Tainted roots

Harmony would’ve loved the rainforest, with its towering trees and its wild vegetation. I, on the other hand, wasn’t a fan. Not with the pouring rain plastering my hair to my face and my clothes to my body. I shouldn’t have been as surprised and annoyed as I was that it was raining. I had a fair warning from its name.

Like with the rift in Antarctica, we portaled in over a mile away. We didn’t talk much, other than to comment on the weather as we trudged through the rain. The trees here were almost as tall as the ones in the jungles of the Earth court, where Ari and I had met Harmony for the first time. Had it not been raining, I would’ve taken the time to observe our surroundings more. As it stood now, all I wanted to do was find that damn rift and get out of this downpour. Which was ironic, since that would put us on the fucking ferry.

I don’t think it had truly sunk in her that we were going back. Despite the number of times I had sworn to myself that would never set foot in that place ever again.

Why the fuck was I doing this? Who cared if the creatures possibly had two keys containing ancient energy? How powerful could they be if I sat across from someone wearing one and didn’t even notice?

I was twenty-three going on twenty-four. There was plenty of older and more experienced Mythics that should be doing this instead of me. But that was overlooking the not-so-small problem of not knowing who was working with the creatures and how many there were. It would be just our luck to get help from someone, only to find out later they’d been leading us into a trap the entire time. My eyes flicked to Gemini who was leading the way, and was unbothered by the weather. Was that what she was doing? Could she be working with the necromancers?

Shaking my head, I almost immediately rejected that thought. Being paranoid wouldn’t help us. It made no sense for her to be working with them. If she had, she would’ve just handed over the key, rather than have them go through all that work planning the attack and risk showing their hand. No, she wasn’t one of the traitors.

Unlike last time, I felt a faint trace of energy humming over my skin, lifting the hairs at the back of my neck. When we moved around a particularly thick tree, I saw a dark blue rift in the tree trunk. I gasped, having never seen a rift so dark in color before. Usually rifts and portals were lighter in color, either neon or pastel. This spoke of a darker energy and was almost a warning to stay clear.

A warning we were about to ignore for a second time. We were dumbasses.

Koa’s focus was trained on the trunk, his widened eyes the only outward sign of his surprise. “Can you see it now?” Ari asked, having moved to stand beside me as we circled the tree.

I nodded, unable to speak as my unease grew the longer I stared at the rift. A shiver raced down my spine, followed by the phantom sensation of having a sharp poisoned talon dragging down the length of my back. “Was it like this last time?”

Ari didn’t answer right away. She drifted even closer to the tree, stopping only a couple of feet away. Her hand hovered only a few inches in front of the glowing darkness. Dark tendrils seeped from the glow, trying to wrap themselves around her hand until she yanked it away and stepped back. “No, it wasn’t this bad.” She shuddered, uncertainty settling on her face.

“I wasn’t able to see it last time, I could only feel it, and I can tell you it didn’t feel like this. It felt off, but nowhere close to this,” Gemini said softly, playing with the small disk on her necklace.

How reassuring. This new development wasn’t helping with my reluctance to go back. The urge to turn around and run away was building in the pit of my stomach, crawling its way up my chest and into my throat. All of my instincts were telling me—no, begging me—to run. Koa’s hand closed around mine, giving a firm and comforting squeeze, grounding me. After taking a deep breath, I swallowed down the panic, forcing myself to take slow and steady breaths.

Gemini squinted as she studied the pulsing darkness. “It’s trying to keep us from entering. I’ve never seen anything like this before.” She made sure to keep her distance as she held out her hand.

I swallowed down another wave of panic, squeezing Koa’s hand in the process. “You’re saying it’s the cause of—”

“The unbearable urge to flee and get as far away as possible? Yes.” She let her hand drop and stepped back.

“Can it stop us from entering?” Koa asked.

“Physically? No.” Gemini shook her head, gnawing on her lip. “But mentally, it could paralyze you with fear if you let it.”

“Well that’s just fucking great,” I huffed out, staring down the damn thing.

“Fuck it,” Ari muttered, moving back in front of it and reaching out her hand. Before any of us could protest, her hand made contact with the pulsing light, and she was sucked out of the human realm. Following her lead before I lost my nerve, I gave Koa’s hand one last squeeze before releasing it.

I hesitated as I stood before the rift, unease eating away at me as fear tried to grab ahold of me. Releasing another deep breath, I pressed my hand to the cloying darkness, fighting the urge to cringe as it crawled over my hand and pulled me into the rift.

The sensation was different than last time, almost suffocating with a heavy pressure and presence pressing in all around me. An icy chill skated over my skin as I broke out in a cold sweat. My lungs felt like all the air had ripped from them, while my head was both light and weighted by a throbbing headache.

I slammed onto the wooden deck of the ferry with a heavy and painful bang. Coughs and wheezes racked my body as I rolled onto my back. My hip, shoulder, and head smarting from the landing. An ache pounded its way through my body, making me not want to move for a very long time. A pair of hands gripped my ankles, dragging me along the worn wood. I weakly kicked at the hands until my eyes snapped open and realized it was only Ari.

Good thing she moved me because only a couple of seconds later, Koa smacked onto the deck.

“Fuck.” He coughed as he rolled over and climbed onto unsteady legs. I was more than a little surprised when he stumbled to the side, gripping the railing as he bowed his head, the muscles in his back and neck tense.

Ari unceremoniously dropped my legs, muttering about how that was far enough. Her skin was paler than usual, and her face was pinched with pain. She stumbled over to one of the benches and heavily dropped on it with a sigh.

Gemini’s landing wasn’t any better than ours, landing straight on her back, where she lay staring up at the sky.

