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Luri pauses, allowing me to catch up. “About?”
“You do have a family. You have me.” I smooth the white and gray fur streaking over her shoulder as I near. “As long as I’m alive, you’ll always have someone.”
“Don’t get sappy on me. I prefer the stone cold, fuck-shit-up-Alice, not this impostor.”
I snort, continuing our trek. “I still plan to fuck shit up. In fact, I’ve seen it. The day me and Finn went to the Tree of Life, after I started sleep walking, I saw myself in the castle. I didn’t know it then, but I was in Solaria, fighting men who stole armor off our dead.”
“And you’re just now saying something. Why?”
“I didn’t know what the vision meant. Scrying the future isn’t an exact science and sometimes it can be taken out of context.”
Luri launches off her hind legs, gracefully leaping over a line of jagged boulders blocking our path. I follow after her, climbing the flat surface of tilted stones, and hopping down on the other side. The moment my feet collide with the ground, a sharp spike of pain radiates through my head, threatening to make me empty my stomach as the world shifts around me.
“Still have the headache, huh?”
“Yeah,” I grit out, squeezing my eyes shut and staggering back into the rock face of the boulder behind me. “Fuck…” After a moment, the pain subsides and I peek my eyes open. My vision blurs, and no matter how much I squint to focus, it doesn’t get any better. “I think something is wrong.”
“You don’t say…”Her sarcasm is laid on heavy as she nudges me with her nose, the dull horn on top of it catching on the fabric of my sleeve.“Why don’t you hop on? I’ll carry you a little ways and we’ll see how you feel in a bit.”
“Do you think it could’ve been the mushrooms? Even though there weren’t any in the fire, maybe the smoke heated them enough to release some of the poison into the air.”
“If that were the case, I’d feel the effects too, and I’m fine. You likely just need some rest. You’re sweating and we’ve barely just begun.”
Swiping my forearm over my brow, I find she’s right. I’m sweating worse than a whore in church. The training suit made of dragon scales is lightweight and is easy to move around in, but it traps heat like a motherfucker. I unzip the zipper, slicing the embossed golden Cerberus in two, and shove it into my duffle bag.
My hand grips the damp material of my thin shirt and pulls it off my skin, sending a rush of cool air over me. “Okay,” I offer, looping my arms through the handles of the duffle bag so I can wear it like a backpack. “I’ll ride for a bit. But if you start wearing out, I’ll walk again.”
“Deal,”she says, crouching down so I can climb onto her back. I use the boulder to help me on, realizing just how weak and sluggish my muscles have become. It takes every ounce of will I have to pull myself up and over, and once I’m on, I collapse against her fur, trying to catch my breath.
What is happening…?
Dosing off, I lose track of how long she carries me. The river seems endless, and the city is nowhere in sight. Having drastically underestimated how large this prison world is, I settle into her fur, trying to let sleep consume me, feeling worse by the second. By the time something startles Luri, I can barely bring myself to open my eyes, even as her body jolts to the left, almost dumping me in the process.
“What is–”
“Shhhh!”she yells inside my head, and I peel my eyes open to find three massive creatures lurking near the edge of the woods. Luri stays close to the water’s edge, her feet never dipping in, or shifting a rock as she prowls silently.
“What are those things?” I whisper so quietly that I barely hear myself speak.
“Trolls… And they’re vicious creatures with magic. We can’t veer off and go around without them seeing us, so our best option is to blend in and stay the course.”
I’ve read about them in the library. They use blood magic and they are truly brutal. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was what attacked the village near Hell Hold. Part of the reason they were cursed to live in the prison world is because they used to devastate villages and leave them in ruin, right after they picked the meat off all its occupants’ bones.
They’re orange skin is thick. They’re colossal, looming as they crouch to move beneath the tree canopy. Large battle axes made up of sharpened bones secured to massive tree limbs are hoisted over their shoulders as they fell trees. The hammering drowns out most of the noise of us moving near the stream as Luri sleeks by… Right until my canteen slips off her side, smashing into the obsidian stones below between swings. I don’t even remember unhooking it. Then again, the last hour or two–at least–have been a haze.
One of the rolls stands up straight, rolling its shoulders back as he twists his torso. A tuft of auburn hair sticks up on top of his mostly bald head, and menacing green eyes land on us. His nostrils flare wide, forming around the bone pierced through the center of his nose like a bull ring, and he snarls, revealing jagged broken teeth.
“Hang on,” Luri says, her body coiling as she lunges forward, taking off with cat-like grace as she bounds across the river’s edge. My body jostles as she pounces from boulder to boulder, hearing the pounding feet of giants racing after us. My sweaty hands are threaded into her hair, my body crouched across her back, hanging on for dear life as she moves.
Fuck being sick–or whatever this is. I can’t even remember the last time I was sick, and it definitely hasn’t been since I’ve been in Hell. The magic is too strong here for most viruses to prosper, and even then, I heal quickly. So, why am I sick now? Shouldn’t I have kicked it already?
Luri takes a sharp right, and my hands slip, the weight of my back shifting in a damning way. Before I can adjust my grip, I’m falling. My body slams into the unforgiving earth. The scent of must and leaves filling my throat like an aerosol powder as I inhale–desperate to catch my breath. Only, it doesn’t stop there. At some point, Luri curved into the forest and when I launched off of her, it sent me tumbling head over foot down the ledge of a ravine.
The sickening snap of bone splits the air as my leg collides with one of the rock ledges on the way down. Twigs and sharp edges of debris slice through skin, flaying me wide open, and the fall seems to carry on for eternity, until it doesn’t. My head smacks hard into the ground as my battered body stills and the heavy footfalls of trolls rumble the ground. I can’t scream. I can’t move as it nears.
Before long, I’ll be theirs to do as they see fit and I can guarantee that I won’t taste like chicken when they barbecue me alive. No… I’ll taste like something more cynical and bitter. I try to lift my finger, summoning my magic–trying to anyway–but the sparks flicker out in seconds. My mind can’t focus long enough to cast, to find me from the wicked beast coming my way.
Something booms in the distance, the impact rattling through my chest. Something warm wraps around my fingers. It’s wet and sticky.Blood. Fuck… I’m going to die here. I can feel it. The world around me twists even as I sit still. My breathing becomes shallower by the second. I broke my leg, I should feel that–the pain–but I don’t. Everything is numb, leading me to believe I broke more than a measly limb.
