The bandits charged.
And I ran.
There was no dignity in it, but dignity was beginning to seem like a luxury reserved for people who weren’t being chased through a forest by six armed men. I pushed through the trees without looking back, my shoulder bag slamming against my side with every stride. Somewhere inside it was the delivery package I had accepted less than an hour ago, carefully wrapped and sealed with red wax. At the time, I had thought the worst thing that could happen was that the client would complain if I arrived late.
Apparently, I had been optimistic.
A blade cut through the darkness behind me.
I heard the sharp whistle of it before I saw the steel flash between the trees. My body twisted on instinct, and the sword passed close enough to tear a narrow line through the fabric at my side. I stumbled when my momentum changed, caught myself against a tree, and kept moving without giving the injury any attention.
"Don’t let him reach the road!" someone shouted behind me.
I didn’t need the encouragement.
My boots struck roots, stones, and damp earth as I forced myself deeper into the forest. The muscles in my legs were burning, and my lungs had begun to protest, but something about my body felt different from before.
The forest was still dark, yet I could distinguish the uneven ground more easily. Branches that should have caught me seemed to announce themselves just before I reached them. My footing adjusted naturally whenever the ground shifted beneath me, and when a low branch suddenly stretched across my path, I dropped beneath it without having to think about it first.
Muse’s heart had not turned me into a warrior.
It had simply made my body better at surviving.
For someone like me, that was probably more useful.
A man came rushing through the trees on my right, trying to cut me off. His sword was already raised, and for a split second we looked directly at one another. He swung.
I ducked beneath the blade.
He staggered forward from the force of the missed strike, and I slipped past him before he could recover. My shoulder clipped his arm, nearly throwing me off balance, but I caught myself and kept running.
I almost smiled.
Then my boot landed on a loose stone.
My ankle twisted.
I flailed, caught a tree with both hands, and somehow remained upright.
I glared at the offending rock as I ran past it.
"Traitor."
A bark came from somewhere behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Asura was keeping pace surprisingly well, though his expression suggested that he found this entire evening deeply insulting. His black fur blended into the darkness so perfectly that only his eyes seemed clearly visible as he moved between the trees.
One of the bandits noticed him.
The man changed direction and charged after him.
"Asura!"
The black dog looked back.
The bandit’s club came down.
Asura moved.
He slipped beneath the swing so smoothly that the weapon struck nothing but air. The man stumbled, and Asura turned around instead of continuing forward.
The dog simply stared at him.
The bandit froze.
Something about those eyes finally reached the man’s instincts, because the confidence in his face disappeared.
Asura’s paws settled firmly against the ground.
A faint darkness began gathering around him.
I recognized the power immediately.
"Asura, don’t use too much!"
He ignored me.
A small black sphere formed beside his body, smooth and almost perfectly round. It did not shine. It seemed to consume the little light around it, leaving a distorted patch of darkness floating beside him.
The bandit raised his club.
"What the hell is that?"
Asura released the sphere.
It struck the ground.
The explosion that followed made no sound.
There was simply a sudden expansion of darkness that swallowed the man’s legs, then his torso, before throwing him backward hard enough to send him crashing into a tree. Leaves shook loose from the branches above him.
The other bandits slowed.
So did I.
Asura stood in the middle of the path with his head raised slightly, looking rather pleased with himself.
"You couldn’t do that before," I said.
"I could not do that before."
"That sounded suspiciously like a correction."
"It was."
He took one step forward.
Then another.
On the third, his front legs buckled slightly.
His paw caught the ground before he fell.
The smugness vanished from his face.
I stared at him.
"You’re exhausted."
"I am not."
"You nearly fell."
"I adjusted my footing."
"You almost kissed the dirt."
"I would never kiss dirt."
"Good to know your standards survived."
He gave me a murderous look.
Another bandit shouted, "Forget the dog! Get the boy!"
Asura’s ears turned toward the voice.
A second sphere of darkness appeared beside him.
