Twisted Legends: Twisted Magic Book 4

by Kaye, Rainy

  Like a snake, the tendril tightened.

  I forced myself to slack, but I worried the tendril would feel my pounding heartbeat as I struggled to ease my breath and continue to constrict.

  The tendril stilled, but did not loosen.

  The other tendrils around us undulated, waiting, anticipating. The longer I stared at them, trying to focus my wavering vision, the clearer it became that they were not tree roots. They didn’t seem to belong to any central entity, but existed in a cluster of independent, semi-sentient…appendages—that came directly out of the earth. The ground folded back at their base.

  I couldn’t spare Randall a look. If I turned my head just a fraction of an inch, the tendril around me might tighten, and much more, I would have a serious oxygen issue. For now, the appendage let me breathe enough, if not comfortable, and I couldn’t afford to push its generosity.

  If only I could…

  Before I finished the thought, fiery magic erupted across my skin. The tendril unfurled, flinging me to the ground. I slid on my side and scrambled to stand. The tendrils nearby swung down, beating into the forest floor. I darted and skidded out of the way as I headed toward Randall. More tendrils slammed down, one after the other, in a wild game of whack-a-mole.

  Why do these things even exist?

  I grit my teeth as another tendril came down on me. Reaching up, I grabbed it with both hands and yanked it toward me, incinerating it with magic. It fell apart into ash that dusted a trail on the ground. I flung around, slamming my palms into the tendril around Randall. It disintegrated, and he pulled his sword.

  We charged through the tendrils, nearly tripping over ourselves. Randall swung the blade, cleaving one tendril after another. They withered and crumbled before they hit the ground. I grabbed others in turn, burning them out of existence one at a time.

  We stumbled out of the reach of the last few and crouched behind a tree, panting. The remaining tendrils swung back and forth, as if looking for us, sensing where we had gone, but no new ones emerged from the earth around us.

  As my breathing steadied, I turned and nudged Randall to follow me, away from the tendrils and deeper into the woods.

  The rampage of dozens of crunching footsteps halted us.

  Fear encrusted my heart.

  Randall tugged me behind a large trunk. We huddled together, low to the ground, his sword draped across his thigh. I squeezed my eyes shut to clear my brain like it was a reset button and then took in the scene.

  The army in white meandered just on the other side of the remaining tendrils, not at all surprised by the quivering strange appendages sticking out of the ground. Instead, they seemed wary but familiar, careful to stay out of reach as they poked around.

  Their leader strode between the trees.

  “The trap was sprung,” he said, thoughtful but unamused, “but it seems to have failed. There should be far more prongs.”

  A pensive look crossed his face, and he crouched, touching a spot on the ground in front of him. He held up two fingers to eye level.

  Ash. He had found the ash and crumbs of our fight against the tendrils—prongs.

  My breath caught, and my jaw slacked a little as he turned to the soldier nearest him.

  “Bring the dogs,” he said. “Whoever sprung the trap got away, but they can’t be far. The hounds will find them.”

  My mind screamed for us to run, but anxiety took over and froze me right in my spot. If we moved, the soldiers would hear us. They were only a few yards away, and they knew we—someone—was out here. We had to remain motionless, breathless.

  The deep-chested baying of dogs broke my trance. The barking grew near, and it was on top of us before I could move.

  Wet snuffling and huffing sounds filled the air, and with a grimace, I peered back around the tree trunk. My stomach clenched, and I skittered back before forcing myself to stop. I dug my fingers into the damp earth and leaves on the ground.

  These weren’t just any ol’ mutts. Their paws, the size of my head, sank heavy footprints into the earth as the dogs snorted and sniffed at the ground, wiggling around, delighted in their task, tails almost as thick as my arms swinging back and forth. Their gleaming wet nostrils flared on their heads as big as my torso, with jaws and teeth capable of crushing straight through it.

  One of the three good boys lifted their heads to a soldier and gave him knowing eyes.

