Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 110034 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110034 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
I swear, I add quickly, I am not this shadow-born whatever the hell. I don’t even know if I’m the one to touch Death. And I’m certainly not the one who will raise the Old Gods. The whole lot of them omniscient creeps can stay buried.
You were able to use Lovia’s sword, he muses, eyes narrowing. That does seem like someone the daughter of Louhi would be able to do.
I’m not the daughter of Louhi! I yell inside my head. I’m just a fucking social media manager, not the daughter of a demon!
I mean, my mother has been pretty awful at times and sometimes I wonder if we’re even related, but she’s not a literal demon.
Maybe I should have left you at Shadow’s End, he says snidely.
Yeah, well maybe you should have!
“What is going on here?” the skeleton man says sharply, looking between the two of us. “Are you communicating in your heads?”
Rasmus clears his throat again and looks at the skeleton man. “I am merely trying to get answers from her. Seems she’s been lying to me since the day I met her.”
Well fuck, now I can’t tell if Rasmus is being serious or not.
“Michael,” one of the skeletons says, coming forward. “How can we be sure this is Salainen?”
Michael? The head skeleton’s name is Michael? Not Skeletor or Bone Thugs?
“Because it is her,” Michael says adamantly, gesturing to me. “I’ve met Sala. We all have. This is her.” He pauses and looks around the cavern, all the skulls turned his way. “Is it not?”
A few of the skeletons come closer to me. I scramble backward until my shoulders hit the earth wall, their sinister fingers outstretched toward me.
“There’s only one way to find out,” one of the skeletons says, holding up a sword. “The real Salainen should turn to shadow when the blade goes in. Should pass right through her.”
Oh fuck!
“Rasmus!” I scream for help, managing to roll out of the way just seconds before the sword stabbed the dirt where I was.
Suddenly the ground starts shaking, several of the skeletons knocking into each other, and Rasmus takes advantage of the distraction to fight off the ones who were holding him. He runs toward me, lifting me up from the ground, then places me behind him, shielding me from the rest of the Bone Stragglers. They stagger toward us, ready to fight, but then rocks start to fall from the ceiling of the cavern, along with clumps of dirt, knocking many of them out. Weapons fall from their hands, and bones separate from the bodies.
“What’s happening!” I yell, holding onto Rasmus’ jacket and peering around him as dirt falls into my hair.
“I’m not sure,” he says, just as the middle of the cavern caves in. The skeletons scream, jaws clacking, bones splintering, as they’re buried by earth and rock, then I’m screaming once again as suddenly hundreds of skinny tendrils come out from the hole in the ceiling and start sliding down the walls. They look like impossibly long thin white worms, and they move as if they all operate as one.
“Oh my god, what are those!?” I screech but then my words die on my lips as the tendrils come for us, snapping around me and Rasmus impossibly fast, binding us together until my chest is smashed against his back.
“Don’t panic,” Rasmus says, though he sounds on the verge of panicking himself. “I think I—”
All of a sudden we’re snatched off the ground and yanked out of the cavern and up through the collapsed-in ceiling. We’re flung through the air, the tendrils releasing us until we land on a patch of moss, back in the forest again.
“Rasmus,” a raspy female voice says that makes the hair on my neck stand up, “back so soon?”
Chapter 4
Hanna
The Mycelia
At first, I don’t know what I’m looking at. Rasmus and I are on top of fuzzy green moss that stretches out into the forest, the pines and cedars being whipped violently by the wind, branches and needles raining down. It’s darker than it should be, and I have to wonder if the clouds have gotten darker and lower, or if a lot of time had passed since we were underground with the Bone Stragglers.
Then I realize it’s dark because there’s something giant hovering over us, blotting out the sky. The same giant thing that’s talking to Rasmus.
I blink rapidly, trying to get my eyes to adjust. It’s like…it’s like the moss has started to grow up the side of a wide tree, except instead of bark there’s flesh. Pale white skin. And the moss continues up, curving in around a waist, then up to breasts, shoulders, neck…
I expect to see the moss-covered face of a giant woman on top but instead it’s a mushroom cap. It’s a giant fucking moss woman growing out of the ground with a mushroom for a head.