Page 18 of Fae Exile

While Roan slashed at a monster moving in from the left, Reed jumped up onto the log and, even while tentacles latched on to his calves, weaving up his thighs, he pulled back on thestring of his bow and released arrow after arrow into the center of the spiral of eyes.

The beast recoiled ... but ultimately absorbed the arrowheads into its gelatinous flesh, sucking them inward where they disappeared from view, the fletchings disconnecting and falling harmlessly to the ground.

Amid a stomach-turning, juicy squelching, Roan grunted, “They got more comin’ at me faster n’ I can hack ‘em off.”

“Pru,” I yelled, but if she responded I didn’t hear her over the battering rhythm of warfare—the insistent pounding of my heart.

A tree creaked, branches snapping above, and I guessed Xeno must be shifting. Moments later, a shattering roar sliced through the constant hissing and chittering, and the whistling of arcing weapons.

More branches broke, and a monster squealed, telling me Xeno’s dragon had pounced. Surrounded by brush and woods as we were, he wouldn’t be able to spray his fire without setting the forest ablaze. But he had wicked teeth, claws, and a barbed tail, and he was brutally fast and fiercely strong.

“Their spit is slow-delay ... poison,” Reed mumbled too slowly, too softly.

With an arm extended to ward off the beasts, Roan and I whirled in time to help lower him to the ground—too close to the crackling fire and to the ever-slinking tentacles.

“Xeno,” I bellowed. “Don’t bite them. Poison.”

Immediately, I heard a dragon hacking, telling me the warning arrived too late.

“Roan,” I said. “Let’s pull back tighter. Protect Reed, Pru, and Saffron.”

Roan glanced at me, nodded, and swung his ax, cutting right through a beast’s mouth, slicing through its face. The monster faltered, sticking out a stumpy, purple tongue as if on reflex. Arich, violet ichor dripped down its body, before the top half of it, including all its eyes and many of its arms, slid off its bottom half—and continued inching toward us.

“Holy Etherlands, that so ain’t right,” Roan mumbled, but he was already helping me drag Reed around the fire to huddle next to Pru, who double-fisted torches while Finnian took a flying leap off a log and slammed his sword into the top of a monster’s head.

All at once, every one of its many eyes shut and its legs drooped, seemingly rendering it instantly lifeless.

“Straight through the top of the head is the kill shot,” Finnian cried over the hissing, chittering, and slithering-snaking that crunched across the forest floor.

I was in the process of driving my torch into the nearest beast’s gaping mouth when Finnian bent over the now-dead creature to remove his sword.

As soon as he tapped his blade, the monster burst like overripe fruit, spraying its guts, gore, and poison in all directions. Heavy gunk rained down, painting my patches of bare skin—everyone’s flesh. Some got in my mouth and clung to my eyelashes.

Even as we wiped and smeared the goop across our faces, Roan and I met eyes. Reed was at our feet, shaking violently but otherwise unable to move.

“We’ve maybe got three minutes before we’re all good as rocks,” Roan cautioned above the loud sputtering of the fire. It, too, was doused in innards.

Pitch-black, slimy mounds slithered toward us from as far as I could see. Moonlight glimmered across them, the entire forest around us undulating like the ocean.

Dragon-Xeno lumbered toward me from behind Finnian, stomping on heads, crunching arms with his clawed feet, his wings batting to lend him stability. Even across the distance, Icould make out the desperation in his eyes, the fading firelight flickering in their depths.

The dragon wobbled, and flew a few feet upward before careening toward a mass of writhing, anticipating beasts, their teethless mouths draped open and waiting, their tentacles oscillating as if in morbid greeting.

The forest floor itself appeared to be ever reaching for us, overwhelming us.

A black arm snagged Roan and yanked his feet out from under him. His face slammed into the ground, where another tentacle was breaking the surface of dirt, slinking through.

I blinked and found my eyelids unreasonably heavy, even considering they were coated in creepy monster.

The toxin is affecting me.That realization pumped a fresh wave of alertness into my system, but it wouldn’t last long—certainly not long enough.

Blade and dwindling torch aloft, I spun in place, taking stock. Reed was on the ground. Once I was unable to ward off the beasts, they’d take him. Roan was kicking at one with his free leg, but his ax had been taken from him. Dark, sludgy poison coated Xeno’s wings, and tentacles wrapped all four of his legs. Finnian was fighting off several reaching limbs at once. And Pru, with Saffron still on her back, huddled so close to the fire that it might soon burn the dragonling.

We’d all been doused in fast-acting poison. Once it claimed us, we’d never walk away from here.

I could defend my friends for however many minutes of movement I had left—the horses were probably dead already—or I could bet on the longest shot of them all ... and the only meaningful one we had left to us.

My eyelids were drooping, and I felt my heartbeat slow, sluggish when it had been racing not even a minute before.

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