  “He got a scent,” the soldier said, seconds after my mind had supplied the realization.

  The leader strode over toward him. “The key?”

  The soldier’s brow furrowed at the dog, as if deciphering his expression, or perhaps exchanging a telepathic message with him—who the hell knew anymore?—and then shook his head once.

  “No,” he said. “There’s someone else out here.”

  “I picked up their scent already,” the leader said.

  Had we been spared? He already knew we were here and didn’t care.

  He whipped his head around to the soldier. “Find them.”

  17

  The soldier snapped his fingers, flicking out his hand.

  The dogs roared to life. They charged toward where we crouched.

  Randall dropped his sword as we fled. We kept low, darting between trees. Bushes scraped at our arms, but we hunched down and used them as cover as we kept going. Barking and howling filled the air. The sounds washed over us like a wave that hit again and again. Underneath it, the churning of heavy footsteps that hurried to keep up with the excited chase.

  I didn’t look back, barely felt I was breathing, as I scurried through the forest. Did the trees end soon, and if so, where? Would we be stuck in the wide open? How could we ever evade these horse-sized mongrels?

  Their paws pounded the ground, and the distinct sound of wet panting rolled up behind us. I was surprised I couldn’t feel the hot air of their breath yet. We seemed to maintain distance, but it wouldn’t last.

  Gray fog collected around my face. In the mad dash away from the mutts, I hadn’t noticed the fog lowering and thickening. I sucked in lungsful of it, even as I tried to keep it out, tried to snort it out, like it would billow from my nostrils as if I were a dragon. Like I could prevent myself from breathing altogether. Instead, I only managed to suck in more. And more.

  The world wobbled. With any luck, I was just hyperventilating. Another unwilling deep breath, and I dropped to my knees. My lungs burned with an acidic pain, and my brain flashed memories of Winston and his toxin clouds. Whatever this fog was, it might not be exactly what Winston harnessed, but it was close. Much too close…

  I fell face forward. My brain struggled to open my eyes but they had been shuttered. I didn’t seem to have any say in the matter.

  Dirt and leaves scraped across my face, and then I rolled—or was flipped—onto my back. Everything heaved and shifted, though I had my eyes closed and couldn’t see anything. I was hefted up, onto my feet.

  “Saf, you can’t,” Randal said. He didn’t have to explain further.

  If I stopped here, we were dead. Or as good as. Whatever happened when the dogs caught us, it wouldn’t be in our favor.

  I stumbled forward, blinded. The world kept bouncing and jarring, and my stomach went right along with it until I was heaving. I forced my feet to keep going.

  The buzzing sound grew louder. I swatted one arm, as if I could make it stop, but I only caught brush as we pushed our way farther through the woods, away from the dogs. I couldn’t tell if we had made any progress in distancing ourselves from them, because I couldn’t hear them over the buzzing.

  “Well, that explains the fog,” Randall muttered.

  Curiosity somehow overruled the dizziness in my brain. Or, perhaps I had breathed in enough clean air to counter the toxin.

  My vision cleared as I blinked a few times.

  Randall grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. As we passed by trees, I twisted to take in the muddy holes protruding from their sides, and in another instant, I realized they were
hives.

  Enormous hives. I could easily reach into any of the cells, if I had any desire to, which I didn’t.

  Smoke wafted out of them, filling the top of the forest with some kind of toxic fog, probably to protect their homes. It was a bit of overkill, though.

  Or, it was just the right amount, and we had yet to encounter everything that lurked in the forest.

  A waspy head popped out of an opening. Then the wasp-thing crawled out of the hive and skittered to the top. It perched at the edge, gazing down at us, and it was no smaller than a large housecat. Its body and legs were long and spindly, a bit like a dragonfly, but its back curled up and out like a scorpion.

  “What kind of drug-infused nightmare is this place?” I whispered to Randall as I slowed but kept heading forward. I couldn’t hear the dogs, but I doubted we had lost them for long.

