A shove in the arm and Tristan’s voice stirred me from sleep.“Rise and shine,” he said tiredly. “Minus the ‘shine’ part.”
I managed to mutter most of the word what before he cleared out of tent opening. I could see beyond the upturned flap that the sky was a dull gray, leaves rustling in a chilly breeze. Overcast was an understatement.
Like a disheveled moth, I emerged clumsily from the cocoon of my sleeping bag. I was sure I was the last one to fall asleep, which meant I was the last to rise. How late had I slept? What time was it? I wasn’t sure, but the hastiness with which Tristan began tearing down the tent and packing it up as soon as I was clear of it spoke volumes.
Outside, Ethan stood peering over the edge of the ravine, hands clasped behind him. Somehow he’d reconfigured his belt so that his sword was now slung across his back, cock-eyed so that the hilt jutted just above his left shoulder. Beneath that, he wore a clean navy polo shirt—different from the day before—over a gray thermal, and a cinched animal-skin pouch hung at his waist. As much as I hated to admit it, Ethan Webb resembled a modern-day knight, a true warrior. As heroic a visage as I’d seen from him—and probably ever would.
“Quick question, fearless leader,” he said as I took up position next to him. “How do we get down there?”
I was about to unleash a torrent of stuttering gibberish, when Tristan called from behind us, “I got it.”
I spun around. “You got it?”
He nodded, then pointed to the tent pack and the rest of our gear. “We’ll come back for this stuff, just bring an empty backpack.” He already had his slung across his shoulders as he tossed me one. Of course he’d remember an extra pack—all the more room for candilisk scales, right? I donned it while Tristan strolled right up to the ledge.
“Take a few steps back,” he ordered. Ethan and I obliged.
Tristan dropped to his knees, pivoting to face us—and then very coolly hopped over the edge backwards.
“Tris—”
“I’m fine,” he countered immediately, strained voice echoing. He was given away by his hands white-knuckling the rocky edge. Within seconds, the ground began to quake lightly. At first, it looked like nothing more than a few pebbles were scattering, but I began to feel the vibrations through my soles. There was a snapping sound, a tectonic crack that sounded like muted thunder.
Tristan’s hands disappeared.
“Damn it!” Ethan spat. He grabbed at my arm before charging forward. I followed him, skidding to a halt just before the ground disappeared. Ethan, on his stomach, reached down into the void. “Tristan!”
No! I’m not losing another—
From just beneath the lip of the slope, Tristan stared up at us. “What?”
I gave him a puzzled glare. “Uh, you fell—didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “I said I was fine. Look, you can start climbing down, but give me some distance. This isn’t the quickest process.”
It took me a second to realize what he was doing. Tristan stood on a jagged oval of rock not much bigger than the width of his two feet.
An oval of rock that hadn’t been there before.
There was another just in front of him and one was sprouting just beneath the surface on which he stood, each new “growth” was about a stride’s length from the other.
Tristan was making steps.
“Nice,” I approved.
Slowly but surely, Tristan created a near-perfect staircase that would let us descend the too-steep slope. He sort of looked like Spider-man as he made his way down the rockface yet to be affected, splaying out his fingers in spots to grow new stepping stones. Algae and moss rearranged and the reddish-brown rock itself parted like a stage curtain as the little plateaus formed.
A few steps above me, Ethan sat on a particularly large growth of stone, chin resting on knit fingers. “Rather slow going, isn’t it?”
Tristan glared up at him, sweat glistening on his forehead. “Maybe you’d like to try sliding down on your ass.”
The corners of Ethan’s lips quirked upwards. “Probably quicker.”
Tristan sighed. “Maybe. But you’ll appreciate my steps on the way back up, I promise.”
“Do I look lazy to you, Alexandre?” Ethan countered.
“Not especially,” Tristan replied. “But you look like the type of person who appreciates a quick getaway.”
Ethan sneered at him, scoffing in disgust. That was the end of their exchange. Maybe Tristan hadn’t meant it that way, but it felt like just as much a jab to me as it had been to Ethan. A quick getaway. A reminder that I was leading him—both of them—on a hunt to find something that could potentially give chase.
Tristan’s steps brought us right down to the stream where we’d seen the pair of wind elk the night before. Their hoof prints clustered in the soft soil before heading away down the riverbed, marking their hasty retreat.
