Hours later…

  Skye’s clothes had finally dried when the rain began. Redeyes said something snarky, but he didn’t allow the comment to bring his spirit down. Despite everything, he felt proud of today’s progress. He’d come closer to the mountain than any explorer ever had. When he finally reached Kastrala, he’d find plenty of food there.

  Curry chicken, spiced vegetables with cream sauce, mushroom soup, caramelized apples… Each blink brought another dish to mind, and his stomach rumbled louder. He’d never been this starved, not even in the dungeon.

  He stopped at a scene both strange and familiar.

  In the center of a growing ground, one gigantic geoxos sat, sticking stones to smaller geoxii, shaping them into bulkier forms. With mounting anxiety, he recognized the skulls they wore.

  “What do your skull and theirs have in common?” Redeyes asked.

  Coldness washed over Skye. He stumbled back, feeling dizzy, barely able to breathe.

  “They’re all empty.”

  “NO!” he screamed, alerting the monsters. “It can’t be! It can’t!”

  As the giant rose to its full height, and the little ones marched towards him, Skye retreated into hiding, and rang his bell. The overuse of his curse, the gnawing hunger, and his many falls left every inch of his body aching. He’d been keeping his wits together, refusing to engage with Redeyes’s taunts because he’d thought he was achieving something, going somewhere.

  But no. He’d circled back to where he’d started yesterday.

  “Don’t worry, we have much time still,” Redeyes said. “It’s not like the elexii will attack Troqua and kill everyone you love by Green Eve.”

  Belted by the rain, shivering in the cold, Skye slumped to the ground. For what reason had he suffered all this misery? The wardens in the Deeps had already won, months ago. He’d deluded himself into thinking he could stop them. That he’d upend their plans. He wasn’t even a thorn in their side.

  He had been jumping, reaching to pluck a star, but the heavens were too far.

  “The solution is near,” Redeyes reminded. “You don’t even need to move. Just call aloud, and they’ll come to you. And everything will be over.”

  “Will you shut up for one Void-damned moment?” Skye hissed, seething at the teeth.

  Redeyes shrugged, obnoxiously relaxed. “I’m not saying anything; it’s all in your head. You could say… you are thinking out loud.”

  Skye shut his eyes, willing the spectral monster away, but when he looked, Redeyes stood beside him, fires flickering in the wind. It was true; Redeyes was a mirror of him. Or at least, of a part of him. Unbound by fear, raw in his emotions, all feelings dialed to maximum.

  What did that say about Skye and his desires?

  He knew something… essential had broken in him in that dungeon. No, even before that. Since the night the bell first manifested, he’d been losing parts of himself: his desire for adventure, his ability to feel joy as if life was one tasteless, gray dream.

  But was he truly this weak? Did he want a way out?

  He glanced at the geoxii through the foliage, then up through the canopy at the mountains. Night was falling, and the moons hadn’t deemed this evening worthy of their presence. He could walk blindfolded, and it wouldn’t make a difference, and the idea of sleep made his skin crawl with phantom insects.

  What were his options then? Did he have any?

  “Just make the call,” Redeyes urged.

  Skye shoved fingers into his ears to block out Basalt’s mournful scream. In its place, the smiling ghost of Gideom appeared, sitting across from him, scribbling his will: LIVE. When he closed his eyes, Rierana and Lyonel ran to meet him, begging him not to leave yet.

  But that was all in his head; they didn’t even know he existed. Quietly, he bit his lower lip until it bled, and let the rain wash away his tears.

  “So weak, so indecisive, so pathetic,” Redeyes sneered. “If you can’t decide, then fate will make the decision for you. Mark my words; it’s only a matter of time.”

  No sooner had Redeyes spoke than a roar ripped through in the forest.

  Skye sprang to his feet as something crashed behind, shaking the ground.

