Chapter 29 #2
All eyes turned to Eliam whose grim expression spoke louder than any words could have. He gave a short nod and Karse swore under his breath.
"We can’t waste any more time," Eliam continued, already beginning to pack their bedroll. "No more leisurely pace. We push hard, reach the seal before he can intercept us."
"We can't outrun him if he's already close," Thaine pointed out.
"We can try." Eliam's voice left no room for argument.
Briar sat in the center of the activity, her hand still pressed to her burning throat, Malus's words echoing in her head: I'll be seeing you soon.
She believed him.
Her throat still ached where the marks had burned. She'd checked it in the pre-dawn light, half expecting to see blistered skin, but there was nothing visible. Just the copper leaves, innocuous and terrible, and the phantom heat that lingered beneath them.
She couldn't shake the feeling of Malus's hands on her. The way his fingers had traced her throat, the pressure of his grip on her waist. Her mind knew it had been a dream, but her body remembered the touch as if it had been real.
They rode north. Or what Karse assured them was north, though the thick canopy made it impossible to track the sun's position with any certainty. Briar found herself checking over her shoulder constantly, scanning the trees for movement that wasn't wind, for shapes that didn't belong.
Everything looked wrong now. Every shadow could hide something. Every rustle of leaves could be approach rather than breeze.
"Stop," Eliam said quietly beside her.
She realized she'd been twisting in the saddle again, neck craned to look behind them. "I can't help it."
"You're exhausting yourself. And Phaeon can feel your tension." His hand found her leg, steadying. "If something comes, we'll know. Thaine is watching our back trail."
She tried to relax, to focus forward, but her shoulders stayed rigid. The exhaustion sat heavy in her bones, made heavier by the sleepless night and the adrenaline that still hadn't fully faded.
The morning wore on. They stopped once to rest the horses and eat a cold meal that no one seemed to have any appetite for. Briar chewed bread that tasted like dirt, swallowed water that didn't ease the dryness in her throat.
When they mounted again, her legs trembled as she climbed back into the saddle. The world swayed slightly, the edges going soft.
"Briar?" Eliam's voice came from very far away.
She blinked, found herself tilted at a wrong angle, Phaeon's neck rushing up to meet her face. Then strong hands grabbed her waist, hauling her back upright, and she was moving through air before settling against a solid chest.
Eliam had pulled her onto his horse. She sat sideways across his lap, her head against his shoulder, his arm iron-strong around her waist.
"I'm fine," she tried to say.
"You were falling off your horse." He made a gesture and Thaine moved forward to take Phaeon's reins, leading the horse alongside them. "You're riding with me."
She wanted to protest, to insist she could manage, but the exhaustion was crushing. Her eyes kept trying to close despite her efforts to keep them open.
"Sleep if you need to," Eliam said against her hair. "I have you."
"Can't. What if he comes back—"
"Then I'll wake you." His arm tightened. "But you're useless like this. Your body needs rest."
She meant to argue more, but his heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, and the rocking motion of the horse was lulling despite her fear. Her eyes drifted closed.
She didn't dream. Or if she did, she didn't remember it. When she woke, the quality of light had changed, grown dimmer, and she realized hours had passed.
"Better?" Eliam asked, feeling her stir.
"A little." Her neck ached from the angle she'd been sleeping at, and her mouth was dry. But the crushing exhaustion had eased to merely bone-deep tired.
He shifted her slightly, adjusting her position to something more sustainable, and she finally looked around properly.
The forest had changed.
It was subtle at first, easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. The leaves on that oak weren't quite the right shade of green, the color muted as if someone had drained the vibrancy away. The bark on the ash tree held an undertone of gray that didn't belong.
And the stream they were following, she could see it through breaks in the trees, had patches where the water caught light wrong, reflecting with an oily sheen that made her stomach turn.
"When did it start?" she asked quietly.
"About an hour after you fell asleep." Eliam's voice was grim. "It's been getting worse."
