𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀 𝐒𝐔𝐂𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘. 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.
It's the beginning of a new age when Jaylah Imperatrix seemingly returns from the dead to reclaim her throne. And in perfect timing.
In her absence, evil has be...
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Act 2 Chapter 25 ALEXANDER
I was just about to eat my tiny allotted meal for the day when Jaylah came back to the camp, traveling in the direction from the river. Annoyance prickled through me at the look on her face, like she was about to chide me for something else. Instead, she said only my name, "Alexander." And only then did she turn so I could see the blood dripping through the fingers clasped around her forearm. There wasn't irritation on her face after all, it was the restraining of pain.
"Something attacked you?" I asked, hoping she hadn't gotten the injuries from falling. I would never forgive myself if I'd missed that.
"A snake," she said, eyes glued to her arm as if she could see straight through her white-knuckled fingers to the wound beneath. My good humor dwindled. "The venom's in my system." With that, she crumpled to her knees, whether on purpose or on accident, I couldn't tell. But by the way I observed her hands shaking and the glazed look passing over her eyes, I surmised it was the latter.
She huffed a few breaths, eyelids fluttering. "Get out the wilderness guide."
"How do you feel about my severing your arm instead?"
"Get out the wilderness guide." Blood absorbed into the black material of her pants.
"So amputation's a no?" She found it within herself to open her eyes and stare pointedly at me. "Fine, princess, it's your funeral." And it really would be, once I took out the hardcover book in question and realized all my progress with reading flew out the window.
Hating the amount of my deficiencies she was already aware of, I tried in vain to read the first few pages. Only a select few letters stood out in my memory, not enough to form words. "What did the snake look like?" I asked, opting to search for pictures instead and deal with the problem of reading when I arrived at it.
"Medium-sized. Dark green. With a gold and black diamond pattern." A strange tremor passed through her body. "I think. Happened too fast."
"Okay." I flipped through the pages, only glancing up a few times to determine whether she was weak enough for me to make a break for it. There were hand-drawn illustrations of mountains covered in snow and types of flora with bulbous flower buds and a hundred bird species. Nothing dangerous so far. There had to be some kind of warning in there. Jaylah's breaths were becoming labored, so I simply skipped to the end. Right to a page covered in too-detailed drawings of hairy tarantulas in their eight-eyed glory. "Ugh," I said, leaving that section faster than a snake's strike. I smiled to myself. If only Jaylah heard that joke.
The tarantulas were a good sign, I assumed. Surely they put all the creatures the gods made the mistake of creating in one place, right?
