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“No, wait!” Thorn grabbed his tail as he streamed past. “Don’t leave me!”

Noro skidded to a stop. He looked back over his shoulder to find her, and something behind her made his nostrils flare.

“Look out!” he cried.

Thorn ducked and stumbled, slipping on the slick ground. Her knees slammed into a patch of rocks, and she caught herself from falling into the water by grabbing for a boulder so sharp that it cut right through her left glove. Her palm blazed with pain. She cried out, then heard a loud gulping sound and whirled around.

A monstrous wet hand the size of her bed at home slapped the rock where she’d been standing. Its fingers scraped up clumps of moss before throwing them away in disgust.

“Yah!” Bartos shouted, flinging eldisks left and right, his cloak whirling. Disks of crackling light soared through the air. When they hit their targets, the lightning inside the eldisks detonated. The disk itself crumbled to glinting metal bits. Brilliant angry energy erupted in a flash. At the touch of lightning, the swamp shrieked and dissolved into glittering silver ash.

One of the other soldiers screamed—a brown-skinned manwith a long black braid. Thorn watched the swamp drag him across the ground. He slammed an eldisk onto the glistening muddy hand wrapped around his stomach. The eldisk exploded. Lightning sizzled down the swamp arm and across the soldier’s body.

With a piercing shriek, the hand collapsed and released him.

Then four more hands burst out of the swamp and clamped down on the soldier’s legs, his chest, his skull.

Smoking and crisped, the soldier gave one last frightened cry.

The hands yanked him under. The swamp rippled, like something huge and hungry was shifting beneath the surface.

A long, loud roar sounded from deep underground.

Thorn’s breath caught as she jumped to her feet, holding her hurt hand close to her chest.The Gulgot?

The rocky ground quaked and moaned. Two cracks raced across the clearing, splitting it into four jagged sections.

Another scream.

One of the soldiers, fair-haired with a scruffy beard, tried to jump from one section of rock to another. He didn’t jump far enough; he fell, knocked his chin against the stone with a choked cry, then disappeared down the crack and into the swamp.

And another shout—

Thorn spun around, shaking. The captain of the guard leaped for a nearby rock. Limbs flailing, he soared—then crashed into the rock chest first, and grabbed hold with all his might.

The swamp crested behind him, huge and dripping. A mouth opened in its center, ropes of mud stretching from top to bottom.

Looking back over his shoulder with wild eyes, the captain screamed.

The swamp swallowed him whole.

Thorn wanted to do something—anything—but she couldn’t move. Bricks of terror weighed down her feet. Bartos darted between the remaining bags, looking for eldisks and finding none.

They’d used them all.

“Noro?” Thorn whispered.

He shook his head, his beautiful white coat splattered with sludge. “There’s a bit of lightning in my horn, but without the royal forgers, I can’t get it out.”

Thorn swallowed. The world slowed down.

This was it. They were alone—Thorn, Noro, Bartos.

Bartos locked eyes with Thorn. His eyes were bright in his mud-caked face.

“I’m sorry, Thorn,” he said, his voice breaking. “I shouldn’t have allowed you to come.”

“I wanted to come,” Thorn whispered, though she wasn’t sure that was true. But if she was going to die, she wanted brave words on her lips.