Page 106 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

And bounced back.

The thing’s head turned, eyes redder than Bodul’s looked straight at us, and it started screeching, loud and piercing and echoing through the night.

And then they were coming.

“Here!” I heard Pritkin yell just as something hit me in the face.

It was dirty and scraggly and I didn’t know what the hell, just that it had come from above. As if the rest of our crew had somehow managed to find a way up there, not that it mattered. Because the creatures were as fast as a blur.

Æsubrand, the complete madman, shoved me behind him like he hadn’t just been trying to kill me a second ago. And like that was going to help! But that might, I thought, as somebody suddenly appeared in front of what had been the great waterfall.

They must have been small since the embankment still blocked my view, even at this angle. But the sickly green illumination they shed cast a hell of a light shadow on the cliff face behind. It extended almost the full height of the towering slope, painting it in leaping shadows that were monstrous enough on their own.

But then some ungodly screeching began emanating from it, like rusty hinges magnified a hundred times over, until I thought my head would burst or my heart explode.

It was the worst thing I’d ever heard, and the creatures hunting us seemed to think so, too. Because they paused, turned, and snarled, their attention momentarily diverted. And a moment was all Æsubrand needed.

He looped what I’d vaguely decided was a woody vine around his arm and grabbed me, all in one fluid movement.

“Pull!” he yelled because it was the only way to be heard over all that.

And he was, both by those above us and the creatures down here, who realized that their prey was about to get away. Which was why, as we were dragged through the air and up the clifflike side of the embankment, the snarling, furious pack was leaping across the lakebed. And jumping up, screaming defiance as fetid breath blew over my feet, as my heart tried to leap out of my chest, and as I did my best to climb up Æsubrand’s body while more claws raked over our dragonscale.

I glimpsed some of the shapes below as they tried to drag us back down. One had fur but was bird-beaked, with a body that didn’t make sense, but mercifully, none of the tangled-up limbs seemed to include wings. Another looked like a giant amoeba, formless and hairy with grasping, pale, sliver-like tentacles longer than my body that shot out from its edges, trying to wrap around us.

And that took Æsubrand’s boot repeatedly to what I guessed was its face instead. And when that didn’t work, the prince snarled, “Hold on,” at me and pulled his sword again. He carved his way through half a dozen whipping white strands, including four that had grabbed his foot and tethered us in place.

The white goo they contained splattered us in the process and burned like phosphorus, glowing in pale patches on our armor and eating through his sword blade, causing him to curse and drop it. But the goo was defeated by our dragonscale, although mine had to build up my breastplate to keep it from getting through. Causing my gauntlets to disappear, as their strength was needed elsewhere.

And that was just one monster!

Others were down there, but my brain was too freaked out to register them as anything but claws, strange appendages, and teeth. I realized I’d started giving off some half-strangled screams, which would have been stupid, except they already knew where we were. And it would have made me feel pathetic if Æsubrand hadn’t been doing it, too.

The perfect fey prince was making what he would probably describe as manly grunts if we survived this, but which sounded more like the shrieks of a little girl. And I was not going to say a goddamned thing about it, not if I lived to be two hundred, which was looking freaking doubtful. Because he was shrieking and fighting, and I was just shrieking.

I couldn’t do anything else as I was dead out of power, except to hope those things couldn’t leap this high!

And they couldn’t, maybe because six-foot-deep mud is a crap launching pad. Or because this side of the little lake was taller than the other, making it a big jump. Or because Pritkin and whoever was helping him were pulling like their lives depended on it, or at least like ours did.

We finally topped the rise after what felt like hours but was probably only seconds, and I found myself snatched up and thrown over Alphonse’s beefy shoulder. The light was a little better here, allowing me a quick flash of some ruined stone steps, cracked and broken and vine-strewn, of a dilapidated raised platform that looked like the one the musicians had been using but obviously wasn’t, and of a single, rusted sword, lying on a step and half buried in dust. And that was all I saw, as Alphonse was motivated.

I didn’t know if Pritkin had had time to tell him what was back there, but he certainly ran like all the demons in hell were after him.

“To the right!” Pritkin called as the strange green light went out, and a pack of braying somethings tore around the side of the lake—the rest of the bastards who hadn’t jumped in, I guessed. But now, they were after us.

“I will hold them off,” Æsubrand said because he apparently had not been paying attention.

“Yeah, for half a second. You’ll be eaten!” Alphonse snarled, and I nodded vigorously.

It was all I could do, as the bastard had half choked me.

“You have a better idea?” the prince snapped.

“Run faster,” Pritkin said grimly, and they did, with magic enhancing their already impressive speed to the point that we were practically flying. Only that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

There was stuff in the way everywhere: a mountain of tumbled rocks and dirt where it looked like an avalanche had descended from the heights above; pieces of wood from the nicer seating for the nobles, or whatever it had been used for in this time, which was half tumbled down and had a single ragged banner blowing in the breeze; and vines growing everywhere and covering the half of the lakebed closest to the water source, which looked like a dark jungle.

Even worse, some of the vines had climbed the surrounding stone pillars and hung in festoons, draping themselves between columns. And while many were as thick around as my arm and easy enough to see even in the darkness, others were deadly little rope-like things that could catch a neck if you weren’t careful and, at this speed, hang a person in mid-air. Like that, I thought, as one snared Æsubrand, who was saved from decapitation by his gorget but who lost his footing, tumbling to the ground.

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