Page 79 of The Ascended
I reached it first, star-sword already forming in my hand. The stag looked up at me.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, and drove the blade home.
The stag convulsed once, twice, then went still. Its antlers dimmed, cracked, and fell from its head.
“You take them,” I told Marx. “You’re the one who slowed it.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” she said, stuffing the antlers into her sack.
One down. Two to go.
I looked back to see Thatcher releasing his hold on the contestant. The man collapsed to his knees, gasping, hands shaking as control returned. He looked up at us—at me standing over the dead stag, at Marx cleaning her blade, at Thatcher swaying.
Understanding dawned in his eyes. We could have killed him. And we'd chosen not to.
He gave us a single nod.
"Well," Marx said, nudging the dead stag with her boot. "So what's next on our mystical scavenger hunt?"
A horn sounded.
Every muscle in my body locked tight. Beside me, Thatcher went rigid as stone. Even Marx's nonchalance cracked, her face going pale.
"Is it over?" she breathed. "No. It's too soon. We haven't?—"
A voice boomed through the forest. Not Davina's honeyed tones, but a deep thunderous voice of a man. Thorne.
"Time is up. The forest has turned, and you are marked for the chase. Run as the deer runs. Hide as the rabbit hides. Your weapons will not save you, but they may yet serve."
What the fuck does that mean?Panic threaded through Thatcher’s mental voice
I never got to answer.
Agony erupted across my scalp—white-hot, blinding, absolute. I screamed, hands flying to my head as the metal crown came alive. The silver wasn't just heating; it wasmoving. Flowing like quicksilver, reshaping itself with my skull as the mold.
I dropped to my knees, fingers scrabbling uselessly at metal that had become liquid fire. Warm wetness ran down my face—blood, so much blood—as the crown reformed.
Something burst through my temples.
The pain transcended anything I'd ever experienced. Bone parted like water. Skin split with wet tearing sounds. And through those wounds, they grew.
I could feel every inch, every branching point, every moment as they thickened and spread.
Antlers.
The weight was staggering. My neck muscles screamed as they tried to support this new appendage of metal and bone.
"Thais!" Thatcher's voice cracked with his own agony.
I forced my eyes open to see him doubled over, hands pressed to his temples where his own crown was reshaping. His spiraled into thick ram's horns, curving back along his skull in brutal arcs.
Marx fared no better. She stayed on her feet through what must have been sheer will, but her hands shook as she touched the new growths—silver antlers like mine.
"This is bad," she said, and the understatement would have been funny if we weren't all bleeding and changed and terrified. "This is very, very bad."
The ground began to shake.
It was rhythmic. Like footsteps, if feet were the size of houses.
