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Valerian didn’t waste a second. As soon as my voice touched the cavern walls, he was on the move with Colbolt at his back. I stepped away from the cave entrance, moving toward the shadow creature standing on the other side of the creek, but Valerian called out to me.
“Amara!” he yelled, as he climbed Colbolt’s back, the Maukibou fully extending himself as soon as he came padding out of the cave. “Don’t!”
“We can’t keep running from it,” I said.
“No, but we can run now. Get on!”
Groaning, I turned around and rushed toward the Maukibou, taking my Fae form as I reached him so that I could climb on his back. “I thought you said we can’t get away from it,” I said, as I settled in behind Valerian.
“We can’t.”
“So, what are we doing?”
“We’re not letting it corner us in that cave. Ride, Colbolt!”
Colbolt clearly wasn’t in the mood to stick around, because he started moving quickly. Instead of going toward the creek, he made a hard left turn and went up alongside the hill of the den we had been hiding in. The shadow figure simply watched on from where it stood, motionless, and wreathed in darkness.
“Do you know where you’re going?!” I yelled at Valerian.
“I’m taking us to the road. We have to try to make it out of the forest.”
“What will that do? That thing will keep hunting us down, won’t it?”
“If it is what we think it is, it’ll have trouble manifesting in wide, open spaces—especially in broad daylight.”
“Daylight is hours away, and so is the road. We’ll never make either.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
Colbolt reared, bucked, and whined. The shadow creature was in front of us again, standing ominously between a row of trees not far from where we were. “You said pure light hurts this thing, right?” I asked.
“Hurtis a strong word.”
Concentrating, I charged magic into my hand, willing it to be as pure and as bright as I could possibly manage. Conjuring the magic was as easy as breathing, but trying to empower it took something out of me; sapped my magical reserves. When the bolt was ready, I hurled it at the shadow figure in front of us.
The last time I had done this, the shadows had swallowed my beam of light and it had done nothing to the creature. This time, the shadows shrieked as the bolt of magic went streaking through it. The darkness receded for a moment, wailing, and screeching as if the light seared it. When the beam faded, the shadow creature was gone, even if the whispering shadows around us remained.
“How did you do that?” Valerian asked.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think I can keep it up. Move!”
Colbolt barged ahead, charging through the space the shadow figure had been standing in a moment ago. As I scanned the woods, I realized the creature was no longer in front of us, but rather manifesting alongside us. I would never see it move, or walk, or run, it was always justthere, standing perfectly still, watching us race past or away from it.
The next time it tried to block our path, I blasted it with magic again, once more sending as pure a bolt of light as I could into the creature’s chest. It was enough to force it to discorporate, but it wasn’t enough to make it go away the way Valerian had last time.
“It’s not working!” I said, “Why isn’t it going away?”
“It’s not enough to hit the creature,” Valerian said, “It won’t go away unless all the shadows are gone, too.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t make a light that strong.”
“If you can keep it from forming in front of us, we may just make it to the road.”
“I’ll… do what I can…” I said, but I knew there was no way I would be able to keep this up. Each charge of magic, each blast of pure light, came with a cost.
Me.
I was taking great chunks out of my own energy reserves every time I tried to strike at the shadow figure, and we were still hours away from the road, and from daylight. Worse, I was starting to notice something as time went on that made my blood run cold.
