The Thing stretched out its hand toward one of the nearest Redcloaks—a woman named Shadow. Thin black tentacles shot out of its fingertips and wrapped around the woman’s neck. Shadow let out a cry as she was lifted clear off the ground. Abeke watched in horror as her skin went from brown to gray to white. Even her dark hair lost its color. It was as though the Thing were sucking the very life from her. With a final twitch, the woman’s body went limp.
The Thing jerked its hand and flung Shadow’s lifeless body into the gaping chasm behind it.
“Aaahhhh,” the Thing sighed as its tentacles withdrew back into its hand. It licked its teeth, which were stained black.
“Zerif, can you hear me?” Abeke shouted, hoping desperately that he could. “You have to resist the Wyrm’s power—you have to fight back before it consumes you!”
“Conssssummmme … ” the Thing said. “Yesssssss.” It turned its eyes toward something just behind Abeke. It flicked out a tongue, as if tasting the air. A hungry smile spread across its black lips. “Aaaahhhhh … ”
Abeke craned her neck to see that the Thing was looking straight at Rollan. The boy stared right back at it, his eyes burning with hate. “Just try it, you ugly sack of—”
Before he could even finish speaking, the Thing had lashed out at Rollan with its tentacles—lifting him clear off the ground.
“No!” Abeke screamed, pulling against Raisha’s grip. The girl held her fast.
Rollan screamed, his body contorting in pain. With a desperate roar, he ripped his left arm free of its oozing binds and touched the tattoo on his chest. In a flash, Essix was above him, beating her wings.
“Essix, fly away!” Rollan screamed. “Don’t let it take you!”
The gyrfalcon didn’t listen. She screeched, swooping straight at Rollan’s attacker with her talons spread.
The Thing that had been Zerif was ready. It raised its other hand and quickly caught Essix in its tendrils—holding them both aloft over the gaping pit.
Abeke watched, trembling, as Rollan and his Great Beast screamed in pain—their eyes growing dimmer as the Thing sucked the very life from them. In another minute, they would both be dead. She had to do something!
She scanned the cavern and saw Niri. The girl had been dragged through the tunnels by one of the Greencloaks. Niri had told her that they had to find some sort of bell—but there was no bell—and even if they could find it, it was already too late.
Rollan screamed again. Abeke clenched her eyes shut, feeling the full weight of her failure. She had fought for so long, and for what? Everything she touched turned to destruction. Soon even these ruins would crumble around her.
She opened her eyes and saw that the ground beneath her feet was wet. Thin streams of water cascaded down from the ice into the middle of the ruins. She blinked, peering up the length of the tower.
A small circle of red sky was still visible overhead. The top of the tower glinted against the setting sun as the final bits of ice melted away, revealing an open platform just beneath the stone cornice. Hanging from the ancient rafters was something dark and heavy and made of iron—
A bell.
Abeke stared up at the bell, catching her breath. It had been right in front of them the whole time. Only now it was too late. Even if ringing the bell could somehow help, she was a hundred feet beneath it with only seconds to spare.
“Sssooo sssweet,” the Thing snarled, raising its prey higher over its head. Rollan screamed out again, but his voice sounded fainter, like the last drops of life were being sucked from him. His eyes met Abeke’s. He moved his lips, but no words came out. She knew that she was seeing her friend for the last time. This was the end.
Abeke didn’t have time to consider the odds. She didn’t have time to consider her pain. She had to act. With a desperate cry, she swung her head backward, slamming her skull into Raisha’s jaw. Her captor screamed and staggered backward, as much out of surprise as pain. Abeke spun around and snatched the bow and quiver from Raisha’s shoulder.
Raisha shrieked, trying to grab her lost prisoner. Abeke dove clear of her grasp and rolled across the ground. She sprang to her feet with her bow raised—an arrow pointed directly at the Thing. “Let them go!” she said, her obsidian arrowhead glinting in the magma’s warm light. She could feel the others in the chamber watching her, confused, terrified.
