I shake my head. No, that’s unlikely. The Black Forest is a long way from here. But…
“Why is it so misty?” Fritzi mutters, taking a few steps forward.
I turn, following her line of sight. Rather than burn away the morning mists, the rising sun is even more obscured now than it was minutes ago.
Fritzi and I instinctively reach for each other. “Cornelia!” Fritzi’svoice is a sharp crack as she shouts for the priestess. Already, the mist is so thick that we can barely see the outlines of the others. When did they wander so far away?
“Don’t let go,” Fritzi murmurs, her grip tightening.
“Brigitta!” I call. One of the forms seems to turn, but I hear nothing. Is no one else shouting for us?
Fritzi pulls me closer to her. “This remind you of the Black Forest?” she asks.
The mists that separated us, the trials the goddesses gave us.
Our grip on one another is iron strong.
In the fog, a figure runs toward us,fast.A man, I think, with broad shoulders. Tall. Too tall to be Alois—
The gait is off. Loping, the head bobbing in the thick fog, an unnatural pace, as if the creature in the mist runs on four legs instead of two, despite the humanlike outline.
I reach for my short sword, drawing it out silently. I feel a crackle in my skin, starting at the hand that grips Fritzi’s, and I know she’s calling up her magic.
The creature races through the mist, swirls of dense, cloudy air rippling around it.
It passes in a blur, and I catch only the barest hints of a humanoid face, of darkness, of streaming white hair. Fritzi and I circle, keeping the racing creature in sight. Why didn’t it attack us? It’s almost like the…thing, whatever it is, ignored us entirely.
Fritzi moves so that she’s at my back, facing the mound, and I look down the path, our hands gripped tight. We may have a better chance at fighting if we let go, but neither of us is willing to do that.
The mists roil, surge forward. The creature is racing back toward us.Ah,I think.It scouted around before it picked us as its target.
“Something coming down,” Fritzi chokes out, her voice tight. I glance over my shoulder, past her head, and see something else, bobbing and weaving through the fog, as if it were on a sailboat in rocky water.
I turn and stagger back, choking on my own horror.The fast-moving too-large shape of the creature that had been racing toward me ishere.Right in front of me.
What I thought was hair is fur, white and tawny, cascading in a long frame over a monstrous skull. The creature watches me through yellow eyes speckled with black pupils. Its lower jaw is wider than its upper face, as if someone removed the creature’s bottom teeth, stretched them disproportionately, and then jammed the bloody jaw back onto its skull. A long orange and black tongue flops out of the uneven mouth, stinking drool hot enough to steam, mingling with the heavy mist.
The creature pants, watching me, its yellow eyes narrowed. Its whole chest heaves, and that’s when I notice the horns—six of them. Two are long and straight, like a young roe deer’s antlers protruding from its ridged and furry forehead. Two more curl like rams’ horns around each floppy ear, and then there is another set, sharp as scythe blades, sticking out of the back of the monster’s head.
The front arms of the creature point out and down, like two sharp walking sticks that help the odd beast remain upright. The creature watches me, panting heavily, its body rocking, the sharp ends of its forearms tapping so they don’t sink into the ground.
What is strangest of all, though, is that the creature’s teeth lookhuman.Teeth on a monster should be fanged like a bear’s or pointed like a goat’s. They should be black or bloody; they should foam; they shouldn’t be sonormal. The creature’s protruding lower jaw is lined with teeth that are straight and white and boxy. Unbidden, I run my tongue over my own teeth.
The creature mimics me, its long, snakelike orange tongue whipping out, slithering over the white molars as if to emphasize how alien the creature is in all ways except its teeth.
The monster slobbers, its tongue lolling as it makes some sort of gurgling sound, some attempt at speech through such a mismatched jaw.
“What do we do?” I gasp at Fritzi, unable to take my eyes off the monster standing in the fog in front of us.
“I’ve got two in front of me; how many do you have?” she asks, her voice tight.
“One, but it’s big. And fast.”
I can feel her magic seething around us, through us, but the creatures do not attack. And we are not willing to make the first blow.
“What are they doing?” I hiss through clenched teeth. I dare a glance behind me. There are two creatures in front of Fritzi, one of which seems to be nothing more than a floating head, pale, ghostly, and almost beautiful, with exaggerated feminine features, white-blond hair that disappears into the fog. The other is short and stubby, with one set of horns that would seem large except they sit atop a face that seems to have been melted and stretched grotesquely long, a sharp chin sticking out at a curve like a crescent moon.
“I think…” Fritzi swallows. “I think these are Perchta’s guardians.”
