Page 26 of Bright Soul

“In the much more likely case that it is awake and biding its time like the good little ambush predator it is, you have to be aware of what it can do and how it moves.” She picked up a wooden carving. “It is mostly legs. Eight feet of looming legs studded with jellyfish stingers that shred skin. It moves in quick bursts to overwhelm its prey, and its sting causes paralysis.”

The carving was passed around so we all could get a good look at how bizarre the Jellywalker was. Its head was helmeted like a jellyfish, with solid plates that might resemble rocks if it buried itself in sand or dirt. Under the rim of its cranium, it had dozens of eyes for full sight in every direction. It supporteditself on five tentacle legs and had a hidden tooth-filled seam of a mouth on the underside of its head.

“Imagine the ocean having more of these things,” I said.

Willow glanced around before saying in her wisp of a voice, “The merfolk hunt unnatural creatures in the water like some of us do on land.”

“So therearemore.” A few of my friends paled at my suggestion.

“Ben,” Cress warned.

I cocked my usual half smile her way. “Just confirming for my nightmares, thanks.”

“Anyway,” Leona said pointedly. “We are running out of time. Myuna’s new creatures howl outside our walls every night.”

I wasn’t the only one shuffling in discomfort. By some unspoken agreement, none of us had acknowledged that it seemed like unnaturals were calling to each other every night above our heads. Their trills and screeches were muffled by several layers of dirt and metal, but they were still present. It was easier to pretend the sounds were from the monsters still trapped in the library…but there were only eleven of those left, and they were all below us.

Geo had taken to standing guard over us at night, posting up in gargoyle form in the shadows of the library’s ground floor. He’d have told me if he killed any monsters…I think.

“The Jellywalker and the rest of our targets are unlikely to be as cowed by Cress’s sunshine as the lesser creatures we’ve faced. So, not everyone at this table will be fighting the Jellywalker. Sorry, kids, but Mad Ash would have my head if you got seriously hurt,” Leona said.

She more specifically had Willow, Áine, and Wren agreeing in various states of reluctance to sit this fight out. Áine would be helping the twitchy verdant witch nurse care for any wounds,while Willow was still too unpredictable in her magic and Wren wasoutof magic, in need of time and rituals to store new spells.

Cress squeezed my hand under the table, beaming. “She wants me to fight,” she murmured under the planning going back and forth between Leona, Jordan, Geo, and one of the older Crystal fae that’d been assigned to the library.

I smiled back, not having the heart to tell her that she was probably coming as a spotlight to blind the demented jellyfish. She needed to work on her channeling, because most days, she used up her storage of magic just by managing her over-bright Lux spell.

If only I could share my channeling ability with her. Our mothers had had the same general problem—Eris Darkmore was all power, and Marie Evenstar had channeling for days but little oomph to back it up. Because they were of the same affinity, they could share power. All the more reason I hoped to see my father’s spirit every night as my nostrils were tickled by the packet of herbs still under my pillow. My mother’s ghost had given me a spark of her channeling as a gift and promised to wake Liam Evenstar in the next life so he would visit too.

So, where was he when we desperately needed him to visit me?

It took a little over an hour to devise our full strategy for the Jellywalker. Geo would be the only one to engage it at first. Its expected tactic of jumping out of a corner of the ceiling to wrap all five legs around its victim would be ineffective with all those stingers scraping solid obsidian. After that, we’d whittle it down while keeping a safe distance.

A small smile lifted Geo’s face, a subtle sign of how pleased he was to protect us from this danger. “Let’s go,” he rumbled.

We headed down to floor negative ten for the fight. I was in the second group down and took the short ride as an opportunity to apply my blood runes. I pricked the pad of my index fingerwith a blade and traced the familiar shapes in my own blood up my arm. Strength, speed, agility, stamina.

During my inspection of my gear, I flicked out the hidden vial of blood secreted within the ring I was wearing. It was a weird shade of purple…a gift from Phaeron, who’d taught me a couple new symbols where it’d be appropriate to use dimensional blood. I could use it to give myself shadow talons or paint a third eye on myself to see through unnatural magic. I was saving it for a dire emergency.

As we faced the Jellywalker’s door together, waiting for Leona to unseal it, I swallowed my nerves. The fights were only going to get more difficult from here. We were lucky to be healthy and whole and have the advantage over this creature’s natural weapons in the form of Geo. Even the five Crystal fae, with their armor of rock and mineral and natural geode-like growths, would be assets. Roe stood with them, her silver flail at the ready and the magical armor flowing from her necklace to encase her in a suit of polished orange crystal with reinforced fists.

Bianca and I stood to one side, prepared to shoot and stab the creature from afar. The librarian witches were another cluster, swords and books at the ready. Cress’s handbook fluttered in graceful loops over her head, chattering away about the best places to get sushi that it’d recorded in Cerris City ten years ago with its last owner. She was blushing faintly, caught asking a rhetorical question that it made literal.

“Hush,” Leona said sternly.

“Hushing!” It dropped its voice to a whisper and flapped closer to Cress’s ear. “As I was saying, there’s a place on Fourteenth Street that’s to die for…”

Sighing through her nose, Leona went ahead and unsealed the door, opening it for Geo to step through. He lifted his shield high and rushed inside.

There was a screech of something scraping unfeeling stone. The fae and Roe pushed into the room next, with the rest of us following suit. I was so grateful I’d seen the Jellywalker in theory first, as it helped me make sense of the hissing, pungent creature that was unwrapping its limbs from Geo and scuttling backward.

The monster’s five legs were fully flexible, currently bowed to drop its helmeted head several feet. Its many orange eyes darted in separate directions all at once, taking in the crowd invading its containment area. We were in an extra-large room, a twenty-foot box with a ten-foot ceiling and a dirt floor it’d been burrowed in for who knows how long.

Dust flecked off its moist skin as it used those flexible limbs to start climbing the wall.

“Heads up!” one of the fae shouted.

Its undulating body made it a difficult target to hit. A silver-tipped bolt flew, and one of its eyes exploding with a splash of blue blood. I threw a few daggers while it reeled from the injury, getting them stuck in its helmet and a second eye.

---