  “We have these,” Randall said, not taking his gaze off the wasp as it stared back. “They’re just much…much…smaller. And harmless.”

  “That’s one small relief,” I began, but he sucked air between his teeth.

  “Maybe. The ones back home are parasitoids, but to insects.”

  I tried to think around the toxin still swishing in my brain. I caught the scent of vanilla, stronger this time, but couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. The fog hadn’t smelled particularly nice—or like anything, at all—when it had been poisoning me a moment ago, and yet…I smelled frosting.

  “Parasitoids lay eggs in a host and then the babies eat the host, right?” I said in a rush as words returned to me.

  “Yes, and given the size of this one…” he said, keeping his voice low, like the bug would pick up we were talking about it.

  “Right. It might have different preferences for babysitting,” I said. “Like humans.”

  As if on cue, the wasp darted forward, aiming straight for us. We broke free into a run, heads down to avoid the billowing toxic fog hanging in the air. The wasp swung around and followed after us. The buzzing grew as another wasp, and then another, joined in. More and more popped from their cells and then decided to get in on the fun.

  The swarm fanned out behind us.

  From the distance, but closing in, the dog barking returned. They had picked up our scent trail again.

  We raced forward. I swatted at bushes tugging at my clothes and ripping my hair. Thin needles scraped across my skin, leaving behind papercut wounds. The buzzing hovered right behind, and it was only a matter if the wasps or hounds got us first.

  My heart pulsed in my head, and I caught the wet snuffling noises of the dogs closing in. I stumbled forward, my legs giving out. I pressed my hand against a tree trunk and shoved myself forward, to another and another. I kept going, only because there was no choice. If we paused for the length of a breath, we were dead.

  A low tree branch nearly caught me in the face. I ducked under it and pushed off the tree.

  My footing slipped. The ground under me gave away. I half slid, half bounced down an incline. My shirt rode up, and rocks scraped and bruised my back. My arms flailed as I tried to find a hold, but my fingers grabbed dirt and leaves.

  Then I was airborne, the sound of rushing water drowned out the barking, the buzzing.

  My screaming.

  The scent of vanilla wafted around me, and I hated it most of all.

  I slammed hard into the earth, on my side. Air rushed out of me with a ungh sound. For a moment, my brain refused to see, even though I was certain my eyes were open.

  A thud hit right next to me, so close I could feel it. I scrambled to sit upright and scurried back as my vision cleared.

  Randall lay in a heap on the ground. Slowly, he lifted upright and dusted himself off, a dazed expression on his face as if he needed a moment to come back from the fall.

  My head throbbed in time with the ocean.

  I jerked around. To my left, a bay spread out in sparkling blue. I tipped my head to look up at where we had been and found a short cliff jutting out from the forest. The gray fog curled around the edges of the tree line but didn’t extend farther. The wasps were nowhere to be found.

  Neither were the soldiers and the dogs.

  My shoulders ached with sickening tightness, and a deep agony built inside me, not yet coming to the surface. When it did, I was in for a bad time.

  A twig snapped as a man stepped out of a nearly invisible cave opening at the bottom of the cliff, among a pile of boulders and rocks we had missed by a matter of a few precious yards. Just beyond the cave, smoke rose up from a fire buried among the rocks, the top of the flames leaping in and out of view. The man flung a handful of dried flowers toward the fire, then swung his attention towards us.

  In one motion, he thrusted out his hand in a blast of magic. I slammed backwards, into a dead tree trunk leaning against the curve of the cliff.

  The world shrank down, smaller and smaller, until I folded in on myself. I could feel my magic, knew it was there waiting for me to use it, but I couldn’t lift my head, let alone wield any arcane force.

  The small scritch of metal indicated a weapon, a blade, had been pulled. His presence loomed over me though I still could not see. I didn’t know where Randall was.

  That stupid scent of vanilla forced its way further into my head, until it coated my brain.