A chill rippled the back of my neck.
“Come on,” Tristan said. “Let’s get this over with.”
This was the Devil’s playground, so to speak. I was standing right where I’d seen the candilisk the first time. From here on out, I had to consider the rest of the woods its territory. Home field advantage. Point: Candilisk.
This was also the furthest from the lodge I’d ever been. Believe me: the uneasiness of that swished and sloshed in the pit of my stomach.
Despite the overcast sky, visibility was still pretty good. Murky light filtered in between the gaps in the trees and even the occasional drop of rain managed to find my cheeks. The three of us trudged forward. Ethan kept his sword sheathed, but I could tell he was ready to draw it. His fingers twitched and drummed the air at his sides. In the same vein, Tristan tried to continue his botany lesson from the day before, but it was halfhearted. Anxious banter, the chatter of his nerves. To me, it was white noise, something to fill the silence.
And I was grateful for it.
Each of my steps sounded louder than the one before it, ticking like a countdown. Might as well have been walking through a minefield. One wrong step could alert the candilisk to our presence.
It’s sleeping, I thought. It has to be.
“How much further?” Ethan asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know,” I answered him. “I’ve never been down here before.”
Ethan stopped. “You’ve never actually seen where this thing lives? How will you even know what to look for?”
“I don’t know, okay? I’ll know it when I see it,” I said hotly. When I feel it actually. Then to Tristan, “I guess keep your eyes open for scales. Or a den, or a nest—something.”
Tristan nodded. He wandered away from Ethan and I just a bit, but it wasn’t more than a few minutes before he gave a light shout. “Something like that?”
I looked to where his voice was coming from. Tristan was pointing at a clearing off to the right—northwest, if I want to be rugged and outdoorsy about it—of where Ethan and I were standing. I glanced back at Ethan snidely. He read my “I told you so” and rolled his eyes, gesturing for me to go on with a patronizing little wave. I chased after Tristan, and together we broke first into the clearing.
“Well, you were right,” I told him, remembering our conversation from the previous day. “There’s your bog.”
A pea-green crescent of sludge stretched out in front of us. Shining Sweetlance shot up around the perimeter of the swamp along with a smattering of reed and cattail. The murk bubbled and popped, rippling the surface and leaving it quaking like lime Jell-O.
“And there’s your den,” Tristan replied.
Sure enough, across the sliver of wetland, sitting on a stubby peninsula, was a bulbous thatch of tree limbs and foliage. Massive and stuck together by a dark substance, possibly mud, the construct looked like a toxic growth on the land, a hardened boil that the Earth had driven up through its skin. There was even a wide, sinister opening like an angry sneer that made the mound look like a cavern.
Despite its crudeness, it was a perfect moat-and-fortress setup. This had to be it. The home of the candilisk.
“You two keep right, search for your lizard turds or whatever,” Ethan commanded. “I’ll stay left and watch that opening.”
Tristan and I nodded. Simple enough. I cinched the straps of my backpack and followed Tristan around the swamp. We tried to stay low behind the fence of tall marsh grasses. It didn’t make us invisible by any means, but a little cover wouldn’t hurt if the creature made an appearance. I watched the entrance to the mound as I circled the swamp, just waiting for that cobra-like head to appear and fix us with its gaze.
We’d come this far, all the way to the dragon’s lair, now I just needed my hunch to be right. I needed it to be Candilisk Molting Season or something. Did they shed? I prayed that, at the very least, the candilisk had scratched an itch a little too hard.
Scales, scales, scales, I chanted to myself. Show me the scales.
Swishing through the grass, like I was checking a dog for fleas, I was starting to lose hope. Fast. I wanted to find those fleas. At least one. Just one precious, rare flea that would skyrocket me to the top of Emma’s list of dorky, but well-meaning, potential suitors. But the more empty-handed I came up, the more I thought it was a dumb idea. As if this metaphysikal monster just went around dropping its scales wherever it—
“Here!” Tristan cried out a little too loudly. His voice softened before he added, “I think I found one.”
It dawned on me that I didn’t know first thing about what a candilisk scale would look like. Sure I’d seen the painting in the Alchemica, but that wasn’t exactly a high-definition representation.
