Chapter 19 The Forest of Forgotten Dreams.

Shawn stood upon the edge of a dark land like a canvas of scratched blackness. A wide canopy reached over the world like a blanket of green branches, so thick it seemed like a cavern instead of a forest. The trees were like a crowd of dead giants turned to bark and wood, the roots pushing up the land and laying out across broken soil like great arms and legs. A vast stretch of land descended before Shawn like the bank of a drained lake, but the bed of this lake was alive with ferns and moss and vines. It was more a jungle between the wide trunks of redwoods that soared hundreds of feet above. The land ahead was black and dripping with rain, and somewhere out there in all that shadow was a Crystal that would allow its wielder to speak to the dead.

Shawn let out a deep breath. “Valery, what did you mean back there when you told Darko this Crystal is going to change the world?” Thunder rumbled in the distance like boulders smashing against the sky.

Valery looked at Shawn and froze, then rubbed her eye. “Nothing. I was just…paraphrasing. What I mean to say is it's going to change my world.”

“Change it how?” Shawn asked.

“You’ve never wondered what it would be like to talk to the dead? It must be boring where you’re from.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”

Valery’s eyes were like marbles. “No, it doesn’t, does it?”

“No,” Shawn said, shaking his head at her.

Valery sighed. “Follow me and maybe you’ll find out.” She held up a backpack behind Shawn and pushed the straps over his shoulders. “Is that too heavy?”

Shawn slipped his arms through and shook the weight. “No, it’s fine.” Shawn was annoyed by her lack of an answer. “Look, if you’re not going to trust me with your plans, how can I trust you with mine?” Shawn turned back to Vee.

“I thought you were here to cure the Gray Death–not ask questions.” Valery sharpened her eyes.

“I guess you’re right,” Shawn said, slapping his hips.

“Good. Glad we cleared that up. Now, put this on.” She handed Shawn a leather sheath.

Shawn slowly tied the belt around his waist, shaking his head in frustration. She’s right, I’m only here for the cure. And then me and Manie will leave this place and never come back.

Valery raised a sword and shoved it down into the sheath on Shawn’s hip, keeping her hands on the hilt as she looked him in the eye. “Now you’re ready for battle, Protector.” She said, smiling.

“Not the first time I’ve used one of these,” Shawn replied, thinking of his fight with Duncan.

“I don’t doubt it,” Valery said. “Why do you think I brought you?” She looked up at Shawn, eyes glinting in the light of the torch. What was it like to kill all those Cinders? Did it feel good?”

The question made Shawn uncomfortable. “Aren’t we supposed to be looking for a Crystal?” he asked, attempting to dodge an answer.

“Oh, are we? I almost forgot.” Valery leaned around Shawn and looked him in the eye with an eyebrow raised. She smiled.

“You two are going to make me sick!” Molly whined. “Stop torturing me!”

Shawn looked over at Molly and Dylan, dressed in gear and supplies. Molly dragged her fingers across her cheeks, moaning.

“If you keep complaining, then maybe I won’t stop Dylan from choking you next time!” Valery said back.

“Please don’t!” Molly grabbed Dylan’s hands and put them around her neck, sticking out her tongue as she pretended to cough. Dylan slowly locked his fingers around her neck and squeezed.

“Dylan!” Valery called, making him let go of Molly’s throat. “No more choking!”

“Why not,” Dylan asked, laughing.

Molly grabbed Dylan’s leather backpack and yanked it down until he fell back on his ass in the mud.

“You’re going to get the supplies wet, you moldy haired imp!” Dylan rolled to his side and got back to his feet, wiping mud off his pants. He pulled up his hood to hide his face from the rain.

“Enough fooling around!” Valery shouted. “Come on. Keep focused!”

“Maybe you should speak to a mirror,” Dylan said, sounding frustrated. “You’re the one with your hands on Shawn’s…sword.”

Valery let go of Shawn’s hilt and turned her body away without looking at him. “I was helping him get his gear on.”

“No one’s convinced,” Dylan said, walking past Vee and letting his shoulder bump hers.

Valery’s mouth popped open in surprise. “Watch yourself. Don’t forget whose shoulder you just brushed into.”

“I haven’t,” Dylan said, keeping his back facing her. “Are we ready to go, yet?”

Molly went ahead of Shawn and Valery and stood beside Dylan, looking back. “For once I think Dylan might be right. Come on, Vee. We’re almost there.”

Valery turned back to Shawn, her eyes bouncing around his feet. “They can’t see what I see,” she said, raising her eyes. “Let’s go. It won’t be long before this is all just a memory.”

