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“Alyx!” Airos shouts.
The toad stares at us with its bulbous eyes and smirks. Then it croaks, and its face changes to something that looks like panic. And then it explodes.
We duck as chunks of flaming toad fly past us. All that’s left in its place is a pillar of green flames, blindingly bright. I squint at the white-hot center and can just make out the silhouette of a man with his naked back facing us. Alyx. He shrinks with the flames and jumps out in his cat form.
“Show off,” Kalistratos says.
Then Melanion emerges from the stairwell, bruised and bloody but triumphant.
“Go north,” he shouts to Airos. “Meet with the others. They may be able to help you?—”
His face goes rigid and his eyes bulge out, frozen in shock. A dark form appears above him, like a void in the air. Then Melanion begins to wither like his vitality is being sucked from him. I can see it swirling into that void, like sand in a dust devil. All I can do is stare in stunned dismay.
His staff vanishes and he crumbles to the ground, just a pile of robes. The void floats down, and I see it has a face. It’s stolen Melanion’s face.
“Oh, fuck,” Kalistratos mutters. “A soul reaver.”
“We fly,” Alyx says. “It’s the only way.”
“No choice,” Kalistratos replies, and he turns to me. “Hold on to my back as tight as you can.”
I wrap my arms around his waist, and he throws himself off the roof. Heat and blinding light burst beneath me, and I’m surrounded by flames. No, wait—feathers. Shimmering orange and teal feathers. I’m on the back of a bird the size of a private jet, and we’re flying straight up into the night sky. Holy shit.
“It’s following us!” I hear Alyx shout.
I look to my left and there he is, a black and greenphoenix. And to my right is Airos, sparkling gold and red. The city grows small behind us as we climb, and I see Alyx is right—the shadow is flying too, and it’s right on our tails.
Airos whirls around and hurls a spiraling sawblade of fire at the monster, but it easily dodges out of the way.
“Fly to the hills outside of the city,” he shouts at us. “We have no choice but to fight. This may get messy.”
They reach the clouds and then dive, leaving a trail of multicolored flames behind us. Alyx and Airos whip in a spiral around us, throwing powerful fireballs to slow the reaver down. It doesn’t like the flames, but it’s not stopping. It’s not going to stop until it has me.
I remember the voice from my dream.“I’m going to send you back to where you belong.”
Kalistratos swoops over the hill, illuminating it like a giant flying flame, and we land near an oak tree. The ground is rocky, and there are a bunch of large boulders sitting around. In a flash of floating feathers, Kalistratos and the others have changed forms. Alyx leaps on Airos’s shoulder, and I’m shoved behind all of them.
“Where is it?” Airos mutters.
Alyx’s fur puffs out angrily. “There.”
The starry sky distorts as the soul reaver descends like a black cloud to the grass, which curls and dies beneath its feet.
“Why are you after him?” Kalistratos demands.
It doesn’t reply. It just stands there, staring with its stolen face.
“It’s not them. Someone sent it,” I say. “The toads, too.”
Jesus. Maybe even the frogs. Maybe they were all after me because of the same reason—the same person.
Who the hell are they?
“Someone…?” Kalistratos says, looking at me. “Who?”
“It’s coming—!” Airos yells, but he’s cut off as the shadowsplits in two, one half smashing into him and the other into Kalistratos.
Alyx swipes his paw and sends a startlingly huge wave of fire at the monster, but it blinks out of the way, then reappears and strikes him with a shadowy force that sends him tumbling across the ground. Airos grabs his staff from the air and sends up a wall of rock that immediately explodes into pebbles when the reaver touches it. I drop to my knees to protect my stomach. Stones pepper my body, and Kalistratos slides in front of me to shield me. He hurls a flaming knife at the reaver, but its shadow body opens, and the knife sails harmlessly through and sticks into the ground.
