It was a shock, seeing himself that way. Realizing they were probably right.
He had to prove he could be better. To Luc, and to himself.
The forest swallowed Rolan like a bug, sucking him deeper and deeper down its dark, twisted paths. Many of them were false paths, little leafy roads that appeared like a promise beneath his feet to lead him through tangles of briars, only to evaporate traitorously and leave him stranded. They made him long for the tried and true streets of Crisanth, which stank of pee and garbage, but at least they didn’t randomly disappear, making you feel like you were being laughed at by a thousand hidden eyes. Luc had taught him to beware such capricious trails, and to trust nothing but the sun and stars when it came to finding his way.
Truth, but he hated the woods.
Rolan felt a thrill of satisfaction, however, when he recognized a large boulder shaped like a turtle’s head, jutting out of a hillside like a huge, mossy shell. That rock meant he was close to the cave, and that somehow, miraculously, some of Luc’s pathfinding lessons might actually have stuck in Rolan’s slippery brain.
“If you’re here, Luc,” Rolan muttered, not daring to shout, “now would be afantastictime to jump out of the bushes and scare the life out of me.”
But the bushes remained undisturbed, and Rolan pressed on, his stomach fluttering with nerves. If the cave showed no signs of the Arcanist, he had no idea where to look next. Maybe he’d just go back to the house and hope—
Click click click.
Rolan froze halfway through a patch of giant ferns, his hands parting the fronds.
His heart hammered like a person beating on a door, begging to be let out. He knew that sound. It was one of the few soundseveryCryptic seemed to make, one way or another. Clacking teeth. Clacking pincers. Clacking horns.
Slowly, slowly, he lowered his hands, letting the fern fronds sweep together like a curtain to conceal his pale, sweating face.
Click click click.
The sun was low in the sky, the forest already soaked in shadow. He hadn’t realized how late it had gotten until now, when the night breathed down his neck and sent chills skittering over his skin. One of his hands moved to a dagger. The other went to his satchel of relics.
Wherewasthe thing? The sound clicked all around him as if it were circling him or, worse, prowling through the treetops. Rolan looked up nervously at the lacework of thin branches and told himself he was only imagining that they were braiding more tightly together, sealing him into an inescapable cage.
Click click… click…
Was the Cryptic moving on? Did he dare hope he’d managed to hide from it? The horrid clicking was getting quieter, more distant.
He waited a few more minutes, but didn’t hear it again.
Rolan let out a breath.
“Close one,” he whispered.
He moved away, going in what he hoped was the opposite direction. He was less concerned now with finding the cave than he was with putting distance between himself and whatever Cryptic was out there. Preferably an entireforest’sworth of distance. The Cryptics out here were much, much bigger than the juveniles he’d been hunting in the city. He knew his limits.
And in the back of his mind was the uneasy threat of the giant Cryptic, the one that had made even Luc turn gray with dread.
After an hour or so of sneaking through the forest, he circled back to the general vicinity of the cave. He heard no more clicking, saw no signs of Cryptics.
He was safe. Or, at least, as safe as anyone could be in a forest filled with monsters.
His spirits lifted. As in, instead of dragging on the ground, they hovered somewhere around his ankles. Still abysmally low, but slightly less than they had been.
They rose again when he glimpsed the cave, a dark smudge in the gray green of twilight. Rolan’s muscles relaxed gratefully as he stepped inside, his hand dragging on the dry rock walls.
Until his hand brushed something warm and wet.
Pausing, he held his hand up to his face and sniffed.
Blood.
Rolan’s heart dropped.
He plunged his hand into his relic satchel, taking out a curved talon. Instead of crushing it, he shook it gently, making it glow blue. The light was faint, but strong enough to illuminate a small radius around him.
