Page 149 of Grim and Oro
“I’ve never been free in my life,” Grim says.
I open my mouth to issue a retort, when a scream spears through the rising darkness. We both stop. Relief spills through my bones. It’s her; it must be.She’s alive. The scream continues, echoing relentlessly. She’s alive, but it’s clear she’s suffering. We turn to look at each other for a moment.
Then we take off.
The second I step foot into the woods, a chill licks down my spine as if in warning. The cold deepens. Everything behind us is silver as the stars; here, the roots are dark as night. The trees are shriveled and sticky, as if they’ve been poisoned. The ground is muddled ash. This is a place of death. Of suffering. Shadows flicker in the sides of my vision. Branches move like swords trying to strike us down.
“Don’t let them touch you,” Grim warns.
I smell the poison on them. It seeps from dark moss, covering their pointed tips.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I say, ducking to avoid the branches. One gets close, and I burn it away. Another swings wildly at Grim, and he grunts in irritation.
“Enough,” Grim growls, extending his hand. From his palm, he issues nothing short of an avalanche of shadows that throws trees to the side, clearing a path.
I swallow hard. After months of being imprisoned, his powers should be weakened. Yet he doesn’t even seem winded.
The screams are getting louder. Closer.
We reach the edge of a black lake and stop, crouching in the brush surrounding its banks to avoid being seen. In the center sits an island. In the center of that sits a child. Ara. Her hands are covering her ears, as if she hears something we cannot. Tears streak down her face. Her mouth is elongated in a scream that’s suddenly gone silent, as if her voice has given out.
Slowly, she rises from the ground, floating, compelled by an invisible force. She shakes, back and forth, resisting its hold. Hooded figures suddenly emerge from the shadows, tattered and frayed. Beneath their hoods I make out bones, and nothing more. Night creatures. And they’re not alone.
A hiss sounds behind me, and I whirl, only to be met by a towering shadow. No. Not just a shadow. Moonlight escapes from behind a cloud, and the figure is momentarily revealed—ghastly and shredded, a mauled body.
There are dozens of them clustered around the edge of the forest. I hear them behind me, crawling from the depths of the lake. We’re boxed in.
The light shifts suddenly, and they’re all gone, made nearly invisible without the moon’s glow. Then there’s silence.
A moment passes. Two.
“The quiet is bad. They’re about to strike,” Grim says, shadows unfurling from his arms.
A high-pitched scream splits the world in half, and they’re on us.
I erupt in flames. They curl down my arms to create two swords. I use them to decapitate the creature right in front of me, but its head quickly replaces itself. I swallow. They’re already dead. Nothing will kill them—not for long. We’ll never defeat all of them.
At my side, Grim battles with his shadows, demolishing everything in his path. Unlike with my flames, the shadow creatures disappear for longer against his power. Some don’t return at all, as if permanently extinguished.
“Go,” he yells, looking over his shoulder. He looks ... almost afraid. But not of the creatures.
He’s afraid for the girl, I realize.
Ara.
I shoot into the sky, toward her—only to go hurling back, smacking against a tree. The shadows engulfing her ... they’ve created a swirling current, almost invisible save for the faint grayness in the air. I squint at the sky. The grayness is growing. The shadow creatures around Ara are swirling, almost blocking her from sight. They know we’re here. They don’t want to let her go.
Fine. If I can’t fly, I’ll get to her on foot. Creatures shoot out of the forest again, but I make a wall of flames, temporarily cutting them down. I use that second to freeze a path across the lake and take off toward the island. Immediately, I hear them behind me, chasing, so I collapse the bridge almost as quickly as I make it, sending them into the water.
It took years to learn how to freeze ice this sturdy. My armored boots clash against it, but it holds. Even through my panic, it holds, as I race toward Ara. She’s shaking wildly, against the shadows. It’s as if they areburningher, the way she screams. It looks like the shadow creatures are gaining something from her pain.
“Hold on, Ara!” I yell. “We’re—”
The world tilts, and my head smashes against the ice. Something has my leg. I blink through the roaring in my skull, through my blurred vision, and twist, only to see a skeletal hand clasped around my ankle. More creatures are slinking up from the icy water. Their rotted arms are reaching over the frozen path beneath me. I’m surrounded. If I collapse the ice, I’ll go down with them. If I fly, I’ll be beaten down by the howling current above.
There’s a Starling ability I’ve only tried once before. It requires great energy—energy I don’t have right now, as blood spurts from my head where it hit the ice. But Ara needs me.
I take a breath. Force my panic into focus. I narrow all my senses into that power in my heart. I brush away all thoughts, doubts, and fears.