Shawn followed Valery to Molly and Dylan, and they let Valery take the lead once again. She pulled out a dark brown scroll and unfolded it. “The map points this way north–through the trees. There’s a formation we have to reach first. It’s called The Crater of Whispers. From there we head to the cliffs along the coast. That’s where we’ll find the Temple of the Old Ones. That’s where my Crystal is sealed away.” She looked back at Shawn. “That’s why I need you.”

“It’s good to be wanted, I guess,” Shawn said with a shrug.

“I’ve never known that feeling,” Valery said, turning back in the direction they were headed. They came to the bank and began to snake their way down a winding path. Layers in the stone grew redder, then whiter, the farther down they went, and the roots grew closer in the crimson bark that carpeted the forest floor.

The first layer of roots they came upon formed a perfect archway over the path like a twisting arm of woody muscles and vines, like an entranceway to the jungles below. Everything was blanketed in wet, green moss. Valery ignited a torch and held it up, spraying a field of glowing gold light across the wet arch, painting the corners and crevices with creeping shadows.

“Welcome to the forest of Forgotten Dreams,” Dylan said as he saw the arch. “The graveyard of many lost travelers.”

“Reminds me of a movie I saw once,” Shawn said. “About a boy who carried a ring.”

“What’s a movie?” Molly asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Shawn said as Valery approached the arch, feeling an emptiness in his heart. “It wasn’t real. It was all just pretend.”

“Well this isn’t,” Vee said.” Now stay awake.”

The ferns shivered and the vines groaned as animals scurried in the darkness around the path, eyes glowing like sparks in the night. Squawks and growls could be heard near Valery’s group, but farther off was a screaming labyrinth of howls and shrieks that echoed between the trunks like tunnel of sound. The deeper into the vines and roots and massive trunks they went, the louder the noises became. Valery found a massive trunk dividing their path between one that went up, into a high part of the jungle that was full of red rocks and clay, or down to the left, into a marsh of tall grass and thick reeds.

Valery led them down, away from the rocks. Shawn was soon sweeping fields of grass aside that were taller than he was. Valery traversed a maze of mud as she fought to keep the torch above water. “I can see dry land!” she said back.

Dylan slapped one of the mosquitos against his neck. “It’s a shame Duncan didn’t burn this forest with all the others. I know I wouldn’t miss the place.”

“Well, I would,” Valery said back. “Because that would have meant my Crystal was lost forever.”

“Yeah, stupid,” Molly said. “Don’t you ever think before you open that big mouth of yours?”

“Maybe it would have been easier to find without all this nature in our way, is what I meant to say,” Dylan clarified.

“I won’t lie, I’m not a big fan of this mud, either,” Shawn said, pulling his boot up from the marsh with a deep suck. “Though I’m not sure I’d want to see it get destroyed.”

“Get over it, forest boy,” Molly said. “You can’t save every tree.”

“Better than letting it burn,” Shawn said back. “Why didn’t Duncan burn this forest?”

“No Torch-Wings,” Dylan said. “What would be the point?”

Valery came to the edge of a bank that had a curtain of dried roots hanging across its mouth. She put her arms against the edge and pulled herself up and out of the swamp. Vee set the torch on the ground then gave Shawn her hand, pulling him out of the muck next. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

“I guess not,” Shawn allowed. He turned and put an arm out for Dylan, but he only swatted the hand aside, climbing out on his own. When Molly came, she accepted Shawn’s hand and let him haul her up the bank.

“You’re sure this is the right way?” Shawn asked.

Valery turned her eyes at him. “Have some faith, Shawn.”

“I followed you this far, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but… we’ve only just begun,” she said back. “I’ll need a lot more trust than this if you want the cure to the Gray Death.”

“I’ll do anything you want. Just tell me what to do.”

Valery smiled as wide as he’d ever seen. “You really are devoted to this cause, aren't you? Almost makes me wonder if the Protectors are right after all.”

“What other option is there?” Shawn asked. “We can’t just roll over and die.”

“There might be another way,” Valery said back.

“A different way to stop the Gray Death?” Shawn asked, squinting at her. “How?”

“Not yet,” Vee said, putting a finger against Shawn’s lips. “Soon.”

“I could help you,” Shawn said as he gently pushed her hand aside. “We could work together.”

“Aren’t we already?” Valery asked. “Just stay with me and you’ll learn everything you want to know.” Valery turned her eyes ahead, to the canyon between the bent trunks and twisting vines and said no more.

A different way to stop the Gray Death? Shawn wondered to himself. What could she mean by that? What other option exists besides a cure? Everyone else is already dead.

Dylan pulled out his sword and hacked away at the ferns and vines to clear a path. “That’s not a good idea,” Dylan whispered to Valery as she came up beside him.