But when I saw the “rock” Tristan was pointing at, I knew right away we’d found one: the scale of a candilisk. The base material of a solistone.
“Croatoan,” I whispered. “This is it.”
Slightly larger than my splayed hand, but about the same shape, the scale was a heavy plate of organic armor. Spiky, and the color of sand, the scale still had a sheen, a reptilian luster that caught what little light the sky gave up.
You’re welcome, Emma, I practiced in my head. Tristan shoveled the scale into his pack and scurried off on the hunt for more.
“Here’s another one!” he cried after a moment. “We’re gonna be rich!”
“You’re gonna be rich,” I corrected. “I just want the one.”
Tristan shrugged. “Even one will be worth—”
“I’m not selling mine,” I told him. “Like I said, just grab as many as you want. Just save one for me.”
“You too,” he said, motion to my pack. “I know you only need one, but if you’ve got space, don’t waste it.”
“Right,” I said. “Got it.”
I got down on my hands and knees and continued scouring. Truthfully, I didn’t really care if I found another one. Tristan and I both had a scale to call our own. In my case, at least, that was more than enough. But I couldn’t forget about Tristan’s family. I kept looking.
“This is slick,” I said to him. “See? We didn’t even need Ethan.”
“Lizard turds,” Tristan said.
I squinted at him. “Huh?”
Tristan looked at me, brow furrowed. “Ethan said ‘Collect your lizard turds.’”
I shrugged. “And?”
“You didn’t say lizard,” he said.
“I also didn’t say turds,” I replied.
Tristan gave a little wince, shaking his head. “Yeah, but how’d he know the candilisk was a lizard?”
“You said scales,” I accused. “Maybe he put two and—”
“What are you doing?” Tristan shouted, interrupting me. But he wasn’t shouting at me. I followed his gaze across the clearing.
Ethan was inches from the mouth of the cave. His sword was drawn.
“What are you doing, Ethan?” Tristan asked again, panic leaking into his voice.
“Shut up,” Ethan replied. He went for the pouch that hung at his side. He fiddled with the drawstrings a little, then withdrew something that sent cold daggers jolting through my body. It wouldn’t have if this was a basketball game, but out here, in the quiet woods, sneaking around the candilisk lair—it was the scariest thing he could have been holding.
It was an air horn.
I think Tristan shouted something but I was already off like a rocket, sprinting around the crescent marsh towards Ethan. I felt nauseous and angry all at once. What was he doing? Some macho power trip thing? A test of his manhood? What moronic reason could Ethan Webb possibly have for intentionally trying to wake up the venomous prehistoric monster that was potentially sound asleep in that den?
I tackled him to the ground.
Seconds after the blaring wail of the horn pierced the forest.
Ethan’s sword clattered out of his grip. He shouted, surprised. My ears still rang from the obnoxious trill of the air horn. Not surprisingly, Ethan had wiggled out of my grip within seconds and climbed to his feet. I stood as well, brushing at the smear of grass and dirt that ran up my forearms.
“What are you doing?” I screamed at him, heart beating like a helicopter rotor.
Ethan’s eyes swept the forest floor for his sword. It was behind me. When he noticed it, he glanced at me, then at the sword, then back at me. “Give it here, Quinn! Hurry!”
I picked it up. It was just as heavy as I remembered, maybe more so.
But I kept it anyway. Instead of handing it over to Ethan, I did my best to level the blade at him. “What were you doing, Ethan?”
“Give me the sword, Quinn.”
“Everything going too smoothly for you?” I demanded hysterically. “Afraid we’d get our scales without you getting to show off your sword skills?”
“That thing’s covered in scales,” Ethan growled, spitting. “You know how many solistones that could make? I’d be rich!”
I shook my head, disgusted. “You’re already—”
The words caught in my throat. That wasn’t right.
“You know what a solistone is?”
“Oh, please!” he hissed, throwing his hands in the air. “Don’t you know who my father is, Quinn? What Webb Industries does?”
I shook my head.
“We’re the number one manufacturer of metaphysikal artifacts, tools, and charms in the goddamn world,” Ethan answered. “You think I wouldn’t figure out what you guys were doing with candilisk scales?”
“But you’re not an alchemist, not even a mage,” I stammered. My grip on the sword began to quake and quiver.
