Page 163 of The Shadow Wand

“You know,” I tell her, bitterness rising even as resolve gains ground, “this would all be a whole lot easier if the side I’ve chosen to fight for wasn’t trying to kill me.”

Valasca spits out a laugh. “Take heart, Elloren. Just because the good side is trying to destroy you doesn’t mean we don’t need you.”

I shoot her a sardonic look. “That is no comfort whatsoever.”

She grins warmly. “If you’re in this fight for the accolades, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

“I’d settle for just a little less outright hostility.”

Valasca’s head suddenly lifts as if she’s heard something that’s caught her attention. Her gaze flicks toward the forest as the fireflies blink and the insects softly chirr.

Her face tenses in confusion as she cocks her head to the side, as if listening to the air. “The horses... I can sense them in the distance. They’re picking up something,” she says distractedly. “Somethingwrong...”

Brush rustles behind us and we both turn, Valasca releasing me as the sound of Lukas’s deep voice and Chi Nam’s scratchy tone become audible from the woods, the two of them engaged in hushed conversation in the Noi language.

My abdomen starts to prickle with a swirling sting.

Panic floods me as my hands fly up to clutch at my stomach. “The rune...” My head whips toward Lukas and Chi Nam just as they step into our clearing, my gaze snagging on something moving behind them. It’s barely visible, save for the rune light glinting off it—a black angular thing, tight on their tail, scuttling predatorily through the trees with terrifying speed. And it’stall...monstrously tall.

“Behind you!” I cry, pointing sharply at the thing.

Glittering, insectile eyes emerge from the shadows, way above Lukas’s head, a twitching, monstrous jaw and cretinous, segmented body below.

It all happens in a horrific blur.

Lukas and Chi Nam leap sideways and swing around just as the horrific thing bursts from the forest, like some giant, grotesque mantis-scorpion hybrid that’s bizarrely stretched out. It has a black chitinous body and powerful forelimbs. And its head—its horrible, terrifying head. Shovel-like, with large, gleaming black compound eyes and smaller swirling gray eyes spread out around its main eyes, as if it has a sickness. As if its eyes are multiplying. Smaller eyes dot the thing’s neck, and the sides of its body are covered in a combination of deep-green runes and runes made of undulating gray shadow.

The thing’s powerful, serrated forelimb slashes down toward Lukas, who ducks and slides out of the thing’s reach as he yanks off his cloak and draws his sword.

Valasca whips out a rune blade and Chi Nam lifts her rune staff.

“Don’t throw sorcery!” Lukas yells at Valasca and Chi Nam as the thing lets out a piercing, horrific shriek and Lukas dodges to the side once more to avoid another powerful swipe of the beast’s massive forelimb. “It’s got a deflection rune on it!”

Lukas slides into a berserker rage that’s stunning to witness. He leaps forward and slashes at the thing with savage intensity, deftly darting away from the beast’s swiping blows like he’s locked in a violent dance with it as I grab up a sharp-edged rock in my fist and back up to the rune-marked wall.

Valasca throws off her own cloak and hoists her rune blade, seeming coiled for an entry point. And that’s when I notice the stinger at the tips of the mantis thing’s scorpion-like tail, the gleaming black barb quivering above its head.

“Watch the stinger!” I cry out to them as I hurl my rock at it and hit it right in the center of its head.

Stunned that my aim was true, I take another step back as the thing sets all of its malignant eyes on me.

A dark tree blasts into the back of my mind, Shadow rising from its limbs like steam, the feel of Vogel’s malefic void rushing in, like a million spiders scuttling along my shielded lines.

The mantis thing leaps toward me and I dodge, a scream loosening from my throat as I lose my footing and fall onto hard stone. Lukas lunges forward and swipes his sword, teeth gritted as he growls and hacks off two of the thing’s back legs in one arcing cut.

The mantis comes crashing down sideways with a rasping shriek as black ichor spurts out its mutilated body. Lukas keeps slashing until he’s cut off the top of the thing’s lashing, venomous tail and half of the foreclaw closest to him.

The thing keeps its eyes on me as the taloned edge of its remaining forelimb crashes down and relentlessly drags its shredded body toward me, its chitinous form scraping the ground as Lukas pulls back his arm and slices the sword through the thing’s neck in a powerful blow.

The thing’s head flies off as its body collapses in a heap, the whole mass twitching and gurgling in a mess of black fluid and guts that smell like sickeningly sweet rotted carrion.

Lukas drops his sword, cursing under his breath and breathing heavily as he glares at the decimated creature.

Valasca and Chi Nam go to him, but I can’t move. I can barely breathe. My back is pressed against the stone, and I’m trembling so hard that I can barely control my limbs. Paralyzed with terror over thatthing. And Vogel’s power...it’s still writhing around in my lines.

Lukas sets his intense gaze on me. “Elloren,” he says sharply. “Are you injured?”

“No,” I choke out.

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