  The yellow-blazed pyroxos with the mammoth tusks clung to the back of the giant geoxos, walloping down with explosive punches. Despite the rain, cinders danced through the air as it screamed, smashed, and trembled in wrathful ecstasy.

  The smaller ones hurled themselves at the flaming titan, piling on it like a living rockfall. They punched, clawed, and howled, trying to bury it. Then, fires leaked through the cracks in the mound of geoxii, and a hot yellow eruption blasted them away.

  They scattered like debris, some crashing into trees, cracking trunks, others shattered on impact against the ground, bodies breaking into smaller fragments.

  As the pyroxos roared, kicking away the more obstinate geoxii, Skye ducked to avoid the burning shrapnel.

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  “You can’t dodge fate forever,” Redeyes reminded.

  With the pyroxos distracted, the giant geoxos shifted its immense arms beneath the flaming monster and heaved, flinging it off its back. The pyroxos screamed as it tumbled through the air, crashing into the ground not far from Skye, leaving him breathless. Within a heartbeat, it was back on its feet, running into the fray again.

  Without the element of surprise, size decided the battle. One thunderous kick from the geoxos’s mountainous leg shattered the pyroxos’s left tusk and sent it hurtling into another stand of trees. Crack! The trunks shattered in a cascade of splinters. Before the pyroxos could rise, the giant was upon it, stomping with such ferocity that the entire forest quaked. With every crushing blow the pyroxos’s fiery form dimmed. Around them, the smaller geoxii cheered, raising their stocky arms in triumph.

  “Remember that book about elexii we read?” Redeyes asked, watching beside him. “What was it called? Elexosociology or something?”

  Skye could never forget it. It was one of the few books left unredacted, providing theories about the origins, habits, and purposes of elexii. The author had claimed that pyroxii raged all the time, starting fights with every possible opponent they saw, because they were in constant anguish. That their true desire was not to fight, but to die.

  The geoxos’s relentless stomping continued, the pyroxos’s fire fading to a dull glow.

  “There’s much to learn from us pyroxii.” Redeyes smiled.

  Fire ruptured from underneath the giant, throwing it off, and making it stumble backwards and fall. The pyroxos roared so loud Skye thought his eardrums would rupture, then it stood, brighter and hotter than ever. Even with its body cracked and broken, it charged the giant, the fires in its arms a searing white.

  Instead of punching, it pressed its fists against the giant’s shoulders, pinning it down, screaming in its face. The geoxos thrashed, but the pyroxos held firm, leaning in as molten rock began to drip from the giant’s arms.

  “It’s tearing its arms off!”

  With a deafening crack, the geoxos’s limbs gave way, falling to the ground.

  The burning fiend wasted no time. It scrambled atop the armless giant and locked its fiery limbs around its opponent’s neck. The smaller geoxii, panicking and wailing, tried to help their elder. They threw rocks, climbed the pyroxos’s back, and maced its head with their stout limbs. But it was all in vain. Eventually, they tumbled down, one after the other, their bodies molten, and so did the giant’s head.

  Mouth agape, Skye watched as the pyroxos turned its fury to the giant’s legs. He hadn’t noticed when the rain had stopped nor when the growing ground had become an inferno. The once-giant geoxos, now reduced to a limbless torso, writhed and contorted, rolling away from its mad opponent.

  “Ah, it appears… we’re more vicious than I’d expected,” Redeyes admitted. “But no matter, your fate is as I promised. As you want it to be.”

  Roaring in victory, the one-tusked, burning pyroxos hunted its fleeing victims. They scattered through the burning forest, but out of the twenty or so running, the pyroxos chose to chase the one running toward Skye.

  “Just wait here, and everything will soon be over,” Redeyes promised softly.

  Staring at the incoming geoxii, Skye remained in his place, his chest tight with dread. Did he want this? Would giving himself to the pyroxos bring him peace?

  Perhaps.

  But then he remembered the wardens who’d died fighting these monsters. The gushing blood, severed limbs, and broken bodies. Those deaths weren’t peaceful. If he were to die, it wouldn’t be like this.

