The coppery tang of blood filled the air, crowding out the thick, oily scent of pine and a musky stench I didn’t recognize. I stared at the gruesome remains spread across the small clearing, examining the still bodies of the six omeni twisted into contorted positions. Their corpses were shredded and torn, ripped nearly in two and quite clearly partially eaten. Their weapons still lay on the forest floor beside their shattered remains, all of them spattered with blood whose color I couldn’t determine in the dim moonlight filtering through the dense trees above.

Our second night of travel passed much the same as the first, with the hungering swarming about the barrier I’d erected but not closing in. As we headed deeper into the Darkwood, though, the creatures pressed more closely against my shield, and it took more concentration to hold them out. Our path led up low hills and down small valleys, across flowing streams and rocky boulder fields, but I noticed that we climbed more than we descended, and the streams got narrower and faster the farther we traveled. The trees crowded closely together, blocking out most of the moonlight except in the far-less-frequent clearings. The air and water both cooled noticeably, and by the end of the night, our breath steamed in the chill air.

“Got awfully cold awfully fast,” I muttered as Renica and I set up our tents in the middle of a thick stand of densely twined thornbushes. I had to carve an entrance into the thicket and hollow out space for our camp with my war axe and Solar Strike spell, but the wall of inch-long thorns would hopefully deter larger, more dangerous predators.

“That’s the Heart,” she agreed soberly, shivering slightly. Neither of us were really dressed for the chill, and the cold air prickled my spine as I dug out a pit for the fire. Of course, Renica might not have been shivering from the cold; she’d been quiet and withdrawn the whole evening. I had a feeling she was having second thoughts about coming along, and I wondered if she would suggest turning back. She hadn’t, though, for which I was grateful. I wouldn’t have been able to navigate the dark woods without a map and a light, but she seemed to know exactly where she was going.

“It’s colder than the rest of the forest?” I asked as she broke a clay disc with a muttered word and a flare of solar magic.

She nodded. “I’ve been here three times, and no matter the season, it’s always freezing.” She shivered again and began digging through her pack. “It’s like the sun’s warmth doesn’t reach the Heart for some reason.” She pulled out a heavy jacket and wrapped it around herself, nodding toward me. “I packed one for you, too. Like I said, I’ve been here before.”

I opened my pack and pulled out a leather jacket lined with soft fur. It looked like it would hang to just above my knees and felt like it would definitely keep out the cold. Beneath it lay a folded, white shirt of heavy fabric and a pair of thick, cotton pants that would be much warmer than the ones I wore. I pulled them out and held them up, looking at them with approval.

“These will be much more comfortable, thanks,” I nodded to Renica, then caught the woman staring at the clothing in surprise. “What?”

“I – I didn’t pack any of that,” she said, her eyes wide. “That’s not the jacket I gave you, and I only packed the clothes you were wearing when I first met you.”

I glanced at the jacket and quickly evaluated it.

Adaptive Jacket

Item Type: Clothing/Armor

Abilities: Adaptive, Bound Item

This item can shift into simple, non-magical clothing of whatever style and fashion is most common on the current Doorworld.

I slipped the jacket on and kept the clothing out to change into after I slept. “Well, someone obviously packed this,” I said, not bothering to explain. “Whoever it was, I’m grateful. It would be pretty cold without it.”

The day passed as the one before had, except that my sleep was far less restful. The air around the campsite wasn’t just cold; there was a strange brownish haze to it that I couldn’t quite make out. The air tasted bitter, and it had a faint musky odor that tickled my nostrils. The haze pressed thickly around Vikarik and especially around Renica, but it felt thinner near me for some reason. It still made it hard to fall asleep, though, and when I did drift off, I tossed and turned, plagued with nightmares of old battles and difficult kills that hadn’t plagued me for years.

Even worse, despite the thicket’s protection, Vikarik woke us three separate times when animals attacked the camp. The first time, a swarm of gray creatures that looked like a combination of a fox and a weasel rushed out of the underbrush, attacking the cairnik and the tents with equal ferocity. The long-bodied creatures that Renica identified as vulpiks had pointed muzzles filled with needle-like teeth, but they were only eighteen inches or so long, counting their short, wire-brush tails, and they didn’t really pose much of a threat.

Neither did the horde of tiny, mouse-sized soricaks that swarmed over us later in the day. There were dozens of the tiny rodents, all with razor-sharp teeth and scratching claws, but I could literally crush them underfoot, and the flat of my war axe squashed them without difficulty. They were just an annoyance, but one that kept us from sleeping.

The large raptor that swooped down on Vikarik was a bit more dangerous, though. The silver-plumaged bird had a six-foot wingspan, a sharp, hooked beak, and tearing claws, and it left long, bloody gashes in the cairnik’s side and back before Renica managed to put a crossbow bolt into it, wounding it and knocking it off the canine so I could kill it with my axe. Renica spent a fair bit of time sewing up the wounds while letting the huge dog chew on the bird’s corpse – after she had me rip the feathers off it. Apparently, the feathers of the somke, as the thing was called, were the best possible fletching for arrows and bows and thus highly prized, especially because the speedy raptors were hard to hunt and kill normally.

