The air by the sluggish river was humid and loud with the drone of unseen insects. Dust motes danced in the faint light filtering through the dense canopy as Leonotis carefully unfurled the brittle parchment, its surface crackling like dry leaves. He'd found it tucked away in the crumbling, leather-and-canvas remains of a traveler's pack half-buried in the mud near the riverbank. Its edges were frayed, its ink faded to a ghostly brown, but the route it depicted was tantalizingly, dangerously clear: a narrow, almost direct path slicing arrow-straight through the ominous, shadowed expanse labeled in spidery script, "Anansi's Forest."
"Look!" Leonotis exclaimed, his dirty finger tracing the jagged line that promised to shave days, perhaps even a week, off their arduous journey to the Capitol. The parchment smelled of mildew and old adventures gone wrong. "This shortcut… it goes right there!" He looked up at Jacqueline and Low, his eyes shining with a mixture of desperate excitement and an almost feverish urgency. "We could be there so much faster! Think of it – every day we save is another day closer to finding Chinakah and Gethii, another day sooner I can find out what happened to my father!" The image of his father, ensnared and terrified, was a constant spur.
Jacqueline, who had been idly tracing intricate, flowing patterns in the damp earth with a pointed twig, looked up. Her blue eyes, usually so clear, were still clouded with the distant sadness that clung to her from time to time since their meeting. The mention of a faster route, even one fraught with implied peril, didn't seem to register beyond a fleeting, dutiful flicker of acknowledgment. "If you believe it is the best way, Leonotis. But I'd rather stay by the water," she said softly, her voice lacking its usual melodic lilt, as if her thoughts were tangled in a sorrow far removed from maps and forests. She glanced at the dark treeline the map indicated, and a subtle shiver traced her shoulders, a movement so slight Leonotis almost missed it.
Low, however, was instantly alert. She snatched the map from Leonotis's grasp, her expression hardening into a familiar scowl as she squinted at the faded ink. She leaned closer, her finger, blunt and practical, tracing the ominous name of the forest. "Anansi's Forest? Are you actually serious, Leonotis?" Her voice was sharp, disbelief warring with accusation. "Even the whispers and warnings in the Stylwater orphanage spoke of that place. Old Man Fuzo used to say it was cursed ground, where Anansi the Trickster himself spun webs of deceit. Giant spiders with venom that can rot your bones from the inside out, or worse, make you see illusions so real you'd walk off a cliff thinking it was a feather bed. No sane traveler, not even the desperate ones, goes near it." Her voice was firm, laced with a deep-seated, almost primal unease that made the hairs on Leonotis's arms prickle.
"But it's a shortcut!" Leonotis insisted, his enthusiasm stubbornly undeterred by Low's grim warnings or Jacqueline's quiet withdrawal. The desperation to act, to do something, clawed at him. "Think of the time we'll save! My green magic is getting stronger every day. I can feel it! I can make vines to trap them, roots to block their paths. I know I can protect us!" He gestured emphatically with his root sword, and as if to prove his point, a few errant, thorny vines sprouted enthusiastically from the damp ground near his feet, a testament to his growing, if still wildly erratic, control.
"'Feel it'?" Low scoffed, crossing her arms, her stance unyielding. The newly sprouted vines withered slightly under her disdainful glare. "Feeling it won't stop a spider the size of a market wagon from spitting poison in your face from fifty paces! And illusions? Venom messes with your head, Leonotis. It twists what you see, what you hear. You can't just 'feel' your way through that, or bash it with a stick!" Her voice rose with a familiar frustration, one he knew was born of genuine concern. "We've been doing fine on the longer path. It's safer. Slower, yes, but *safer*. We're a team, remember? We look out for each other."
"But every single day counts!" Leonotis argued, his voice tight with a desperation that bordered on anger. He couldn't bear the thought of wasting any more precious time, of Gethii and Chinakah facing unknown dangers in the Capital while he ambled through safe but tedious countryside. Then the image of his father's terrified face, wrapped in Oko Egan's dark, constricting tendrils, flashed in his mind with painful clarity. Jacqueline's passive near-agreement, her quiet deference, stung slightly, but it was Low's stubborn, sensible resistance that truly fueled his impatience. He felt the familiar, hot urge to prove himself, to show them he wasn't just a bratty kid but a hero, that his magic made him capable. "You two can take the slow, safe way if you want," he said, his chin jutting out defiantly, the words tasting like ash in his mouth even as he spoke them. "But I'm going to the Capital. And I'm not waiting."
Without another word, Leonotis folded the brittle map, its creases threatening to tear, and tucked it into his pocket. He turned, his shoulders set, and headed towards the dark, looming treeline in the distance, the oppressive silence of Anansi's Forest beckoning with the false promise of speed. He glanced back once, a foolish hope flickering in his chest that he might see Low or Jacqueline following, or at least hesitating. But they remained by the riverbank, Low's face a mask of worried disapproval and frustrated anger, her hands clenched at her sides. Jacqueline had returned to tracing patterns in the mud, seemingly lost once more in her own silent, sorrowful world. With a determined, almost painful, set to his jaw, Leonotis plunged into the shadows, the forest swallowing him whole. He was convinced, with the reckless certainty of youth and newfound power, that his burgeoning magic was all the company he needed.
He was wrong.
