Page 58 of Unleashed

Balir stood with his head tilted, listening. After a moment, he crouched, lowering his hand to the ice under the snow.

A flicker of awareness pulsed through the back of Nina’s mind; it wasn’t a thought, wasn’t an emotion, it was something deeper. Something more primal, something purely instinctive. And it was moving closer.

Eyes wide, she sat up straight. “There’s something beneath us!”

“Something big,” Balir affirmed. “We need to move n—”

The sound of the ice shattering was as deafening as a boom of thunder. Balir and Aduun leapt away from the explosion of ice, snow, and water, and Vortok staggered backward. Nina’s heart skipped a beat, and her breath caught in her throat. The pulse of fear from her valos only solidified her own terror.

Nina knew of many dangerous, frightening animals on Sonhadra. She’d faced a good number of them herself. But this was beyond anything she could’ve imagined.

A massive, wormlike creature shrugged off the chunks of ice and swung its gaping maw toward Aduun. Rows of jagged, inward-pointing teeth ringed its mouth, which looked wide enough to swallow even Vortok whole.

Aduun was faster than the worm, diving aside, rolling, and regaining his feet in an instant. The worm’s front slammed down onto the ice, producing another loud crack. Vortok trembled with the vibrations.

To Nina’s horror, the worm leaned forward and hauled more of its body out of the water. A writhing ring of tentacles encircled what she could only imagine was its middle, latching onto the ice for purchase.

“Run!” Aduun roared.

The worm bent its body and straightened, whipping its head toward Aduun. The tentacles not touching ice or snow waved in the air, their teardrop-shaped ends shifting to follow Aduun’s movements as he bounded away. Something launched from the end of a tentacle, something small and thin, hitting the snow just behind him.

Vortok scrambled forward, snow crunching beneath his hooves. Nina leaned down and grasped his mane to anchor herself in place. Her heart raced, so fast she couldn’t count the beats, and it felt more likely to burst from her chest than to slow.

The worm reared back, lifting its front up high, and lunged at Vortok. Nina caught a single glimpse of its massive mouth rapidly approaching before burying her face in Vortok’s fur, muffling her scream.

Vortok’s panic became her own as he skidded to a sudden halt, scrambling to find purchase with his hooves. His body turned sideways, and Nina clenched her hands and squeezed him with her legs as her forward momentum threatened to pitch her off his back and directly at the worm.

The massive creature slammed down beside them, spraying her with snow, bits of ice, and freezing water. Vortok released a growl that built into a roar and powered forward. His hooves slammed hard into the ice, the impact jolting through him and into her. Somehow, she held on, and found the courage to look up again.

They were charging toward what had to be the far shore. Aduun and Balir were just ahead, a quillbeast and a shrieker, tearing through the snow in a desperate flight.

Can that thing follow us onto land?

It didn’t matter. They just needed to get off the ice, to safety.

Without relinquishing her viselike grip on Vortok’s mane, she twisted to glance back.

The worm had receded, leaving only a gaping, jagged hole in the ice that displayed grayish water. But Nina knew it wasn’t gone. It followed them, stalked them beneath the ice…and it was swimming faster than they could run.

“Keep going!” she shouted to Vortok. “It’s coming!”

Another thunderclap of cracking ice deafened Nina as Vortok was suddenly thrown into the air. Her body rose off his back. She screamed, clutching his fur tightly enough that her hands hurt; her desperate hold on his mane was the only thing keeping her from being catapulted into the snow.

Nina slammed onto Vortok when he landed, and the bags slung across her back struck her hard. The impact rattled her bones and made her teeth clack together. She shook off her momentary daze as he slipped, found traction, and resumed his wild run. The presence behind them surged closer in pursuit.

Aduun roared, and Balir released a piercing shriek. They were running on either side of Vortok now, radiating fear and concern that combined with Vortok’s to hammer into Nina. Added to her own fear, it was overwhelming, clouding her mind.

But that primal presence remained. It was beneath them now.

“Go left!” she yelled.

Vortok’s hooves slipped, but he banked hard to the left without falling. The ice to their right burst upward in large, broken chunks, sending up more snow and bits of frost into the air as the worm smashed through it.

Somehow, Nina’s heart sped. She didn’t want to die, didn’t want her valos to die, but they were going to die on this ice. This was too much, too dangerous…

Kelsharn had never meant for the valos to succeed. They were meant to die, one at a time, as they progressed through this world he’d made.

But he hadn’t counted on her, and she refused to allow him his victory. She refused to lose her valos.

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