I trained for a couple hours while Renica turned some of the vulpiks we’d slain into dinner, and once the moon rose, we set off once more, climbing slowly but steadily uphill the whole way. The trees grew closer and denser, and the ground felt harder and rockier as we ascended. The frigid air bit at my exposed nose and ears, and my fingers felt half-frozen after only a couple hours – which was about when Renica stopped us with a startled exclamation.

“Ionat, look here,” she said, crouching down and touching the needle-strewn earth.

I squatted down beside her and stared at the ground. “Okay, what am I looking at?”

“A boot-print,” she said, outlining the indentation in the ground. “More than one. Look. A party of omeni passed this way.” She glanced at me, her face nervous. “Do you think there’s more than one lomoraji?”

“Either that, or someone else is hunting him,” I pointed out, looking around. “Do you see a lot of signs of people passing through here?”

“Just these,” she shook her head. “And they’re all headed toward the Heart. Should we follow them?”

“So long as they’re going the same way we are, I don’t see why not,” I shrugged. “Maybe they’ll be a hunting party from another village, and they’ll take care of the problem for us.”

“Or the Vanatori.” She shivered again, and this time, I don’t think it was from the cold. “Although the print doesn’t look deep enough for that. They’re usually heavily armored, and that should make the track deeper and plainer.”

“Well, no way to find out but to keep going,” I said, then hesitated. “But let’s go slowly and carefully in case they aren’t friendly. No point in letting them know we’re coming, right.”

She nodded. “Good idea.”

As it turned out, our caution wasn’t necessary. We smelled the blood long before we saw the bodies, and the cluster of hungering pressed against my shield gave us a good idea of what awaited us. The undead reluctantly fled as we approached, their hunger driving them to fight against my will but eventually shattering, allowing them to scatter into the night. We approached the clearing silently, and as Renica examined the bodies, I kept my axe ready and my eyes peeled.

“This wasn’t the hungering,” she said after a few minutes, shaking her head and pointing to one of the figures. “They were dead before the mooncursed started feeding on them – probably since before moonrise, from the way the blood’s congealed.”

“Do you recognize them?” I asked. “Are they from Borava?”

She shook her head. “Reva, a village on the other side of the Darkwood from Borava.” She pointed at one of the figures, a young man whose features were unrecognizable after being feasted on by the hungering. “This is Costel, one of the village’s two hunters. We’ve run into one another a few times out in the Darkwood during long hunts.” She sighed. “He was a good man and a skilled hunter. May he walk beneath the sun.” A shimmer of wan, orange light, looking strangely weak and pale, settled over the man as she spoke.

“So, what killed them?” I asked.

“This.” She pointed to a softer spot in the soil, where a massive pawprint glistened in the moonlight. I put my hand on it, and my fingers fit easily within the print, with plenty of room to spare.

“What animal made this track?”

“Leurik,” she said shortly. “It caught them by surprise and killed them all, then left them for the hungering.”

“It killed eight of them?” I asked, surprised.

“Easily,” she nodded. “Even the mooncursed avoid leuriks. They’re basically just huge killing machines; everything about them is designed to hunt prey. Their coats give them almost perfect camouflage, and they can move through shadows and darkness without leaving a trace. Their roar paralyzes or even kills weaker prey outright, and I’ve seen the tracks of one that leapt over thirty feet in a single bound.” She shook her head. “These omeni never stood a chance.”

“Great,” I muttered, glancing about. “It must still be around if it killed them earlier today.”

“Not necessarily. Leuriks move fast; this one could be halfway across the Darkwood by now.” Her voice was hopeful, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.

“You really think that it’s a coincidence that the leurik was near the Darkwood Heart at the same time as a lomoraji that’s somehow affecting the animals nearby?” I asked archly.

“No,” she sighed. “That would be too much to ask for, wouldn’t it?”

“Probably.” I hefted my axe. “If we have to fight the thing, what’s the best way do to it?”

“From the highest part of a tree you can reach,” she laughed. “They’re too big to climb well, but they can jump pretty high, so you have to be way up to stay out of their reach. Beyond that?” She shrugged. “I’ve never heard of a group of less than twenty killing a leurik, and then only because they were outfitted specifically to hunt it. If it attacks us…” She sighed. “Then we’re probably dead, Ionat.”

I stared at the bodies, the scent of blood filling my nose. That would be a gruesome way to die, ripped apart by an animal, but then, so would being eaten by the hungering – or being shot in the stomach and left to bleed out, I suppose. Death was never pretty or pleasant, and it wasn’t like I was ever going to go peacefully in my sleep anyway.

“Which way to the Heart?” I asked quietly.

“The Darkwood Heart is the peak of the hill we’re climbing,” she replied. “There’s a lake on top of the hill, one that’s always ice-cold and shrouded in fog but never freezes. All the streams that run through the Darkwood start there, and the trees grow so thickly around it that they almost form a wall.”

