And Ruin Followed Behind Her

Chapter 7-2

WE REAPPEARED IN A forest so dense the sun’s light couldn’t penetrate the dark canopy. I couldn’t see my own feet for the fog that covered the ground. The place was suffocating.

I turned around to Aziolith, barely able to make out his face in the darkness. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just some trees.”

I knew that was true, but still couldn’t shake the creeping dread in my bones. The forest was noisy. Crows cawed and flapped their wings across the branches. The wind moaned through the trees, whose gnarled trunks looked like shrieking horrors from beyond, contorted and wrapped around each other.

“I don’t like it here,” I said to Aziolith, letting my wings grow long to illuminate the ground in front of us. I didn’t like having a beacon on my back, but without my wings I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me.

“Is this the place you saw?” Aziolith asked. “Is this where Imogen took the girl?”

I looked around at the trees. I remembered them, and their haunting shapes, from the mirror’s image of Imogen pulling Kimberly through the woods.

“Yes, it looks like the place.” I nodded, cupping my hands around my mouth. “KIMBERLY!”

Aziolith quickly covered my mouth. “Don’t shout. It will give away our position. We have the element of surprise now.”

“You’re right, sorry.” I hovered above the ground and started to make my way forward through the verve. “Charlie said the portal was in the middle of the forest.”

“Then that’s where we go.”

“Perfect,” I replied. “Except where is that? Where are we? Which way toward the center of the forest?”

“Hmmm...I can feel the portal call to me. It’s pulling me toward it, as if it was sucking at my bones toward Hell, pulling me home.”

“That’s not home,” I said, grabbing him by the chest. “Remember that.”

He nodded. “I do, Julia. I do.”

“Which way is it telling you to go?” I asked.

Aziolith pointed forward. “This way. I’ll bet Imogen feels the same pull as I do. We are both supposed to be in Hell.”

“I won’t tell you again to stop talking like that. You belong up here. This is your home.”

“Follow me,” Aziolith said, lacking any of his trademark confidence.

Aziolith slumped forward, his arms swinging below him. He seemed to be led by an invisible string that pulled him forward. Every hundred meters or so, he stopped and changed directions until, after thirty minutes of wandering, we were back to where we started.

“s**t!” I shouted. “We’re lost.”

“We’re not lost,” Aziolith replied. “We just don’t know where we are.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“The portal is around here somewhere, I can feel it.”

“Maybe, but I’m sick of cluelessly circling around. I’m going to break through the canopy and try to find the portal from above.”

I spread open my wings and rose higher into the air. A strange howling noise emanated from the canopy, and as I neared the top, dozens of vines shot out and entwined me in their clutches before I could twist to avoid them.

“Get off me!” I struggled against them in vain.

I dragged Akta’s daggers out of my belt and slashed at the branches until I broke free. I wasn’t free for long before a torrent of new, sinewy vines attacked me. No matter how many I destroyed, twice as many shot back at me, until they had me by the throat and arms, and pulled me tighter and closer to the branches of the old gnarled trees. On either side of me, I saw old bones poking out from the underbrush. Tree branches wrapped around rusted armor and broken weapons. The more I struggled against them, the tighter the branches clung to me, until my vision clouded.

“Help!” I shouted with the last of my breath.

I had nearly blacked out from the vine’s tight hold around my neck when Aziolith’s breath seared the branches around me. The trees let out a screech and released me into Aziolith’s talons. No longer was he a human. He had reassumed his true form, and with his fiery dragon’s breath, the trees caught fire and the canopy parted for us. We rose high into the air above it.

“Thanks,” I said, rubbing my throat.

“Don’t mention it.”

I climbed out from Aziolith’s talons and floated onto his back, expecting to watch the fire consume the trees. Instead, the flames dissipated as quickly as they came, and the canopy expanded again to cover itself as if it had never been burned—except for a streak of bright red light rising into the Heavens, against the far horizon.

“There!” I pointed. “That must be where Imogen is going!”

“Then it is where we must go as well.”

Aziolith flew us toward the bright light. Its presence there could only mean that Imogen had opened the portal to Hell. I only hoped we weren’t too late to stop her from bringing Kimberly into Hell with her or draining her blood and leaving her dead on the floor of the forest. I wasn’t sure which was worse.