Page 29 of Light Locked #1

In the strange alignment of their features and bodies, they looked like crafted dolls. Like Ryson and Alina, they bore the faces of the forest.

“Does she belong to the Insednian?” Yellow Eyes asked, and then as if he didn’t care about the answer, he looked eagerly to what appeared to be his leader and added, “Can I hunt with the others?”

“Go,” Red Eyes replied, and in a surprising flash, the other man was gone.

Now it was just Clea and this dark figure, standing with several feet of snowy ground between them. It was a fickle barrier if this opponent could move like the other.

She’d never seen Kalex move like that.

“My name is Myken,” he said, to her surprise. His hands, previously folded behind his back, fell down by his sides. Clea remained poised for a fight, hands out and knees bent, but she couldn’t help but notice his fingers.

Just like his companion’s fingers, the ends looked like they’d been dipped in black paint to the first knuckle.

As if noticing her surprise, Myken extended a hand out for observation, the back and then the front.

He seemed to be studying her reaction as she took in the sight of his fingers.

Upon closer inspection, she saw that forked arrows extended from the first knuckle to the second of each finger, like tribal markings.

“Something called to us. It doesn’t make sense that we would find you in its place. What are you doing in the forest?” he asked.

Clea’s eyes settled back on his face as his hand fell by his side.

When she didn’t answer, his brows furrowed and with the slightest tilt of his head, he whispered, “Why? Why can I not sense your ansra?” He stepped toward her.

She tried to step back to maintain the distance between them, but he lifted his fingers to her and in a subtle gesture, pulled them back against his palm.

The snow became hard around her feet. She was locked in place.

Myken closed the distance between them, but stayed out of reach as Clea tried to remove her boots from where they’d been locked.

“You appear to be a Veilin,” he continued, and she focused back on him again. “Your skin possesses that certain glow, as faint as it is.”

Myken’s hand lifted in front of his chin pensively. “It’s like you’ve been tainted by something. What has the Insednian done to you?”

Clea dropped down into the snow, blessing the ground under her feet and sending an array of glowing white lines blasting from her hands. The blessing loosened the snow at her feet, freeing her as it raced toward Myken .

Myken dropped to his knees, and in the intensity of the light, Clea thought she’d managed to trap him. But as the brilliance faded, she found herself locked in a dark reflection.

Myken had only mirrored her posture, his hands flattened against the snow in the same way, but from his palms raced dark, jagged lines that looked like tree limbs against the night sky. They met her blessing with equal intensity, and both her blessing and the black lines faded.

Her stomach jolted. She’d never seen anything counter a blessing.

Clea rose back up, and he mirrored her. She tried with all her might to sense his cien but failed. “What are you?” she asked.

“I could ask you the same question,” he replied. “Why don’t you recognize me?”

“Recognize you?” she repeated the question, unsure of what he meant.

Snow began to fall, Myken and Clea eyeing one another through the thickening veil of white. She had no answer and so she gave none, trying to decipher the puzzle that remained unspoken between them.

“Ralth,” Myken said in the same volume, like he were speaking to her.

Clea jolted as Ralth, the being with yellow eyes, flashed into their line of sight, a stripe of blood drawn down his sleeve. It dripped from one of his fingers.

Myken didn’t remove his eyes from her as he spoke to his companion. “How are things?”

“Quinn is dead, but she tore open his shoulder,” Ralth said, licking the blood off his fingers in a way that made her stomach lurch. “He might be an Insednian, but he has no soul and a human heart.”

“So, we have parts of an Insendian, and a tainted Veilin. These days it seems like we find everything in pieces.” Myken replied thoughtfully, as Ralth’s bright eyes flickered to Clea. His gaze was hungry, tongue lapping a stray stroke of blood in the corner of his lip.

“I’ll go finish things before the Insed costs us anything else.

Even when you chop off their heads, they still bite.

Watch this one,” Myken said. “I think he’s already used her up, and done something to her mind to make her docile toward him.

The first is unfortunate but repairable.

I think the second will help her sell at a higher price. ”

With every mounting word, Clea’s heart beat faster.

Myken bared his teeth in a wicked grin and vanished.

Clea dropped to her knees and cast another blessing in Ralth’s direction before she darted for the trees. She didn’t know if she could ever escape these creatures, or even kill them, but she had to fight back. She had to fight with everything she had.