  Ringing his bell, he turned to run as the monsters closed in. But no matter which direction he went, the geoxii followed, and so did the blazing pyroxos.

  His head throbbed with every chime, his chest and stomach tightened with hunger, and his legs grew heavier with each step. The sun had abandoned the sky, and he could no longer see his feet.

  Then, the ground dropped away.

  They tumbled down the steep hill, all of them, rolling end over end in a deafening cascade of snapping branches and crashing stones. When he hit the bottom, the hard ground knocked the wind from his lungs, leaving him face-down and motionless.

  The geoxii scrambled up and fled into the forest, leaving him alone with the burning, raging monster.

  “Only an idiot falls into the same hole twice,” Redeyes said as the yellow-flamed pyroxos rumbled back to its feet. “Rejoice, for there won’t be a third.”

  Skye propped himself up on one elbow, looking behind. The pyroxos stomped forward, arms ablaze, molten magma dripping from its fists. The heat seared his back, making every nerve scream, and he forced himself to crawl, ringing his bell frantically, but the monster didn’t stop.

  Pyroxii were incapable of stillness, burning with fury and madness. It wouldn’t stop hunting just because it forgot its prey.

  “This looks like a nice grave,” Redeyes said, calm despite Skye’s mounting panic. “How many centuries do you think it’d take the universe to conjure the next moronic adventurer who’d find your charred bones?”

  The heat became intolerable, and the stabbing in his head made him scream.

  “Oh, silly me! They’ll probably wear you like a trophy and march you back to Troqua! Here’s hoping you and your friends wind up decorating one of my brethren together!”

  Unable to go further, he turned to face the flames. Sweat dripped from his chin as he fumbled in his pockets, pulling out every crystal he had left. With a defiant yell, he hurled them at the pyroxos, sparking cinders against its blazing hide, succeeding only in enraging it further.

  They both screamed as the monster charged, then a third shriek split the air.

  Something fast and colorful slammed into the back of the pyroxos’s head. A four-legged cockatoo darted around the monster. Its feathers shimmered with iridescent colors that shifted as it moved, its tail whipping through the air like a long banner.

  Unbothered by the heat, the bird swooped down, scratching and pecking at the pyroxos’s skull, maneuvering between its flaming arms with impossible agility. The pyroxos thrashed, trying to catch the creature, but the bird evaded every blow. Then, as fast as it had arrived, it soared off, drawing the monster away into the burning forest.

  Skye collapsed onto his back, staring up at the dark canopy above. Somehow, he’d survived.

  But that bird wouldn’t last long, and the pyroxos would return as Skye couldn’t cast his curse anymore. Not to mention all the geoxii running rampant, or every other terrible predator lurking in the Smaragdine Forest.

  Like the bear-tortoise currently approaching him.

  It was the same creature he’d attacked before, but its face was visible now in the firelight. It looked more like an old man than a beast. Its leathery skin was dry and cracked, and bushy white eyebrows drooped over milky, slanted eyes. Beneath a short white beard, it smiled, the same toothy grin a lion dons when it approaches prey.

  The flowery vines around its waist resembled a loincloth more than natural growth. Which was bizarre, because Skye hadn’t known there were any intelligent animals in the Smaragdine forest.

  None of that mattered now. The tortoise-bear moved steadily closer, and it could easily rip his insides out with its scythe-like claws, or crush his skull with the thick cane it used to support itself.

  “That’d be one pathetic death,” Redeyes said.

  Skye struggled to summon his bell, but it refused to appear. It felt as if someone had wedged something inside his brain, tearing it apart.

  As he pulled on the tether and his pain mounted, the tortoise-bear crouched before him, pressed its claw to his face, and spoke.

  “Hello, little one,” it said, and Skye could keep his eyes open no longer.

  ?????Days until Green Eve: 21?????