Chapter 26: At the Cave’s mouth

Another jump, then another. We rose and fell again, my stomach floating somewhere near my ribs. Emma screamed, then laughed, then screamed again, neither of us able to tell where fear ended and joy began.

Finally, we landed in a marsh.

We untangled ourselves and slid off the pad. I steadied Emma as her feet hit the ground. Her legs shook like jelly.

Frogs. Enormous ones. They were everywhere.

They crouched among reeds and mud, bodies broad and heavy, rising higher than the cattails and low shrubs that dotted the marsh. Each sat with its limbs tucked beneath it, vast and patient, as if the land itself had decided to breathe. Atop every head rested a single wide lilypad.

Emma’s laughter died in her throat as she stared at the massive Lilyhop that had carried us this far.

The frog’s tongue snapped out, long and wet, catching a Sugarscale mid-scuttle. It swallowed.

“Ahh!” Emma screamed and tried to bolt, but I grabbed her wrist.

“They don’t swallow them,” I said quickly.

As if on cue, the Lilyhop spat the lizard back out.

The Sugarscale hit the mud, scrambling away, its movements sharp and furious.

“Why would it do that?” Emma asked, still trembling.

“Because Sugarscales are delicious,” I said. “Actually, I have some.”

I gave her a proud smirk and pulled out a small pouch. Inside, Sugarscales glimmered faintly, their scales dusted with fine honey crystals.

“They glow,” Emma whispered, taking one.

“They stain too,” I warned, popping one into my mouth. “So don’t wipe your fingers on your tunic.”

I led her through the marsh. The trees slowly opened, revealing another tall stone wall.

“We’re still in the grove?” Emma asked, astonished.

“Almost out,” I said, heading toward it.

Inside the wall was an outhouse. Inhouse, technically, since it was indoors. It definitely did not qualify as a bathroom. After that, we continued on.

I felt a rush of excitement as we stepped out the other side.

I’d been in the Grove before, but never this deep. Never out this way. This time, I joined Emma in staring around with open awe, even though it wasn’t truly different. The same trees, the same fungi, the same flowers scattered across the forest floor.

We ate Sugarscales in easy silence.

Above us, Kitesqueaks hopped from branch to branch. Everywhere. In every direction.

That was strange. I’d never seen them far from Arbolive. I hadn’t known they ventured this deep.

Then they began to chitter wildly, leaping overhead in bursts of sound before all landing on the same tree ahead of us. They went silent at once.

Waiting.

I froze.

Something was wrong.

I shot out a hand, stopping Emma, and pulled her down into a crouch.

“What is it?” she whispered.

I pressed a finger to my lips.

She nodded and lowered herself beside me.

I gestured away from the Kitesqueaks. We crawled in the opposite direction, moving several meters through brush and shadow. We kept low, slipping from bush to bush, careful not to stay in sight for long.

It almost felt like a game. Find Me in the forest. I’d always been good at it. Only Olivander and my dad ever managed to track me properly.

Then I heard it.

Something big shifted deeper in the woods.

We edged forward.

Just beyond the next rise, we saw it.

A thin, towering body shuffled along at a lazy pace, moss and mushrooms clinging to its domed shell. Two wide, curved horns arched from its head, sweeping aside branches with effortless indifference. Its glowing eyes blinked slowly, half-lidded, as if it were perpetually on the edge of sleep.

Trailing behind it were animals.

At least a dozen.

Color-shifting rabbits with ears that shimmered like oil in sunlight. Tiny fox kits with mist curling from their tails. Birds whose feathers looked like shards of stained glass.

They weren’t fleeing.

They were playing.

Some pounced through the grass. Others climbed onto the beast itself, curling into the crooks of its barky limbs.

It was massive. Slow.

And gentle.

Emma’s eyes went wide. “What is that?”

I didn’t answer right away. I could be wrong.

“A Shepherd Maw,” I whispered at last. “Dad told me to stay away from them.”

We stayed low, barely breathing, as it moved through the forest.

