Mikelos stooped to examine the bit of brush that didn’t top his knees. “Is it even alive? Where’s Kane when we need him?”
Syri crouched on her heels and poked at a branch. “I have no idea if it’s alive. Could this have survived in the badlands all this time?”
“A remnant from the world of the light?” Ahn stood back, surveying the perimeter, as if she had no time for such distractions.
“Or a hallucination we all see,” Jarimis said.
Ahn urged them onward, and no one protested. The novelty was a relief from the unrelenting press of boulders and sandy gravel and gray, gray, gray. But it wasn’t what they were there for. If they ever found what they were there for.
Until Connor spotted the second sign of life.
Half-life was a better descriptor. This bit of shrub was taller, its spindled bra