The Thing that had been Zerif seemed to pause a moment, keeping Rollan and Essix both hanging in the air, somewhere between life and death. “It would threaten meeee?” It stretched its mouth into a rictus grin.
“The arrow’s not for you,” Abeke said. And quick as a flash, she raised her bow over her head and let fly.
ABEKE’S ARROW ARCED THROUGH THE AIR FOR WHAT felt like an eternity. Finally it sliced up through the high bannister railing and struck the edge of the bell with a light ting!
The sound was barely a whisper, but it echoed through the whole cavern. Everyone around Abeke seemed to be holding their collective breath, waiting to see what would happen next. Even the Thing dropped its prey and was watching the bell.
And when Abeke saw its face, she could tell that it was nervous. “It knowssss this … ” it hissed. “Turningggg … ”
The ringing of the bell finally gave way to another sound—a deep rumbling that shook the entire mountain. The tower in the middle of the ruins trembled and then shifted, slowly rotating on its axis. Rubble and ice fell from the walls of the volcano, crashing to the cavern floor around Abeke. There was a ripping sound as part of the bottom wall broke loose—letting a flood of cold water gush in from the ocean outside.
The biggest change, however, was in the hole. The panels of the cavern floor retreated into the walls of the mountain, revealing a huge chasm that went straight down into the heart of Erdas. Redcloaks and Greencloaks alike scrambled to find stable ground around the perimeter. The Thing had also moved, stranding itself on the front steps of the bell tower, which was now surrounded by yawning darkness on all sides.
The bell tower continued rotating. Its foundation seemed to go down as far as the chasm. Stone buttresses secured the lower tower to the inside walls of the tunnel, and as these moved, giant cracks appeared in the hole. Bubbling magma from deep within the earth spewed out, filling the hole to the very brim. The magma churned and frothed—creating a hissing whirlpool around the spinning tower.
As the tower turned, Abeke felt a sort of queasy shift in the air, like her stomach was folding inside out. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she feared her teeth were going to crack. She wasn’t the only one experiencing strange symptoms. Yumaris and the Redcloaks were all clutching their heads in agony, as if they were being ripped apart from the inside. Zerif’s Greencloaks had dropped to the ground and were snarling and shrieking and snorting in furious confusion. Some tried to dig into the rock with their hands. Others were climbing the walls. Their spirit animals staggered around, bumping into one another as though confused about where they were.
The only ones unaffected by the tower seemed to be Abeke and the other kids who had lost their spirit animals. They all remained standing, watching the chaos around them.
“What’s happening to my brother?” Dawson Trunswick said, backing away from Worthy. Devin was writhing on the cavern floor, clutching his head. “What did you do?”
Abeke swallowed, shaking her head. “I have no idea.”
There are some moments that seem to be almost infinite.
When Rollan saw Abeke’s arrow soar up toward the sky and strike the bell, he felt as though it was the death knell of his own existence. The Wyrm creature had sucked him dry, and all that was left for him to do was let go and slip into death. But then something strange happened. That bell’s chime continued to ring and ring and ring. It rang so loud that the entire world around him began to shake and blur. He felt a prickling nausea sweep through his entire body and the next thing he knew, he was floating high in the air, staring down at his own body, which lay at the foot of the sto
ne tower.
This is what people must mean by an out-of-body experience, he thought. Rollan flapped his wings, watching as his thin body lurched forward, blinking in confusion, darting its head all around. The sight was so strange that it took Rollan a second to realize that he was flapping his wings.
Rollan opened his mouth to let out a cry, but all that came was a raspy squawk! The boy on the ground darted his head up and stared at Rollan—looking truly bewildered.
And that’s when the true realization came over him. He wasn’t Rollan from Concorba. He was a bird. And not just any bird … He was Essix … or rather, his mind was inside Essix’s body.
Rollan let out another bewildered squawk and rose up higher into the air.
All he could think to do was fly higher and higher until he burst from the mouth of the volcano. He stretched out his wings and let the cold air beat against his face.
For the first time in his life, he felt truly free.
