The Carnelian Fox Page 7

  The trees were getting closer, the air more oppressive. I wasn’t sure how much farther we had to travel.

  “This could be a dead end, Lucy. It’s getting late and we don’t want to get lost in the dark away from camp.”

  “You have flame Gems, and candy Gems can produce light, we’ll be quite alright. Let’s find whatever it is we’re being led to – it would be a shame to have come so far and have been so uncomfortable for nothing.”

  “Five minutes,” I said. “We can always try again in the morning. I don’t want my Gems fighting in the dark, even if they are making their own light.”

  “Fair enough, although… Oh, there it is.” Lucy pointed over to a tree trunk that Dew was looking up and scratching. “Forget it.”

  For once, I agreed with her. The pink-backed spider dangling from a web wouldn’t be winning any beauty contests.

  “Let’s go, I’ve seen enough of that gross thing.” My lip twitched, and I swallowed the nausea in my throat.

  “Oh, but don’t you think it’s actually super cute?” Lucy mocked, flouncing off back the way we’d come.

  “Frogs at least have the right number of legs,” I hissed, catching her up as she ground to a halt.

  “Which way did we come?” Lucy snapped.

  “This way.”

  “Well we’re certainly not returning in the same manner.”

  I looked past her and almost broke down sobbing. A huge web drifted over the narrow path we’d hacked out.

  Finn was at my side and growling. Another, larger spider sailed down on a sticky strand and bumped into the path before us. A thousand clicks, shuffles, and rustles surrounded us. I grabbed Lucy’s hand. She crushed mine just as hard.

  I was about to call my Gems, but they were already there, guarding us on every side. Dew crouched, rumbling along with Finn.

  Then I saw them, and my heart seized with terror before they even laid a mandible on me. Clusters of glowing eyes and twitches of jointed legs from every direction. They were every type and size.

  “Sam, do something!” Lucy whimpered.

  So, I did. I pulled my SOS tab and then I hoped bloody hard that someone way more badass than me would be close enough to do something better.

  Chapter Nine

  The mass of spiders advanced with an ebb and flow, like each one didn’t want to be the first to reach us. With professional poise, my Gems waited for the enemy to break rank.

  “Lucy, get yours to help,” I whispered.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she hissed, her clammy hand crushing my fingers, “They wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

  “They have attacks, it’s not like they need to be championship material. Just keep the smaller ones back while mine go through them.”

  Lucy sighed and reached a trembling hand to her necklace. She summoned everyone but the fresh-caught chinchilla. Her three candy types looked around, heads twitching and bobbing as they took in the horror show. The squirrel grasped her leg and buried its face into the material of her trousers. Rolo, the rainbow lemur glanced towards Dew.

  Finn spat off a lava dart, sizzling a plant spider that wandered too close. It hissed and skittered away with smoulders charred into its back. The glow of its retreat stood out in the waning twilight. With the two flame Gems, if the arachnids didn’t get us, we’d probably end up burning ourselves to death instead.

  Charlotte’s shift rustled the leaf litter behind me as she planted her claws ready to charge.

  “Stay close, guys,” I said. “They’ll try to split us up to get an easy target, we have to watch each other’s backs.”

  Sev blasted out a beam of ice from his mouth, freezing a tiny spider to the branch it advanced on. Its capsule soon dropped to the ground, but no way did I want to risk trying to pick it up.

  “Sam, what are we going to do?” Lucy whispered.

  “We need to move.” I didn’t have a damn clue really, my desperation for a task to focus on was the only thing stopping me peeing myself. “Everyone let’s take small steps away. If anything gets close, blast it. When we get to all that web, Sev can freeze it and smash it. Then we won’t burn this whole place down with us in it.”

  I felt Lucy’s emphatic nod through her fingertips, wow, she actually trusted my stupid idea.

  Sev and Finn led, with Dew and Charlotte taking the rear guard and Lucy’s Gems doing their best to fill the flanks. As soon as we took those initial tiny, nervous paces the behaviour of the spiders changed too. More low hissing went up from the trees, the thump of weighty bodies sailing to the ground came from every direction. I swallowed a gross hint of vomit and put another foot forward. They didn’t like that.