I nodded. “You don’t have to come with me, Renica,” I said firmly. “I can find the place myself from here, I think. That way, if the leurik’s still about, it’ll only get one of us.”

She snorted. “Unless it decides to track Vikarik and I down, as well,” she said, then shook her head. “No, Ionat, I’ll come with you. You still need me. There are only a couple ways through the trees to the Heart, and there’s something in the lake…” She stared uphill into the darkness. “I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it whenever I’m close. It’s terrifying – but also calls to me. I can show you the ford that leads out to it. Otherwise, you’d be swimming, and in that water, you wouldn’t last long.”

I looked in the same direction and frowned. The brownish haze I’d sensed earlier was thicker here, almost a fog coating the ground, and it condensed in the direction of the Heart. I understood what Renica meant; the mist stirred primitive fears in the back of my brain, making every sound seem like a predator about to leap on us, but it also spoke to me. I could feel it calling me, urging me to be the predator I was at heart. I shivered. It was a seductive feeling, and my hands tightened their grip on my war axe involuntarily as I stared in that direction.

“Okay,” I said at last, tearing my gaze away and looking at the woman. “But if that thing attacks, I’ll try to hold it off long enough for you and Vikarik to get away.”

She laughed. “No chance of that, Ionat. All we can do is hope that it’s moved on – or that it’s busy hunting the hungering instead of us.”

She led me uphill, and I quickly understood what she’d said about the trees. The trunks here were thick and old, some of them ten feet across or more. They pressed closely together in spite of everything I thought I knew about forests, with smaller boles filling the gaps. Often, we had to squeeze through narrow spaces no more than a foot or two across to pass, and the higher we climbed, the narrower the passage became. It wound about in a serpentine pattern, and wisps of actual fog curled around it, wrapping around the trees and sliding across our skin.

Finally, we pressed between two trees, scraping against the bark to get through, and emerged into the open. The trees ended abruptly, leaving a narrow strip of muddy, gravel-strewn land leading down a silent shore. Black water lapped gently at the beach, although I couldn’t actually see any ripples moving along its surface. A thick fog rose from the water, catching the moonlight and bathing the area in a gray blanket that blocked vision past ten feet or so. The chill that pervaded the forest enveloped us, and I watched as my breath sprinkled like frost on the ground, frozen the moment I let it out. The brown mist I’d sensed lay thickly in the air, so dense I could feel it coating my tongue and filling the back of my throat with each breath.

Something odd caught my eye, and I stared at the reflection of the moons hanging in the ominous water for several seconds before I realized what I was seeing.

“Where’s the brown moon?” I asked Sara silently, not wanting to disturb the utter stillness of the lakeshore.

“What – oh,” she said. “Huh. That’s odd.”

The silver moon hung like a grayish smudge in the glassy surface of the water, as still and pristine as if I were seeing it in a mirror. A smaller, crimson blob shimmered faintly beside it, the red moon barely visible in the fathomless lake. The brown moon, though – I glanced up at the sky, and there it hung, a faint smear of umber barely visible through the fog. The lake didn’t reflect its image at all, though, as if it sucked in the light from it without letting any escape.

Renica tapped my shoulder, grabbing my attention, and gestured for me to follow her. She led me along the shoreline, our steps noiseless in the strange quiet surrounding the lake. Finally, she stopped and tapped a tree near the water. I glanced at it, then looked more closely. I barely made out a rough circle cut into the bark just below shoulder height. Renica pointed to the water, walked out, and stepped onto the surface – which rippled slightly as it held her weight, her boots barely sinking into the water. She beckoned me, then took two steps out, apparently walking on the water. Vikarik followed behind her, the canine’s paws sinking no deeper than the hunter’s boots had.

I stepped cautiously into the lake, and to my surprise, my boot struck a solid surface just beneath the water. I bent down, probing with my fingers. The water stabbed my skin with needles of liquid ice, but before my fingertips numbed, they felt a slightly rough, unyielding surface that I was certain was stone. Somehow, a stone walkway ran beneath the surface of the water, here, invisible in the fog and moonlight.

I moved cautiously on the slippery rocks, but the path ran straight and level as a sidewalk. We walked for fifteen minutes, the shore vanishing behind us into the fog, before another shoreline appeared, this one black gravel that gleamed dully in the moonlight. The fog and the brown haze both thickened as we approached, and the silver moon above seemed to fade and grow wan the nearer we came to the shore.

I finally stepped onto the gravel, my boots crunching faintly as I left the water. Renica spun swiftly toward me, pressing a finger to her lips, but apparently, her warning came too late.

A roar split the night, rippling visibly through the fog and slamming forcefully into all three of us. The sound burrowed into my brain, filling it with panic, trying to freeze my muscles and drain my strength. Renica dropped, boneless to the gravel, and Vikarik staggered, its legs trembling visibly. I pushed against the numbing feeling creeping along my spine, trying to drive it out, but before I could, a huge shape burst through the fog and slammed into me, bearing me to the ground. My head slammed into the hidden stone walkway with a loud crack and a flash of light blinded me. Darkness washed over me, and I fell into blackness that looked exactly like the mocking, icy waters.