***
Ignoring Low's dire warnings and fueled by a burning impatience that gnawed at his gut, Leonotis plunged deeper into the shadowed depths of Anansi's Forest. The air immediately grew heavy, stagnant, thick with the cloying, overripe sweetness of unseen blossoms and the underlying, feral musk of decay. It was a silence unlike the companionable quiet of the outer woods; here, it felt watchful, predatory. Even the insects seemed to hold their breath. Sunlight, already weak, struggled to penetrate the dense, interlocking canopy above, casting the forest floor in a perpetual, disorienting twilight where shadows writhed and shifted with a life of their own.
Initially, a thrill of defiant power coursed through him. His green magic, still raw and untamed but undeniably present, responded to his focused will with surprising readiness. He pictured thorny barriers, and with a surge of effort, rapidly growing vines, thick as his arm and studded with needle-sharp thorns, wove themselves across narrow game trails, a smug satisfaction blooming in his chest as he imagined deterring any lurking predators. He even tested his finesse, and with a flick of his wrist, a slender tendril of living root, guided by his thought, shot out and snared the leg of a plump, rabbit-like creature with iridescent fur. He released it quickly, its terrified squeak echoing in the heavy air, a pang of guilt momentarily overshadowing his triumph. But the demonstration of his growing abilities, the tangible proof of his power, was undeniably encouraging, feeding his conviction that he'd made the right choice.
The forest, however, was ancient, and its true inhabitants were far less docile than iridescent rabbits. The first undeniable sign was a shimmering, almost invisible thread stretched taut and impossibly wide between two colossal, moss-strangled trees. It caught a stray, sickly beam of the filtered light, revealing an intricate, silken tapestry that pulsed with a faint, unsettling energy, like a captured heartbeat. Giant spiderwebs, strong as iron wire, glistened with a dew that wasn't water.
Before Leonotis could fully process the sheer scale and ominous beauty of the sight, a monstrous shape, blacker than the deepest shadows, scuttled with horrifying grace down the trunk of a nearby oak. Its bulbous, bristling body was the size of a small zebra, its eight hairy, multi-jointed legs moving with an unnerving speed and liquid precision. Multiple eyes, like a cluster of polished obsidian beads, each a faceted jewel reflecting the dim light with cold fire, glinted malevolently, fixing on him with an unblinking, predatory hunger. Venomous fangs, long as his fingers and wickedly curved, dripped with a viscous, opalescent fluid that shimmered with an oily sheen, each drop promising an agonizing end.
Raw, primal panic flared in Leonotis's chest, cold and sharp. He lashed out instinctively with his green magic, his earlier confidence shattering. He pictured roots, thick and strong, erupting from the ground, but his panicked mind clouded his control. The roots that burst forth were haphazard, some shooting wildly into the air, others too thin and weak, tangling uselessly around the spider's massive, chitinous legs, which it shrugged off with an almost contemptuous ease, the silken hairs on its limbs barely disturbed.
The spider lunged, its movements a terrifying blend of speed and weight. Leonotis dodged clumsily, a choked cry escaping him as one of the creature's hairy legs brushed against his arm, sending a wave of crawling revulsion through him. He tried to conjure a thorny barrier, to weave a shield of vines, but his magic sputtered. The vines grew too slowly, too thin and brittle, offering no real defense against such a colossal foe. His focus was gone, shattered by fear.
Then it happened. As he stumbled backward, desperate to put distance between himself and the monstrous arachnid, his foot caught in another near-invisible strand of the treacherous webbing. He yelped as sticky, incredibly strong filaments clung to his leg, tightening with alarming speed, pulling him off balance. Before he could even think to slash at them with his root-sword, the giant spider was upon him, a suffocating wave of musky predator-scent washing over him. Its fangs, glistening and terrible, sank deep into his calf.
Agonizing, unimaginable pain shot up his leg, a burning, searing fire that ripped a scream from his raw throat. He thrashed wildly, his root-sword flailing uselessly, glancing off the spider's hard, armored body with dull thuds. Finally, with a desperate surge of adrenaline born of pure terror, and a series of frantic, poorly directed sword swipes that managed to tear through some of the clinging webbing, he ripped his leg free. A patch of torn skin and cloth was left behind, and the deep, twin punctures oozed dark blood, the lingering sting of the venom already beginning its insidious work.
The giant spider hissed, a chilling, rasping sound like dry leaves skittering over stone, and retreated with fluid grace back into the deeper shadows, seemingly satisfied with its venomous parting gift. Leonotis collapsed against the rough bark of a tree, clutching his throbbing leg. The venom was already spreading, a cold, creeping numbness radiating outwards from the bite, followed by dizzying waves of nausea that made the forest floor tilt and sway.
The vibrant, albeit muted, greens of the forest began to blur and bleed at the edges, the familiar shapes of trees and ferns twisting into grotesque, nightmarish parodies. The air itself shimmered as if seen through intense heat, and phantom whispers, sibilant and mocking, brushed against his ears, disorienting him further. Anansi's Forest was far more dangerous, far more insidious, than Low, in her starkest warnings, had ever described. Alone, injured, his senses betraying him, and with his untrained magic proving woefully inadequate against true horrors, Leonotis realized with a sickening lurch of terror that his impulsive, arrogant shortcut might very well be his last.