16. Chapter 16
AMARIA
We'd been walking for maybe an hour when Eryndor stopped.
His hand shot out—a silent command. Halt. His head tilted, eyes scanning the treeline with the hard focus of a trained weapon.
I opened my mouth to ask what—
Dreadscale went still beside me. The same freeze. The same tension.
"You feel it too," the Crownforged said quietly.
"Since the last clearing." Dreadscale's nostrils flared. "A Void creation. It's been tracking us since we crossed the border."
"Tracking us through the Sensorium?" Maxx's hand had already found his dagger. "I thought this forest kept things out."
"It keeps most things out." Dreadscale's voice was flat. "This one is hungry enough to follow anyway."
The temperature dropped. Or maybe that was just my blood.
"How do you know?" Serenya’s face tightened, her hand curled around the Codex like a talisman.
Dreadscale didn't answer. His head had tipped slightly, listening for something in the woods—what was left of the woods. We'd moved past the glass-chime trees into a denser wood. The trunks here were gnarled, twisted, caught between the Sensorium's strange beauty and primal darkness.
Then I heard it.
A sound like bones clicking together and joints popping in the wrong order—the sound of a creature learning how to move through space and not quite getting it right.
It emerged from between two dead oaks.
My stomach lurched before my brain caught up.
Everything about it was wrong. Too many limbs—six?
eight?—arranged at angles that made my eyes ache.
Too many eyes, clustered across what might have been a face, blinking out of sync.
It moved in jerks and stutters, like reality couldn't quite render it properly.
Born of the void energy, and by the looks of it, starved since then as well.
The size of a large horse, if a horse was terrifying.
Its mouth opened.
Wider than anatomy permitted. A wet, gaping maw that seemed to fold space around itself.
"Nobody move," Eryndor said quietly.
The thing's eyes—all of them—swiveled toward me and Eryndor.
The tether pulsed between us, a beacon broadcasting our location to anything sharp enough to sense it.
"It's hunting your bond." Dreadscale's voice dropped to a whisper. "The tether reads like wounded prey. You need to calm down."
Calm down. Right. With an eldritch horror staring at us like we were the most interesting thing it had seen in centuries.
I drew my short swords, Voidbringer and Dawnrender. My heart was hammering wildly.
The beast's head snapped toward me. It took a step closer.
"Fear makes it circle," Dreadscale said. "Anger makes it—"
Eryndor's hand closed around my wrist. "Put the swords down."
"Like hell."
"You're radiating hostility. It's reading your emotions through the bond. You need to calm down."
"I AM CALM."
The beast lunged.
We dove—me left, him right—and the tether caught us both mid-air. Yanked us backward. We collided in a tangle of limbs, flaring heat, and curses while the beast's claws raked empty air.
"That worked well," I gasped.
"We need to move together."
"Fine. Moving together."
We scrambled up, shoulder to shoulder. The beast circled, head low, eyes tracking the space between us.
"Stop being angry," Eryndor murmured.
"I'm not angry."
The beast's hackles rose.
"You're a little angry."
"I'm a little trying not to die."
It lunged. We dove—together this time—and came up swinging. My blade caught its shoulder. Eryndor's opened a gash along its flank.
It shrieked. Circled wider.
"Better," Eryndor said.
"Don't compliment me. That felt like pride. Does it hunt pride?"
"I don't know."
"Find out."
"How?"
"Feel something prideful and see if it charges."
"That's the worst plan you've ever—"
It charged.
"STOP FEELING THINGS."
"I'M FEELING FEAR, THAT'S REASONABLE."
The beast paused. Tilted its head. Sat back on its haunches like a dog waiting for a treat.
"See?" I hissed. "Fear is fine. Fear it understands."
"Then stay scared."
"I AM scared."
"You don't sound scared. You sound angry," he retorted.
"I'm not—"
It lunged.
I dove. A limb I hadn't tracked whipped past my ear—caught the blade at my shoulder and came away wet. "MAYBE IF YOU WEREN'T SO—" Another swipe. I ducked. "—INSUFFERABLE—"
"ME?" Eryndor was circling now, blade up, trying to flank. "YOU'RE THE ONE WHO—"
The beast spun. Faster than physics allowed. Eryndor threw himself backward, hit a tree, and the thing's jaws snapped shut an inch from his face.
"—started this," he finished weakly.
"I STARTED this?"
The beast's head whipped toward me. Too much anger. It crouched.
"That was hostility," Eryndor said.
"That was SELF-DEFENSE."
"Tell that to the monster."
From the sidelines, light flared. Maxx's glamour blazed to life—flames, sparks, a perfect duplicate of me running in the opposite direction.
The beast didn't even blink.
I flicked a star at it on principle. It pinged off a horn and snapped back to my vambrace like even my weapons were embarrassed.