“You let me decide that,” she said back. Valery dove into the jungle before Dylan could cut it down and pushed vines and branches aside. Shawn stayed close to her, letting her lead him onwards. Bright green plants and brown roots were all around them, glowing in the light of the torch, twisting in the wind. The trees rose ever higher, crackling and whispering in a sky of black mist that rained teardrops down from above.

Shrieks echoed across the forest and cut past Shawn’s head. He felt like a spark in a flame–small and insignificant compared to the world around him. Maybe I’m like them, Shawn thought, looking at Valery and her friends. Just one person in a war involving tens of thousands. None of the Protectors even knew if a cure would work, it was just the only choice they had left. A good choice, but a reckless one. Like the choice I made to abandon my home in trade for a girl. A good choice, but a reckless one, Shawn thought. Now my home is gone forever. Shawn tried not to think too hard about it, remembering Manie and the Torch-Wings instead. You have to follow your heart, he remembered his mother telling him. But was she right?

“How close are we to the Crater of Whispers?” Shawn asked, making his voice loud to overcome his own sorrow.

“Close,” Valery whispered back, her voice like a hiss. “It’s just beyond the trees.”

Dylan went ahead and cut down a sapling that was clinging to a cliff's edge. He kicked the little tree down and sliced away at the grass. By the time Shawn and Valery arrived where he was, a clear view of the land below was waiting for them. Shawn looked across a great bowl ripped in the ground ahead like a gash in the Earth’s crust–a deep pit of shadows and rock and bones as wide as a city. The tall trees with red bark ended where the crater began, their canopies reaching far out and hanging above the inky chasm, as if they were trying to hide the wound in the land from sight of the sky.

The rain fell in choking sheets across the world below like the sky was trying to drown the forest–submerge it, and bury this land and all its secrets forever before anyone could uncover what it had to hide. Shawn could see half a hundred little rivers spitting into the great pit from every angle he could see. It had to be filling fast. Great mountains of sharp stone rose high into the storm around the crater, the tips disappearing into the clouds of boiling mist above like a long scythe of rock.

“We’re going down there?” Shawn asked.

“That’s right,” Valery said, taking a stand beside him. “Looks rough from here, but we’ll make it.”

“I’m drenched,” Dylan complained.

“Me too,” Molly agreed.

Down below, lightning cracked and exploded against tips of trees, lighting small fires that quickly drowned in the deluge. The wind and rain seemed to have grown fiercer as they left the city, and Shawn couldn’t help but wonder if Agatha was behind this storm, like her shadow was hiding behind every cloud. Perhaps she was angry that he and Manie hadn’t died when the Beacons fell. Or maybe she wanted revenge for saving Manie from Goroth. He thought of his fall at the mine in Wisconsin, the misstep that started this terrible adventure, and he stepped away from the cliff’s edge.

“Let’s get back under the trees,” Valery said, pulling up her hood. She turned from the cliffs and went back into the grass, fighting through to the trail that snaked down between the wide trunks of red trees. Everyone followed, and the forest, though thin at first, grew quickly thicker the deeper they went until the vines and roots made paths between trunks like great threads in a titanic, mossy garment. The world sunk away into a field of blue mist, glowing in the spots of moonlight.

Birds shot past Shawn, making a field of fireflies rise up from the grass, lighting the trail ahead. Shawn weaved through clouds of the glowing bugs like he’d stumbled into an ocean of living sparks. They were almost as beautiful as the Torch-Wings. Valery went to a wide root and climbed up the end, putting out her arms for balance as she winded up its tail. “Come on. This way’s quickest.”

Molly and Dylan followed her up, their inky shadows crawling across trunks and vines.

“How do you know?” Shawn asked.

“Because I know,” Vee said back.

“I guess that’s all I’m going to get,” Shawn muttered to himself.

He went up the root last, staying at the back of the group while Valery led Molly and Dylan along a highway of roots that coiled through the forest like ropes. Soon the roots bent up and went higher into the trees until the forest floor grew to be dozens of feet below them. Valery jumped across to another root below them, one that was clinging to a different tree. Just watching her make the leap made Shawn’s hands sweat. Molly and Dylan quickly followed, leaving Shawn alone above.

“Just don’t look down,” Valery called up.

“And don’t miss!” Molly screamed.

“I have to look down!” Shawn called back. “The root is below me!”

“Well, don’t look way down,” Valery said, waving her arms. “Just look at us!”

It’s just a little hop, Shawn told himself. He swallowed and leapt out, falling onto the roots feet first. His legs buckled and he tumbled out, catching himself against the trunk of the tree. Valery grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him back.

“Good job,” she said, holding Shawn to help steady him.

“How are we supposed to get back?” Shawn asked, looking up at the tree they’d come down from. There was a wide gap between this trunk and the next one, and the roots were high above their head.

“We’ll find another way,” Valery said, pulling Shawn back to his feet. “Lets focus on finding my Crystal for now.”

