Chapter 30
Into The Greywood
I found shelter before nightfall.
It was just a shallow cave. It was nothing like the tomb from last night, but it would keep me hidden. I pressed my back against the cold stone and settled in, legs crossed, worm-sword ready to form at a moment's notice.
The Long Dark—the name we had given the night—began its descent.
The chill had begun to cut through Cedric's armor as the temperature dropped. Mist rolled in, thick and unnatural, crawling across the tundra. It moved against the wind, defying nature.
The sing-song wailing of the Mist Singers—another name we had created—a melody designed to lure wanderers into the night.
I stayed still, watching the cave entrance. The mist flowed past my hiding spot, as shapes moved within it I caught glimpses of their twisted silhouettes.
My muscles cramped from holding still and hardly breathing, but I didn't dare move. My anxiety made the worms uneasy, and ready to burst.
"Mabel, I need to rest… could you wake me up if anything happens?"
"Oh, so I'm your personal alarm system now? Do I look like a security guard to you?"
"You don't look like a worm."
"I am a magnificent worm, thank you very much. And yes, I'll watch over you, my pathetically fragile host. I'll alert you if something decides you look tasty."
◆◆◆
My heart hammered as I snapped upright, hand already forming the worm-sword before my eyes fully opened.
But there was nothing at the cave entrance. No Mist Singer. No monster. The mist just flowed past, thick as ever, but nothing was attacking us.
"What is it?" I hissed, scanning for threats. "What woke me?"
""Look there," Mabel replied.
She extended outwards from my neck, forming an arrow. I squinted into the darkness, trying to see what she meant. And there, in the distance. I could see a small orange light flickering in the darkness.
Someone made a fire?
"Is that..." I trailed off, not daring to hope.
"A fire," Mabel confirmed. "Someone who doesn't fear the Long Dark enough to hide their presence."
I stared at the distant light, my mind racing.
Who would be out there? Other survivors from the fortress? Zo? Sadie? Sophie? Rafe? It seemed impossible, but they'd gone through the tear too.
Maybe they'd landed nearby.
Or it could be locals. A settlement of some kind. Horn's Rest wasn't the only place people lived in the Hearthlands. Or it could be something else entirely.
I watched the light flicker, trying to decide what it might be. Trying to guess if it meant my salvation or my death. Then it disappeared.
Swallowed by distance or deliberately extinguished. I couldn't tell which.
I lay back down, but sleep was impossible now.
My mind churned with possibilities. Zo could be out there. Sadie. Any of them. People who'd fought beside me, who'd risked everything to escape a dragon—Klaus—that should have killed us all.
◆◆◆
The tundra spread before me—white and grey and endless—Cedric's memories mapping my way… staying close to the foothills where the wind was less brutal.
But that light from last night… I climbed to higher ground, onto a rise that gave me a better view.
From this height, I could see farther across the frozen expanse. I searched for the source of last night's firelight. And I found it, where the ground rose into a forested ridge.
The edge of the Greywood—dense pine forest—stretched toward the distant mountains. The light must have come from somewhere on that ridge, high enough to be visible above the mist.
I considered my options.
Cedric's memories provided a safe route to follow, with shelter each night, and a way to reach Horn's Rest in a few days. I could hunt if needed… I’d survive.
It was my safest option. But that way of doing things lacked one essential element, the potential for finding the others.
It was well-suited to keeping me alive, but offered no hope.
If I was destined to spend days walking alone through frozen tundra, never knowing if they were dying somewhere in this world.
"You're thinking about the fire," Mabel interrupted my thoughts.
"Yeah."
"The fire could be anything. Anyone… it is most likely something that wants to eat you."
"You don’t have to remind me..."
"Cedric survived by avoiding unnecessary risks."
"And look where he is now…"
I thought about Zo. About Sadie. About Rafe and Sophie. They were somewhere in Rajkovia, probably as lost and confused as I was before I consumed Cedric's memories. Staying safe meant abandoning them to figure it all out on their own.
"You know what this means, If we go searching for that fire, we're walking into Drake territory."
"It cuts the distance significantly," I replied. "And it leads toward where the fire was."
"It's probably a trap."
"Maybe. But what if it's not? What if it's Zo? Or Sadie? Or anyone else from the fortress?"
Mabel was silent for a moment.
Then, with a theatrical sigh that somehow conveyed perfectly despite not having lungs. "Fine. We'll go get ourselves killed chasing a mystery firelight. It's not like I have any choice in the matter. I'm just the brilliant, beautiful worm forced to go wherever my reckless host decides."
