Basil’s roar of conviction echoed against the wall of the dome. The remains of Daena’s pendant crumbled to ash. Their red sparkles would be the last evidence of our group’s existence in the forest.

  The monster behind the dome began to shamble towards us again. Her grey skin betrayed the ball of clay hidden beneath. We'd be dragged away like Lesi if we were caught within her bile.

  “Lead the way Sallix,” shouted Basil. The residual mana signatures and Lesi’s howls still reside in my mind. These creatures weren’t feeding on her directly, what other purposes would they have?

  **********

  The labyrinthian forest grew as if to trap us beneath its sunless roof. The dangling modules of light would reveal long stretches of dirt trapped beneath layers of dust. Overgrown roots clawed through the ground and tried to stop our path.

  The horde of creatures behind us was a constant reminder of how beautiful Nyla’s plains were. Being consumed here would be an eternity in the afterlife. As we ran, groups of those caricatures slinked out of nearby trunks. They never ran.

  In our mad dash, we easily outpaced them. But, each group we outran was another group we’d rush into. They’d stumbled into one another trying to reach us with their tainted nails. More than once, we’d watch as their outlines would meld into each other.

  Their arms would jut in awkward directions as the bodies would fuse. Visages of ballerina dancers intertwined in a loveless dance painted our peripheral vision. Pairs joined together to form eight-legged monstrosities. These new amalgamations hopped after us.

  “They must be jealous of Haunt,” Basil chuckled. The crude form of imitation was as horrific as it was comical.

  “They don’t look smart enough for that,” I said. They were automatons. In our struggle for Lesi, they continued to pull her without a shred of self-preservation. A magic spell? “How long until your parents get here?” I turned towards Basil.

  He dodged a hand that tried to grasp his cheek. A trail of blood bled in its wake. “Knowing them? At most ten minutes. They’ll put everything down to come over!” he laughed as he threw a nearby rock at one of the creatures. Her head was blown clean off. The headless body continued walking forward without pause.

  “Why even try to look like a person when you’re nothing but a childhood nightmare? Be original,” I said. A few more leaves were torn away. The clay from their hands were binding claws. Better to leave them behind than risk being absorbed.

  “You good?” Basil shouted, turning his head back at me. Haunt could web away at a moment’s notice, Basil could lunge or punch through obstacles, but me? The hundreds of roots were tangling along. My bulky figure could barely keep up, straggling behind the group.

  “Don’t worry about me!” I yelled back, I looked at the passing branches hanging above, threatening to pluck us into the sky. Would anything live in those desiccated arches? “Haunt! Any news yet!”

  Haunt travelled ahead of us, his night vision pierced the starless night in front of the path. “Tracks,” he shouted. A plume of webbing directed us to the left.

  Paw prints riddled the ground around us. They seeped into the mud and churned up the ground below. The group of shambling clay mounds closed in behind us. “Where, where did they go?” Basil begged, his finger searching the ground, pleading for its secrets. I searched with him, talking to the fungus below would be too long.

  “Graaaa,” echoed a muffled voice.

  “There,” Haunt announced. He pointed a leg towards a row of trees. I threw a light node in that direction.

  The two creatures had Lesi in their grasp pulling her towards a wall of trees. Before she could cry again, her growling jaws were drowned in a puddle of mud.

  We ran towards them. Basil’s feet tripped over loose stones as he clenched his hand around Lesi’s figure. We were less than ten meters away from them, it was just a little more.

  But the forest spited us.

  The rows of trees in front bent and broke. A doorway of bark welcomed the captors inside. They stepped through, Lesi in tow.

  “NO!” yelled Basil, his voice screaming across the air with fervent denial of what we were witnessing. The doorway replied with a firm shut as Basil careened into them. His fists pounded against the wooden prison. “Just give me some time, I’ll break it down in no time,” he said.

  “Done,” we replied.