Valery started her descent from the tops of the trees, following the roots and vines down like a road paved in gold. It wasn’t long before the red mulch and ferns were coming back up to meet Shawn and the rest of the group. The end of the roots twisted down and bent over an edge of land, falling out of sight.

“This way.” Valery jumped down into the wet bark and leaves.

Shawn followed her down, torchlight dispelling the blackness around them. A deer who’d been sleeping beneath the roots to shelter from the rain grunted as they came down, tearing off into the ferns and grass and kicking up bark as it sped away.

“Sorry, little guy,” Valery said under her breath.

Molly and Dylan came down beside Shawn in a pair of thuds against the dirt.

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“This crater better be fucking close,” Molly said.

“It is close. In fact–it’s right there,” Valery pointed towards where the giant root was hung over the edge of land.

Shawn went ahead and looked down, eyes rising across the massive scar in the Earth he’d seen before, like a rip in the land at his feet. At the end of the crater was a tear in the coastline which revealed an ocean churning between a horseshoe of broken cliffs that were hundreds of feet tall on both sides. “How did the land get like this?” Shawn asked.

“Some say a boulder the size of a mountain fell from the stars and crashed into the forest a thousand years ago,” Valery said.

“A meteorite fell here?” Shawn asked.

“Is that what they call them in the North?” Valery asked.

“Not really,” Shawn said, turning towards her.

“Maybe it came from the same place as the Crystals,” she suggested. “Maybe they came for a reason. Or do you believe the Crystals fell by accident?”

“I have no idea,” Shawn said, caught off guard. “You really think someone could have sent them on purpose?”

“It’s more possible than not,” Valery said, shrugging. “I mean, look at what they can do: the powers they contain. Many believed that explanation in the age of Mikhail. It’s why the Crystal Keepers were revered as gods. Who knows how or why the stones ended up here really, but they changed Talmoria forever.”

“Very poetic,” Dylan said, interrupting her. “But if I remember correctly we came to find a Crystal for ourselves. Not to talk about where they came from.”

Valery shot Dylan a hard glance, then turned to look across the crater. “Come here.” She went to the edge and knelt down behind some rocks. When Shawn arrived he saw there was a hidden staircase carved into the side of the cliff that went down for hundreds of feet to the bottom.

“You knew this was here?” Shawn asked.

“I did,” Valery said. “The map gives pretty clear instructions.”

“Why does everything have to be so high up,” Shawn complained as he got to his hands and knees.

“No risk, no reward,” Valery said. “Come on, it’ll be easy. We just go down these stairs and up the other side, and then we’ll be standing on the temple’s doorstep.”

Valery waited for Shawn to follow, and when he began to move towards her, she smiled.

“This is crazy,” Shawn said as he put one foot down the cliff. He reached the first stone stair with his toes and twisted his foot around. A hand slammed against Shawn’s shoulder, nearly making him fall. He looked up and saw Dylan smiling.

“Don’t fall,” Dylan said. “It’s a long way to the bottom.”

“Yeah, I’ll try not to,” Shawn said, pushing the hand off his arm.

Molly shoved Dylan from behind and made him nearly stumble over the edge. She laughed hysterically as he turned back, fury in his eyes.

“You should have seen the look on your face!” Molly said, coughing with laughter. “You nearly shit your pants, didn’t you?”

Dylan grabbed Molly by the collar of her coat and shoved her back as he stood on one of her feet, making her trip back and fall to the ground.

“Asshole,” she complained, rubbing her arm.

“Enough!” Valery shouted. “We don’t have time for screw ups! Not now!”

“Of course not,” Dylan said as he waited to mount the stairs.

Valery began her descent and Shawn did his best to stay close, trying not to slip on the steps in the rain. The farther down they went, the higher the edges of the crater rose around them, like they were descending into the mouth of some titanic creature. Rivers ran down the cliffs, turning into hundreds of waterfalls that sprayed off into the dark. The deepest parts of the crater were completely flooded, turned to rising pools by the storm, and more ponds were quickly forming. In the deep shadows, Shawn could swear he saw creatures squirming in and out of the light. Creatures with bony, pale skin.

“There are things moving down there,” Shawn said.

“Likely driven out by the storm,” Dylan said from behind. “Hasn’t rained like this in nearly a decade.”

Shawn leaned against the wall to hide from the spray of a waterfall coming down over them. “What lives down there?”

“You don’t want to know,” Valery said from the front. “We’re taking the shortest route possible to avoid going into the crater. The map had a different name for this place than the one I told you earlier. The man who drew our map called this place the Crater of Death.”

“Good thing we have the statue killer with us,” Molly said from behind Dylan, snickering.

“That’s great,” Shawn said as he shimmied along. “Thanks for waiting till now to tell me.”