  The swarm advanced, all different colours and ranging from palm size to Charlotte’s length. They circled us, getting closer and bolder, waving forelimbs and snapping their freakishly large mandibles. Some had spikes or plates on their thorax, or horrific patterns that guaranteed they carried venom. The dark grey of the corrosive types sent the worst pains through my chest, they could dissolve or envenomate us if they got close enough.

  Finn and Sev fired off attacks towards the leaders of the swarm, I spotted countless frozen legs and scorched abdomens. They tried to be accurate and conservative, it wasn’t like they had the energy to keep fighting forever. Dew barked out beams of light that flipped his targets and left them in a daze, Charlotte aimed her flamethrower at any small groups that dared advance.

  A creak shattered the constant clicking and chittering. A tree to my left skewed to a crazy angle and teetered. It smashed down a half-grown sapling next to it and the forest echoed with the almighty crash. The waft of putrefied wood and disturbed muck invaded my nostrils, decay coated my tongue with every inhalation.

  The first colossal leg slammed down into view, one leg of eight and it was taller than me. Green and brown dusky tiger stripes banded the limb. Earth and plant dual typed. I raised my shivering arm to scan it as more vast legs pushed the rest of the bulk between the trees. A mature Gem - twice evolved and at the height of its power. I didn’t need the eBand to tell me it was a gargantuan version of its species. I would be lucky if it even noticed my cubs’ attacks.

  They hadn’t sized up the new threat, still picking off the smaller spiders trying to ghost down from overhead branches to sneak up on us. Scorched flesh mingled with the gargantuan’s gagging stench, my guys were doing so well, but this was not a task I could prepare them for. That monster wasn’t in the same competition, let alone the same league.

  “Get in close, guys,” I said, “We need to make a break for it, no way can we fight that.”

  “How?” Lucy’s voice cracked. “We can’t move as fast as them.”

  I held back a comment about only having to be faster than her, proudest moment of my life. I scanned the area to find a good route, but with the rapid spread of darkness I couldn’t even make out the trees closest to us now.

  “Dew, light it up, find a way out.”

  The candy Gem shook his fur and a handful of crystals dropped out, they gave off a low glow and rose to spiral out from him into the surrounding forest. My heart sank. All the new wash of rosy light showed was the mass of increased ranks that must have followed the gargantuan. There were more now than when my team had taken the first ones out.

  Lucy screamed and dragged me sideways, falling to the floor. Finn spun and slaughtered the tiny spider still clinging to her leg with its fangs buried in her calf. The capsule flew off about ten feet into the woodland with the force of the fox’s strike, he looked up at me apologetically.

  “Not your fault, it’s hard to see, get on watch.”

  I dropped to Lucy’s side where she cried and clutched her wound. Her Gems abandoned their posts to cluster around her.

  “You three, back to work,” I snapped, but they didn’t obey the orders of someone who wasn’t their Prime. “Lucy, are you all right?”

  “No,” she sobbed. “We’re going to die. Daddy was right.”

  “No.�
� I hugged her close and tried to take my mind off the gargantuan almost upon us, squeezing the pustule of its abdomen ever closer through the tight-knit woodland. “I’ll nuke this whole damn forest before that happens.”

  “We still die.”

  Flares of my Gem’s attacks increased in the gloom, the orange-red flames, dancing ice-white, pink-honed flashes. All lighting up the night and producing screams and hisses where they struck the army threatening to overtake us. Nothing slowed except my panting Gems, fighting for breath between strikes. Would I rather end up as a pile of ash or a liquified cocoon of arachnid lunch?

  “Charlotte, Finn… Give us a perimeter of fire.”

  They complied, both racing around our huddled group and spewing out roaring flames that caught the grass, wood, and brush surrounding us. Instantly, the breath shrivelled from my lungs as the fire hoarded the oxygen for its own greedy use. Come on, this had to scare the spider Gems enough to make them run away.

  Most of them backed off – it was working!

  A patch of the fire dimmed. I squinted. The gargantuan reached the perimeter. It was shovelling piles of dirt to put out our barrier…

  “Attack that thing!”

