Chapter 15
15
W e blasted through the pale door and fell, as if tumbling off a cliff edge. The world spun.
The gungrotter bellowed its tiny bleat and the rest of us were flung off its back as we fell. Kinkly had her wings, so she’d be okay. That was my only thought as the world tipped around us in whites and grays, a wicked icy wind snapping across my skin, stealing the heat of the fire realm from me.
I hit a drift of snow and sunk deep into it, the bone-chilling cold a pleasant release after the heat of the golden desert. But not for long.
I fought to get up and out of the loose-packed snow but could barely manage to get my head out. “Nancy, assuming this is the wind realm?”
“You would assume right,” he grumbled. “I can’t believe you brought a gungrotter with you! You’re insane!”
I shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea,” I fought to get further out of the snow but only succeeded in sinking myself in deeper. “Kink? Are you okay?”
“Here, I found a perch,” she said. I turned to where she sat clinging to an outcropping of rock, hanging from her fingertips, her wings tight to her body.
“Robert?” I called out. “Corb?”
“Here!” Robert hollered back. He was far to my right.
“I’m here.” Corb was behind me somewhere.
“Can either of you move? I’m kinda…stuck.”
A chorus of nos followed my question.
The bleat of the gungrotter echoed across the snow, and then the critter was snow plowing its way toward me, almost invisible with the white of its slick fur against the snow. It dropped its head, and I grabbed the horns to scramble up onto its back. Its body was still warm from the other realm as I clamped my legs around its middle. “You know, I’m surprised we didn’t see any fire back in the last realm. I mean, we saw the lava. But no flames.”
The gungrotter made its way between the four of us, picking up each of us like it was our very own private Uber.
“Don’t say shit like that out loud,” Nancy spat. “You don’t seem to grasp this, so let me help you. These four realms aren’t meant to kill you, and if you did die, you’d just be stuck here trying to figure it out. They’re meant to break your spirit! Not have you be damn happy that there weren’t flames or make friends with the local wildlife!”
I shrugged. “I’m just saying, it could have been worse.”
Nancy kept up his grumbling. Kinkly settled herself between me and Robert on the gungrotter, and Corb took the rear spot again. Kink shivered, her teeth already chattering. “This might be the worst place for me.”
I patted the gungrotter on the head. “We need to find a door, friend. Can you help?”
It gave a little bleat and started a slow walk, head down, straight into the wind.
“Nancy, what critters might we face here?” I had my head down, chin tucked to my chest.
“Snow ticks,” he said. “That’s what you want to look out for, they’ll latch onto you, suck all your blood out, and leave you in the snow, pale and unseen.”
I looked to the left and right, as if they would be visible on the surface. “And I guess they’re white like the snow?”
“You’d guess right.”
“What gets rid of them?” Kinkly asked.
“Heat. They only live in the cold,” Nancy said. “So my suggestion is to get out of here ASAP.”
Corb gave a low grunt. “You think we aren’t trying? We wouldn’t be going even this fast if we didn’t have this beast with us.”
The gungrotter gave a tiny bleat, sadder than before. I leaned over the side to look down its long legs. Snow clung to them. Snow that was moving . “Oh no. That isn’t snow. Our ride is getting eaten alive by snow ticks.”
And the snow ticks were working their way up toward us. I dug around in my hip bag, looking for the lighter that I kept for just such an occasion. My fingers brushed against the jar that contained the spell dirt from the wall of the Haven House.
Not yet. My grandfather’s voice whispered. You will need it, but not yet. I kept searching past the jar.
Pulling a bit of paper from my bag I twisted it up into a thin torch, though it wouldn’t last long with the blowing wind.
“Your knife,” Robert said. “Heat your knife, then lean down and swipe the ticks off. We’ll hold you.”
“Smart!” I nodded and dropped the paper, scooping up my blade instead. Kinkly cupped her hands around mine as I struck the lighter, a tiny flame blooming in the space between our fingers.
We managed to heat a partial section of the blade. I leaned over, felt my friends’ hands grab my legs as I tipped upside down and swiped the blade carefully down the gungrotter’s leg. The ticks exploded away from the heat of the blade, blood blooming across the snow. The ticks glaring at me as they leapt off.
Yup, I said glaring. The ticks were in some cases as large as my fist, looking like snowballs attacking the thin fur of the gungrotter. Their eyes were glassy black, like tiny sharks.
“Piss off, you!” I growled as I moved to reheat the blade, then swipe it down his other front leg.
Corb and Robert cleaned off the back legs, but as soon as they were done, the front legs were covered again.
“If we were in there,” Kinkly pointed down at the snow as a particularly strong gust of wind snapped around us, nearly knocking us off the gungrotter’s back, “we’d be covered in those things.”
“Demons. Lost souls. Devils,” Nancy said, almost lazily. “They’ve been trapped as snow ticks and tasked with taking out anyone passing through. That’s their job. Lucky for you, once you are through a realm, that’s it. No going back. One way road if you want to think of it that way.”
“You’d just pass out if they kept attacking you,” Corb said.
“Yes and no,” Nancy said. “You wouldn’t ever get to that warm fuzzy sensation that hits before you die of hypothermia. You’d perpetually be in the most painful, horrid almost-dead you could experience. And then you’d be stuck, unable to move. Conscious but stuck.” He shivered in my hand and the tip of my blade pointed down. “Look.”
