22
And I step into a dense forest webbed with pale mist draped heavily between ancient, mossy trees whose thick branches drape and weave together in some places.
There are small clearings interspersed between the tangle of swooping limbs, but the forest is odd.
Eerily quiet. The sound of every footstep is absorbed by the lush, green carpet. The air is cold and damp.
I turn in a circle. It smells like my father’s home, like Morrigan’s realm.
Where is everyone? Am I the first to arrive, or is the trial over and I’ve been left behind?
In the clouds, I swear I hear the gods’ distant chattering.
“Climb!” a harsh male voice whispers.
I follow the sound to a nearby tree and find a deep purple hue that’s out of place in it. Hazi crouches on a low branch. “Get off the ground!” he hisses. “Unless you want to die.”
I turn, looking near my feet for the threat. “What is it?”
Just then, a series of awful, guttural, animalistic sounds come from somewhere close. Whatever’s making them is hiding in the mist.
I hurry to the closest tree and try to climb, but the trunk is too broad and I’m too short. The tips of my toes and the pads on my fingers shred. My metal prosthesis strips the bark off, which doesn’t help in the least. I can’t do this.
“Come here!” Hazi waves me toward him. “Quickly!”
A loud, animalistic squeal erupts the moment I start jogging. I push into a run, pumping my elbows and praying I don’t fall.
I’m almost there.
“Jump!” he yells.
I push off the ground. My stomach catches the branch, and Hazi grunts as he grabs the back of my bodysuit and hauls me up. I wrap my arms around the wood and swing my leg over to straddle it, raising my legs out of the path of whatever is chasing me.
A creature darts under me, screaming and bucking as I catch my breath.
It’s a wild boar.
A boar the size of a pony.
Now I understand my mother’s warning. I feel like I might vomit on the gnarled and knotted muscles of its back, like the buckled roots of the trees knitting this forest together.
Dark spikes line its coarse coat. Its tusks are long and yellow, sharp and bloody at the end.
Foam leaks from the corners of its mouth.
Hazi yells and snaps a finger in front of my face. “Callalie!”
I snap out of the daze, refusing to let the horror of this trial in and focus on getting out of here. I push my body upright. “Sorry. Thanks.”
Hazi nods once.
I’m not sure why he helped me. The other members of his alliance – namely, Torsten – won’t approve. “Who else is here?”
“I don’t know, but the boar targets anyone who touches the ground.” He crouches on the swooping branch, perfectly balanced and still. “It infects whomever it gores.”
“Infects?”
A nod. “One of the unchampioned men landed just after I did, but he didn’t make it to a tree in time, and the beast tore into him.
” His brows knit. “It could have killed him, but it didn’t.
After it gored him, the boar ran away. I climbed down to help, but before I left this limb, the guy got up and started stumbling that way, through the wood.
” He points behind us. “His leg was shredded, and he just walked away like he felt nothing. He passed under the tree again just a while ago with foam built in the corners of his mouth, like the boar.” Hazi’s amber eyes dart toward every sound, watchful. “So, yes. Infected.”
He’s quiet for a moment, holding up a finger to his lips. I don’t hear anything.
The boar can’t reach us if we’re in the trees, but an infected mortal who can walk despite his wound might be able to climb. “Where’s the portal?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Have you seen anyone else? Do you know if Koda’s here?”
He runs a hand over his shaved head. “I haven’t seen anyone else other than that man. I tried running between the trees, but every time I sprint to another, the boar charges me. I don’t know if that means most contestants aren’t here yet, or if its ability to hunt is preternatural.”
A gods-blessed, diseased boar that infects the people it injures.
If Koda’s not here, it would be for the best, but what if he appears and the boar finds him before I do? Or before I can reach him? “We have to kill it.”
Hazi’s brow arcs. “We?”
I shrug, thinking of Daedalus. “That’s what ended the last trial.”
“I only have this dagger. And Koda has your spear.”
I pull out the black glass shard. “I have this.”
“What is it?”
“Obsidian. It’s probably sharper than your knife.”
He shakes his head, unconvinced. “Using short blades will require us to get close to the beast. If the boar bites or gets his tusks into us, we’ll be frothing at the mouth, wandering these woods until we die.
We’ll try to harm our friends, and I don’t want to do that.
And I certainly don’t want to be left behind for that boar to eat us down to the teeth. ”
“To the teeth?”
He nods. “Swine will eat every inch of a human body. Bone. Sinew. But never the teeth.”
I don’t ask how he knows that. I don’t want to know. I look up, wondering what to do. And see the answer.