This one was smaller.
Much smaller.
It trembled before he even released it.
The sphere struck the ground between the approaching men and exploded, forcing two of them backward. It did not throw them through the air like the first attack had. It merely disrupted their advance and filled the space with swirling blackness.
Asura staggered afterward.
I grabbed the loose strap of my bag and continued forward.
"Asura!"
"I am fine."
"You’re lying."
"I am offended that you can tell."
"We’ve spent too much time together."
"That is unfortunately true."
We ran.
The bandits followed.
For several minutes, nothing existed except the chase.
The forest rushed around us in broken pieces of shadow and silver moonlight. Branches whipped across my face, leaves brushed against my arms, and my breath came harder with every passing second. I didn’t know where we were going. I only knew that stopping would be worse.
Then, gradually, the forest changed.
I noticed it first in the absence of sound.
The insects were gone.
The faint rustling that had filled the undergrowth earlier had disappeared. There were no distant cries from birds hidden high in the trees, no movement from small animals fleeing our footsteps, not even the soft whisper of leaves brushing against one another.
The forest had become still.
Not peaceful.
Still.
I slowed instinctively.
Asura slowed too.
The footsteps of the bandits remained somewhere behind us, but even those sounds seemed wrong now, swallowed by the enormous silence surrounding them.
I looked through the trees.
The moonlight had almost disappeared beneath the thick canopy. The trunks around us were larger than the ones nearer the road, their bark dark and deeply ridged. Some were so old that their roots rose from the ground like the backs of buried creatures.
I had the sudden, unpleasant sensation that we had gone somewhere we weren’t supposed to be.
"Asura."
He didn’t answer.
His ears were pointed forward.
His nose lifted slightly.
He was smelling the air.
"What is it?"
"Keep moving."
His voice was quieter than before.
I slowed anyway.
"Asura."
He finally looked at me.
"There is something here."
My gaze traveled through the trees.
"What?"
"I don’t know."
I stared at him.
That was not an answer I was accustomed to hearing from him.
Behind us, the bandits crashed through the brush.
"They’re catching up," I whispered.
Asura didn’t look back.
That was when I realized he had stopped caring about them.
The five men who remained on their feet emerged between the trees a moment later.
They looked exhausted.
One had blood running from his forehead. Another was limping slightly. Their weapons were still in their hands, but the confidence they had shown on the road was gone.
The leader raised his sword.
"There!"
He took a step toward us.
Then stopped.
The others nearly walked into him.
"What now?" one asked.
The leader didn’t answer.
He was staring past me.
I slowly turned.
There was nothing.
Only trees.
Only darkness.
Only the faint silver light of the moon far above the branches.
The leader’s expression tightened.
"Did you hear that?"
One of the men frowned.
"Hear what?"
The leader didn’t answer immediately.
Somewhere deeper in the forest, a branch cracked.
Every man turned toward it.
Nothing appeared.
The younger bandit swallowed.
"We should leave."
The leader glared at him.
"We have him surrounded."
"No. We don’t."
The words came out quietly.
The leader’s face hardened.
"What are you talking about?"
The younger man looked around.
"Listen."
Everyone fell silent.
At first, I heard nothing.
Then I realized that was exactly the problem.
The forest had gone completely dead.
No insects.
No birds.
No wind.
Even our breathing seemed too loud.
The leader slowly lowered his sword.
"Forget the package."
The others looked at him.
"What?"
"Forget it."
The younger man’s face relaxed with immediate relief.
Another bandit shook his head.
"What happened to all that talk about cutting the boy’s throat?"
The leader ignored him.
His eyes remained fixed on the trees.
"We’re leaving."
Something moved far beyond us.
It wasn’t a sound.
It was a disturbance.
A patch of grass bent down.
Then another.
Then another.
The motion traveled slowly across the darkness, moving toward the clearing in a straight line.
Nobody spoke.
The leader raised his weapon again.
The younger bandit whispered, "What is that?"