The Maw reached a small cave beside a stream. It stepped aside and lowered its horns, carving a shallow trench, redirecting the water so it flowed in front of the cave mouth. A rabbit hopped toward it. The Maw nudged the little thing gently before settling nearby.

More animals filtered into the cave, as if they knew this was where they belonged.

The Shepherd Maw began dragging branches and logs into place, building a crude fence that boxed in the stream and cave entrance.

“That’s sweet,” Emma whispered, her shoulder brushing mine. “It’s treating them like pets.”

“Like livestock,” I murmured.

She stiffened.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “Impressive, though. I think it enchants them. Spores, maybe. Either way, we shouldn’t get closer.”

The Maw curled around its enclosure. A bird fluttered down onto its back, nestling into the moss.

The clearing looked peaceful.

Too peaceful.

I glanced up and saw the Kitesqueaks watching us.

I’d misunderstood.

They hadn’t been warning us away. They’d been trying to guide us.

“Let’s take the long way around,” I said quickly.

Emma nodded at once. “I don’t want to be part of the herd.”

We crawled away without snapping a single twig. The farther we got, the easier it was to breathe.

Eventually, we stood and picked up our pace.

Then the forest rustled.

We froze.

The air filled with the sharp scent of iron.

I yanked Emma down and we slid into a knot of shrubs. The ground was cold and slick beneath my palms. Thorns tore through my sleeve, biting into skin, while wet leaves smeared my cheek with the smell of rot and sap. I held my breath and parted the branches just enough to see.

A clearing opened ahead.

Sunlight filtered through the canopy in pale, broken columns, catching on drifting motes of pollen and dust. The ground dipped slightly at the center, churned into mud by many small feet. Flattened grass lay slick and dark, pressed into the earth as if something heavy had passed through again and again.

Under other circumstances, it would have been beautiful.

It was littered with bodies.

Vulpiquills lay scattered across the clearing, their squat, foxlike forms twisted at wrong angles. Their puffed bodies had deflated unevenly, fur clotted and dark where blood had soaked in. Oversized ears sagged against the mud, no longer alert, their quills dulled and matted together.

My stomach clenched.

One still lived.

It stood near the center, legs shaking so hard I could see the tremor ripple through its frame. Each breath dragged its body wider, skin stretching taut as it puffed itself up in reflex. Quills rose along its spine, every one bristling outward, while its long tail lashed through leaves and water with frantic, uneven snaps.

I followed its stare.

The ground behind it shivered.

At first I thought it was heat haze, a trick of light. Then the soil rippled, bulging upward as if something beneath it were breathing.

The earth split open.

Something long and translucent surged out, plates of glassy flesh unfolding as it rose. Sunlight struck it and fractured, scattering into warped reflections that bent and twisted across its body. For a heartbeat, my eyes couldn’t settle on it. I couldn’t tell where it ended and the air began.

The Shardscale Wyrm lifted itself higher, uncoiling with slow, deliberate grace.

Higher than the shrubs.

Higher than the Vulpiquill.

Its plates vibrated.

The sound reached me through my bones before my ears, a pressure that rattled my teeth and made my jaw ache. My vision swam. The air itself felt thick, as if it were resisting every breath.

The Vulpiquill screamed.

It fired first.

A compressed blast of air tore across the clearing and slammed into the Wyrm’s side. Leaves detonated outward. Mud sprayed high, pattering back down against bark and stone.

The Wyrm did not recoil.

Its plates hummed louder, the vibration deepening until it pressed against my chest like an invisible weight. My lungs stuttered. The world blurred at the edges.

The Vulpiquill ran.

Three steps.

Then the sound hit fully.

Its body folded inward with a sickening violence, the puffed shape collapsing as if crushed from the inside. It struck the ground hard, limbs jerking uselessly, ears flattening as whatever held it together failed all at once.

Emma gasped.

She lurched forward.

I caught her, clamped a hand over her mouth, and hauled her down into the mud with me. Her breath burned against my palm, sharp and panicked.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair. As I held her down “I’m sorry.”

The Wyrm surged forward.

It wrapped around the Vulpiquill in a single smooth motion, plates flexing and locking into place. There was a sharp crack as bone gave way.