“It’s more exciting this way,” Valery said.

“If you’ve got a death wish,” Shawn replied.

“Maybe I do,” Valery said. “I’m just taking all my friends with me.”

“Then let’s get it over with,” Shawn said. “I’m tired of waiting.”

“You won’t have to wait long.”

Valery continued down the stairs until she reached the bottom. When they finally arrived and stepped down from the final stair, Shawn was so exhausted he thought his legs were going to buckle beneath his own weight. The grass and ferns around him were dancing in the rain as wind swirled and howled across the pit.

“Stay quiet everyone,” Valery whispered, swinging up her torch. “Most of the creatures down here are blind, but they can still hear. So don’t make a sound.”

Shawn could hear brittle legs crackling and tapping stones in the dark around them, water rushing and splashing, screeching and snapping branches–but he couldn’t see the things making the sounds. It was almost pitch black this deep in the crater. Without Valery’s torch, they would have been as blind as the beasts within.

“This way,” she whispered.

The path led up the far edge of the Crater, towards where the cliffs broke into a horseshoe opening before the ocean. But another path went down into the deepest depths of the blackness, where water could be heard roaring over everything else from what sounded like thousands of feet below. Shawn had no idea what horrors were hiding down in that pit, but he knew he didn’t want to find out.

They followed the path up the edge of the crater. Out of the darkness a pair of fuzzy branches swinging in the wind came into Valery’s way. She reached out to swipe them aside, but as she touched the branches they quickly twisted towards her and began to swat the air around her arm. Dylan held out his torch and pincers quickly came into view, shining in the darkness like white tusks, dripping with rain and yellow slime. It seemed to be a centipede as big as a man, body hanging from the mossy branches of a fallen tree on the edge of the crater.

Valery stood open mouthed as the antenna swung up to her face. The centipede’s dozens of bony arms caressed the air around her, teeth opening and closing as they dripped with blood and mucus. The centipede fell from the trees and splashed into the mud with a heavy slap, making Valery flinch. Shawn put his hand on her shoulder and tried to draw her back, but Vee stayed still. He reached down and slowly drew his sword up out of its sheath, but Valery grabbed his arm to stop him.

No one made a sound as the centipede touched her cheeks and batted her wet hair with its antennae. Valery turned her face, then swept her foot to the side and kicked a rock off the trail. The centipede twisted towards the sound and hissed, then slithered back from Valery and went to the ground. The creature swam across the path and down into the deepest parts of the black pit where the rock had fallen, its long body bending as thousands of legs chattered against the stones.

“Let’s fucking go,” Valery whispered.

With a hurried pace, she followed the trail along the rim of the Crater until they came up out of the blackness. A large river pouring down between massive cliffs at the edge of the ocean waited ahead. Everyone stopped at once to take a breath. The crater was a broken shelf of rocks and sediment behind them, just a shattered remnant of what it was before the meteor fell.

“That thing was huge,” Molly said. “I thought it was going to bite your face off!”

“So did I,” Valery said, wiping her hands across her chest. She let out a tight breath.

Where the river fell was a fork of land around the water, reaching out from the forest, broken and separated by the crater–but a wide log lay across the gap, a great tree that had uprooted and fallen across possibly centuries before. Below the tree was a hundreds foot drop to the sea, where shards of stone were sticking up from an ocean as black as ink, turning the water to white froth as it broke against the teeth of the shore.

“We have to cross here,” Valery said.

The log was rotten–its thick roots hanging out of the earth like decaying veins ripped up from the cliff’s edge–and the tip of the tree was thin and brittle near the opposite side.

“You’re sure there isn’t another way across?” Shawn asked.

“Not unless you’d like to go back down there,” Valerys said, looking down into the blackness of the crater. “The river is too strong. The nearest bridge is miles away.”

“That place gives me the creeps,” Molly said, sounding shaken as she looked into the crater. “I don’t ever want to go down there again!”

“You’re scared?” Dylan asked, swinging the torch at Molly. “Of what?”

“How about getting eaten by a giant fucking centipede,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“There are worse ways to go,” Dylan said back.

“I can’t think of many,” Molly replied.

“Then you haven’t got a very good imagination. So,” Dylan said as he swung out his arm, “who’s going first?” He turned back to the log, making Valery, Molly and Shawn look with him.

“I will,” Valery said, eyeing the cliffs.

“No, Vee. Let me,” Molly said. “To be sure it's safe.”

“Alright,” Valery said, her eyes softening to the idea. “But be careful.”

“It’s just a log. What’s the worst that could happen?” Molly asked as she turned to look at Dylan. A smirk grew across his face and Molly turned to climb up the end of the log where the roots were coming out of the ground. When she got to the top she froze. “Actually, on second thought, maybe Shawn should go first.”

