Page 32 of Shadow Weaver
We broke into a full-on sprint away from the skitter but not toward base.
“Carlo?”
“Trust me,” he huffed.
His legs were longer, but I kept up easily, resisting the urge to hit blur mode. The mist took it out of you, the composition of the air making it harder to recover after a blur sprint. I’d learned that the hard way.
The radio crackled. “Carlo. What direction are you leading them?” Lloyd said.
“Sector three, east line.”
I’d never been this close to sector three. My eyes stung as the mist thickened. My lungs screamed for clean air, and my face tingled.
Shit, the concentration of whatever they put in the air to ward off the fomorians had to be high there. But why was it affecting me so acutely?
Carlo skidded to a halt, bringing me to a stop with him.
“What were we running from, by the way?” I gasped for breath. “And are we safe now?”
“Horde of skitters. There are mounds, like anthills, to the west. They send out scouts to find prey.”
“That thing we killed was a scout?”
“Yeah, scouts are bigger than the regular skitters, but the regular ones have deathly venom.”
Great. “So, we’re safe here?”
“They don’t like it this close to sector three. It’s like each sector has its own unique ecosystem. The gradient of whatever they put in the mist affects the evolution of the creatures in that area differently.”
It made sense. I rubbed my arms and thighs through the feytech skin that covered them.
He swept a hand through his epic mohawk. He’d grown out the middle and shaved the back and sides down even more since the last time I’d seen him, and the style suited him to a T.
He winked at me. “You like it?”
“Meh.” I made a seesaw motion with one hand.
The radio crackled. “Horde spotted.” Lloyd’s voice came down the line. “Firing now.”
“Firing?”
There was a whoosh down the radio.
“What just happened?”
Carlo’s slender face broke out in a grin. “Just a little bonfire. Skitters don’t like flames.”
“We have flame throwers?” My voice went up an octave.
“Has Brady not shown you the armory yet?” He looked surprised.
No. Brady had been keeping his distance the last couple of days. We’d shared a room for a week at the fortress, and I’d become accustomed to the rise and fall of his breathing as he slept. But since we’d been allocated to barracks four, he’d kept away.
“We can head back now,” Carlo said, his gaze sweeping the landscape. “It’s pretty quiet.”
Yeah, we’d been lucky on this patrol. Harmon and Devon, not so much yesterday. They’d run into a pack of wild hounds, taken down two, but barely escaped with their hides when more had arrived. The knights had been alerted to the coordinates of the sighting and would be chasing it up.
Harmon had been shaken when he got back. His eyes wild. He’d told me that the hounds in the catacombs had nothing on the real thing.
