Page 51 of Wicked Prince of Shadows
My gaze darted frantically across the devastation, clawing for any escape. The walls were collapsing. There had to be something?—
DRRRAKKK-VOOOMM.
The first behemoth smashed fully through, its head swinging like a battering ram, jaw splitting wide in a roar that rattled my soul and marrow. The impact sent shockwaves racing through the ground, new fractures spiderwebbing outward. Stone groaned, marble shrieked, terraces crumbled. A whole front section collapsed into ruin as a jagged fault ripped from the front down the center of the garden. Two more terraces cracked apart, revealing earth and stone beneath.
The second behemoth bellowed, shaking its skull, horns gouging the wall as it forced its way inside. “BAAARRROOOM!”
Osric cringed and covered his ear with one hand while ducking the other against his shoulder.
To the right, stone split with a teeth-rattling crack, a fissure tearing open wide enough to glimpse the wasteland beyond—endless salt flats stretching toward the hungry chasm. The black weeping forest was in the opposite direction.
"There!" I pointed at the crack, already pulling Osric toward it. "We can get through! We get into the forest, and then we get help." The burning sap might serve as a weapon against the creatures.
Osric nodded, his face pale.
Knowing this was our best chance, we ran, our feet pounding across broken marble. Behind us, the behemoth's roar shook the air itself and made the rocks vibrate. It burned within my body. I locked my grip around Osric’s hand, dragging him over shattered stone, lungs searing as the garden fell apart around us.
A deathbeak shrieked somewhere behind us, its call echoing off the collapsing walls.
Ten feet. Five. The crack was narrow—barely wide enough to squeeze through if we could just reach it.
A shadow plunged over us, blotting the light.
I skidded to a halt so fast Osric slammed into my side. My stomach dropped. A centipede shot up through the crack, its segmented body blocking the crack in the wall, hissing and snarling. Its countless legs writhed as it swayed, preparing to strike.
I stumbled backward, pulling Osric with me and pushing him behind me at the same time.
We were trapped. There was nowhere to go. Behind us, both behemoths trampled the garden. To our sides, beetles and deathbeaks closed in. We were cornered. I grabbed one of the fallen shrubs. The branch snapped in my hand as I ripped it free, leaves rustling and grey berries pelting the marble as I brandished it like a bat. “Back off!”
The centipede lunged. I swung.
The branch cracked against its head, only for its mandibles to snap the wood in half with a sharp, splintering crunch. The centipede jerked back then, its mandibles whirring as it hissed at me.
Snarling, I seized the rest of the shrub, shoving it forward as the beast reared again. Osric’s scream blurred into the chaos as I jammed the branches toward the centipede’s face. It tore through, shredding leaves and wood with terrifying ease. I braced myself, every muscle locked, waiting for the ripping pain of its strike?—
A ribbon of smoke slammed into it. The vapor coiled tight around its body, solidifying enough to grip. The centipede shrieked, thrashing. An eel shot in and attacked. More shapesflickered into existence—two, three more—circling Osric and me in rippling, translucent loops, fading in and out of corporality.
"Get out!" Vetle’s command cracked through the chaos above and to the right. “Get around the wall to the western watchtower!Go!”
His wings beat down with great force, pinning us to the marble before he slammed into the behemoth with a sound like mountains colliding. Shadows exploded outward.
The creature roared, the shockwave rattling my teeth, but Vetle was already moving—claws raking its skull as he twisted midair, then plunged his talons deep into its glowing eye socket. The second behemoth lashed at him, but the heavy claw struck the wall, sending shards of rock flying. Guards swarmed in, blades and arrows glinting, trying to draw its attention.
The eels surged through the crack, clearing a path. One coiled around a deathbeak, slamming it sideways into the marble. Another tangled a beetle’s legs, sending it sprawling into its companion.
“Come on!” I yanked Osric forward, shoving my head through the fissure. Beetles and centipedes writhed along the walls to either side, swarming toward the guards above. To the west: rubble and the watchtower rising beyond in what remained of the outer wall.
“Change of plans,” I said, trying to sound confident and calm. “We follow the eels to the watchtower. Stay aware. Don’t let go of me.”
The stone scraped my arms raw as I squeezed through, dragging Osric behind. Dust rained down, gritty against my teeth and bitter on my tongue. The wrap snagged and ripped against the coarseness. Behind us, Vetle’s roar blended with the behemoth’s.
The crack narrowed further. I twisted sideways, chest grinding against one wall, back against the other. Osric slippedthrough easier, small enough to dart like a shadow. Tremors shook the wall, stones grinding above us.
"Almost there!" I gasped, trying not to think of what would happen if the ground shifted and this crushed us like pomegranates.
We burst through to the other side, stumbling onto cracked earth. The outer section of the palace wall stretched before us. My breath caught. That wall had been shattered too, whole sections torn open as if they were made of paper instead of stone.
My breath caught. But the monsters weren’t here. Every beetle, every centipede, even the deathbeaks—they were converging inside the garden, drawn like flies to a corpse, leaving this stretch momentarily clear.