“What? Why me?” Shawn asked.

“Because you’re expendable,” Molly said back.

“I thought you were about to heroically risk your life to be sure it's safe for the rest of us?”

“Yeah, well, you’re the hero boy. I’m just the errand girl.”

“Shawn’s not expendable,” Valery said. “I need his blood to get inside the temple. If anyone’s expendable, it’s you!”

Molly gasped. “I’m less expendable than Dylan!”

“That’s true,” Vee agreed. “I like you better.”

“You hear that, Dill?” Molly shouted down from the top of the tree. “You’re the least important person here!”

Dylan shoved the torch at Shawn, making him take it. “It seems I’m the only one here unafraid to pay the price for power.”

“And you think I am?” Valery asked as he went by her and began to climb the tree.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Dylan said. “Besides, you know the answer to that question better than I do.”

“I’ll do whatever needs to be done,” Valery beamed back, her voice angry and threatening.

“I suppose we’ll find out,” Dylan said back. “It’s on you now to prove it.”

It was a dark message spoken in unspoken words. It made Shawn uneasy. He was reminded of Shaleah and her cunning devotion to the same ruthless pursuit of power. “There are more important things out there than these Crystals,” Shawn said, cutting in.

“Oh, you mean gold?” Molly asked from above.

“No, like love,” he said, making Valery look over at him, “and family.”

“That’s fucking stupid,” Molly said.

Dylan laughed. “Where did you find this kid?”

“It isn’t stupid,” Valery said, letting her eyes descend to the ground. “He’s right. It just isn’t always true.”

“Yeah well, if Shawn’s so devoted to love and family,” Molly said, “maybe he should go back to the North, cause he’s not going to find it out here!” She leaned as Dylan climbed up the tree, letting him get by.

Valery peered into Shawn’s eyes as lightning flashed above her, painting her wet features with blue light. She seemed to be speaking with her mouth closed. A wordless message came into Shawn’s mind as she stared into his eyes. He was much more than just a key to the temple in her eyes. He was more. But what?

The rain stopped, but the storm continued churning above as much as the black ocean below, and the wind seemed to be getting stronger as it spun. The trees along the river were leaning and moaning as wind howled through their branches, following the path of the river and pouring down over the log in wafting sprays of mist.

“Throw me the torch!” Molly called down.

Shawn flung it at her, letting it land among the roots. Molly leaned down and grabbed it, then twisted back and followed Dylan across the log, holding out her arms for balance. The trunk on Shawn and Valery’s side was wide enough for two to walk side by side, but further down it became a balancing act. When Dylan got to the end he fell to his knees and straddled the log.

“It’s not an ass-scratcher,” Molly said from behind. “Hurry up.”

Dylan let out a breath and stood, legs shaking as he came up. “This fucking wind is going to get one of us killed!”

“Just jump!”

Dylan leapt out and rolled across the grass on the other side, stopping on his back. He leaned up and got back to his feet, then looked at Molly as she clung to the branches at the end of the log, her green hair snapping in the moaning wind. “What are you waiting for?” Dylan asked. “It’s only a two-hundred foot fall to the rocks below.”

“It’s so windy!” she screamed. Molly dove for the grass and landed on her chest, but her legs didn’t make it and she slid down the cliff’s edge. She scrambled to get handfuls of grass to hang to when Dylan came over and grabbed her wrist, helping her up the edge. “This doesn’t change anything,” she said, rolling to her side.

“Why would it?” Dylan asked.

“It wouldn’t.” Molly turned back to Valery and Shawn on the other side. “Okay, it's safe for you to cross! Send over The Stick.”

Shawn flipped Molly off from across the chasm, making her mouth drop open. She immediately returned the gesture. Valery pushed Shawn’s arm down, laughing. “Okay, on second thought, I think I’ll go next. Seems safer that way.”

“Why’s that?” Shawn asked, crossing his arms. “I can handle a little wind.”

“So I can stop Molly from tearing your finger off when you get to the other side.”

“She can try,” Shawn said under his breath.

“I know she can be annoying, and Dylan's no better, but keep it together. We’re almost done.” Valery climbed the roots and stood at the wider end of the log. Shawn climbed up behind her. “Wait here until I make it across, okay?” she said. “We don’t want to stress the log with our weight.”

“If you say so,” Shawn said, letting his hands slap against his sides. “Sure you trust me not to run off?”

“I have the map,” Valery said without turning around. “You’d never make it back to Denengear alive.”

Shawn burst air from his nose. Valery laughed and went ahead, crossing the log with ease. As she neared the middle of the fallen tree, the wind seemed to die down. “Oh, perfect!” she called back, her voice echoing across the chasm. “Can you believe my good luck?” She went to the thinner edge of the tree and leapt over, landing perfectly on two feet. She turned back and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Okay–your turn, Shawn!”

