Page 57 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Melody

As we march on through the forest, Kyrith complains several times about food. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s glancing frequently in my direction, as if I’m the answer to his hunger.

I try to watch my steps. The forest has turned into a treacherous swamp, and it has become hard to find solid ground and not sink knee-deep into the insidious bog. Dead trees thrust upward on stretches of solid grassy land in between, cutting through the veil of mist like spears. Silence coats everything like a heavy blanket.

It’s as if the green paradise from hours before has been eradicated. Even the frogs have gone still a long while ago. Nothing lives here. Well, nothing good , because I can feel a sinister presence hovering close, can smell death and decay. As we probe on, I can’t fight the dawning sensation that it’s been purposely made that way—dangerous and deadly—for all who want to cross. And that the only reason we don’t find our end here is because of Queen Calianthe, who fears Caryan’s wrath.

My eyes snare on a piece of blanched wood that protrudes out of the soil, and a cold shudder rakes through me. Not wood… bone . A human-like ribcage.

The silence grows even more oppressive, doing nothing to distract me from the gaping void in my very being, where just a few hours before there was that connection to Caryan’s mind. Only with it severed do I realize that it has always been there. Something dark and velvety, laced deep with my soul, buried in my very core. When I reach out to it now, those walls are still locked into place. Cold.

A bond…

A bond. We share a bond .

I still can’t wrap my head around that.

But whatever it does, with it suddenly blocked, all that’s left in its wake is my own aching heart and a sudden heaviness in my bones. As if, without it, a part of me is as good as dead. Just like this swamp.

I don’t know why all that darkness I saw in his mind affects me so much either. Why it makes breathing difficult. And all those things he said to me before. Do you think I liked it? Being torn from sleep by witnessing your panic and diffuse fear night after night? Wading through this… necropolis of your feelings day after day, year after year. When I wasn’t able to distinguish your recalled pain from a real threat, or whether it was just your nightmares again.

How could he know? How is that possible? How could he feel me, even in a different world? For years?

As we go on, my body grows heavier and heavier, my steps slower. Sluggish. Sweat runs down my body in rivulets, and my clothes are drenched from the unrelenting heat and humidity so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Caryan’s set an unforgiving pace. Ronin and Kyrith seem to have no trouble matching it. And I try to keep up as well as I can, yet I become tired, my half-human body exhausted. Drained. My throat aches from thirst and my head is dizzy.

In the early afternoon, the swamp suddenly ends, the dead trees reaching up like a rampart, pieces of bones thrown in between, their peaks sharp like teeth, forming a kind of fence. In its middle, a gate appears rippling out of nothing.

We step through.

Before me, a rough meadow stretches out towards roiling, grassless hills, a thin path cutting through them like a scar, leading up to the mountains .

“We should pause here,” Ronin says. It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak since we left the Fortress.

Caryan shakes his head. “No. We will go on and set up camp further up.”

“But… we need rest,” Ronin says with a significant glance toward me.

Suddenly, I know the witcher’s asking Caryan on my behalf, as if he can sense the exhaustion in me. There is no denying that I’m tired to my very core. Over the last two hours, Caryan has set an even more brutal pace, and after we crossed that bog I more or less stumbled along rather than walked. It touches me… that Ronin cares.

“We don’t,” Caryan cuts him off.

“But—”

Caryan whips to him, fangs bared. “You heard me.”

Ronin nods once, clenching his teeth. Kyrith snarls quietly but doesn’t say anything either.

The hike up takes forever. I drag myself along, up and up until my feet hurt and I’m so tired that I feel like I’m sleepwalking. A dense, strange fog has come up, cold and eerie, as if it wants to suffocate us. Voices and laughter cut through it like ghosts. I stagger a few times, my steps becoming heavier and heavier the further we climb. On one occasion, Ronin catches me before I can hit the hard ground. Caryan only turns once before he walks on.

The next time I stumble, I barely manage to get back up, my legs and arms are feeling that weak. The cold fog feels like it’s creeping under my skin, draining the life out of me. Deep down, I know it’s not natural. It makes me slow, so slow and dizzy.

Death. This is the death the flute warned me about. Not Caryan’s but—

My death.

I stumble one more time and then darkness envelops me.