  Masses of crumpled-together arms and legs moved closer. Heads jutting out of those shambling mounds peered at us with their rows of teeth. A moving landscape of grey was threatening to engulf us.

  Hundreds of roots wrapped around every peddle, clump of dirt, or dried bundle of bones. “I’ll bury you first you bastards,” I said.

  A machine gun of projectiles raged against the walking mass. If taking off their head did nothing to stop them, then we take out their mobility altogether. Torrents of debris flew through rows of legs. Like a house of cards, tens of the demons fell to the ground.

  One of the monsters, bereft of an arm and both legs, continued struggling towards us. Their hand pushed into the dirt and dragged themselves forward. They lifted their soulless face at me. The smokey surface threatened to choke me out of existence. A wicked tongue blinked at me. I threw another stone.

  Haunt swung through the crowd. Neither my rocks nor their writhing limbs could catch him. Spools of thread covered the air. Members would trip over the wire or get stuck between the fibres when they tried walking through.

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  “How’s the progress going?” I yelled in between throws.

  Basil’s fists slamming against wood replied. “We’re slowly getting there!” he cried. Piles of wood chips surrounded him. A small crater was growing at the base of the trees. I looked at his fists. The blood dripping from his knuckles had mixed with the wood dust, turning an already crimson hue into a night husk. “It’s getting harder and harder the deeper I go!”

  “That’s what he s—Okay! Keep it up!” I said, stifling a laugh. Haunt turned to look at me in between his lines of webbing. His fangs chattered something I couldn’t pick up. Why do you look so done with life?

  “Shift…up,” rumbled a voice behind me. It was like wood scraping across a grater. I turned to look, only the darkness of the forest canopy welcomed me.

  “Everyone else heard that right?” I yelled.

  “No idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Busy with monsters.”

  The mass of monsters trapped underneath Haunt’s web moved forward. Their bodies tied between knots fused through the lines and continued walking towards us. Legs that were obliterated by my throws were caked in additional layers of mud.

  One of them turned their head towards Haunt lunging through the air. They pointed their arm towards him. A vein bulged against the surface of their forearm. It snaked towards their palm, bulging to the size of a baseball bat.

  “Get out of the way Haunt!” I yelled.

  Haunt was mid-lunge and could only turn to look. The snaking bundle of fluids erupted from the creature’s hand. An arc of viscous silvery liquid shot towards Haunt. He curled up, trying to dodge the stream. It slammed into one of his legs.

  The sludge travelled up Haunt’s leg and began to invade another nearby appendage. “You need to cut—” I tried to yell, but Haunt already knew my intentions. His pincers grabbed a hold of both infected legs and tore them off. The two legs landed in the crowd and disappeared in the mass of clay.

  With the remaining momentum, Haunt swung into my leaves and stumbled down. “Movement, inefficient…help inefficient,” he mumbled. Transparent globules of fluid were seeping out of his two lost limbs. He was entirely unbalanced on one half.

  “Basil!” I yelled again. The horde was moving at an exponential rate without any webbing to slow them down. My roots tried to pry for more rocks, but we had exhausted the surrounding ground dry.

  “It’s. Just. Not. Breaking!” Basil shouted.

  I pried the butterfly totem from out of my hollow. It was the final safety net. I pushed it into Haunt’s fangs. “If they are within arms reach of us, you activate that thing, alright?” Haunt’s unflinching eyes blinked at me. His chittering front palps hugged the totem close.

  “Punch…up,” repeated the drying voice. No one was around us. Were we about to trust a random voice in the woods?

  “There’s no other option,” I muttered. I looked at Basil, the crater hadn’t changed in diameter. “Basil, throw your weight higher up!” I yelled.

  “Sure!” he yelled back, “I’ll take anything at this point!” He wound up his fist and pulled his entire body back.

  “HAAAAAAAAAAAA,” he screamed.

  *CRUNCH*

  His fist pierced through a layer of wood. “Gotcha,” he smiled. He pulled out his fist, revealing a grapefruit-sized opening in the wall.