My stomach heaved when I finally managed to roll over to my hands and knees. There was a moment I thought I might throw up when I stood on shaking legs. A head rush shortly followed. “Shit,” I swore, stumbling to the side until my rib cage slammed against the railing. All of our breaths were hard and fast, sounding like we ran several miles.

“What in the actual fuck was that?” I asked in between pants, resting my forehead on the railing.

“I don’t know, I’ve never experienced a rift like that before,” Gemini answered breathlessly.

As the waves of nausea passed, I lifted my head, taking stock of our surroundings. It was hard to see much, because instead of being a dull blue-gray, the sky above the river was pitch black, without a single star or even a moon to shed any light. I wanted to pull from my wolf, to enhance my eyesight further, but I’d rather not be attacked right away.

Less than half a mile away was a jagged cliff face rising high into the sky, stretching along the river. A nagging thought kept tugging at the back of my mind, there was something about these cliffs I needed to remember, but for the life of me, I couldn’t. Wickedly sharp rocks lined the water around the base of the cliff, making me want to stay far away from them.

On the other of the river were dead spindly trees underneath a drab sky. A chill worked its way down my spine as memories of my nightmares flashed through my mind. I shook my head, refusing to let myself dwell on a stupid nightmare. The bare branches swayed back and forth, pretending they weren’t assholes that smacked the shit out of you when you least expected it. I absentmindedly rubbed my ribs, remembering how much it hurt to get smacked by those assholes

“Do we want to start with the haunted hotel?” Ari asked, pushing off the bench with better balance than before.

“I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t pay attention to how we got there,” I said leaning back against the railing.

“Not that it would help, we’d be starting from a different side of the region,” Koa said as he rested his forearms on the railing closest to the forest. The muscles in his back had loosened, but there was still tension riding his shoulders.

“Nor do we know how big the forest is,” Ari said with a sigh, crossing her arms.

Gemini gnawed her lip as she squinted at the forest. “Let’s leave the haunted hotel as a last resort. If what we seek was there, I feel the message would’ve mentioned a building, not a tunnel.”

* * * * * * * *

Night descended on the forest, the gray sky becoming even darker than it was over the river, even with the luminescent full moon. The eerie silence that emanated from the land vanished in the wake of low mournful cries. Faint cries from a woman could be heard as well as her begging for help.

It was almost too convenient that she started up just as soon as darkness descended. My suspicion grew when a couple of minutes later a child began calling out for his mom. Followed by a man yelling about how his wife was sick and needed help. My hands tightened around the railing closest to the forest as I stared out at the shadows around the trees, moving like they had a life of their own. They probably did.

Gemini joined me at the railing. She had been sitting on a bench arranging her charms and supplies, strapping a couple of them to the harness belted around her waist. In the same harness, were several small knives, along with a couple of long daggers. “Clever isn’t it? Trying to use our emotions and sympathies to lure us into entering the forest.”

“We didn’t hear them the first time.” When we heard human screams at night, they were real, I could hear the pure terror that these cries were lacking. These voices were hollow, and without the emotion true humans would feel trapped in an unknown world while being hunted.

We remained quiet while the air filled with layering voices calling out, pleading with us to come and rescue them. The sensation of being watched settled between my shoulder blades. While I knew the dark forest had eyes on us, I wasn’t sure if those unseen eyes also came from the cliffs.

So far I hadn’t seen any movement on the narrow pathway chiseled into the rock face had. I nearly missed it with how dark it was, but once I spotted it, I noticed several other pathways. Which increased my suspicion that something lived up there.

That nagging feeling at the back of my mind kept telling me I was forgetting something, but I couldn’t remember what.

Koa remained at the front of the ferry, keeping a lookout. A broad sword was now strapped to his back. His hands rested on the railing, tapping out a slow rhythm as his head swiveled between the cliff and the forest.

Ari stood on the lower level at the back of the ferry. Her quiver attached to the side of her bag, full of a couple of dozen arrows. She rested her arms on the railing, her bow propped against the railing beside her. She didn’t turn my way at my approach, keeping her focus on the rippling water. The black water was even more unsettling in the cloying darkness of night.

“Last night, I dreamt about getting pulled from the ferry, and drowned,” I said breaking the silence that stretched over us. I eyed the water, noting every little ripple on the surface.

Ari didn’t answer right away, nor did it seem like she was all too aware of her surroundings. Instead, she appeared lost in thought. “I’ve dreamt about this place too,” she finally said, her voice so low I almost missed it.

I nodded in understanding, this was the kind of place you didn’t want to dream about. “I can’t believe we’re back here.”

“It was inevitable,” Ari said, not elaborating further.

We didn’t speak again, lapsing into an anticipation-filled silence as we watched the forest end and a branch of the river merge with ours. My shoulders began loosening as we floated further away from the dark forest. Away from the cries, shrieks, and howls.

Movement from the corner of my eye had me whipping my head to the side, to stare at the snow-capped mountains rising beside us, piercing the thick layer of clouds settling over the land. My stomach pitched when I caught sight of a bronze dragon disappearing into the clouds. It didn’t appear to have noticed us, but I still kept my focus trained on where it disappeared.

I found it almost unsettling how we’d been here for hours and the only creature we’d seen was the dragon. It wasn’t like I wanted to be attacked, but the anticipation kept me on edge, ready to jump at every little noise.

The looming cliff didn’t help the feeling. Neither did the thick layer of fog over the mountains, hiding whatever creatures were out there. They could be watching us right now, waiting.

A low whistling wind blew over the ferry, sending an icy awareness skating over my skin. The winds almost sounded melodic, like they were singing a song. The wind picked up, whipping my braid around my face as it became louder until it was all I could hear.

It wasn’t until words emerged from the melody, sung with a haunting beauty, that horror, and an icy chill invaded my body. I finally remembered why I should’ve been wary of these cliffs. What lived there.

Sirens.