Page 30 of Unleashed

Swallowing, Nina pushed past her lightheadedness. This wasn’t done yet. She looked down at Vortok, focusingonlyon him to stop her head from spinning.

The huge valo below took a moment to tug the spears out of the ground, position all three on his flattened palm, and toss them up. Aduun caught two. The third fell into the water and was swept away on the current. Vortok turned back to the tree and spread his arms as though embracing it. His muscles bulged as he attempted to pull himself up, but his power wasn’t enough to overcome his lack of solid hand- and footholds.

The roar of the floodwaters strengthened. Nina shouted Vortok’s name, but she could no longer hear her own voice over the cacophony.

Brow low and expression grim, Vortok clenched his fists and punched one into the tree. The boney, horn-like protrusions jutting from his knuckles sank into the bark. Reaching up, he slammed the other hand in and pulled himself up. His big muscles flexed and strained, their definition clear despite his fur. His legs swung as he hauled himself out of the water, hooves struggling for purchase against the bark. He didn’t allow that to slow him down; through sheer strength, he climbed higher and higher.

Just as he neared his companions, the larger waves slammed into the tree. The entire thing shook, dropping dead branches and leaves from overhead. Vortok slid down an inch before catching himself with his knucklebones. He reached out with one hand, the other arm trembling with the exertion of holding his entire body up. The floodwater churned mere feet below his hooves.

“You’re almost here!” Nina called, digging her nails into the bark.

Balir and Aduun lay down beside her, extending their arms toward Vortok.

The wood around his knucklebones cracked and splintered. He slipped another inch before thrusting himself away from the trunk.

Nina’s breath caught in her throat.

Stretching forward, Balir and Aduun caught Vortok’s forearm in their hands. His blood welled beneath their claws, flowing from fresh gouges, but, somehow, they held his massive body up. The tip of one hoof skimmed the surface of the water for an instant before they hauled the dangling valo up, grunting and growling with the strain.

Nina moved back to give them space as Vortok crawled onto the branch. The immense relief that swept through her at seeing him safe couldn’t ease her nerves; she looked out over the angry water below. Entire trees — not just logs, but trees with roots and branches and leaves — floated on the surface amidst the smaller debris, some getting caught between the trunks of the surrounding trees.

Where had the water come from? Though there was at least one stream relatively nearby, there was no way a flood of this magnitude could’ve happened so quickly without heavy rains — and even then, it couldn’t have come from all directions.

The crashing waves subsided, but the debris on the water’s surface continued to flow rapidly, some of it swirling wildly as conflicting currents clashed.

Balir shook his head, features strained.

“Are you all right?” Nina asked.

“The noise is…uncomfortable. Overwhelming,” he replied.

Aduun crouched at the edge of the branch, scraping a set of gouge marks into the bark with the claws of one hand. “The water is still rising. We need to move higher.”

Nina glanced worriedly at Vortok.

The big valo tilted his head back to look up at the next set of branches. “It’s not as far. I will make it.”

Though the flow of blood from the gashes on his arm had slowed, Nina noticed crimson smeared around his knuckles, staining the protruding bone. She took one of his hands in hers and pulled it closer. “Your hands…”

“Do not worry for me,” he replied gently, withdrawing his hand from her loose hold. “We need to move.” Pressing a palm against the trunk, he stood up, and before she could protest, took hold of her hips and lifted her.

With his arms fully extended, her shoulders were just above the top of the next branch up. She reached out, curling her arms over the limb, and swung her legs up once Vortok released her.

Aduun joined her a moment later, and Balir, spears clutched tight in his long tail, climbed up behind him. Heavy grunts and thethump-crackof bones slamming into wood marked Vortok’s slow ascent. Nina hesitated when Aduun guided her toward the next branch overhead.

“He will make it,” Aduun said. Even if she didn’t feel it herself, she could not dispute the certainty in his voice.

She continued the climb, and though she refused to look down, another wave of dizziness momentarily blurred her vision. This was higher than she’d ever been. When she was young, she’d occasionally climbed trees with Quinn to gather riverfruit, and even those branches — perhaps eight or ten feet off the ground — had been high enough to strike her with a crippling sense of vertigo.

Of course, avoiding almost certain death was a bit more powerful a motivation than picking some fruit.

“Stay there,” Aduun said from a branch below her; she peeked down to see him and Balir helping Vortok up.

Focusing her gaze on the branch, Nina crawled along its surface until she reached the trunk and shifted into a sitting position, leaning her back against the bark. The sound of rushing water below seemed undiminished from its peak.

Nina closed her eyes and took a deep breath, hoping to push aside her fear and calm her nerves. After a moment, she tilted her head back and opened her eyes, looking up at the branches above. She gasped as a long, clawed limb swiped down at her.

Crying out, she threw herself forward. The tip of a claw caught in her hair briefly.

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