  My four Gems concentrated their attacks that way, but they were just fighting a damn leg. Another limb crashed through, refusing to acknowledge the heat coming from the rest of the crackling flames. Then I saw the head. Eight malevolent eyes seeking prey. My mouth ran dry, hung open, ash and mouldering fungi congealed on my tongue.

  The gargantuan heaved forward. I squinted and flinched as Lucy screamed.

  Silence.

  I opened my eyes to a shadow dark enough to black out the flames. See-through yet darker than wearing a blindfold. It was as large as a pony but built like a cat with antelope horns. Nothing about it made sense. Except that it blocked the gargantuan’s route to us.

  “You know starting forest fires is dangerous, right?” A voice tinged with humour came from behind me, it held a slight foreign twang I’d heard from some battle Primes on TV.

  I glanced over to a guy tapping a capsule bound around his thigh in a kind of holster. A stag appeared, tall and majestic with an impressive rack of antlers. It was corrosive grey but streaked over with dark blue, tiny specks of rain fell constantly from its fur. The stag poured water over my flaming shield, the light dimming by the second as the fire receded.

  “Wait, there are tonnes of those things out there,” I pleaded.

  “It’s okay, I got your SOS. We’ll get you out of here,” he replied, unfazed by the situation. Hadn’t he seen the number of foes surrounding us?

  As the darkness overcame the forest, I noticed a new light. A yellowish crackle that tore through the trees. Static ripples of pure electricity bolted around as though gravity wouldn’t dare bind the source.

  I couldn’t see the horned shadow anymore, but I heard the guttural utterances of rage and slams of razor-sharp legs as the gargantuan tried to spear its opponent.

  “Hey, V,” the guy said, “Get these two to Kira, I’ll meet you in the clearing.”

  The stag stepped up to us, hooves muted on the damp leaves. It ducked its head.

  “Ladies, this is your escort, can you climb up?”

  He directed the question at Lucy as she bound her leg tightly with a scarf and hunkered over her wound.

  “I think so,” she said, hooking her fingers in my jacket to scrabble to her feet.

  The stag, the guy had called it V, bent its knees so I could heave Lucy onto its back. I wondered why the guy didn’t lend a hand, but I probably had more muscle than that scrawny dude, anyway.

  “You too,” he said, pointing at the stag.

  “Can he carry both of us?”

  The guy laughed and waved me up, “Yeah, he’s got you. Kira can too, get on and she’ll take you to your camp. Hold on tight, yeah?”

  I swear he winked at me in the gloom, then tapped two more capsules on his thigh holster and strode towards the gargantuan. I ached to find out what other Gems he had, but V nudged me with his nose, and I scrambled up onto his back behind Lucy, recalling my own Gems.

  The stag trotted off, blasting the odd spider that tried to follow us with a jet stream of water. It was the kindest strategy, this stag had corrosive abilities too, and I’d seen the terrible things their power could do. They were the only type that had certain attacks banned in tournaments. I got twitchy just sitting here on the grey fur.

  “How are you feeling?” I whispered to Lucy. She had her fingers buried in the thick tufts of V’s shoulders and her back bent to rest her forehead on his neck.

  “Ugh, I’m going to be sick,” she muttered.

  “Not on the nice gentleman’s Gem, please, Lucy. I don’t think he’d appreciate that.”

  “Shut up, Sam.”

  There, she wasn’t that bad.

  V skimmed through the tangle of undergrowth with ease until the trees thinned. Finally, I saw the twinkle of stars in the sky. It was like being able to breathe again, though that might be because we were away from all the burnt woodland.

  I caught sight of a hunched shape in the clearing, something fluffy and dark. V snorted. It lifted a head, a short, fanged muzzle with pointed ears. The bat, who I figured was Kira, unfolded herself. Her leathery wings stretched out brought a gasp to my lips and Lucy froze against my front. The bat’s fur was midnight black, shot through with the silver streaks of an air Gem. She wasn’t quite big enough to be a gargantuan, but I suspected she was large.

