13
“I think I see another one.” I place a hand against Vawn’s chest, holding him back.
He groans. “Why are there so many?”
“Because it’s the fucking Red Mountains.
” I scan our surroundings, trying to pierce the veil of purple and scarlet leaves that overlay most of the trees in this area.
Blood ivy is a plague, a parasitic plant that creeps up living things and spreads itself over them, using their trunks and branches as a trellis so it can soak up all the available sun.
With the blood ivy comes a particularly nasty predator, the spidermaw.
It burrows into the thickest part of a dying tree, either in the trunk or among the roots.
From there, it extends long tendrils, similar to the parasitic vines, but sticky as a spider’s web.
Each tendril bears scaly red or purple flakes in mimicry of the blood ivy.
Throughout the forest, blood ivy cloaks the trees and bushes and fills the spaces between them. It’s often difficult to tell whether a particular tangle of vines and leaves is just ivy, or if there’s a spidermaw enmeshed with it.
If a traveler makes a single mistake, they’ll find themselves stuck to the spidermaw’s tendrils, being wrapped ever tighter and drawn ever nearer to the creature’s mouth.
Inside that mouth are thousands of tiny razor teeth, which begin grinding and sawing the second prey is caught.
The teeth can reduce a full-grown human to red mist within a minute.
The spatter feeds the ivy, which will absorb blood as readily as water.
My glyph set has saved our lives multiple times already, and it’s only our first full day traveling through the Red Mountains.
We’ve used the carpet a few times to gain some ground and let my glyphs recharge, but the carpet is still erratic, and any flight longer than several minutes makes Vawn and me sick to our stomachs.
The carpet is suffering from the severance of his corner. While my stitch job worked temporarily, the wound is disrupting Severin’s energy. He’s having trouble speaking coherently, which distresses him. Repairing him isn’t just convenient for travel—it’s a matter of mercy.
According to Severin, we’re not far from Weaver’s Canyon, a village known for the manufacture of high-quality carpets.
The place is difficult to reach on foot, accessible only by a narrow path along the side of the canyon for which it’s named.
If we keep moving at our current pace and keep our nights short, we should reach it by sunset tomorrow.
In Weaver’s Canyon, we can barter the vial of glyph paint for the services of a carpet weaver.
Once Severin is repaired, we won’t have to spend as much time trudging through the mountains on foot.
We’ll be able to fly hours at a time, covering larger sections of the forested slopes and deep valleys.
And we won’t have to pause every few minutes to either destroy or avoid one of the spidermaws.
I pinch the small cut on the back of my wrist with my teeth to refresh the flow of blood, and I use it to activate the attack glyph on the tip of my left index finger.
A targeted shockwave bursts from my hand, causing the blood ivy leaves to shiver.
Two dozen sticky tendrils shudder, detach from their weblike arrangement, and recoil, while high-pitched squeals erupt from two separate trees.
“A pair of them,” Vawn says. “I hate these woods.”
I swallow the bile and panic that threatens to climb my throat.
Those tendrils extended much farther than I suspected.
I saw the central tangle, but more outrunners extended to the left and right, far into the undergrowth on either side of the host trees.
If we’d tried to circumvent the main web, we’d have been caught in the fringes of the spidermaws’ traps.
If my perception glyphs had been active, I would have noticed how far the pair of spidermaws extended.
But I keep having to deactivate them to let my energy accumulate in my fingertips again, which makes our progress painfully slow.
I have the same problem with three of my shockwave glyphs.
Thankfully, Vawn’s two vibration glyphs have been unexpectedly helpful in disturbing the spidermaws and making them withdraw from our path.
The deeper we venture into the mountains, the colder it gets. Both of us are wearing cloaks, our breath issuing faintly white in the crisp air. Overhead, through the riot of scarlet and purple leaves, the sky is bright blue. If it weren’t so deadly, this place would be beautiful.
We move through the newly cleared opening, swishing aside the curtains of blood ivy.
“I can’t activate my perception glyphs again, not yet,” I tell Vawn. “Use yours and help me watch for more of them.”
Carefully we pick our way through the undergrowth.
A dozen steps farther I have to clear another knot of spidermaws, using up the last of my available shockwave glyphs, until they recharge.
We move slightly uphill, onto a rocky slope where trees are sparse and the ivy isn’t as pervasive.