“We can make spears with smaller branches.” Mamá had cut her shirt and used it to bind the end of the obsidian shard. “We could tie this and your knife to longer sticks. Or sharpen the ends of some of them with our blades.”
Hazi takes a deep breath. “It might work.”
He climbs in search of the best branches. Those that are strong and long enough to put distance between us and the boar. He finds one he thinks will do, breaks it off, and hands it down to me.
The obsidian easily slices off the smaller branches. I unwrap the binding on my blade from Mamá’s shirt and use it to tie the shard to the end of the stick. I push the obsidian tip against the trunk to see if it’ll hold. It seems secure.
“Hello?” someone shouts through cupped hands.
I look down to see Elias standing in the center of the clearing where I’d entered the trial. “Elias, climb the nearest tree!” I yell. “Now!”
He scurries to the trunk closest to him and scales it, working his way onto a lower branch. “What exactly am I avoiding?”
“A huge boar,” I answer. “And anyone it’s infected.”
“Infected?” He curses.
Too close for comfort, a guttural male cry mixes with feral squeals before everything goes silent. Elias curses again.
“Watch for mortals wandering the woods, especially if they’re foaming at the mouth,” Hazi yells.
“Look for the foam. Got it.” Elias nods his head. “Is everyone here?”
Hazi shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Koda!” the Greek shouts, standing up on his branch and aiming his voice in different directions. “Koda Zivai!”
From the forest, we hear a few mortals call for Koda.
Word trickles back to us; it doesn’t appear that Koda is here yet. Thank the gods.
“We’re making spears,” Hazi tells Elias.
He cuts the small branches off his own stick and with his knife, splits the purple fabric that drapes across his chest into strips.
He hands some to me. “Bind yours again. Make sure it’ll stay put when you stab.
We don’t need it falling off or getting stuck in its hide. We want it to bleed out.”
I tightly wrap the obsidian blade and knot the fabric extra tight, then look over at Elias’s tree. He’s gone. “Elias?”
A moment later, he climbs back down onto a lower branch with his own long stick, breaking the small branches off. “I don’t have anything to sharpen mine with.”
Hazi searches the forest floor all around us. “When someone else screams, I’ll run to Elias’s tree and help him. Keep watch for me.”
I nod.
A few moments later, we hear shouting in the distance. Taking advantage of the distraction, Hazi leaps to the ground.
Hazi’s a fast runner, I learn. And nimble. He deftly runs up the side of the tree trunk to get to Elias and sharpens Elias’s makeshift spear into a deadly point.
“We should make a few more of them,” Elias tells Hazi. The two find more branches that will work, and Hazi quickly shapes their points.
Veronia, in lavender leathers, suddenly appears in the clearing behind me, in the direction Hazi said the infected man had walked. The monstrous boar trots through the wood behind her, disturbing the fog between two trees.
“Veronia, run to me!” I yell.
My tree is closer to her than any other; still, she balks when she realizes who yelled.
“Go, Veronia! There’s a boar! Don’t let it touch you!” Hazi shouts and points at the creature that’s now barreling toward her, snuffling and shrieking.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” She takes off running.
While she’s fast, the boar quickly gathers speed and gains ground.
“Come on!” I yell. Wrapping my thighs around my branch, I tightly grip my spear.
Veronia leaps onto the branch just as the beast swipes its tusk at her leg, narrowly misses, and squeals with rage. It circles, still scenting her and when it gets close enough…I stab it in the side.
The obsidian spear rips a hole in its thick hide. Hackles raised, the boar goes into a wild frenzy, twisting and bucking, then disappears into the swirling mist.
Where its blood leaks, the moss burns, smoldering orange at the edges before turning to ash.
“You see that, right?” Veronia breathes shakily.
“Yeah.” To the guys, I shout, “Avoid the boar’s blood!”
“Why?” Hazi asks.
“Because it burns.”
The two talk in tones too low to hear.
“Callalie!” Elias yells, warning bells pealing from his tone.
I turn to find Koda wrapped in bright red like a bow on a pretty gift, standing in the middle of the forest clearing with a weak grip on the spear. The incensed boar appears from our right and lowers its head as it snorts and snuffles, scenting him. Then, it takes off running.
I swing down at the same time as Hazi and Elias, my thigh stinging from the shock of the impact to the prosthesis.
August bursts through the trees, close to the two men. The Greek tosses a sharpened branch into his waiting hands. “Boar!”
The beast squeals.
Aymes shouts, “Koda, use your spear!”