“No shit. But you don’t have to be magic to have a checkbook, genius,” Ethan said. “Now give me my sword.”
I gulped a breath. “No.”
“That thing is going to come out soon,” Ethan argued. “Are you going to kill it?”
I flicked my eyes to the mouth of the mound. It yawned just between Ethan and me. Nothing appeared to be stirring inside. No eyes stared back, no deathly hoarse cry. Tristan trotted up on my right, sizing up the situation.
“Quinn?” he whispered, but I ignored him.
“I think its a deep sleeper,” I told Ethan softly, getting my breathing under control. “You’re lucky. You should probably just keep being lucky and come with us back to the resort. You can have a cut of the scales Tristand and I found.”
“A cut?” Ethan laughed theatrically. “Are you kidding me?”
“Quinn!” Tristan hissed again. I waved him off. I didn’t exactly have the time to broker a proper deal.
“Not now.”
“No, we have to go,” Tristan said urgently. “It’s not in there.”
I tried to look at him without taking my eyes off Ethan. “What do you mean?”
“The candilisk isn’t home,” Tristan explained. “But its kids are.”
“What?”
“Eggs,” he said. “The nest is full of ’em.”
“Eggs?” I questioned, still baffled.
“Big eggs,” Tristan clarified. “We need to split. Fast.”
I gave him a nod then turned to Ethan. “We’re going, Ethan. All of us. Now.”
Another deep laugh. “My father warned me about people like you. ‘Small thinkers,’ he called them.”
“Ethan—”
“Tell you what,” he interrupted me, grinning. He strolled over to Tristan and snatched the backpack out of his hands, holding it up in the air. “Give me back the sword and I’ll give you a cut of my scales.”
With a sudden rustle, a wind elk appeared out of the forest. Head bowed, its hooves dangled a couple feet above the ground. Blood darkened patches of its bluish coat, mixing to make a dark violet.
It was hanging from a maw filled with long, thin teeth.
“Oh, shit,” Tristan whispered.
The candilisk plodded into the clearing, a sandy brown coil of armored muscle on four oak-stump legs. In a way, it reminded me of one of those dragon puppets you see in parades during the Chinese New Year.
Except this definitely was not a puppet.
For a second, everything was still. Quiet. Its eyes were obsidian slits in hot amber, tired at first, then becoming wide—intrigued—as it saw us. Its nearly glowing orbs darted to Ethan, then to Tristan. Then to me.
Then to the sword.
“Oh, gods,” Tristan whimpered. “It knows.”
I was numb. Frozen. I felt weak, like I might black out and crumple. I just had to watch as the strange display took place.
It started with a stirring behind the candilisk. A long, tapered stretch of scales reared up, igniting two sails of bright orange.
A second candilisk?!
The sails wavered in the air methodically, like an organic kite. I realized it wasn’t a second serpent at all, but the original’s tail. It looked like its head.
It looked like a distraction.
There was a thump as the wind elk corpse fell to the ground. All our heads swiveled. Those telltale sails of fire bloomed around the candilisk’s saurian face, twice as intense as the ones on the tail and toxic red.
After seeing its fully-reared head up close, I couldn’t believe I was fooled by the candilisk’s tail at all.
The serpent hissed that demonic trill. With blood and venom dripping from gleaming fangs, it charged right for Ethan, bowling into him with all its momentum.
I watched in sad horror as Tristan’s backpack filled with scales sailed free of Ethan’s hand. One of the scales dislodged from the unzipped bag and plunked into the bog a second before the bag did.
Emma.
My stomach lurched as I watched her solistone—her future—sink into the slime.
I’m sorry.
The beast continued rolling Ethan like a tumbleweed, face-first, scraping him along the ground until he was out of sight behind its nest. With him out of commission, the candilisk was free to turn its attention to Tristan and me. It flanked us to our left. We were forced to strafe right, crossing the mouth of the nest. I couldn’t afford a visual check of Ethan, but I could no longer hear his pained moaning.
He’s gone, I thought. Ethan’s gone.
The beast’s triangular head dipped and bobbed rhythmically only a few feet away. I realized it wasn’t watching me, though—it was watching the blade in my hands, mimicking the way it trembled in my grip.
