Shadow Trials

by Isla Frost

  I wasn’t confident enough in my own second sight to trust I’d seen anything in the remaining direction. “Then I guess we go this way.”

  Still, as a final precaution, I chose a long stick to test the ground before me. Some dangers weren’t detectable by second sight. “I’ll lead. You guys keep scanning.”

  But I’d only made it ten paces when my stick sank deep into the earth. Too deep. When I pulled it back, the end was shorter and crawling with small insects.

  “Terrants,” I hissed.

  I hurled the stick fifteen feet in front of us as a decoy, hoping the nest would move toward it instead of us. Then I backed away with extreme care. We’d learned to tread quietly and with minimal disturbance to the forest floor in our Survival Skills class, but they’d likely still be able to locate us.

  Bryn was backing up just as carefully behind me. “Their heat signatures must’ve been blocked by the soil.”

  “I still can’t see them either,” Ameline reported. “Or communicate with them for that matter.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. The flicker was clearer this time, perhaps because I was closer. “I can see them, but only just. We better choose a different route fast.”

  “I can probably convince the black locust bird to move to different hunting grounds,” Ameline offered.

  Bryn was just as quick to volunteer. “Wilverness said they’re quite flammable, so I bet I can convince it to move along.”

  Fire was her solution for just about everything, but the idea had merit. The black locust birds had an aversion to fire.

  “How about we use a combination of both to conserve your magic? Bryn, you can light a small fire that will kick the bird’s instincts into gear, and Ameline, you can play on those instincts to convince it to move.”

  “Spoilsport,” Bryn muttered. She lifted her arm, and a small fire sprang up at the base of the twin trunks.

  But I knew from her lack of further protest and the modest size of those flames that she agreed with my compromise. Conserving magic would be vital in this trial.

  Ameline frowned in the bird’s direction, and one of those “trunks” uprooted and stomped on the patch of flame.

  It went out.

  I checked the ground we’d just retreated from for terrants—employing both another stick and my second sight. The insects were advancing toward us. But slowly. Perhaps unsure of our location now we’d stopped moving.

  We were safe enough for now. I let my friends concentrate on their own tasks.

  “Can you light a fire halfway between us and the bird?” Ameline asked. “It might be birdbrained, but it has useful preservation instincts.”

  Another small leaf fire broke out. And a moment later the second “trunk” uprooted. This time it didn’t stomp out the flames; it moved away instead.

  The bird was so large that its first step carried it ten feet. By its third, we had enough room to dash out of the clearing.

  “Nice,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before anything comes to investigate that fire.”

  Or the terrants suck us into the earth and devour our flesh, I added silently. At least the nasty little insects weren’t particularly fast.

  I led the way again, my companions forming an arrowhead formation behind me. Their superior second-sight scouting abilities provided a valid reason for me to take point, but it was the position I would’ve wanted anyway. If we ran face-first into danger and had no time for magic, I was best equipped to handle it.

  Bryn was fearless and competent enough with her daggers, but her petite frame did her few favors when it came to fighting. My tall athletic build was better for strength and reach, and I was more practiced with a weapon. Not to mention Bryn was a tad too fearless to make a good leader.

  And Ameline… Her magic affinity with creatures was incredibly useful. But three months at the academy had not changed the fact that she was good and gentle and kind. Too gentle and kind for the fate of the firstborns. It didn’t matter that most of the beasts we dealt with were bloodthirsty monsters. Ameline wanted to live in harmony with them all. She was the only student who, despite all the trials we’d faced, had gone the entire time without resorting to bloodshed. Two things had made that possible: her affinity with creatures and my stepping ahead to do the dirty work anytime I could.

  Because protecting Ameline from physical harm had only ever been half my ambition. I wanted to protect her wonderful, gentle soul and her warm and tender heart too.

  So I would lead the way. And anything that tried to get to Ameline would have to do so over my dead body.

  Not that I told her that.

  Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me if she already knew.

  As soon as I judged we’d put sufficient distance between us and Bryn’s smoking fire, we slowed to search for vinegar moss. A common species that smelled even worse than it sounded but was otherwise harmless.

  Not everything hunted by sight. So we rubbed the stinking moss all over us to conceal our scents, singeing our nostrils in the process. We also strived to keep noise to a minimum, although there was only so much we could do walking on leaf litter.

  We skirted the edge of a colony of hellwings, avoided the creeping snakeberry vines, and steered well clear of an embercat’s den.

  Then Ameline paused. “Can you smell that? Like bitter melon and rotten lime?”

  In truth, I’d been trying very hard not to smell anything at all. But I sniffed the air obediently, relieved to find my nose had grown accustomed to the vinegar moss’s obnoxious odor and was now filtering it out.

  Sure enough, I smelled the acrid fruitiness too. Not a pleasant scent, but a distinct one, and far more agreeable than our own fragrance.

  Sleepwood shrubs.

  With luck, we might still be on the right side of the season to make use of their seedpods.

  We’d learned about them in our botany classes—if burst while still green, they released toxic spores that caused instant paralysis in anything that inhaled them. They were a last-resort kind of measure because if the wind changed at the wrong moment, you’d be the one lying helpless on the forest floor. And your target—who was likely bigger and nastier than you—was also likely to regain function of its limbs before you did.

