Page 123 of Land of Monsters

Joska and Samu advanced on Raven and me, causing her to growl, her magic swelling, her claws and teeth budding from her as the blades on her back pierced her clothes, a hiss of words rolling off her tongue.

Iain grabbed his head with a cry.

“What is happening?” Iain’s voice rose in panic. “What are you doing?”

Raven snarled, her obscurer blackening the stars above, dimming the firebulbs, its fury like a fog of death.

Iain screamed, blood pooling from his nose, her power squeezing his brain.

“Stop her!”

Joska leaped for her, but her obscurer was too focused on Iain to notice.

“No!” I bellowed, but it was too late. Joska tackled her to the ground, breaking her concentration for a moment.

It was enough time for Iain to pick up his bow. Aiming it at her, his fingers twitched to let go of the poison arrow.

“Mroczny!Stop!” I heaved, pleading with her, not able to handle if anything happened to her, the toxin already tingling my fingers. “Please…dziubus.”

She snapped her teeth, her eyes fire, wanting to disobey me.

Dziubus.I called to her, running invisible fingers over the monsters inside her, whispering for them to back down.I can’t handle anything happening to you.

“Nor I you,” she responded to something I never said aloud.

“Too late for that,” I whispered.

Joska latched goblin metal around her wrists, ripping her fae magic from her. Her body went limp for a moment under him.

“Get the fuck up.” Joska kicked at her, dragging her up to her feet.

Iain glared at her, wiping the blood leaking from his nose. “Take them to my mother.”

Samu grabbed onto me, pushing me to follow Joska and Raven, Balazs yanking Celeste with him.

“Nooooooooo!” The high-pitched cry came from Celeste. She thrashed against Balazs, screaming hysterically. “Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!” Her arms flayed and punched. It was as if his touch dissolved her numbness and pushed her into sheer panic. Her trauma was a place where logic was no longer a concept, and distress had taken over. “Let gooooo!” she wailed, twisting out of the hyena’s hold. “Nooo! Help!!”

“Get her under control!” Iain ordered, lifting his arrow again, but she wouldn’t stop wiggling and squirming, making it impossible to get a lock on her. “Shut her up!” His agitation rose at her frenetic screeches.

“Get off me!” she pitched from her gut. “Don’t touch—”

Balazs reared back, his fist striking her face so hard it cracked like a whip across the courtyard. Her neck snapped back, flinging her body to the ground in a heap.

Rook growled, trying to lift himself up, but fell back down, his system trying to fight the poison crippling him.

Celeste didn’t move. I couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.

“Good.” Iain lowered his bow, nodding his chin at Balazs in approval. “Move them out.” He indicated to me and Raven. Samu, Joska, and Balazs shoved us forward to a stairway.

Rook growled as we passed, but his physique sagged further into the stone, the handful of arrows still sticking out of his hide, his breath labored.

Energy crackled in the air between Rook and Raven, as if they were communicating. A sob wracked her chest, a hum in his. They held each other’s gazes until the last moment. Joska drove us up the stairs, leaving Rook to die.

In the moments of battle, where death and survival were a blink apart, there was no time to think, to consider true loss when peril was a constant. But I could feel Raven lock down, notallowing even a consideration, a splinter of doubt that he would survive this. She couldn’t, not if she had to keep functioning.

But we all knew pure goblin essence was fatal. Even if you got a remedy quickly after it hit the bloodstream, it still might not help. I had worked with herbs, which could postpone the fatality until a remedy was found, but I had none of those nearby, even if I had the chance to save him.

To save myself.

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