"It’s not working!" Maxx shouted.
"WE NOTICED."
"Try being less emotionally interesting!" Maxx yelled.
"HOW?"
"I DON'T KNOW, THINK ABOUT TAXES OR SOMETHING."
Serenya was yelling something about breathing techniques.
Dreadscale hadn't moved. He stood at the edge of the clearing, arms crossed, watching us flail with the expression of a male who had seen empires rise and fall and found this more entertaining than both.
"AREN'T YOU GOING TO HELP?" I screamed.
"You don't need help. You need to calm down."
"HELPFUL. THANKS."
I got a hit in—a shallow slice across its flank that oozed black tar. It shrieked. My teeth ached. My eyes watered.
Then it feinted.
Lunged left, pulled back, and moved faster than anything that size should be able to—
Its jaws unhinged.
And it caught Eryndor around the head and shoulders with its huge mouth.
And it swallowed him. Slowly.
Chest. Waist. The beast kept gulping him down in gradual, horrible increments, like a snake working down a meal too large for its body. Wet sounds. Squelching. Saliva slinging.
Until all that remained were his boots. Kicking. Frantically.
Muffled sounds emerged from inside the beast. Sounds that might have been swearing. Sounds that might have been my name.
I sighed and grabbed his ankles and pulled.
It turned into a tug-of-war with a nightmare. My heels dug into the dirt. My arms screamed. I screamed—and somewhere inside the thing, Eryndor screamed too, muffled and furious.
The tether went haywire between us. Not anger or fear of each other—fear for each other. A shared surge of panic.
Panic fed panic. Amplified. Reflected.
The beast recoiled.
Then it gagged.
Made a sound like a cat with a hairball.
And vomited the Crownforged onto the forest floor.
He hit the ground in a wave of black saliva and bile, gasping, retching, absolutely drenched in things I refused to identify.
I drove my blade through its skull before it could reconsider.
The beast crumpled. Twitched once. Went still.
For three heartbeats, nobody moved. Just panting. The wet drip of ichor hitting dirt. The sound of Eryndor retching somewhere behind me.
That's when Maxx lost it.
The laugh burst out of him—ugly, wheezing, completely inappropriate.
"It THREW UP. The monster literally THREW HIM UP."
Serenya made a strangled noise that was definitely not a giggle.
Dreadscale's body was shaking and a smile was snaking across his face, his eyes alight with mischief.
I stood over the corpse, sword embedded in its skull, every muscle trembling—and completely unable to stop the grin spreading across my face.
Behind me, Eryndor was retching, gagging, and making noises that suggested his dignity hadn't just been wounded—it had been annihilated.
I turned.
He was on his hands and knees, dripping. The black slime coated him head to toe—in his hair, dripping from his chin, soaking through his clothes. He was trying to wipe it from his face.
It wasn't working. It was making it worse.
He was shaking. Actually shaking. And not from the fight—from the mess.
I'd been elbow-deep in worse. But watching him try to stand, try to wipe the slime away, try to hold his coated hands as far from his body as possible—
Who raised you? I thought. And how did you survive this long?
"You alright there, princeling?" Maxx emerged from wherever he'd been hiding, grinning despite the circumstances. "You look like you've never been inside a monster before."
Eryndor shot him a look of pure murder but couldn't muster words. He was still retching, still dripping, still fundamentally destroyed.
Somewhere in the canopy, I heard chittering. Giggling. High and strange and definitely amused.
The Wildlings. Watching. Enjoying the show.
Of course they were.
I braced my boot against the beast's skull and yanked my blade free. The wet, sucking sound made Eryndor gag again—impressive, considering there couldn't be anything left in his stomach.
The chittering in the canopy grew louder. Delighted.
"Glad someone's entertained," I muttered, flicking ichor from my sword.
Maxx had finally stopped laughing—mostly because he'd made the mistake of getting too close to Eryndor and caught a whiff of what monster bile actually smelled like up close. He was now keeping a very deliberate distance, hand pressed over his nose.
"We can't keep traveling like this," Serenya said, her voice muffled by her sleeve. "The smell alone will attract every predator in the Wood."
She wasn't wrong. The black slime coating Eryndor was already attracting flies—or what passed for flies here. Iridescent things with too many wings that seemed personally delighted by the stench.
"There's a spring." Eryndor said it through his teeth, dignity in critical condition. "Maybe a hundred paces back. Off the main path."
"I saw it too." I scraped a chunk of void monster off my arm. "Clear water. Looked like it came up from underground."
Dreadscale's expression didn't change. "The springs here aren't safe."
"Neither is traveling covered in—" I gestured at myself. At Eryndor. At the general horror of our situation. "Whatever this is."