But the more open ground comes with its own risks.
“Walk as softly as you can,” I murmur to Vawn. “See the holes?”
“I see them.” His voice is tight with nerves. “Stop talking.”
“We can talk quietly,” I assure him. “They only come out when there’s more impact or vibration, or if they hear loud noises.”
“I remember learning about wimmets,” he says, stepping over one of the holes. It’s a larger one, nearly the size of my head. “My tutor showed me sketches—furry little fluffballs with enormous eyes. I thought they were cute.”
“They are very cute. And very deadly. But if we’re careful, we should be able to—”
My foot drops into a hole, and I fall forward.
Vawn catches me by my pack right before I hit the ground. We both freeze, and then I carefully pull my boot out of the hole.
“I think I prefer the forest and the spidermaws,” he whispers.
I step right against him and press my hand over his mouth. Behind him, several paces away, a small fluffy head has emerged from a hole.
The creature has fluffy, floppy ears and immense dark eyes. I have never seen anything so adorable. It’s the strangest feeling, the love that washes over me for that little creature, even as my stomach tightens with sickening horror.
The wimmet cheeps. It has spotted us.
Maybe there’s only one. Maybe we’ll be lucky.
If only Vawn hadn’t used up his luck glyph and partially withered his fingertip, we could use that.
Our stealth glyphs won’t do us any good here, since they primarily affect visibility.
The wimmets, once their attention is caught, can track their prey for miles by scent and sound.
The wimmet chirps again, and several more fuzzy heads pop out of the holes in the ground.
“Run,” I whisper. “We have to run. Run!”
We flee across the slope, heading for the treeline.
All around us, wimmets burst out of holes, cheeping delightedly and bouncing toward us.
Some of them are dark gray or pink, others are deep blue or crimson.
They are part of this ecosystem, adapted to camouflage themselves with blood ivy.
They are prey for the spidermaws, and yet they are also predators. Horde hunters.
When they spot a large living thing, they chase it tirelessly.
One wimmet, separated from its horde, might follow a traveler for days without causing any harm, but an entire colony of them will leap onto a human or a large animal and cling to it.
They might look small and weak, but they’re dangerously fast and shockingly heavy.
They’ll cover the entire body of their victim, weigh it down, and overrun it in such large numbers that it collapses.
They suffocate their prey, covering its mouth and nose and eyes, piling onto its ribcage until the bones bend and collapse.
And the whole time they will chirp lovingly, an affectionate death dirge.
Vawn yells out, trying to shake off two of the wimmets who have caught his legs and are clinging there with tiny paws. The miniscule serrations on the pads of their feet enable them to hold onto their prey until the rest of the horde can catch up and participate in the kill.
I whip out a knife, ready to cut them off the prince, but he’s already activating his nerve stimulation glyph, bending down to prick them with overwhelming pain so they let go.
“The carpet,” I gasp out. “The carpet.”
Vawn unlatches the case, and Severin unfurls from the interior, snapping, “What now? Have you gotten yourselves into trouble again?”
Without answering, Vawn presses his strength glyph, picks me up, and throws me onto the carpet. I catch one of the handles, but Severin is jolting and swerving so horribly that I’m almost thrown off again.
“Stay still so he can get on!” I scream.
“I am trying,” the carpet says. “Shouting at me won’t help.”
“Vawn!” I reach for him, but he paid the price for getting me to safety first. The lower half of his body is covered with adorable, terrible creatures.
I lock arms with him, still holding onto the carpet with one hand. “Kick them off!”
He’s struggling, but more wimmets are leaping onto him every second.
Recklessly I plunge another fingertip into the cut on my wrist, activating my second shockwave glyph with a scream of violent purpose.
Thankfully it has recharged enough to be moderately effective, and the pulse of energy hits the wimmets, loosening them.
Vawn bites his other thumbnail for strength and the finger next to it for vibration, combining both effects to jar more of the creatures and shake them off.
“Come on!” I shriek. “Come on!”
Kicking and thrashing, he manages to climb onto the carpet. I pluck the remaining creatures off him and hurl them away. “Higher, Severin.”
“Can’t go any higher.” His voice is thready, frayed. “I can’t fly far.”
“Just a little way,” I beg. “To a rock or something. Anywhere we can rest for a minute without being in danger.”