Her long nails cradled over the red gem. They smeared its glossy sheen with fetid mud, encasing our bloody reflections in rot. She craned her neck around, its vertebrae twisted and turned, clacking together like an ancient melody.

  The excuse for a mouth slid open, revealing hundreds of pin-sized teeth. A tainted tongue weaved through the air. It crept closely to my skin—

  “SALLIX!” yelled Basil. His gashed voice pierced the choking miasma she was enveloping us in.

  “YEAH,” I screamed back. My branch wrestled her nails away from the pendant. In a swift fatal push, I rammed the pendant against myself. Thousands of crimson tears rained around us.

  Spindly fibres sprung across each broken shard as they landed on the ground. The woman remained fixated on me. Her tongue peered into each groove along my side. A dome of red energy was emerging from the ground around us.

  Another large shove from my branch sent her careening to the side. There were no bones I pushed against. It was a bundle of clay masquerading as a person. She hopped back away from the dome and continued facing us.

  “SALLIX!” Basil yelled again. His voice was rushed and charred.

  “I got the dome down!” I yelled back, turning to him. Two more of those creatures had Lesi in their grasp. Their spindly arms had Lesi wrapped in an endless embrace. Half of her body was outside of the dome, slowly being dragged into the depths.

  “I can’t get a good grip! Her fur is breaking underneath!” Basil cried. His knuckles with burning white as his hands tried desperately to pull Lesi back. The dome was rising along, it passed Lesi’s legs and would soon reach her belly.

  More thread Haunt!” I shouted.

  Haunt spun another round of silk around our group. The three of us grasped the lifeline and tugged. Lesi groaned and bit at the two invalids. Their legs sank into the ground and anchored the bear down.

  A fireball raged from my branch and burned away at their bodies. Not a lick of damage soaked through their taut skin. Another one directly at their heads held the same result. The “hair” that adorned their heads was nothing more than a parlour trick. The assembly of dead vines burnt away to reveal the same ghastly skin.

  The rising dome hit Lesi’s belly and stopped. Its flared mana sparked and curled in wait. No progress was made. Our legs sank deeper into the welcoming dirt as we desperately pulled. In the corner of my eye, the figure I pushed back was strutting forward. Her garish feet with toes as long as her fingers slithered forth.

  “Basil…” I whispered.

  “Distract the other one, we’re not losing her!” he yelled.

  “Haunt! Take care of that one!” I said.

  Haunt stopped weaving lines around us and shot towards the other creature. He face-hugged her and jammed his fangs into her skull. He pulled them out, leaving two desiccated holes. The skin sutured itself back together.

  “Distract,” Haunt muttered coldly. His jet-black form smeared webbing across her as she tried grasping at him. Each nail would snip a few hairs off his legs.

  The two holding Lesi remained steadfast. Every pull we attempted against them was a gulf of indifference and apathy. It was like Lesi was already a part of the forest.

  “Can you hold the line down?” I yelled.

  “Do whatever it takes!”

  Basil wrapped the line around his fist and pulled as I let go. Blood seeped through his hand as the silk cut through. His feet were being dragged away with Lesi.

  I twisted my roots into a pike and rammed it through one of the creatures. The entire bundle of roots sunk through layers of mud and debris before emerging out the other side. The cavity collapsed around them and wrapped around my tendrils.

  Bundles of clay jutted from her body and squirmed a top of roots worming their way up. Getting wrapped in their grasp is not an option.

  “What’s another day of growth?” I muttered. The surrounding roots cut off my section before the clay pieces could worm their way up to me. My trapped roots were consumed by the impaled woman and disappeared inside her chest cavity.

  I swung back an entire branch and whiplashed it along her face. Her head bent back at a ninety-degree angle and snapped back into place. Their nails continued sinking into Lesi’s fur.

  “Ineffective,” screeched Haunt. The one he was distracting was stumbling towards the dome. Countless webs trapping it to the ground was welcomed into the cold embrace of the earth.

  “Basil!” I yelled, “We have to let Lesi go before—”

  “Shut up!” He yelled back. He wound more silk around his hand and continued to desperately pull. “Just keep pulling with me and we’ll get through this!” he sputtered. His lips trembled along each syllable.

  “…Okay, one last try or else we’ll have to deal with one of these things inside here!” I replied. We strained ourselves against the earth. Feet and roots dug in.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Just give it a good pull! Three, two, one!” Basil roared. Bulged veins riddled his arms and screamed along with us. But as we pulled, pieces of Haunt’s webbing were blown apart.

  “String, not strong enough—” Haunt tried to speak in our death rattle.

  *SNAP*

  The line holding us down let out a deathly sigh. We were flung back toward the center of the dome, a broken strand in tow. As the red dome crackled and sealed us shut, the two figures holding Lesi pulled her away from view and into the darkness. The last of her howls were the final evidence of the brown Furgal Bear.

  “Goddamnit!” I yelled.

  The red dome shimmered with arcane sparks around us. The remaining woman stood outside, gazing listlessly at us. Her spidery fingers traced the outline. Each nail tried to figure out a crack or opening to exploit.

  “Basil,” I called, turning back to look. His figure was collapsed to the ground like a building through a sinkhole. He stared at the void that Lesi was pulled through, his fingers gently tracing the bloody clumps of fur stuck to his palm.