Shawn stepped forwards and came to the edge of the cliff beneath the log. It was a sickeningly long drop to the bottom, and Shawn could feel his legs begin to shake as soon as he saw the water below. The rocks at the bottom were like shark’s teeth biting up from the sea. “How do I keep getting into these situations?…” It was moments like this when Shawn wished for the everyday mundane of home more than ever.

He continued walking until he reached the branch near the middle, and grabbed a hold to shimmy around. As he stepped one foot and another around the obstacle, Shawn heard a roaring moan coil through the forest behind him, and he turned to see an invisible wave knocking through the trees around the river, rattling leaves and shaking branches. As the wind came down against the rapids and drove up a blast of mist, Shawn realized what was about to happen. The wind was going to hit him–just like the day at the mineshaft. He turned and clung to the branch with both hands as tight as he could.

The wind rammed against the log, making it jerk to the side and roll. Shawn felt his legs fling out beneath him and hang. The branch he was squeezing cracked loudly from his weight, but just when it seemed ready to break, the log recoiled and twisted back, the roots snapping and breaking as it spun. The motion was enough to throw Shawn back up on top of the log, but he nearly went over the other side as he landed. The wind kept roaring, and the log threatened to roll again, breaking even more of the roots anchoring it to the ground as it shook.

“Hold on!” Valery screamed. “We’re coming!”

Wind blasted the log again, making it roll down the cliff on Valery’s side to where the gap between the lands was wider. Shawn was thrown to his back in a crook in the log where moss had made a soft bed for him to land on. Shawn put out his arms on both sides and hung to the bark as it rocked from side to side beneath him, but the wood kept crumbling between his fingers from the years of rot. He could hear the log crackling as its wood splintered and fractured.

“It’s gonna’ break in half!” Shawn leaned forwards and started to crawl, using the moss to pull himself along as the log jerked and rolled in the wind under him. The roaring blast of air was screaming in his ears like a voice on the wind. A voice of poisoned whispers. It was not so different from the noise he’d heard that day Agatha disappeared into her storm.

Shawn reached a pair of branches that formed a sort of Y shape he could wedge himself between to wait out the wind. He clung to both branches and used his feet to pin himself down against the log as it shook and moaned.

“Shawn!” Valery called. “You have to keep going! Don’t stop!”

Shawn felt the log bucking and fighting beneath him like he was riding an angry bull. “The wind will blow me off if I move!”

“No it won’t!” Valery called back. “I can keep you safe! You have to trust me!”

“I can’t move!” Shawn called back, frustrated by such a stupid suggestion. Then a great kick of wind rammed down against the log and made it bounce. “No no no!” Shawn felt the log lift up at the skinny end, then slam back down and crack as soon as it touched the rocky cliffs. What was left of the fallen tree kept going, swinging down the side of the canyon with Shawn still stuck in its grasp.

“Shiiiiittt!” Shawn wailed as he swung down. He clung to the branches with all his strength, but when the log slammed against the inner edge of the cliff with all its immense weight, the collision shook him free. Shawn fell and began to tumble head over heels towards the bottom.

“Shawn!” Valery screamed out as she watched him fall.

“No!” Shawn tried to find the ocean with his eyes, but all he could see was a blur of waterfalls and rocks and vines tumbling by. His breath was gone. His heart was like a jackhammer. If he could time it right, Shawn thought maybe he could somehow use his powers to save himself from hitting the rocks, but he couldn't stop spinning. Shawn reached out, trying to grab at anything, but nothing came to his fingers. He heard the roar of the waterfall and churning ocean growing louder below as his stomach tightened itself into a marble. “No, no, please no...”

A rush of warm air blasted against Shawn’s face like he’d fallen into a volcano. His spinning came to an abrupt end and his descent slowed in the upwards wind until he hovered to a halt just feet above the rocks in the sea that looked sharp enough to shred flesh like tissue. Then he started falling backwards, feet-first rising up the canyon he’d dropped from. The speed of his rise increased rapidly until he felt like a rocket shooting up from a crack in the earth. Shawn looked up and saw the log detach from its roots and begin to fall, plummeting right towards him.

“Shit!” Shawn raised up his arms and blasted the log with a beam of golden light, splitting the trunk in two. A cloud of wooden shrapnel rained across Shawn as the two halves of the log went flipping past him. Shawn felt the hot wind roaring in his ears as he came whipping up over the edge of the cliff on Valery’s side. The wind stopped, and gravity took hold once again, bringing Shawn back down against the grass flat on his back with a loud thump.