  “Bask in your triumph later!” I shouted. Without any more stones to throw, the small bundles of dirt did little to stop the horde’s advance except to give them a new coat of paint. I stumbled back to Basil.

  Roots and hands worked together to pry away at the opening. Haunt crawled onto Basil’s arm and began chipping away. One fang holding the butterfly totem close whilst the other flung itself wildly against the wood.

  “They’re getting closer Basil! Put your back into it!” I shouted.

  “You know I have a hard time training back!” he replied. The hole expanded as wide as an umbrella through our digging.

  “Basil, you go first!” I shouted. The masses behind us had started reaching for their meals. Bundles of roots became their sacrificial meal.

  “But—”

  “If there’s something back there, you can clear the path for us, now go!” I yelled. Basil’s torso disappeared into the hole. “Your turn Haunt.”

  His legs pushed through the opening and disappeared. His eyes poked from the other side of the opening. “Friend?” he chittered.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming through!” I said, pulling myself through the opening. Despite trying to save the few branches I had left over, the opening cut away at any outstretched stragglers. As I submitted myself to this haircut, pieces of painstakingly grown parts of me flew away. When my trunk was halfway through, it stuck against the hole.

  “Oh no you don’t,” shouted Basil. He grasped me from either side and furiously pulled. The cold sensations of primordial earth spread along my roots, hanging from the other side. “Just a little more!” he gritted his teeth. Bark against bark scraping together filled the air. With a final tug, I popped out of the wall like a cork from a bottle.

  Wriggling piles of clay flew in with us. They tried desperately to adhere to different sections of my feet.

  “Do we?” Basil asked.

  “Yeah…” I sighed, “Just cut it off.” Sounds of hacking muffled my dramatic whimpers. By the end of the savagery, bundles of root fibres lay at our feet with mud mixed in between. Basil grabbed an uninfected section and chucked it through the hole.

  “No chase?” Haunt asked.

  “We’ll count it as a blessing,” I replied.

  “Lesi!” Basil shouted. We turned to look.

  A large clearing opened in front of us. Barricaded in by trees, the dead meadow was occupied by a large pool of stagnant liquid. By the edge of the pool, the two creatures were pushing Lesi into it.

  They already had one of Lesi’s paws dunked into the sludge. One of them turned to the source of the commotion. Basil’s figure was the only sight.

  He pushed through and bearhugged both figures before we could react. As they careened into the ground with him, the holding cell loosened around Lesi. She tore through and moved to Basil.

  “Stop her,” I said.

  Haunt bound her before she could reach Basil. She turned and indignantly roared at us. Basil was in the middle of quicksand. The two monsters dissolved into puddles of clay and were drowning him in their fleshly fa?ade.

  “You try that and you’ll both drown,” I muttered. The snaking clay choked Basil as his hands flailed in the air. “Grab on you dumbass!” I roared.

  They tried to find purchase amongst the roots, but the clay continued to pull him back. “Come on, come on!” I shouted. There were barely any branches or roots left to push the clay away. “Just a little more!” I cried desperately.

  “Struggle, rage,” Haunt pushed.

  “Is this necessary?” sighed a languid voice next to us. A warm spring breeze travelled through the air. A woman clad in vines and dried umber-coloured leaves emerged from a nearby tree. Her hair was made from a patchwork of loose branches. She pointed to the struggling elf. “You need to rest,” she said.

  Hundreds of vines erupted from her hand and pulled away at the clay. Every morsel that came into contact exploded into bits and pieces. Basil pulled himself up from the disappearing chokehold.

  “What,” he hacked up a ball of clay which was promptly destroyed, “What are they?”

  The remnants of a long nail lingered on the ground in front of us. The woman gazed at it, her golden-brown pupils lingered on her reflection along the sleek surface.

  “Old ghosts,” she said, turning to us.