He doesn’t need me to finish. He knows what I want – a lightning strike.
‘I’m on it! Move. Everyone move back!’
I glance above. Even in the darkness, the thunderous peridot clouds above glimmer, whipping up a wind that lashes through the branches. A heartbeat later, lightning strikes the trunk, igniting the hellish tree that is trying to steal Caz into the earth. Flames crawl skyward and thunder follows, rumbling, deafening, enough to rupture eardrums, yet somehow still quieter than the scream that tears from Caz.
The tree is on fire, every single one of its branches littered with leaves of red flames, and yet it’s not stopping its relentless dragging of my friend into the earth.
Helplessness fills me as the roots continue to pull at her, to consume her. They’re growing around her chest now, so fast that I can see them moving. Her thighs are lost within the even angrier tangle that squeezesand constricts her as she sobs and screams. It’s punishing Caz for the pain we have caused it.
‘We need to put the fire out!’ I scream. ‘It’s not helping. It’s retaliating! It’shurting her even more!’
I reach for my ice powers, but in my pure panic, they slip from me, as if I’m trying to juggle ice cubes.
Thankfully, Kyor is on it.
Rain lashes down, sudden and furious, steam hissing as water collides with fire. The writhing of the roots slows, but though the tree has stopped squeezing her painfully, it has not stopped dragging her into the dirt. Caz’s head is almost the only visible part of her now. Eyes continually flashing between red and white.
‘Benny!’ I turn to my last hope. ‘What do we do? What can you see?’
‘I can’t see a weakness … I don’t know …’ His voice cracks. ‘I don’t know what to do!’
‘You can only ease her suffering.’ The voice that trembles through the darkness is low and cold, and for a brief moment everything else is swept from my mind as two figures step out of the shadows. Figures that barely look human. Their bodies are layered in red furs, their heads hidden beneath hoods of fox heads, complete with long, snarling teeth.
For a heartbeat I freeze, gaping at the newcomers. Then I draw the dagger at my hip. Do they mean us harm? They have no weapons in their own hands, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have magic to floor us all.
‘The Quiet Ones!’ Loch gasps and drops to his knees, as if he’s praying to Aitara, the Mother of Gods herself. ‘You came.’
Ruben snaps at the strangers, ‘Stop this! Please, stop it!’
‘This is not our doing,’ one of them replies. Completely serene. Utterly unmoved. And for all I know, full of shit.
‘Kyor, hold them!’ I shout.
The buzz of static rumbles through the ground and their yelps of surprise confirm Kyor has indeed pinned them in place.
I lunge towards them.
‘Stop this!’ I snarl.
‘She can’t be saved now,’ one of them says. ‘The Sannthrall has her.’
Up close, the layers of skins they wear look impossibly thick,stitched with bone and sinew. Killing them with my dagger would be slow, and Caz doesn’t have time to spare.
‘I will give you one chance,’ I spit. ‘Reverse this. Now.’
The left figure tilts her skull-head. ‘You have an impressive blade.’
‘And I will use it on you,’ I snap.
‘Give it to us,’ she whispers. ‘Give us the dagger, then perhaps your friend may yet live.’
‘You said she couldn’t be saved.’ Ruben glares, stepping beside me.
Kyor flanks my other side, blade raised.
‘Perhaps we were wrong,’ the Quiet One murmurs. ‘Give us the knife and we will try.’
‘Rose,’ Kyor warns, voice tight. ‘That blade is magical. We’ve seen what it can do. You don’t know what it will cost to give it up. And she’s almost?—’