Deep underground, on the other side of Erdas, Meilin felt a rumbling beneath her as the snare in the middle of the fallen city began to turn once more. She stumbled to one side and in the space of a shuddering heartbeat, she found herself staring out from a different pair of eyes—dark, animal eyes pressed into the muzzle of a soft, round face. She stared at her paws, black fur stained red with blood from the battle against the Wyrm.
She blinked, looking out at the host of wounded Sadrean soldiers in the Fallen City. Every face she saw filled her with an aching pang. She felt an overwhelming desire to care for every person suffering—to make each of them whole again.
She padded onto the battlefield and began to help.
For Conor, it was like waking from a terrible dream. Dreams were something Conor was good at—and more than once he had experienced dreams that showed him his own future. But all of those were nothing compared to this. He had been trapped inside his own body for so long, unable to fight the power of the parasite.
But then he opened his eyes and knew—knew instantly—that something had shifted in Erdas. The fever was gone. The wriggling parasite no longer burrowing into his flesh. The Wyrm’s voice no longer hissing in his mind.
The shores of the Sulfur Sea had drawn back, as if pulled away from the city by some invisible force. Conor drew himself up and limped over to a pool of dark water left in the sand. He bowed his head, lapping at the pool with his pink tongue. Then he stood upright and stared into his reflection. Blue eyes as deep as the sky. It was the face of Briggan.
Abeke stared at the cavern, which was now echoing with the sounds of hundreds of confused Greencloaks and their even more confused spirit animals. But as she watched them, she began to see how they were behaving—the humans acting like beasts, and the beasts like humans.
Everyone except Abeke and the other children who had lost their spirit animals.
“The snare,” she said. “It’s somehow reversed the connection between humans and their animal companions.”
The words sounded ludicrous coming out of her mouth, but her eyes told a different story. She stared up at the tower, which was still turning, though more slowly now. The swirling lava bubbled and hissed around it, creating a fiery whirlpool. “Look at the tides!” called the girl Cordalles, pointing at a gaping hole in the rock.
Abeke looked outside and saw that the ocean was churning, swelling up into huge waves that swirled in the same direction as the lava. Even the spilled water from the icy tower was cutting an arc across the ground, moving on its own.
Abeke looked back toward the tower—at the Thing that was Zerif. The figure remained standing but was staring around at the cavern with a confused expression, inching back from the swirling lava at his feet. And when Abeke saw his eyes, she caught a slight flash of hazel. The same eyes she had first seen in her village in Nilo.
“Zerif!” she shouted. Abeke still had her bow and quiver. She wanted to shoot every arrow she had at the man—but one look at his face and she knew that he was just as much a victim of the Wyrm as anyone. She didn’t need revenge. She needed to stop the Wyrm. “Zerif!” she called more loudly.
The man fixed his bloodshot gaze on her. “What … what have you done to me?” he said, his voice shaking. “What’s happening?”
“There’s no time to explain,” Abeke said, racing to the edge of the lava pool. There was a groaning crunch as a huge crack ran up the length of the tower, which had begun to slow its rotation. The strain of Erdas was too much for the snare. “The bell has put you in control of the Wyrm,” she said. “You have one chance to stop it.”
“Stop it … ?” he said blankly. Zerif glanced down at his gray hands, which were still pulsing with the black veins of the Wyrm.
Cracks spread up the volcano walls, raining down rubble. Abeke shielded her face as huge chunks of stone fell around her.
“The tower won’t last much longer!” she screamed. “Zerif, please!” The idea that she was pleading with Zerif of all people to stop the Wyrm was beyond comprehension. But she had no choice.
What was a hero but someone who had chosen one time to do the right thing? Shane had saved Abeke from Uraza. Kovo had built the snare.
Could Zerif kill the Wyrm?
“I can’t force you to do anything,” she said. “Either you kill the Wyrm now, or you will spend the rest of your life enslaved to it.”
The stone tower cracked in half, falling into the molten pool, which swallowed it whole. The whirling lava stopped churning and started to drain back into the earth. Abeke could feel a static prickle in the air as Erdas pushed back against the turning. The swirls of water cutting across the stone floor exploded into a scatter of droplets.