She watched a bird flit between branches, noticed how its movements were slightly jerky, not quite right. Another landed nearby, and she saw its feathers held that same wrongness, colors that should have been vibrant rendered dull.
"Karse?" Arion called from ahead.
The Drak had stopped, standing in his stirrups to scan the forest around them. His expression was troubled.
"It's spread," he said finally. "Last time I came this far, the corruption didn't start for another day's travel north. Now..." He gestured at the discolored trees, the oily water. "It's creeping outward. Claiming more territory."
"How much further to the seal?" Thaine asked.
"Three days at our current pace." Karse settled back into his saddle. "Maybe two if we push hard. But the corruption will only get thicker from here."
They rode on. The changes became more pronounced as afternoon faded toward evening.
Whole trees with bark that wept dark sap.
Mushrooms growing in spiraling patterns that made no sense.
The undergrowth had taken on shades that existed somewhere between brown and green and gray, colors that didn't quite resolve into anything natural.
When they stopped to refill water skins, Sian had to spend long minutes cleansing each container, her magic pushing back against whatever taint tried to seep through.
"Don't drink anything I haven't cleared first," she said, and no one argued.
By the time Karse called for them to make camp, everyone was on edge. They'd found a small clearing that seemed relatively untouched, the grass still mostly normal colored, no visible signs of corruption in the immediate area.
Eliam helped her down from his horse, and her legs nearly gave out again when her feet hit the ground. She caught herself against his chest, feeling his hands steady her automatically.
"Easy," he said.
"I'm fine. Just stiff." She forced herself to stand on her own, to move away and help with setting up camp even though every muscle protested.
The group worked in tense silence. Ward stones placed with more care than usual, Halian murmuring over each one as he strengthened the protections. Sian cleansed the ground where they'd lay bedrolls, pushing back the subtle wrongness that tried to seep up from the soil itself.
Briar gathered firewood from the edge of the clearing, staying within sight of the others. Even dead branches felt wrong in her hands, the bark too smooth in some places, too rough in others, textures that shifted when she wasn't looking directly at them.
The fire took longer to catch than it should have. The wood burned with smoke that was too dark, too thick, and the flames themselves were tinged with colors that didn't belong. Green at the edges, purple in the depths, orange that was too bright and too dim at the same time.
No one commented on it. Everyone had seen enough by now to know that nothing here would behave the way it should.
They ate in silence, food that had been perfectly good that morning now tasting faintly of metal, of something spoiled. Briar forced herself to swallow each bite, knowing her body needed fuel even if her stomach protested.
The forest around them was too quiet. No bird calls, no rustle of small creatures, no normal night sounds. Just wind through branches that creaked wrong, and the distant sound of water moving over stones with a viscosity that water shouldn't have.
Briar sat with her back against a log, Eliam beside her, and tried not to think about how exposed they were. How easy it would be for something to approach through the corrupted wilderness, for Malus to find them here in the dark.
The marks on her throat pulsed once, as if responding to her thoughts. She pressed her hand over them, trying to calm the sensation.
"First watch," Thaine said, already moving to the perimeter. "Karse, you're with me."
The others began settling in, but no one looked comfortable. Sian kept glancing at the tree line, her hands fidgeting with her water skin. Halian rechecked the ward stones twice. Even Arion, usually composed, had his light flickering erratically around his fingers.
Briar leaned against Eliam, feeling the solid presence of him grounding her against the wrongness pressing in from all sides. The warmth in her chest pulsed, agitated and uncomfortable in this place.
She was just beginning to think she might be able to sleep despite everything when the first sound came from the trees.
A crack. Sharp and loud, like something large stepping on dead wood.
Everyone froze.
Another crack, from a different direction. Then a third, and a fourth, surrounding them.
Thaine was on his feet, weapon drawn. "Something's out there."
There were more sounds, whatever it was not trying to be quiet now, crashing through undergrowth, multiple sources, coming from all directions at once.