"I don’t know."
"You’ve been through this forest before."
"Not here."
Another patch of grass bent.
Closer.
The men took a step backward.
I found myself doing the same.
Asura’s claws sank into the soil.
His fur had risen along his spine.
I had seen him furious.
I had seen him smug.
I had seen him complain about everything from food to weather to the tragic condition of his current body.
I had never seen him this quiet.
"What do you smell?" I whispered.
His nose remained pointed toward the darkness.
"Something old."
That answer sent a strange chill through me.
"How old?"
"I don’t know."
"You said you could smell it."
"I can smell it."
He paused.
"I cannot measure it."
A deep sound rolled through the forest.
The bandits froze.
It was too low to be called a growl.
Too rough to be called a roar.
It sounded like something enormous had awakened beneath the earth and taken its first breath.
One of the men dropped his sword.
The sound of steel striking stone echoed through the clearing.
Nobody looked at him.
The leader’s lips moved.
I couldn’t hear what he said.
Then he turned.
"Run."
This time, no one questioned him.
The bandits bolted.
They didn’t run toward us.
They ran away from whatever was behind them.
Their boots hammered against the ground as they disappeared between the trees, branches breaking in their wake.
I watched them go.
For a few seconds, I couldn’t move.
"They’re leaving," I whispered.
"Yes."
"All six of them."
"Yes."
I looked at Asura.
"You knew this was coming."
"I knew something was here."
"And you didn’t know what it was?"
"No."
The answer came so naturally that I almost laughed.
Instead, I felt my stomach sink.
That was perhaps the most disturbing thing about all of this.
Asura knew ancient creatures. He knew dungeons. He knew the Grimoires. He had once ruled enough of the world to speak about gods as though they were troublesome acquaintances.
And something in this forest had made him uncertain.
A scream rang out in the distance.
It belonged to one of the bandits.
I flinched.
The scream was cut short.
The forest returned to silence.
I stared toward the direction where the sound had come from.
"Asura."
He stood.
Every muscle in his body was tense.
"We should go."
"Which way?"
He looked around.
For perhaps the first time since I had met him, he seemed genuinely unsure.
"I don’t know."
I closed my eyes for half a second.
"Excellent."
Something moved behind the trees.
Asura’s head snapped toward it.
I turned.
Nothing.
A few seconds passed.
Then a sound came from somewhere much closer.
A slow scrape.
Something hard dragging against bark.
I could feel my heartbeat in my throat.
We stood together without speaking.
The darkness between the trees seemed to deepen.
Then I saw it.
Not clearly.
Just the edge of a shape slipping between two trunks.
Too tall.
Too broad.
Far too still.
It disappeared before my eyes could understand what they had seen.
I looked at Asura.
He was staring at the same place.
"Was that—"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"I don’t know."
There it was again.
That answer.
I had begun to hate those four words.
A shape emerged from the darkness.
Slowly.
There was no dramatic roar.
No sudden charge.
It simply stepped forward, as though it had all the time in the world.
Its outline rose above the surrounding brush.
Its shoulders were broad enough to make the trees around it seem strangely thin, and its body was hidden beneath a mass of darkness that I could not quite make sense of.
Then one pale eye opened.
The creature stopped.
It looked directly at us.
My entire body went rigid.
Asura lowered himself until his belly nearly touched the ground.
For once, there was no arrogance in his expression.
No insult.
No joke.
Just calculation.
And beneath it, something I almost didn’t want to recognize.
Fear.
"Asura," I whispered.
His eyes never left the creature.
"Kain."
"What?"
"Don’t move."
The thing took one slow step forward.
The earth gave a faint tremor beneath my boots.
Somewhere behind the creature, far away among the trees, something crashed violently through the undergrowth.
Then came another scream.
I stared at the pale eye in front of me, and suddenly the entire chase through the forest made sense.
The bandits had not been hunting me.
They had been fleeing from something.
And somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, I had run straight into its path.