Into the Deep Wood

A great tree came crashing down, the heavy body of the giant serpent crushing against it as it twisted and coiled. The wood broke off jaggedly, with sharp, protruding splinters being left behind. Another groaned as the tail slammed halfway up the trunk, even its larger branches detaching and flying to the side.

Anushka did not stop the large snake head as it struck at Yaro, but it made a significant dent in its snout, knocking out a tooth.

“S-erve-s you right!” Yaro shouted at it, getting up from the ground where the force of it had launched him.

Things had not gone as planned or as well as they should have. All three managed to avoid being bitten, but not without paying a price. With just a tap of the serpent’s tail, Marat was launched off the boulders, landing on his back twenty feet away.

Ivan’s face was bloody where the snake’s fang had grazed it but the serpent was forced back with Kladenets going through the roof of its mouth.

All three were forced from the cave entrance, cutting off their escape.

Thankfully, the beast was not particularly fast or clever. It seemed to have trouble with its whereabouts, surely resulting from losing an entire head that it relied on for thousands of years. The two heads had trouble coordinating in two different directions. They struck out at the same target, one lagging behind the other. This was problematic when trying to parry, but not if one was to get out of the way of the strike fast enough.

The remaining stub where the Iron Claw had taken its head was now withered and crusted over, dirt and forest debris sticking to the uneven texture.

An arrow stuck out of the smooth skin of a head where the eye would otherwise be. The flesh was still soft there, and Marat took any opportunity to take a shot, few as there proved to be.

“Should have brought a pike!” He called out between heavy breaths.

“Sh-ould have s-tayed home!” Yaro yelled.

Ivan did not speak. The sword was still heavy, and he slashed at the creature every chance he got, standing his ground. He was strong, but his arms shook from exhaustion after so much time.

Trying to hit the vulnerable area behind the venom gland where the jaws met its body, Ivan quickly realized that he could only do so after the creature struck and was low to the ground.

A head lashed out and almost caught Marat on the leg as he ducked behind a broken-off tree stump. The teeth clamped down on the wood, taking pieces of bark back with it when it pulled back.

“Split off as far as you can!” Marat commanded.

The hopes of slaying the monster were lost by now, and it was only a matter of keeping it occupied while Valeria was gone. He hated the thought that she may be the one saving them by the time she returned if she even could manipulate the creature’s threads.

Assuming it had threads.

The Hag still stood before her, the needle being offered up, but Val could not raise her hand to accept it. Her body was not her own, or perhaps she was not there at all.

“That’s right.” The Hag sighed, pulling it back and slipping it into her pocket. “You aren’t in the Deep Wood, are you? Not at the Great Oak? You come later, like he did. You do not even know where he keeps it. You best find it, because when he is done devouring yours, he will come for his own, too.”

And with that, Val felt the earth give out beneath her. Each little piece of dirt, leaf, and root crumbled and shattered into light, airy matter floating all around. The Glade, the Hag, the trees, and the sky all came apart around her.

Nothing.

There was nothing.

Until they came together again into something new.

She saw Titan’s Pass before her. But the sky was the wrong color, and the mountains surrounding it were blackened and dead.

A screech echoed from the Iron Gate, and then another. It was so loud that it forced Val to the ground, clutching her ears. When she looked up, one of the massive doors had bent and twisted, pieces of it crumbling and flaking away as the brownish-red patina spread across it at the speed of a spilled glass of water.

“No…” She whispered, and to her surprise, she had a voice with which to speak. The western gates were falling away, and she saw the reason ahead.

The tall, skinny figure stood still as if asleep. Surrounding it were dead grass and the bodies of birds in various states of decomposition.

The Legho.

“Stop!” Val shouted to get the thing’s attention away from the gate.

The Legho turned, its decaying foot pushing off the ground but not easing the jerk of its body. It stepped forward, facing her, and suddenly covered a great distance between them to stand only a few feet from Val.