I looked in time to see a body sort of float by in the snow as if it were water and not snow. The body of a man coated in ice and snow ticks, skin pale and frozen. His eyes, though, his eyes were alive . Before I could say anything, he was gone, swallowed up by a snow drift.
I clutched at my middle. “We can’t save them?”
“No,” Nancy said. “You’d become as trapped as them. Besides, you think they went to hell for good behavior, do you? Not everyone is here because of a spell, Sentinel. Some of these people deserve to be here.”
The wind picked up, driving into our faces, flinging snow and snow ticks at us. I slashed at them with my knife, and they popped open. I fully expected blood like when they’d grabbed onto the gungrotter, but this time what I got was a bunch of much tinier ticks that flew through the air, lashing at my friends. Much screaming and yelling ensued, and we all ended up kind of just clinging to the gungrotter as it sludged slower and slower through the snow.
All around us the wind changed, spinning now, driving snow and those stupid ducking ticks up in a cyclone that wrapped us up in its hold. “Keep going, buddy,” I lay forward on the gungrotter’s neck, hanging on for warmth and to keep from being pulled off its back.
A tick clung to my left arm, its beady eyes locked on mine. I didn’t even have the strength to knock it off. I could feel more on my other arm, all but holding me down.
I closed my eyes.
Maybe we would end up like those bodies in the snow. Just floating along here. Freezing to death, never dying, unable to move.
Trapped. That’s what we’d be if we didn’t get out.
“You’re almost to me.” Crash’s voice curled through me . “Bree, you’re almost to me. You can do this. Don’t give up now.”
Limp against the gungrotter’s back, all I could do was weakly flop my legs against its sides. “Keep going.” My voice was a weak whisper, but it was audible.
The wind howled now, like a living beast that was mighty pissed at us for not just falling into the snow like the others.
Kinkly began to slip. I felt her list to one side, and I reached back and grabbed hold of her. “Hang on.”
She whimpered and clung to me. “Don’t leave me here.”
“I’d never,” I tried to lift my head, but the fatigue and cold were too much. It was all I could do to hold on to my friends and pray we made it out the other side.
Finally, there it was ahead of us in the snow, a flash of green. The gungrotter had its head down, and it made a tiny bleat of what sounded like excitement to me.
Was it moving faster?
Maybe. Or maybe that was just hope.
Nope, not hope. We were moving faster.
The green painted door reared up in front of us, and the gungrotter didn’t slow, just barreled on through.
We tumbled out of the snowclad realm and into a realm of jungle and heat, soft dirt, and the screams of birds.
I yelped as I was ejected from the back of the gungrotter. Its body bent and twisted, transforming as we fell, until it was no longer a four-legged creature but one with two legs and wings that spread wide. Its feathers were the deepest purples and blues, and its beak and talons a solid shining silver.
I groaned and tried to sit up, the soil below me soft and full of moving things.
What had been the gungrotter but was now some sort of bird tipped its head sideways and then its beak shot toward me.
It plucked off the snow tick from my arm. Moving rapidly, the bird walked between us, snapping off the snow ticks and swallowing them whole. I wasn’t sure I’d want to swallow down something that had a horde of other, smaller snow ticks within it, but gourmet is different for everyone.
“Thanks,” I stood and the bird gave a tiny gungrotter bleat before turning and hopping away.
I offered a hand to Kinkly and helped her stand. Her wings were in terrible shape, the cold and wicked wind had torn holes through the gossamer-thin material.
“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t say anything. We’re still moving forward. Damian can help me with my wings if… when …we get back.”
I nodded. “Right. Robert, you okay?”
His blue eyes found mine. “Okay might be an exaggeration. But I’m here.”
And still looking like himself. That was good.
Corb grunted. “Crash had better appreciate all the effort that went into getting to him.”
I smiled. “I’m sure he’ll give you a great big hug when he sees you, Corb.”
I did a slow turn, taking in this last of the four elemental realms before we reached the spirit realm. The jungle around us was thick with plant life, and the humidity was a shocking change after the bone-chilling cold of the last realm. Leaves and vines hung from the trees, and bushes and long grasses blocked our every path. How were we supposed to see where to go?
“I mean, it’s not like we had paths in the other realms,” I muttered.
“What?” Robert stepped up to my side. “You’re mumbling.”
I shrugged. “I was thinking we need a better viewpoint, but it occurred to me that we had no idea where we were going in the other realms either. Unless…”
“Unless getting lost is the point of this one?” Kinkly offered. “Yeah, that’s what it feels like to me. Just drop us in a jungle and make it impossible to find our way out.”
A soft chirping turned my head around. “What’s that?”
“Bird,” Corb said.
Only it didn’t feel like a bird. Nope, it felt like something…other. “Let’s move,” I whispered. “I don’t like the vibe I’m getting from this spot.”
I led the way, Kinkly, then Robert and Corb fell in behind us. Not that I knew where I was going. I only knew I wanted to get away from whatever creature sounded like a bird.
Because it wasn’t one.
I was sure it wasn’t.
Nancy was quiet, which didn’t bode well. “Not a bird?” I pressed.
“No.”
The answer was so quiet I could barely hear him, like he was afraid to make a noise. I looked over my shoulder and put my finger to my lips. Everyone nodded.
At least we were on the same page. I dared to glance at the time piece hanging from my neck and my heart stuttered. We had less than fifty percent of the allotted time left now, and no idea what we’d be up against next. The hands and bodies that writhed within the sand struggled against gravity, but they were no match for it.
We had only one choice now. We needed to move and move fast.