  “Hi, Kira.” I dipped my head, hoping she’d believe me. “Your Prime asked if you would please take us to our camp? He said he would meet us there.”

  “Sam, I’m not so sure about this,” Lucy muttered.

  “Flying is the quickest way to get you to safety,” I said. “Also, the most fun.”

  “I’ll definitely be sick.”

  “Plus, there’re no spiders.”

  “Help me onto her.” Lucy said, almost falling off V’s muscular back.

  The flight was short, but damn exhilarating. Kira was a gracious pilot, like the most maternal bat I’ve ever met. She held steady and flew low over the treetops, flicking her head around to check our hand holds way too often. Her fur felt incredible, it was softer than the finest down, and I wanted to stroke my fingers through it forever. Kira’s wings caught the air and powered through as though she ignored any extra load. In a mad moment I dared to release my grip for a second to scan her. I slipped back an inch and she let out a peep of caution, but I had her details. She was in her final evolution form, shadow and air type, with general basic stat enhancements.

  This guy was much more advanced than me. His other Gems must be at least the same level, no way he’d leave his strongest Gem out as transport. Yeah, so I was jealous. Not of his actual Gems, I’d take my guys over a bat and deer any day, but of his progress. I couldn’t wait to be there, a full team that were all evolved. Able to stride into any SOS knowing my guys would handle it. I wanted that more than anything. I so wanted to make a difference.

  Obviously, I still wanted to go to competitions and win too. But that night, being that close to dying and seeing what just one well-prepared Prime could do, that made me want to be more than a celebrity. That night gave me the delusion I could be a hero.

  Chapter Ten

  “Hey, you made it.”

  I looked up from my bedraggled position by the campfire to see the skinny guy walking into camp.

  “Well, we were the ones fleeing for our lives on your epic Gems,” I replied. “Glad you made it too.”

  “That gargantuan was a top-level threat, I couldn’t just leave it there.” He sat down next to the flames and warmed his hands. I saw his features for the first time, hoodie drawn up over his scruffy dark hair. Faraway, tilted eyes focused on the fire. He had a pair of thigh holsters with three capsules on each over his black combat trousers. Top battle Primes said they were the fastest way to summon your Gems because they’re closer to your fingertips than a wri
stlet.

  “Thanks,” I said, holding out a hand for him to shake. “That was really dumb of us to go there at this time of night. I guess I got overconfident…”

  “No problem.” He shook my hand, then let it drop to reach out into the gloom at his side. I strained to see what he was doing until I noticed the fire picking out the edges of his shadowy Gem. He stroked the fur between the ears of the large cougar, right where the antlers sprouted.

  I discreetly scanned the Gem, wanting to know what the thing was all about.

  “Lyle’s a normal cougar, it’s an equipment upgrade,” he said.

  “Oh, that’s cool,” I replied, checking my screen anyway. I was right about his team being fully evolved… though I hadn’t anticipated one thing. “Oh damn, you’ve got an elder?”

  They were crazy rare, or at least crazy expensive. There was a way to push your Gem to another evolution after cub, adolescent, and mature - elder level. But it took a limited item, and they only allowed you to have one on your team at a time.

  “I won the gear. Trust me, I’d never have got the credits together. By the way, I’m Eli, it’s nice to meet you two. Even though one of you is very much asleep right now.”

  “Oh, sorry. I’m Sam, that’s Lucy. She’ll be fine, it wasn’t a venomous bite. You were so awesome back there, properly saved our butts. I took down a wild adolescent raptor recently that was terrorising a farm, so I thought I was pretty indestructible. Turns out that four cubs cannot fight off an army led by a fully evolved gargantuan…”

  “I’m sure you would have figured something out,” Eli said, rubbing Lyle’s ears until he rumbled and leant into the touch.

  “I highly doubt it,” I replied, pulling two chocolate bars out of my backpack and tossing one over to him. “There you go, your well-deserved reward.”

  He nodded his thanks and ripped open the wrapper, broke off the tip and fed it to his cougar. The rough tongue flicked it in with a single lick.

  “So, your life’s worth a whole chocolate bar, huh? Rare to get a prize like this.”