“Shawn!” Valery shouted. She was standing beside him with her hands raised to face the wind. She let her hands fall, then stumbled back with a gasp of pain. A rumble of hot air shook the wind, driving it back up the river into the branches of the trees, dispersing its breath out amongst the forest above with a great clap of energy. Seconds later, the gale descending the river returned, and it continued to howl and shake the branches of the trees along the river banks like nothing had ever changed.

“What the hell just happened?” Shawn moaned, rolling and rubbing his back as he tried to catch his breath.

“You fell,” Valery said back as she dropped to her knees, voice thin and terrified. “But I caught you.” She crawled to Shawn’s side, holding his arm in both hands. She was shaking. “I never should have brought you out here. I’m an idiot. It’s too dangerous for you...”

“You can control the wind,” Shawn said, trying to cough air back into his lungs. Just like Agatha, he thought.

Valery breathed heavily. “Yes, but not usually like that… I’m sorry.”

“You saved my life,” Shawn said, lungs heavy from the words. “Thank you, Vee.” His heart was still pounding, and his hands were shaking as much as Vee’s. He thought for a moment he was looking into the eyes of an angel.

“Yeah, don’t mention it,” Valery replied, stunned.

“I would have drowned. Or been cut to pieces by those rocks.” Shawn sat up and looked at a cut on his arm he’d gotten during the fall. It was bloody, but nothing serious. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“I had to try something,” she said, her eyes glimmering with tears. “Otherwise we would have come all this way for nothing.” Then her eyes fell away.

“Well,” Shawn said, groaning as he tried to sit up. “Whyever you did it, I owe you a big one for that.”

“You don’t owe me anything.” Valery raised her eyes to Shawn, fear sparkling on her tears.

Molly came over and grabbed Vee under the elbow, helping her stand. “Are you okay, Vee?”

“Yeah…just a little shaken. Nothing I haven’t been through before.”

Dylan put out a hand and helped Shawn stand up, Shawn groaning as he rose. “Glad you didn’t die,” Dylan said. “Good job.”

“Thanks,” Shawn replied with a sigh. He looked back to where the log had been laying across the cliffs and saw an empty ravine with a mess of tangled roots hanging out of the ground on one side. He looked down the edge of the cliffs and saw the two halves of the log bouncing in the sea below, breaking against the rocks into even more pieces. “I guess we’re not going back this way...”

“Good,” Molly said. “That means we won’t have to go through the crater.”

“It was our only way back,” Valery said under a breath, her voice full of darkness. “The map only shows one route.”

“What does that mean?” Shawn asked.

“It means we’ll be setting off blind after the temple,” Valery said. “We’ll have to take the long way around the Crater to get home.” Dylan raised up the torch behind Valery and set her outline ablaze. “We’ll have to go into the Renjin nests,” she said.

In his mind, Shawn saw Goroth unleash a river of flames across the gathered armies below wreckage of the Beacons, turning soldiers to ash like dandelions breaking in the breeze. “I thought all the Renjin died in The Great Drought?” he stammered.

“The big ones, sure,” Dylan said. “But not all of them were big.”

“We can’t go there. It’s too dangerous,” Shawn replied. “The last time I fought one of those things it nearly burned down half the island! If that’s the reason you brought me, then you’ve made a big mistake. I can’t kill a Renjin without Mikhail’s Crystal.” He didn’t have a magic rock to save the world this time.

Valery looked at Dylan, then to Shawn. “Shawn, our bridge was blown down by the wind. How could I have known that was going to happen? We have to trust each other now. I just saved your life. I brought you here so you could help me open the temple. Nothing else.”

“This whole thing just keeps getting better every minute.”

“I don’t want to go into that part of the forest as much as you don’t,” Valery said, frustration bending her tone. “But can you see another way?”

Shawn looked back at the empty ravine behind him, then up the roaring river, wishing against reality that the log would somehow reappear. The river was churning and bursting up its edges so fiercely that not even the riverbanks could keep themselves from being washed away. The red bark of the forest glowed crimson in the growing moonlight, like an omen of blood.

“Fuck,” Shawn said, rubbing his forehead and letting out a breath. He could still hear the screams of soldiers and horses as they burned and turned to ash around him. “Okay. Fine.”

“First we have to find the temple. That should give you time to prepare yourself for what’s ahead.”

“Yeah, sure,” Shawn said back.

“We’ll be okay,” Valery promised, grabbing Shawn’s arm. “We made it this far, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, barely,” he said with a heavy voice. “But luck doesn’t last forever.”

Valery smiled. “It wasn’t luck that saved you from your fall.”

Shawn turned his head away, annoyed by her attitude.

“When we get back to Denengear, you’ll understand why this journey was worth it. We’ll be gods,” she whispered, “like Mikhail and Jango were.” Valery smiled and squeezed Shawn’s hands. “Now follow me.”