  Still, we may yet need a last resort tonight.

  We checked the area for night crawler spiders, which fed on the sap of the same plants to sharpen their venom and often made their lairs nearby. Even with our second sight, the coast looked clear. So we scoured the shrubs and found two seedpods still green enough to work.

  The seedpods were oblong and as large as coconuts, making them awkward to carry without piercing the hard shell. But Bryn and I cut a strip of fabric from our cloaks and tied them to our belts.

  We’d barely progressed another fifty yards when Bryn cursed quietly. “Something very large and hot enough to breathe fire is coming in at two o’clock.”

  Ameline squinted in that direction, trying to identify the threat.

  She blanched. “A shadow stalker. Start climbing!”

  Shadow stalkers were a vicious fusion of dragon, leopard, and dinosaur and had the reputation of being one of the most lethal predators in the forest.

  Even if we somehow survived an encounter, we’d be drained and defenseless and never make it back. There were too many miles of dark and dangerous forest between us and safety.

  So we dashed to the nearest climbable trunk and scrambled upward. The monsters hunted by sight and smell, but their hearing was relatively weak and they were too heavy for tree climbing. Which meant if we could ascend high into the branches and stay very, very still, we might just escape its notice.

  “Incoming,” Bryn warned.

  We froze where we were.

  A second later, the shadow stalker prowled into view.

  Its dark body was long and sleek with four powerful legs that moved with leopard-like grace and speed. Impenetrable armored plating and squat, razor-sharp spikes covered its back—which was too
close to our hiding spot for comfort—the spikes lengthening into increasingly dangerous weapons the closer they came to its head. The head itself bore the ferocious reptilian characteristics of a dragon and was equally capable of breathing fire. And as if that wasn’t enough, the monster had a brutal club tail we’d been told it could wield with bone-breaking accuracy.

  From terrifying head to equally terrifying tail, it was about thirty feet long, though its club tail made up half of that.

  All we could do was stay frozen and hope the leaves we’d rubbed into our skin would conceal our scent, hope that we’d climbed high enough, and hope none of us would be overcome by the sudden urge to sneeze.

  If it saw or smelled us, it would burn down the tree or smash the trunk into splinters with its tail.

  The monster moved with impossible quietness for a creature so large, advancing through the undergrowth with barely a rustle. We held our breath and prayed it would not look up.

  It stopped beneath our tree, nostrils flaring.

  Cold dread trickled through me. Curse the fates, we had not survived all these months at the academy just to become this thing’s meal.

  The giant beast resumed prowling, and after its tail receded from view, I resumed breathing too. But we still didn’t move. Still didn’t count ourselves safe yet.

  Shadow stalkers always hunted in pairs.

  A long, long minute passed before the second one appeared.

  It was larger than the first, closer to our hideout. Its spikes glinted wickedly in the moonlight. This stalker too paused beneath our tree. Just in case our frantic hearts hadn’t had enough of a workout.

  But it moved on.

  We waited another five long minutes, Bryn and Ameline making sure the stalkers were well out of range before we returned to the earth. My limbs had gone weak with relief—which wasn’t ideal when I was relying on them to convey me down the trunk.

  That had been close.

  We resumed our cautious journey through the forest.

  I was leading the way after an uneventful half mile when Ameline shrieked.

  I spun to see her airborne. Grasped in the creepy fingerlike feet of a giant bat crossed with something more nightmarish.

  I leaped at Ameline’s trailing legs. The bat thing was big, but could it carry both of us?

  Apparently it could.

  But as much as the leathery wings labored, we were no longer gaining height. Instead, we were being swept along, five feet off the forest floor, our legs tangling occasionally with the undergrowth. I freed my dagger from its sheath.

  Ameline had recovered from the shock and had her wand arm aimed at the creature. Whatever she was trying didn’t seem to be working. A fireball smacked into its back from where Bryn was racing below, singeing the scattering of fur there and worsening the already unpleasant musty odor. The bat thing screeched but did not release us.

  Until I hauled myself upward and hacked off its foot.

  We tumbled to the earth together and landed in unkind shrubbery.

  It hurt less than falling off a tower anyway.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  I was hoping the crashing sounds growing nearer was Bryn and not some new predator.

  Ameline didn’t look so good. Her skin was scratched by the bushes that had broken our fall; her complexion was white and her eyes wide.

  I mistook the cause of her fear.

  “Fine,” she said. “But look. Are those night crawler threads?”

  Fine silken threads were strung all around us, barely visible in the gloom. We’d found another patch of sleepwood shrubs. And these were already claimed.

  I closed my eyes, just for a moment, and saw hundreds of faint flickers.

  Night crawlers did not hunt like normal spiders. Their webs were not hung to catch their prey but as the sensors of an alarm system that detected when a meal had been gracious enough to wander into their hunting ground.

  They were also the size of rabbits and hunted in force.

  “Run,” I hissed, just as the frontline of the night crawler army scuttled into view.