Karse moved to stand back-to-back with Thaine. "I count at least six. Maybe more."
The fire flickered wildly, throwing shadows that moved wrong, that seemed to reach too far. Briar scrambled to her feet, her hand going to the small knife at her belt even though she had no idea how to use it properly.
Eliam was already in front of her, thorns erupting from the ground at his feet, spreading outward in a defensive barrier.
A shape burst from the trees to their left.
Dark and twisted, moving on too many legs, its form shifting in the firelight until Briar couldn't tell if it was animal or something else entirely.
It lunged toward Halian with a sound caught between a scream and the sound of the wind rushing through a hollow space.
Halian threw up a ward. The creature hit it and recoiled, but more were coming, erupting from the trees on all sides. Things with wrong proportions, with limbs that bent at impossible angles, with faces that were almost familiar but distorted beyond recognition.
The camp dissolved into chaos.
Thaine moved with lethal efficiency, his blade catching firelight as he engaged the nearest creature. Karse fought beside him, his claws extended, tearing into something that bled dark liquid that steamed when it hit the ground.
Arion's light flared bright enough to hurt, forming weapons of pure starlight that he drove into anything that got close. Sian and Halian worked together, wards and cleansing magic trying to hold back the tide.
And Eliam's thorns spread like a living thing, erupting from the ground in waves to impale, vines snaring limbs to drag creatures down, roots bursting through soil to trip and tangle anything that approached their position.
But something was wrong.
Briar watched Thaine's blade pass through a creature without resistance, watched the thing dissolve into smoke and reform a moment later. Watched Karse's claws tear into flesh that felt like fog, insubstantial.
The sounds were real. The movement was real. But the creatures themselves—
A hand clamped over her mouth from behind.
She tried to scream, but the hand pressed harder, and she felt herself being pulled backward, away from Eliam, away from the fire. She kicked, tried to twist free, but whoever had her was strong.
The chaos of the battle surrounded them, everyone too focused on the attacking creatures to notice her being dragged into the shadows. She caught a glimpse of long, dark hair, felt magic wrap around her like invisible chains.
Ferria.
The creatures fighting the group flickered, their forms becoming less solid. Illusions. All of them illusions.
Briar managed to get her teeth into Ferria's palm and bit down hard. The fae woman hissed but didn't let go, just tightened her grip and pulled Briar further from the fire's light.
She tried to reach for the warmth, to make it manifest, to do something, but panic was making it hard to focus. Her hands clawed at Ferria's arm, trying to break free.
Something hard struck the side of her head. Pain exploded white-hot behind her eyes, and the world tilted sideways. Her knees buckled, but Ferria's grip kept her upright, kept dragging her backward.
Through the ringing in her ears, Briar felt the knife at her belt again. Her fingers fumbled for it, clumsy and desperate, vision swimming.
She got it free and drove it backward into Ferria's arm with all the strength she could manage.
Ferria's scream was sharp and genuine. Her grip released, and Briar stumbled forward, trying to run, trying to shout for help. But her legs wouldn't cooperate, wouldn't hold her weight properly. The blow to her head had left everything spinning and disjointed.
She made it three steps before Ferria caught her again, yanking her back by her hair. Briar tried to swing the knife again but Ferria caught her wrist, twisted until her fingers opened and the blade fell into the corrupted undergrowth.
"Stupid girl," Ferria hissed, blood running down her arm where the knife had caught her.
Briar opened her mouth to scream, managed to draw breath—
The second blow caught her temple, harder than the first. The world went dark at the edges, closing in like a tunnel. She felt herself falling, felt Ferria catch her, felt the ground moving beneath her as she was dragged away from the light, away from the camp, away from safety.
The sounds of fighting grew distant. She tried to hold onto consciousness, tried to move her limbs, but everything was slipping away like water through her fingers.
Then the world went black, and she knew nothing at all.