I smiled. "Your concern is noted."
"It's not concern. It's resigned acceptance of your inevitable poor decision-making.
I turned toward the Greywood's edge.
Trying and failing was better than not trying at all.
◆◆◆
The storm began without any warning.
I'd been moving across the tundra for hours, leaving the safe route behind us. The tundra had changed as I came up on the Greywood—more rocks, more vegetation, scattered pines becoming denser—the ground rose toward the forested ridge where I'd seen the light.
Midday. The sky darkened as clouds rolled in from the Frostspine Mountains, black and heavy and moving too fast to be natural.
I pushed forward, leaning into the wind. The worms were working overtime to keep me warm. But the wind cut through everything, stealing the heat faster than the worms could generate it. Ice formed on the edges of Cedric's armor. My exposed skin went numb.
Visibility dropped to nothing.
The world became a white blur, disorienting and deadly. I couldn't tell north from south, couldn't see where I was going. The storm had swallowed everything.
I stumbled forward, hoping I was still moving toward the Greywood.
I found a large snowdrift piled against what might have been a boulder. I crashed into it, my frozen hands digging into the snow.
I began to carve out a hollow in the snowbank, my hands clumsy with cold. The worms helped—thousands of them working together, flowing from my fingers and shifting the snow. I created a small cave, barely large enough for me to curl inside.
The space was tight and dark, but it was out of the storm's direct blast. My worms continued to generate heat, fighting back against the cold.
The storm raged for hours.
I crawled out of the snow cave as the storm finally passed, blinking in the sudden brightness. The sun had returned, reflecting off the fresh snow.
I could see the treeline of the Greywood. The day was more than half gone. I needed to reach it before nightfall.
◆◆◆
I hesitated at the forest's edge. Cedric's memories screamed warnings. This was not a place for humans.
"We could still turn back, find the safe route to Horn's Rest."
I shook my head. "No… the fire came from somewhere on that ridge. We're close."
"It's your funeral. And mine…"
I stepped past the treeline, and immediately a strange feeling. It was as though the world beyond the forest no longer existed, and all that remained were the twisting, dark paths between the pines.
"I don't like this, send out the worms to scout ahead."
I nodded, extending my palm.
A thin stream of worms flowed from my skin, dropping to the forest floor and spreading out in different directions.
They were my eyes and ears, crawling through the ground, reporting back what they found. It looked like a clear path, there were no threats. I moved carefully, following their reports. Sometimes I had to backtrack as we found dead ends. But the worms helped me find the way.
An hour passed. Then two.
The forest remained silent except for the occasional creak of branches under snow. The worms reported nothing dangerous—no drakes, no predators—nothing but trees, snow, and shadows.
"This is going too well…"
"Maybe we're just lucky."
"Luck doesn't exist in places like this. There's a reason, and I don't think we'll like it when we find out what it is."
The worm-scouts still hadn't found any threats.
My new power was working perfectly, with the scouts and Cedric's memories, I felt prepared for anything.
I had consumed a veteran Dragoon. What could this forest possibly throw at me that I couldn't handle?
The worms reported that the path remained clear.
I had lowered my guard. Just a little… just enough…
The snow directly in front of me was starting to form a slight depression. My instincts screamed a warning a fraction of a second too late.
Twenty meters of scaled muscle had erupted from the earth in an explosion of dirt and snow. Its legless body and serpentine jaws were lined with teeth the size of daggers. The wyrm lunged at me with a frightening speed.
I threw myself sideways, but I was too slow; the wyrm's head clipped my shoulder, spinning me through the air. I hit the ground hard, snow doing little to cushion the impact.
The worm-sword had formed in my hand before I stopped rolling. I scrambled to my feet, blood running down my arm where the wyrm had scraped through Cedric's armor.
Its head swung toward me, jaws opening to reveal row after row of teeth. It began hissing, and its scales were grey and brown. It had near-perfect camouflage.
It had been waiting beneath the surface, sensing vibrations, letting me walk right into its kill zone.
Cedric's memories flooded my mind with information.
Wyrms were the primary cause of Dragoon deaths in the Greywood. They burrow through the earth, strike from below, dragging their victims underground to devour them.
I was fighting something that had killed professional dragon hunters.
The wyrm was already on the move, its massive body forming a circle around the small clearing. Cutting off my escape.