38. Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
A large puddle of water covers the path.
It’s not a lake or river, but it wraps around the bend ahead.
It’s possible it’s from the snow that melted, but something about it forms goosebumps on my arms. There’s no way around it, and the rock wall next to me is smooth and high to the top.
I tap my toes into the water and increase to splashing to make anything hiding below the surface reveal itself before I step where I can’t easily flee.
The temperature isn’t cold like freshly melted snow.
It’s warm like it’s sat in the summer sun for a while, yet the air is fairly mild.
I test each step I take into the puddle to be sure there are no sudden drops, as I can’t see in the murky water.
Nothing happens all the way to the bend, and the water stays at the level of my knees.
When the path narrows, I realize there’s nothing natural about the water because it ends at the cliff side, but not a single drop plops off the side. The depth doesn’t change.
My neck tingles, and I glance behind me while also feeling for potions that take out water creatures.
I recite which numbers go with which water creature.
The path grows steeper, and the water stays at the same level.
It doesn’t flow back, and I brace myself on the rock wall not to slip.
The puddle bounces up as a circle of peaks.
There’s no way a kelpie could hide in such shallow water, but the odd pool is behaving as though there is one hiding ahead.
I pull out a jar of pixie salt and ground troll’s feathers that will shrivel most water creatures.
The water bursts up like a fountain, and a faceless bluish gray creature with around a dozen thin arms stands in the middle.
She’s much too large to have remained hidden in the shallow pool.
Her tattered white dress flows around her, along with a vortex of swirling water.
Black orbs move from the sides of her face and position themselves as eyes at the same time a black line cuts her face open near her chin. The newly created mouth splits open from right to left. “Who dares to touch my pool?”
“I only want to get by.”
“No, I do not welcome company.”
“Fortunately for you, I don’t want to stay and chat.”
The mouth opens wider to reveal sharp silver teeth, and she whips forward using her spindly arms. There’s no real way to avoid her without jumping off the mountain.
I lift my sword and spear her through, but she simply parts her abdomen.
I leap through the large hole she makes in her middle and slam down on the other side of her.
My stomach slams into the water, and I scramble to my feet, wheezing as I recover my stolen breath.
She spins around, flying at me. I throw a handful of the water potion at her, and she hisses.
Her skin bubbles but quickly repairs itself.
She stares down at her stomach, and her orb irises grow to almost consume her face.
I get myself to my feet while throwing another handful of the potion at her.
She’s repairing herself as quickly as I’m damaging her.
I take off running down the path but have to slow at the narrower spots.
Her hissing tells me she’s close behind me, so I leap to a wider spot and stumble.
Her tendrils wrap around my ankles, and she flings me over the cliff.
After all my work getting to the top, this will be it.
Instead of falling to my doom, I’m suspended upside down over a horrific drop.
I swing myself forward, and she whips me around like a white flag surrendering for a desperate army.
She stops moving and dangles me again, baring her teeth. “How dare you disturb me!”
I swing out again, and she repeats the action of whipping me around.
The third time, she does the same thing, and when she stops again, I flip the jar with the powder up and swing.
As expected, she shakes me around, and I wait for just the right moment to pop the lid and fling the rest at her face.
She screams and drops me close enough that I’m able to grab dangling roots from the side of the mountain.
I swing from root to root as fast as I can before she recovers.
When I’m far enough away from her, I scale back up the mountain and pull myself over the top.
She flies at me, and I run, sliding on the damp rocks of her pool that seems to have no end.
I feel for a second water potion, and throw it at her, but it doesn’t impair her.
It’s only a waste of time as she continues to barrel toward me.
A twisted tree sticks out of the mountain ahead, and I leap up to grab the lowest branch, pulling myself higher with the branches.
She tugs on it, and it cracks. I drop with it, but it doesn’t break off completely.
I scan above me for any jutting out rocks.
The first one I go for isn’t wide enough to secure my hand, and I fall back onto the tree branches.
Her arms are trying to reach me between the branches, but I keep moving higher until I reach the top.
It takes a few attempts, but I jump and reach a crack in the rock.
It takes immense strength to pull myself up with it.
The ledge I’m on only allows half my feet on it, and I grip the rock to not topple off.