  “It can’t be,” he murmured, “she was just there with us. I saw her staring back at me. Her eyes were right there. I was right there…”

  “Basil when your parents get here—”

  “How can someone be there, and then not be there? How?” he said. Each word hissed through his teeth and annihilated the air. He placed his hand over one of the paw prints Lesi left behind. Every finger overlayed with Lesi’s claws.

  Haunt placed a leg over his hand. “Webbing too weak, inefficient. Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he repeated like a broken record.

  Basil turned to Haunt and grabbed him, lifting him into the air. “Why didn’t you make our lifelines stronger? Why weren’t you there pulling with us? Why did you let her get pulled away?” he yelled. His words grated my skin. Haunt continued mumbling.

  “Basil, we can find her—”

  “Why did we go in?” he cried. His hands razed to his sides. Haunt fell to the ground, he didn’t bother landing upright. As he lay on the ground, his eight eyes encompassed the entirety of the crying mountain in front of us.

  We must find her, somehow. The remaining roots were dug into the ground. There may not be anything living above, but the earth is always home to life, right?

  Basil pressed the remnants of Lesi’s fur against his cheek. “I was with her, all of her life. I was with her when she was an orphaned cub. I was with her when she first tried out fried eels. She was with me…for so, so much,” he said. If you squinted your eyes, it was like a paw was pressed against his cheek.

  “I’m sorry Basil,” I said. The roots continued exploring underground. Shards of bones littered the landscape. A network of graves ran through this forest. Many other tree roots, long dead, made exploring the earth a concrete maze.

  “I’m sorry to her,” he said, leaving a trembling smile. “You ever have a friend that close to you leave you in a flash?”

  “No,” I said, staring at the monster outside. Her chicken scratch of a mouth continued to taunt me. No smiles of glee or grins of triumph. Just acknowledgement of the fate that was outside our circle. “But I know what loss feels like.”

  Basil started collecting the surrounding pieces of fur that fell during the struggle. Haunt leapt from the ground and began collecting bundles with him.

  “It’s funny,” he spoke again, the air cuddling around his voice in bated breath, “Furgal Bears like Lesi can live maybe up to 50 years. Us? At least to 2000. But for as long as I live and breathe here, she will be living forward with me in my mind. She is always alive.”

  “How old wa—is she right now?” I asked, stumbling through the correct tense that separated the living from the dead.

  “Hit 31 the other day!” he laughed, looking at the growing bundle of her legacy. “It’s amazing what you can do in a single year. Most elves like to meander for centuries…”

  Haunt finished bundling up the last of the fur around us. He stumbled over to Basil, each step was a mark of guilt. He gently placed them over his hands.

  Basil turned towards Haunt. Haunt’s eyes winced as he placed a hand over his head. Basil rubbed the top of his head over, and over…and over.

  “I’m sorry Haunt…it wasn’t your fault,” Basil whispered the words of absolution.

  “Bear, good bear,” he chittered. The giant cradled the ball of shadows, rocking himself back and forth.

  “Found it,” I said. The snaking tendrils found their way to what I needed.

  “ao;efba?” chattered thousands of voices. Information about places that were disturbed wasn’t enough.

  “Tell me what you see,” I whispered. Mana surged through my veins and travelled to the network of fungus living across the forest floor.

  In the depths of my heart revealed a sprawling network of ancient trees infused with growing fungal networks blazing across the horizon. As mana continued to be drained, hundreds of acres bloomed in the dark. I could barely keep up with the expansion, a few more breaths would be the end of my link.

  A dull roar broke the silence. Across the tiny, microscopic fibres of mycelia reverberated muted growls and pants. Claws scraped against the dirt, exposing newly grown fungal highways. The sound was being dragged, further into the forest.

  “She’s alive, fighting,” I grunted. Each word threatened to sever the concentration built up.

  “Where?” Basil shouted, leaping to his feet. He shoved Lesi’s fur into his pocket and readied his fists.

  Lesi’s whimpers were cascading across thousands of small fibres. With the last breaths of mana, I arced a connection from our location towards the source of her cries.

  “Ahead, left, they…” My words clawed through the open air. I could feel Lesi’s paws, her desperate scrapes across the earth screamed in my mind. Then nothing.

  “Where?” Basil repeated.

  My roots broke from the ground. “They’re taking her in, strafing to the left. She’s sinking into the ground,” I continued.

  “We’re going then,” Basil replied. His figure turned towards the outskirts of the dome. The creature continued to bask in our newfound hope.

  I grasped his shoulder, “I’ll go with you, but what do we do when we get there? We can’t take her from their grasp.”

  “No, but we can distract them. Give Mom and Dad time to arrive, they’ll know what to do,” he said. He was raising his hands together in a prayer.

  “And they’ll find us if we leave the dome?”

  “What do you think I just did?” he replied. Bundles of mana began to rain down from his palms as his hands came apart.

  “That’s all I need,” I said, pulling back from his shoulder. The mountain was moving again. Haunt landed on his head.

  “More webbing, better protection. No third time for fail,” he said.

  Basil at the top of the dome, the red energy continued to crackle with the broken shards of ruby.

  “Release,” he yelled.