The last time she glanced it was at Nashtuun’s walls. Now, Val could see it all.

The jaw that dangled from its face was gone, completely broken off. Only a tongue remained underneath a row of yellowed, broken teeth. The rags it wore did not conceal the arms that had been torn from its body. The Legho barely resembled a person at all, now.

But, even here, the collar and chains were still fastened around its neck.

Val saw all this in the span of only a moment, as the next thing she knew was the world breaking and reforming all around her again. Even the ground beneath them changed. There was no more wall, no trees, no… anything.

All that was left was a soft clay, running flat in every direction as far as the eye could see. The sky was a sickly, mossy shade of green like it could sometimes be before a storm.

And there was the Legho, still standing before her.

Its tongue moved, but it did not try to speak. No noise or breath escaped its throat.

Val felt her already heated skin burning hotter, even feverish, and no longer in a tolerable way it did with the other Nothing-touched.

A pain wormed its way from the back of her head and down her spine, splitting off and crawling down her arms and to her fingertips, which had suddenly gone numb. When Val looked down in horror she saw the skin retreating from her nailbeds and up her fingers.

She felt every bit of it, and she screamed, her eyes snapping back to the Legho. This was the moment that she came for, and now, she did not know what to do.

Her knees buckled, but she steadied herself. She tried to step back, but one leg had been rendered useless, the muscles suddenly growing weak and her hip tight and immobile. Something sent a sharp pain through her gut and cramped up her chest.

She was dying.

The Legho had nothing here to use for its Misfortune, and so it used Val’s own body.

Find a thread; by gods, find a thread.

Val raised her arm to grab at the idea of a connection. The skin was already peeled back to the elbow, right where the Legho’s own arms had been cut off. The flesh burned and sent intense, rippling pain across her entire body. But she held it up still.

But, there was no thread to be caught.

Panic shuddered through her; she knew the pattern of the trap. Arachne had repeated it nearly every day since the very first. But there was nothing here…

…nothing but the chains.

Desperate, Val lunged to grab the gold one. Her bad leg buckled, her hip popped out of place, and she fell. But not before grasping the chain and pulling the Legho down with her.

To her surprise, the metal was light. Where it was thick, her raw fingers only found a thin strand…

These were the Legho’s makeshift threads.

Korschey had trapped it in a new binding.

Relief washed over her, but only momentarily because the next thing Val knew was the ground covered in thick red liquid. It had been dripping from her lips.

Still, she scrambled to her knees and crawled to the next chain, the Legho kneeling on the ground, no sign of fight or emotion in its motionless body. The havoc it was wrecking was only inside Val.

Choking, her mouth filled with blood faster than she could spit it out. Her hands found the third chain, and she felt them tense as the Legho stood back up.

Val doubled over on the ground, feeling everything in her body fail as if old age had worn it out, but her hands firmly grasped all three threads. She felt bile begin to rise.

Gods, no. If she could only have a few minutes. Just a few minutes.

She tugged at them, and they had give. Her hands were slippery, and the exposed nerve endings throbbed with pain against the metal. But still, she wove. This was not an unbinding like the rest; she had to craft the weave herself—the trap.

The Legho turned to her once more but did not pull away.

Val felt a new pain, a new sensation.

This one had been familiar in a different way.

It originated in her lower abdomen, and it crawled downward. Suddenly, the night in the River Cities flashed across her mind. The Hag ripping something out of her…

“No!” She cried out, the words mixing with the hot liquid in her mouth. The pull was strong, the nightmares of that day flooding back.

The final thread, by gods, she prayed that she had not made a mistake. It was almost there…

The Legho leaned down, its horrible face leveling with Val. She could even see the sewed-shut remainders of its eye sockets.

A sound escaped the creature’s mouth. It's final one, as Val pulled the final thread into place, fastening the trap.

The last thing she saw was its gray skin, teeth, and hanging tongue. And then, it was all gone. In the very final moments…

Val had gone blind.