Page 160 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

“The barrier is broken?” I ask, trying to get a clear answer and straying further from it.

“For you, pain awaits. Free us and accept. Your fire draws you closer to the home.”

“That’s it?” I say a little louder than necessary. “That’s what you’ve been trying to say to me? That makes no sense.”

“Not me.”

“Is this a prophecy or something?” I can’t do another one of those.

“Not future, now.”

A tree pulls itself from the ground and its branches grow to the floor, like legs, pulling itself closer to us. It’s branches wrap around the semi-solid creature, and my hand draws away from its scaly skin.

Okay, so maybe I can’t take Wendy. I had no idea the Eunoia could do this. I thought they just healed people.

I retreat, backing right into Leiholan. He all but pushes me away, then unsheathes a sword I’ve never seen before. The blade isn’t silver—and not by design—it’s rusted away, unsharpened and forgotten.

Wendy has one hand pulled back to her shoulder, her fingers contorted and bony, while the fingers of her other hand wiggle. She’s controlling the tree.

“How do we kill it?” I ask.

“Drain its blood with the arphac blade,” Leiholan says and raises his sword, walking to the subdued corenth. A snake shoots past the arms—branches—of the tree. The snake swings around, hitting the trunk of the tree with so much force I hear multiple cracks before the thing finally breaks a hole in the trunk. Two of the corenth’s four arms slither out from the gap, coming right for me.

Everything becomes a blur. Leiholan steps in front of me, then the arm wraps around his calf so tightly that he screams.

I look to Wendy, waiting for her to do something, to save him. But her hands drop to her stomach and she falls to the floor, gasping like there’s no air in her lungs.

The tree snaps in half with a crack that sounds so… alive.

Leiholan is being pulled across the ground and Wendy is still on the floor, and I have nothing but my throwing knives and a box of matches.

Unsheathing quickly, I hold one of my knives by the tip of its blade, closing one eye and trying my best to estimate how far off I have to throw to account for the movement. It’s just an austec, I tell myself, one that Damien didn’t electrocute nearly enough and happens to be moving faster than I can.

Somehow, I cut off the arm that drags Leiholan, but the snake—its tongue, I realize—takes the position I’d just relieved the arm of. It bites so deep into Leiholan’s leg that I’m not sure he’s going to get to keep it, if he gets to keep his life at all. The corenth roars, but it doesn’t turn to me. It pulls Leiholan in entirely, wrapping its three remaining arms around his torso.

With the sword we need to kill it.

I run for the creature, slicing at its tail that hovers just above the ground. I throw the knife at one of the arms that holds Leiholan and another at what I think is the thing’s neck. Not that it seems to care.

The snake, covered in Leiholan’s blood, comes right for me. I throw another knife in its eye that’s even bigger than the bullseye of my targets. Another tongue shoots from the snake’s mouth and wraps around my neck. I writhe and claw at the dry, sandy thing, but it’s no use.

And suddenly, I don’t seem to care at all! This is funny, I’m being choked to death, I know that, and I am entirely calm. At peace with it. The stillness in my lungs is oddly comfortable. Death is the only promise, and I’m just happy that something is being promised at all.

Stars fill my vision before the word goes black, and there’s nothing I can do, and I feel good about it.

When I can see again, the branch of a tree is hugged tightly around me and the world is moving toward me. Then away from me. Everything turns, and I see another two of the corenth’s four arms on the ground, next to Wendy, whose hands are glowing green. Two trees are growing from nothing, and then they tug on the corenth’s last arm. Leiholan falls out of its grasp, unconscious, the bottom half of his leg held on by a limb beneath his knee while he bleeds out at too rapid of a pace.

He’s going to die, and I don’t want him to. I was going to die, and I was okay with it. Arphac blade, snake, calming its prey, of course. This is one of Serpencia’s greater corenths.

Both Wendy’s hands twist in an unnatural way, and the corenth is being restrained by three trees—one of them the one that holds me, I think. Wendy takes the sword, holding it in both hands over her head, and plunges it into the creature.

In one jerking movement, she pulls the sword down the creature’s body. Blood sprays out from the sudden cut, and Wendy twists the sword even further and gives it one last push. The tip of the blade comes out from the other end.

The corenth falls to the floor, its black-and-blue intestines spilling out of its stomach, and Wendy falls to her knees, clutching her stomach again.

I run to Leiholan, unconscious and bleeding out, cursing under my breath. “You have to heal him!” I downright cry, turning to Wendy. She’s taking shallow breaths, and suddenly I’m not sure she can do anything.

“Leiholan?” I slap his cheeks. “Open your eyes!” Slap, slap, slap. “Now!”

---