Zach Brenner's Arc

Chapter 23 of 86

They left the town at dawn, Garrok leading on foot with his great axe across his back. The trail climbed above the north spring, narrow and cold. Snow crusted the rocks. Zach walked with his sword drawn. He remembered Garrok's warning in the hall: the woken things claimed this ground now. Malachar had roused them three nights back, and Garrok's hunters had died on this same path. By midday the trail opened into a wide, bare slope. No trees. No cover. Zach stopped. "I don't like open ground," he said. "We can't see them coming." Garrok crouched and touched a scrape in the snow. "They hit my men here. Fast. From below the rocks." He rose, jaw tight. "You never hear them until they're on you." That was the trap. The creatures ambushed them on open ground, and the group had no way to sense them first. Zach looked at his companions. "We need eyes we don't have." Lyra knelt and pressed her palm to the frozen stone. Her elven gift read living things through rock. She closed her eyes. "I can feel them," she whispered. "Under the slope. Four. Moving toward us." "How long?" Zach said. "Seconds." He didn't wait for the ambush. He turned it. "Then we choose where they hit us." He pointed to a cleft between two boulders. "There. They can only come one at a time." The group ran for the gap. Lyra guided them, calling the creatures' path as she felt it shift beneath the snow. The first burst up through the crust. It was low and armored, four thick legs, three eyes bright above jutting fangs. A fangcrawler. It lunged for Garrok. He met it with the axe and split its skull. The second came behind it. Raven put a crossbow bolt through one glaring eye. It dropped. "Left!" Lyra shouted. Zach spun as the third erupted from the snow. He drove the enchanted blade down through its neck. The steel bit deep. The creature thrashed and went still. The last one hesitated at the mouth of the cleft. Lyra flung out her hand and threw fire across the gap. The flames caught it. Ayla stepped past her and struck with her staff, and the silver crystal flared white. The creature collapsed and stopped moving. Silence fell over the slope. Four dead things steamed in the snow. Zach lowered his sword, breathing hard. No one had been hurt. Garrok stared at Lyra. "You felt them through the stone." "I always can," she said. Zach understood then. Their blindness was over. Lyra could sense the creatures before they struck. The open ground no longer belonged to Malachar's beasts. "You scout the trail," he told her. "Every step from here." Garrok wiped his axe and nodded north. "Then we move. The pass is close." They climbed on, faster now, the way to the Dead River open before them.