Cautiously. Fearfully. Like it had seen one before.
“Put it to sleep,” Tristan suggested quickly.
I almost laughed. “What?”
“I think it’s been out all night hunting. It’s probably tired—put it to sleep,” Tristan went on.
“How?” I hissed, trying not to even move my lips.
“I don’t know! Don’t you mages have a spell for that? Nightstalker, or Nightcrawler—”
“Nightcaster,” I corrected him. My eyelids sagged and my lips thinned to form a tight frown. “You mean Nightcaster.”
“Yes!” Tristan said excitedly. The hope in his voice was painful. “You know it, right?”
I should have. I would have if I’d stuck around and finished Babbit’s lesson instead of running off to ask Tristan about coal. I could have saved my friends.
That was the key, wasn’t it, old friend? You handed it right to me. A key I couldn’t turn.
“Quinn?” Tristan pleaded. The sword drooped in my grip. Not that it mattered. The candilisk was growing bored with it anyway. Over the ages, it had probably run into this situation before. Heroic knights with swords that wanted a piece of it. It knew how to react to a warrior.
But I wasn’t a warrior.
Tristan’s sigh sounded like I’d taken the sword and shoved it through his chest. The frustrated leak of air became a quiet sob. He sniffed wetly. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go.”
I stole a glance at him. His nose and cheeks were bright red; tears streamed from the corners of his eyes and rolled down his face.
“Can’t we just go?” he squeaked. “I’m just gonna go, okay?”
“Don’t,” I growled.
He strafed around the candilisk’s head, giving it a wide bubble of space. I watched the creature as it watched Tristan. Gauging. Anticipating. Its eyes became slits.
This is it, I thought. I can’t watch.
I could only wait for the candilisk to leap at my friend. It was inevitable. It—
—it was letting him go?
Tristan had taken another step back, just starting to turn away from the candilisk. The creature’s fiery sails dipped, coming down to half-mast as it watched his retreat. It recoiled a bit, making a slight shuffle backwards, scraping the dirt with its dagger claws. The candilisk was still wound to pounce at any moment, but with each step Tristan took away from its nest, the creature took a step away from him.
The impossible was happening.
It was making a deal.
A savage growl of effort erupted behind me.
Ethan!
Bloody fingers gripped around my own grasp on the sword’s hilt. I tried to fight him off, tried to let go, but it all happened so fast. Like my shirt was stuck in the door of a moving car, I suddenly found myself charging forward.
Toward the candilisk.
The creature reared up. I had just enough time to register the betrayal in the serpent’s eyes before shutting my own. My feet took over, propelled by Ethan’s. His bloodthirsty howl continued. I felt the blade meet a sickening resistance, like a serving fork sticking a tough spot on a pot roast.
The candilisk’s rasping nightmare scream blended with mine. A hot spray of thick liquid spattered onto my face. The serpent’s cry gurgled out of existence, but I didn’t stop. I kept screaming until my voice cracked into a sob.
I fell to my knees. Ethan’s hands left mine alone on the sword. I opened my eyes. The blade of the sword ran from my fists deep into a slit in the candilisk’s throat. Dark arterial blood was pooling on the ground, mixing with leaves and dirt.
I let go of the hilt and looked behind me. Tristan was still sobbing. Staring at me wide-eyed, his head shaking slowly as he backed away.
“Tristan,” I managed. “I—”
“You killed it,” he whispered wetly. “It was letting me go and—and—you killed it.”
I found Ethan, his face covered in gore and grit, bleeding from three burning-red slashes that ran from his left temple to his collar bone. Despite what must have been searing pain, he was grinning maniacally.
“Nice work,” he rasped.
My hands began to tremble. It quickly spread up my arms, seizing my chest. I shuddered like a newborn tasting something bitter for the first time.
It was me. I did this.
Ethan laughed. He cupped a hand on my head and shoved me aside as he went to retrieve his grandfather’s sword. Planting a black boot on the candilisk’s throat, he pulled the blade free, spraying another gout of blood. Then he used the sword to pry a huge scale free from the creature’s shoulder, inches from where the soft skin of its neck and chest met the hard armor.
He held the massive plate in front of my face. Bloody connective tissue trembled before my eyes. I winced, instantly squeamish.
“Now that’s worth something,” he spat.