“Open your ears and listen to these words carefully, Julius.”

Daivad kept a firm grip on the little green apple as he knelt on the forest floor in front of Julius, whose big, pale eye tracked the prize in Daivad’s fist. Though Ben, Kadie, and a handful of guards and healers (as well as Maxea and Drauge) stood around watching him, the last few days had fully inoculated Daivad to any embarrassment that might come along with speaking to monsters.

Julius’ squashed nose wiggled, and he perked his over-sized ears, as if to prove he was listening.

“After you guide us to Ori, you head straight for camp. Don’t get near the beast. Leave. Understand?”

Julius bounced, which Daivad took to be his version of nodding. His eye, beginning to take on the slightest blue hue as the sunlight waned, remained locked on the apple.

“After we find the monster—”

“Oa-krsht!” Julius chimed in.

“Right. After we find it, you’ll leave?”

“Good boy, Julius!” He shuffled a step closer to the apple.

“Good.” Daivad lowered the apple, but had to snatch it back when Julius dove, teeth first. “Wait. Let me break it first, gluttonous little shit.”

Daivad drove one clawed-thumb into the center of the apple and pulled it apart with a snap. He broke the halves into pieces small enough to at least decrease the chances Julius would choke to death—he didn’t think he could eliminate the possibility completely. Not the way Julius ate.

When he’d tossed all the pieces to Julius and sucked the apple juice off his thumb, he and Ben climbed aboard their Wolves. They would follow first—the healers were only here to aid the victims once the monster had been killed, and the guards were only here to ensure the monster didn’t get anywhere near the healers.

So far this monster, this Hunger as Nyxabella called it, had relied entirely on stealth, picking off lone, vulnerable prey. It had only taken two guards (and Julius) to run it off the night before. Their plan was to find it, restrain it, and find a way to flush out the parasite controlling the whole thing. Ben and his vines could handle the restraining, whether on the ground or in the branches. Daivad, much as the idea sent nausea sweeping through his gut and brought a cold sweat to his skin, would brave the mass of flesh to find the monster within.

The healers would be there to pick up the pieces. Literally.

This was not going to be fun.

Julius shrieked, “Yum snack!” sending apple pulp flying, shook his head hard enough to make his collar jingle and his ears flap against his head, stretched his wings, and took off into the air. “Huge Man follow Julius!”

Maxea surged forward with Drauge on her tail. Daivad kept a close eye on the pale blur, waiting for the moment it would arc up into the canopy overhead, but Julius’ rapidly flapping wings kept him just overhead.

It didn’t take them long at all to find their prey, which pissed Daivad off even more. This thing was so brazen it didn’t even bother to make its bed more than half a mile from the village.

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Suddenly, Julius had swooped back around and landed on Daivad’s shoulder, seizing a handful of his hair to steady himself as usual. Daivad shifted his weight back and held up a hand, and the Wolves came to a stop immediately.

Daivad really had to give Julius more credit—the beast, normally an unending font of shrieking and nonsense, stayed silent. Nyxabella had named him Discreet.

Balancing on one leg, Julius used the other to point one long finger-toe forward, toward a clump of undergrowth and vines that Daivad knew hid a small ravine. Daivad listened—but heard nothing. No movement, no breathing, no beating of hearts. Just a gentle breeze through the leaves.

A quiet song that Daivad recognized started up in Julius’ throat. It was the one Julius sang in the mornings when Daivad was getting up for the day and the beast was settling in to sleep—usually hanging upside down from Daivad’s window. A lullaby in Nyxabella’s voice.

At first Daivad just thought Julius was still tired and already thinking about going back to sleep, but then he pointed his toe again.

It was impossible to be sure, but Daivad thought Julius might be trying to tell him that the monster was sleeping.

As quietly as he could while still being audible, Daivad said, “Good boy, Julius. Go home.”

Julius whispered “Kiss!” and head-butted Daivad before dissolving into smoke and disappearing into the canopy above.

Daivad slid quietly off Maxea, gesturing for Ben to do the same. He knelt and brought his palm to the grass beneath them, driving his magic down and sending it out as quietly as he could. He felt the roots of the giants all around them, he felt the faint vibrations of daybeast critters skittering around the forest floor, getting ready to hunker down in their homes for the night. He felt the ever-present magic of the earth all around him, still but so alive. He even sensed the snores of nightbeasts, huddled in their own homes until the sun truly fell. But no mass of hungry flesh.

Ben’s staff planted itself next to Daivad’s hand, and Ben went still beside him. While Daivad’s magic was mostly restricted to the earth, Ben’s flowed up and out of it, into the trunks of the trees all around them. Daivad’s magic twined with Ben’s, searching out across a thousand twisting, forking branches, using the leaves to taste the air, reaching until—

There.

Daivad felt the flesh in a hundred different places, on a hundred different branches and vines. Three hands gripping here, another two gripping there. Joints draped over half a dozen different branches, and even jaws clamping on thick, hanging vines.

The Hunger had twined in the low branches, suspending itself over the ravine. Unmoving. It was asleep.

With a gesture of his hand, Daivad indicated Ben should stay where he was. Before Daivad lifted his hand from the earth, he felt Ben’s magic blooming, taking root in the greenery around them.

The whole of Silvax Forest was a weapon Ben had trained his whole life to use.

Daivad crept forward and the Wolves braced, ready to move in an instant. He just wanted to get his eyes on the thing, to know exactly what he was dealing with before Ben gave it its rude awakening. Daivad had yet to even glimpse the monster, and he hoped that when he got his first glance it wouldn’t be as horrifying as the picture Pait’s story had painted in his mind.

But when he so, so silently pushed aside the undergrowth blocking his view, those hopes were dashed.

He’d been imagining a dozen, maybe twenty bodies all tangled together, but this… Maybe it was fear, or the branches above obstructing his view that made it feel like a hundred bodies worth of flesh. Everywhere he looked, he found another inexplicable body part that had been stretched too far and twisted all wrong. With a jolt, Daivad realized that a head with a too-small face stretched over its skull was dangling not three feet to his right, one bulging eye staring right at him while the other hung several inches out of its socket. Its mouth moved, trying to speak, but no sound came out.

For just a moment, Daivad couldn’t move. He just stared at the head until he thought he recognized the words its mouth was trying to craft.

Kill me.

The world tried to tilt beneath Daivad’s feet. But, whether he wanted to admit it or not, Daivad was an Earthbreaker. He would not lose his footing.

Daivad gestured back to Ben, and the forest moved as one.