There was only one problem. Before we could reach the flat expanse where we could see danger coming at us from a long way away, we had to get past the next obstacle. We were right on the edge of a cliff. I looked down. I figured the drop to be nearly a full mile. I looked at Delph and he looked back at me.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
He gripped my hand and nodded.
I lifted Harry Two into his harness and gave his head a pat. I had come so close to losing both of them so soon in here that a part of me wanted to go back to Wormwood. But a bigger part of me knew I couldn’t. Not now. Perhaps one light.
We heard the sounds behind us and they were coming fast. From the quantity of noise, I figured three or four garms and what sounded like a whole herd of freks. They had no doubt been alerted to our presence by the previous battle.
They burst from the dense forest, which lay behind us. I looked back. I had been wrong. It wasn’t four garms, it was ten. And they weren’t freks. They were amarocs. And if anything, they were even more terrifying than the freks.
I turned and looked ahead to the distant blue mountain that somehow I knew was where we needed to go. Just beyond that, in the sky, were the stars, the lost stars as I thought of them now. Lost, like we were. Would they ever find their way? Would we? Perhaps not. Perhaps we would simply flame out. But at least we would have tried.
I looked once more at Delph, attempted a smile that died before it reached my face, and then we jumped. The three of us were suspended in air for a long moment as the wicked beasts sped toward us.
And then we soared downward, now fully embraced by the Quag.