Steps away from the forest, eyes illuminated en masse between the trees, Clea sliding to a halt. She searched the clearing, seeing the wall of eyes watching her like an arena of dotted darkness.

They were surrounded. They were surrounded by forest beasts, lingering in the quiet as if they’d always been there. They did not attack, but watched. Clea had never seen them behave in such a controlled manner before.

Ralth flashed into a crouch before her and as he stood, she saw the wall of eyes behind him flicker with movement. Monsters shifted in the blackness, hints of gray claws, spines, tails, bones and teeth, growing ever restless as Ralth straightened in front of them.

He lunged. She drew Ryson’s dagger from her boot, stumbling back as he lashed out at her with bared claws. When he lashed out a second time, she swung the knife back toward him, cutting his wrist. He recoiled and hissed in pain at her, but the wound stitched itself up.

Weapons didn’t hurt them either.

Ralth swung for her again, faster, hungrier.

She leapt back, but he appeared by her side and hooked onto her arm.

Using his entire body, he slammed her into the ground.

Her lungs latched onto her breath with the force, and she heaved forward in an attempt to get to her feet.

He dug a heavy heel into her shoulder, and she crashed back into the frozen earth.

His pointed fingers grazed her throat menacingly as she drew in suffocated breaths.

Her mind raced through any means of escape, every thought repetitively blank. She’d never felt the force of such repeated, violent blows. They could resist weapons. They could resist blessings.

Ralth leaned down with a wicked smile, his hair falling around her face like a curtain behind which he intended to share dark secrets.

“D-Docile, he said? No, no. Docile, maybe only to the Insednian. Did he curse your mind?” Ralth hissed as his other clawed hand grazed her temple.

“What is the secret curse? The secret curse to have a Veilin follow you like a lamb?” Ralph’s eyes widened in a kind of hysterical, distracted, excitement.

“O-Oh, I want to know. So-So badly. Y-You always fight until we gut you to your last breath.”

Clea turned her face away from him, preparing her hands for a blow.

“Struggle is fun, but not in the end, not in the end, is it? I don’t want you to struggle to the very, very end. Such a hassle.”

Grabbing a breath, she shouted and slammed her hands into his chest, spilling light through her fingers. His chest heaved with a joyful laugh until he grabbed her hands and then howled when the cut on his wrist re-opened and gushed.

He drew back as if pain were an alien thing, as if wounds were an alien thing, holding his bloodied wrist to his chest as his other claw lifted to strike her.

A black shadow flashed over her face before she could act, and the pressure of Ralth’s body lifted off her. She heard a short, loud huff as something tackled him to the ground.

She propped herself onto her elbows in time to see Ryson and Ralth rolling through the snow, blood trailing behind them.

When they came to a halt, Ralth scrambled away, slipping once in the snow before turning to face Ryson, who held a dagger in his left hand. Ralth was still clutching his gushing wrist that now bled through his fingers. Why was it not healing this time?

Ryson put his dagger away with one hand, simultaneously drawing his scythe with the other. He was breathing heavily, but between labored breaths, threatened in fluent Kaletik. Ralth hissed at him, but sank back and vanished.

Ryson slammed his scythe into the snow as he collapsed against it, cursing.

Clea scrambled over to him. His shoulder was a bloody mess, accompanied now by a gaping wound on his side. His breath shuddered dangerously, spots of blood dampening his hair in sticky patches.

“Hold on,” Clea demanded, reaching to heal the wound.

He snatched her hand in his, coating her fingers in the blood that dressed him.

“There’s worse to worry about, Princess.” He swallowed hard as he staggered back to his feet.

Ralth and Myken now stood at the edge of the woods with a third figure in a bloodied gray cloak. He clutched a wound on his chest, peering through a veil of blood-soaked hair with glowing, green eyes.

“What are they?” Clea asked.

Ryson heaved over as his breath caught against the wetness of blood. His hand clasped over his mouth. He tucked his hand away, but she saw the blood staining the bandages on his palm.

“Venennin, and they’ve taken control of the surrounding forest beasts. We have to kill them to get any measure of control back.”

“How do we defeat them?” Clea asked, and her question drew incredulous eyes.

“Are you serious?” he asked, and she was surprised that he was looking at her now and not the battlefield.