Then it opened.

Not a mouth.

A seam. An absence.

The Vulpiquill slid inside and vanished.

The plates sealed again, faintly clouded where blood smeared across their inner surfaces.

The Wyrm sank partially back into the ground, coiling through the clearing like a ribbon of fallen glass. Its shimmer dulled. The vibration softened into a low, steady hum, almost like breathing.

I pressed my forehead into the dirt, heart slamming so hard I was certain it could hear me. The ground smelled of iron and crushed leaves. My hands shook. I dug my fingers into the soil just to feel something solid.

Then the shrubs rustled.

Another Wyrm slid free of the undergrowth, its plates catching stray light as it moved.

I grabbed Emma’s hand.

Its eyes met mine, clear and reflective, and in that instant something inside me snapped.

I ran.

Still holding Emma, we burst over a rise and nearly collided with it.

The Shepherd Maw.

The Maw charged, its bulk thundering forward, horns cutting through brush. I twisted, dragging Emma with me as we slid down the slope, crashing into mud and startled creatures that scattered in bursts of color and sound.

The Maw lowered its horns toward us.

The ground split.

The Wyrm erupted upward, vibration roaring through the clearing.

The Shepherd Maw turned instantly, abandoning us as it intercepted the Wyrm head-on. The force of their collision shuddered through the forest, dirt leaping from the ground in rippling waves.

I did not run away.

I ran toward the cave.

“Olive?” Emma gasped, confusion sharp through the fear.

“This is the safest place” I said, breathless but certain.

The Maw and the Wyrm clashed again behind us, the sound rolling through the trees like distant thunder. I dragged Emma across the churned earth and into the shallow mouth of the cave. Small bodies pressed past our ankles. Fur. Feathers. Warm, living things scrambling deeper inside.

I followed them.

The cave was crowded with breath and motion. Color-shifting rabbits flattened themselves against stone. Fox kits huddled together, mist curling from their tails in frightened puffs. Birds clung to roots overhead, feathers trembling but wings tucked tight.

The air smelled alive. Safe, in the way a den is safe.

Something inside me settled.

The Shepherd Maw was not guarding its territory. It guarded its herd.

I pulled Emma down beside me, tucking us against the stone where the animals clustered thickest.

I focused; I needed it not to notice us when it came in.

A soft heat emanated from me. The air wavered, the cave’s ceiling folded into the haze, reflected downward and stretched across our vision. Where the entrance should have been, I saw the roof of the cave, stone and shadow, repeating patterns of rock and hanging shapes that looked like bats clinging to stalactites.

Emma whispered a prayer beside me, the words trembling at first, then steadier as she matched her breathing to mine.

“They won’t see us,” I murmured. “But they’ll smell us.”

Her face went pale.

“Can you remove our scent?”

She nodded. Closed her eyes. Focused. The forest smell peeled away from us, thread by thread, until even my own nose lost track of where I ended and the cave began.

Outside, I could hear the Wyrm and the Maw facing one another.

The roar of the Maw met the vibration of the Wyrm, rolling through the earth in measured pulses rather than strikes.

It didn’t sound like a deadly fight. I realized that after a moment. This was intimidation, the kind common between beasts without regenerative capabilities.

“They won’t fight into the cave,” I whispered to Emma. “Neither of them would risk the critters.”

She didn’t answer. She only huddled closer to herself and continued praying to Lumisiel, the words low and urgent.

The Glass Wyrm shifted in slow, deliberate coils, its plates humming softly. The Shepherd Maw scraped one horn against stone, a low grinding sound that vibrated through my ribs. The Wyrm answered with a deeper hum. Leaves trembled where they hung.

The sun sank lower. Shadows stretched long and cool. Movements slowed, both giants settling into guarded stillness.

The Shepherd Maw turned first. It planted itself before the cave, curling back around its enclosure, horns low, body squared and immovable. The ground beneath its feet darkened where it pressed its weight into the soil. Animals that had not fled pressed close to it, sheltered by its bulk, its body forming a living wall at the cave’s mouth.