  Ameline and I ran, calling out to Bryn as we did. But we weren’t running in terror. Well, not just terror anyway. We were running toward the flowing water we could hear down the slope.

  Night crawlers hated water. So that was where we’d make our stand.

  Amazing how much information you could retain when your life depended on it.

  Of course, we had to make it to the river first. The spiders were rushing after us in a swarm so large they looked like thick, viscous fluid flowing down the hill.

  Somewhere off to the side, Bryn was fighting to join us.

  The night crawlers were going to reach us first.

  But the river was in sight now. And so was Bryn. She was running—downhill from the encroaching landslide of leggy, venomous arachnids, yet with more distance to go.

  Then Ameline went down. Hard. Her foot catching on a concealed root and sending her sprawling facedown into the leaf litter.

  Heart in my throat, I skidded to a stop and dashed back up the hill in a race to prevent the oncoming horde from burying her alive with their furry bodies.

  Bryn saved us both. A wall of flame erupted a bare six inches from where Ameline was shoving herself to her feet.

  The swarm shrank from the fire.

  I lunged to help Ameline up. The flames were already dwindling. I couldn’t imagine how much of Bryn’s power that had drained.

  We ran, Ameline limping now, my arm around her waist, trying to lend what support I could. Behind us, the wall of flames went out.

  The horde resumed its hunt.

  We reached the water’s edge and spun to face the oncoming throng. The river was too wide to leap across, and Wilverness had warned us that worse things lived in the forest’s waters. Warned us not to dip so much as a toe into any waterway we came across.

  But the spiders would avoid it too, effectively giving them only one direction to attack us from.

  Thanks to her wall of flame, Bryn reached us half a second before the first wave of night crawlers did. Without needing to confer, we took up position on either side of Ameline. She was far more effective using her magic than she was a blade.

  Then the swarm hit.

  I kicked the forerunner into the one behind it, feeling its soft abdomen splatter against my boot, and stomped on the next, which left, oh, about a dozen jumping and racing up my legs, biting as they went. I’d already drawn both my daggers, which made short work of the immediate encroachers, along with those that had slipped past me to Ameline.

  Ameline’s wand arm was stretched outward, her attention fixed in the distance where the rear half of the horde had stopped. She was holding them back.

  Bryn was focused on those closer to us, setting the leaf litter on fire beneath them and stomping and swiping at any that broke through.

  But any we killed were replaced with a dozen more.

  I poured magical speed into my limbs. I didn’t have an affinity, but I’d found enhancing my physical capacities was an efficient way of using my power. I slashed and stabbed and kicked and stomped until I was slipping in spider guts.

  They kept coming.

  The night crawler venom was taking hold, turning my limbs increasingly numb. Not paralyzed, not like the sleepwood seedpods. But the lack of feeling was making me clumsy, making me fumble. And I could no longer feel the skitter of legs up my pants and over my back or the needle-like fangs sinking into my flesh.

  Their venom wasn’t deadly. Just incapacitating. Because night crawlers liked to keep their prey alive while they feasted on it.

  Sometimes over multiple days.

  The venom prevented their victims from going into shock and dying, and the spiders’ saliva prevented them from bleeding out.

  The crawlers wanted their meals fresh and warm.

  Now would’ve been an excellent time to use one of our last-resort seedpods. Except thanks to the night crawlers symbiotic relati
onship with sleepwood shrubs, they were one of the few creatures immune to the spores’ effects. That, and the wind would blow it straight back in our faces anyway.

  So we fought on.

  I dropped one of my daggers and couldn’t find it again in the mess of slime and bodies at my feet. I punched or threw or slapped instead.

  Bryn must have run out of fire or sufficient fuel because she’d switched to fighting purely with her own weapons too.

  Ameline was still holding back over half the horde, sweat beading on her forehead from the effort.

  At this rate, it wouldn’t matter.

  Then something splashed behind me, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and as one, the spiders turned and fled.

  It was not Ameline’s doing.

  Heart thudding in my ears, I swiveled to see what had made them run.

  Chapter 27

  An elemental was rising from the river in the watery likeness of a woman.

  The figure towered over us, so large it had lowered the level of the river to build its current shape. Watery hair hung long and loose, and a flowing dress was formed from thick, swirling ribbons of more tightly controlled water.

  Without taking my eyes off the creature, I aimed my wand at the ground beneath us and buried our boots in the soil before setting it like concrete.

  Then the elemental struck. Too late I realized the long, twisting rivulets I’d mistaken for a dress were tentacles. They smashed into us with the force of a wave, grabbing us and sucking at us, trying to pull us into the river.

  Our feet held firm.

  But as the water slapped and splashed around me, I began to wonder if we could drown standing upright on supposedly dry land.

  My dagger was useless against a being of water. Bryn dredged up the spark of a fire that was instantly drenched. And though Ameline’s arm was pointed at the elemental’s head, the assault kept coming.

  Ameline’s affinity could steer and leverage the natural instincts of many creatures. But her level of influence was affected by the power and intelligence of the other entity. She could still attempt to communicate with greater beings through images and sensations, but the elemental would find it easy to ignore her. And it was doing just that.