped head. “As was well within their rights. You broke the treaty by stepping over the border. You were fair game. Just as you and your ‘people’ broke the treaty by stepping over again, and thus, you all are fair game.”
The grin that followed this proclamation was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. For several heartbeats, I only looked at her, gauging the possibility of escape and determining there was none. I couldn’t escape, because I didn’t even know where I was.
The idea of being trapped again, as I had been my entire life, was like an anvil on my shoulders. It took more effort than I was sure I had to clear my throat and respond.
I reached into my shirt and removed the red stone, swirling with whatever magic Adriel had infused it with, and pulled it free so that she could see it.
