Remembering the knife still nestled in its sheath, she slipped it out with nimble fingers and slashed at the fleshy tendril.
“Let me go, you horrible fucking thing!” she cried out, tears spilling from her eyes as she slashed again and again, digging deep into its flesh. The tentacle tightened as the other tentacles relinquished the tree. For one horrible moment, she was certain it was going to snatch her up now that she was within its reach. Instead, the creature bellowed, its tentacles ripping away as it abandoned her, a trail of blood following after it as the hacked tentacle tore away from its body in its rapid retreat.
Wasting no time, she stumbled out of the swamp, her vision deteriorating with each step. Sheer determination was the only thing that kept her feet moving even as she began to get lightheaded. Panic raced through her as she realized that she couldn’t remember exactly where she was going.
Just a little farther, a small voice whispered as she stumbled through the mire.
Gradually, an outcropping of rocks came into view. Hoped flared within her as she felt the haze retreat from her mind. Eyeballing the deep crevice between them, she bet she could fit inside. She just needed to rest.
Just for a little while, she told herself.
The helmet was still blaring a warning, but she couldn’t find the energy to care as she pushed herself the last few feet before slumping against the rocks. Her eyes were getting harder to keep open, and she longed for her small room back in the dome. Yeah, that’s where I’m supposed to be going. She needed to get home. But somewhere in the back of her mind, Charlie knew she was never going to see it again. She would die out here in this fucked-up wilderness.
Sucking in her stomach, she pushed and pulled until she fell into the crevice. If she lived, she was going to kill—what was his name? She struggled for it for several minutes before it materialized in her thoughts like a memory hidden away in a vault.
That’s right. Rhyst.
She was going to kill Rhyst for leaving her to be eaten. Her knife fell from her fingers as her eyes became too heavy to keep open, and the black depths behind her lids pulled her into unconsciousness.
In the end, she couldn’t argue that releasing him had been worth it. She had done the right thing. That would be something to tell her kin when she saw them in the next world.
Chapter 19
Rhyst heaved the dan’shival into the cave before following up after it. The dan’shival was good meat. He was certain that he would be able to tempt Cha’lii into eating. The animal was prized among his people not only for the sweet flavor of its flesh, but for the seven pure black bony frills descending from its forehead, incrementally increasing in size as the rows flowed back to the base of its skull. Some of the best artisans would have given him many zelbs for the frills if he hadn’t been so careless as to drop the dan’shival hard enough to crack the largest of the bony plates.
It was of little consequence to him. He had hunted it to feed Cha’lii.
He frowned. Where was Cha’lii? His eyes narrowed as he glared at the place where the female should have been waiting for his return. He glanced around, hoping that he might spy her hiding among the rocks deeper in the cave in retaliation for leaving her behind, but he could not fool himself.
The animal’s damp gray fur was overpowering, but not so much that he could not notice her scent trail. She had left the cave some time ago. With a growl, he stepped over his prey to drop out of the cave, his paws landing silently on the rock below.
His nostrils flared as he tracked Cha’lii’s trail. Within seconds, he noticed another scent mixing with hers that he had not detected when he arrived. He froze as he drew in the scent of a mountain ga’torna. Its trail followed hers, weaving among the rocks, heading down at a far steeper and more hazardous incline than he had gone when he had departed.
That way Cha’lii fled led to the vash’ra, the places where water accumulated in the mountains and trees grew thick. It was dangerous to go near the bottom of the valley where some of the deadliest of predators lurked searching for easy prey. The lor’vash was a monstrosity that consumed