Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
“Ferris!” I roared into the malevolent forest.
The trees were groaning around me, vines twisting together as I slashed at them with my sword, trying to tear a path after her. But for every vine I cut, another two grew in its place, the passage forward impossible to forge.
But I would not give up.
The dark seeped from every corner of the wood, like it was a creature between the boughs, creeping from the roots to drench the trees in black.
I panted as I came close to exhaustion, my sword having swung so many times that my arm ached from the force. Countless strikes and I’d barely moved a foot in the direction she had followed those damned children.
Laughter tinkled behind me and I twisted around, sweat beading on my brow as I raised my sword and bared my teeth.
“Come at me, cursed beasts, and I’ll cut you apart,” I warned.
More laughter called in answer and the glint of eyes gazed out at me from between the branches above. I could just make out the shadowy figures of the Lost Children creeping closer, undeterred by my threat.
“Where is she?” I spat. “Return her to me or I’ll rip this forest apart to find her.”
“We know you,” a boy’s voice called out. “We know what you are.”
“Does she know the truth?” a girl asked somewhere to my right, and I whirled that way only to find more laughter carrying off into the dark.
“King of Death and Ruin,” voices whispered around me, then one of them started up an eerie song, letting it pour from branch to bough until it was all I could hear.
“You’re heading to the deep places of the ground,
There you will lay in the earth without a sound.
Let them drag, let them rip, let them tear until its done.
They long for you, you, you, dear one.”
Small hands gripped my wrist from behind and I jerked around again, swinging my sword with a yell. The Lost Children scattered, barefoot and racing into the dark again with echoing laughter in their wake, leaving ice in my bones.
“Get away!” I bellowed as more fingers brushed my arms from behind and I swung my sword in that direction instead, trying to slay these monsters with the faces of children.
They were a lie. There was no possibility that any of them could truly be alive after all these years in the forest. They were a mirage of the Great Elm’s design, put here to torture us in their own twisted way.
The song grew to a crescendo as light footsteps pattered around me between the trees, the flash of a ragged skirt, or a small hand brushing the bark of a wide trunk the only sign of their movements.
I could feel them closing in on all sides, above and around me. Their song was thrumming through my ears, burrowing into my chest. It was all I could hear, and somehow their voices sounded like knives against a chalkboard now, making me wince against the raking noise which grew ever louder.
“The forest seeks what has been stole,
And she’ll break and crack your worthless soul,
‘til you answer to the restless trees
And beg for mercy upon your knees.”
“Enough! Where is she?!” I roared, slashing blindly with my sword as tiny hands pulled at me again. But my blade never struck a single monster.
A flash of movement beside me made me lurch around, but my head spun and the song droned in my skull, making me feel weak. I staggered toward a blur of children as laugher cascaded around me, trying to strike at them but finding my knees hitting the forest floor instead.
The song built inside my bones, echoing through me and driving me mad with some magic I couldn’t unravel.
My mind was caught in the threads of their song as it wove insanity through my thoughts. Nothing I did could fight it away. I swung the sword again, but it slipped from my fingers and my hands hit the mossy ground to brace myself.
My muscles strained against the power of the song as it echoed fuzzily in and out of my head, mixing with the childish laughter of so many soulless creations.
“Ferris,” I rasped, trying to get up with every ounce of strength I had.
But I could not. Part of me needed to answer to the call of the music, to give in and lie down and let the forest feast upon my bones. The more I tried to fight free of the Lost Children’s allure, the deeper I fell into it.
“Get back inside,” I commanded Ferris, knowing she was out here somewhere, but the dark had come and it was claiming her beyond my reach.
I could do nothing but sink into the lull of the song and fall prey to the thundering dread that resounded through each note.
Because every word that found me now sounded like that of monster whispering in my ear, not a softly spoken child.
And as it lured me away from my plight to find Ferris, the final line imbued me with a sense of horror for what I might be about to lose forever.
“No soul escapes the bloodthirsty nights.”