“There’s no time!” Abeke screamed.
All around her, the Greencloaks and spirit animals were calming down—their minds returning to their rightful bodies. The Redcloaks had begun to stir. Zerif staggered to one side, doubling over in pain. When he looked up at her again, one of his eyes had turned to black. “Sssstopp meeeee?” he hissed in the voice of the Wyrm.
“Fight back, Zerif!” Abeke cried.
Zerif planted a hand against the rumbling tower, the other pressed to his temple. “Get out of my head!” he roared. His one human eye was clenched shut, streaming tears. She could see him fighting the Wyrm for control.
“Do it!” she begged.
Zerif screamed like a man being torn in two. With a desperate cry, he pushed himself away from the tower and staggered toward the lava, leaping from the edge of the rock—
The moment his feet left the ground, his body contorted and spun around. The Wyrm took control of his body once more. Black tendrils shot outward, flailing in the air as it plummeted down into the chasm and the churning lava.
Abeke scrambled to the edge and watched as the Thing that was Zerif disappeared beneath the fiery surface of the magma.
She sat back, breathing hard. Abeke stared at the lava, still terrified that the creature might somehow pull itself free. That it had somehow survived.
But then she heard the voices behind her. Not just one, not just a dozen, but hundreds of voices. Men and women, muttering to one another in bewildered tones. Abeke turned around to see Greencloaks, many of them kneeling on the floor of the cavern, some in tears. Those who could walk had rushed to the sides of the Redcloaks to help them. The Greencloaks’ faces were battered and bleeding from the fight, but their eyes—their eyes showed the clear glint of humanity.
The Wyrm was truly gone.
ABEKE TIGHTENED HER HAND AROUND THE GRIP OF her bow. It was a crude weapon—she had carved it from the soft limb of a baobab tree. Usually, baobab would be terrible for bows, with not enough tension in the string. But this baobab, like every tree in Erdas, was changed now, its roots infused with the power of the revived Evertree. She could feel life coursing through the pores of the bow’s grain, connecting with her hand, her spirit.
Abeke ducked down, hearing a rustling in the bushes below. She was in the hot jungles of Stetriol. Sweat beaded her brow.
The jungle floor was thick with vines and brush, and so she had been forced to make her way through the canopy of trees, carefully climbing from limb to limb. She had been living like this for weeks, barely eating or sleeping.
She was a hunter. And she would have her prey.
Below her, the jungle wildlife ticked and croaked—oblivious to her presence. It had been months since the destruction of the Wyrm at the hands of Kovo’s ancient snare. For one brief moment, all of Erdas had been transformed. Spirit bonds across the world were reversed. Seas had drawn back from the shores. Storms had raged in the sky. The Wyrm, housed inside Zerif’s body, had been plunged into the burning whirlpool in the center of Erdas. And then, just like that, everything had returned to normal.
But of course, everything wasn’t normal. The Wyrm had left one final gift to the world it tried to destroy. The power that fueled the Wyrm was washed into the tides. Every spring began to bubble with the same power that fueled the bond between humans and beasts. Every blade of grass and flower and tree became a smaller version of the Evertree.
The world was connected in new ways. Abeke didn’t know what this meant for Erdas. She hoped it was good.
But amid that new life, there was still pain.
Abeke recalled the moments after the death of the Wyrm. A stillness had settled over the molten ruins in the Frozen Sea as the humans and beasts who had been possessed by the Wyrm’s parasites recovered—blinking as if waking from a slumberless dream.
Abeke could still hear the haunting wails of grief that rang out inside the volcano as the Greencloaks regained their minds and recalled the horrific things they had done while under Zerif’s control.
They were free of Zerif perhaps, but they would forever be captive to their own guilt.
Mulop, again restored to Niri, had been able to speak with Kovo underground, and arranged a reunion. Abeke and Rollan managed to get passage to Eura, where they met Conor and Meilin, who had emerged safely from the tunnels of Sadre. Takoda was with them, too, his hand intertwined with a pale girl named Xanthe’s.