  “You will die like the last one,” the man said with a growl. I felt him swing his blade down. I jutted out my hand, forming a paper-thin shield. His weapon clinked against it.

  I could only go on sound, on feeling. The world was falling away in chunks.

  “Please don’t,” I whimpered.

  “The quorum will not stand for this,” he snapped, on just the other side of my clear wall. “You think after hundreds of years of service, you can betray us like this?”

  My brain tried desperately to pull together his words.

  Booming dog barks echoing from the top of the cliff, in the forests, stirred my senses.

  “I’m not them,” I said in a rush, pushing myself forward, though I still couldn’t quite make out more than light and dark motions. “I was just looking for the keys and—”

  A voice interrupted from far away, but not quite far enough: “Found them! I knew I smelled trespassers.”

  I snapped my head back, the world rushing back into focus. The leader of the soldiers stood at the edge of the cliff, leering down at us.

  “The key has been sighted,” he called back to his men. “Send the dogs.”

  A flurry of activity erupted from just above us. I could nearly track their footsteps descending to the bay.

  The key looked from the top of the cliff back to me, his wheatish complexion slightly paling. “Oh.”

  My wall disintegrated, and I couldn’t be sure if I had made it happen or not.

  “Otilia sent us,” I said, pushing to my feet.

  Surprise registered on his face, but then sank below the surface. I stumbled forward, and he caught me, propped me up a moment until I found my balance.

  “We have to get out of here but—”

  “There’s a passage,” he interrupted in a rush. “Let’s go.”

  He turned and fled toward the boulders.

  Randall slumped against the side of the cliff, eyes half-mast. He must have been caught in the key’s surprise maneuver too. I darted to him and shook his shoulders, my attention flicking to the key as he made his way farther along the base of the cliff.

  “We found the key,” I whispered. “Come on. Randall, come on. Ready? On three.”

  I grabbed his arm and tugged, but he didn’t budge.

  “Man, this is where you say three,” I whined.

  Part way down the beach, the key stared back at us, then up at the cliff. The dog barking closed in.

  With an irritated swish of his hand, the key charged back toward us and together, we hefted Randall to his feet. Randall staggered with us, finding his bearing, as we passed by the cave opening and the campfire. The vanilla scent billowed up around me.


  “Why?” I asked between huffs, trudging through the rocks and boulders, as if this was the most pertinent question I could be asking the elusive key that could, theoretically, open an arcane vault. “Why does everything smell like vanilla?”

  “The flowers,” he said. “The purple ones that grow by the water. When they’re dried out and burned, they smell like vanilla. It overpowers the dogs’ senses, makes it harder for them to pick up my trail.”

  “Oh. So those aren’t—”

  “No, they’re not normal dogs, not the ones you are familiar with,” he said.

  Why didn’t the soldiers know that about their own dogs, though? Or, the better question, how did the key know, but the soldiers didn’t?

  My soles slipped and slid as I made my way across the uneven rock. It was the path of most resistance, and I couldn’t imagine why we didn’t try an easier way. There had to be one.

  As if reading my mind, the key said, “This is the only way to the passage. It will lead us back to the central world.”

  “I assume that’s what you call where, uh, we’re from?” I said, motioning between Randall and me.

  The key nodded. “I was, too, a long time ago, but I have left this pocket only once in a hundred years.”

  “Oh. Well, a lot has changed,” I said, because I had been whacked pretty damn hard in the head. All riveting conversational skills had been knocked loose.

  “So I saw, but they kept us up to date,” he said with a small shrug, and pressed one hand to the cliff side as the ground sloped upward and the rocks became smaller and more unstable. “Just in case they needed to recall us.”

  “Recall, how?” Randall asked, fully back on the same planet with me—or pocket, as it were.

  “I’m a key,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  Well, one key. I still had questions, but there were too many, and I was trying to pace myself.

  First, we needed to not die. Then, we could find out what fresh level of hell we would have to endure to find key número dos.