Rivers of blood and sand

The moment I was sucked into the rippling blood-soaked ground, I thought it was over for me. So when I found myself whole, without a speck of that shitty blood on me, and relatively unharmed, I was shocked. I even pressed my hands to my body and pinched my uninjured arm just to make sure this was real.

The new world I found myself in was monochromatic and terribly lit. The gray sky had no stars, sun, or any form of natural light. I was in another forest, but this one was vastly different. The dark gray trees were spaced at least fifteen feet apart and towered over me, way taller than the trees of the forest I’d previously been in. Not only were they tall, but they were thick and almost twenty feet in circumference. Another oddity of the trees was their lack of branches. At least I knew they wouldn’t come to life and smack the hell out of me.

I was alone in this new forest, which normally would make me happy since I hadn’t been a fan of my previous company, but all I could feel was nervous. Where were they? Were they watching me, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike?

Not only were they nowhere to be seen, but neither was the portal. There wasn’t any blood or even a circle on the weird-looking black ground. It wasn’t grass or dirt, and it wasn’t smooth but textured.

Since there was no way back through the way I came here, I did the only thing I could do. I ran. I had been through a portal that somehow sent you to an offering site, that nobody came out of alive. I’d thought that meant the portal itself killed, but I’d been wrong. So if the portal didn’t kill, that meant that the beings that brought me here did, hence why I was now running. I didn’t know how this place led to the offering site, or whether or not there was another portal here that led there or not. All I knew was that I needed to get as far away from here as possible until I could figure out what the fuck happened and where I was.

As I ran, I discovered not only was the ground a weird-looking spongy texture, but it bounced under my feet. Running on it was awful and made it hard to run as fast as I wanted to. Especially when hisses filled the air, overlapping each other and coming from all directions. The chill that had been in the air in the Aurora court was present, along with the unsettling feeling of being watched by hundreds of unseen eyes. I felt weirdly exposed by the distance between the trees, like they didn’t provide a good deal of cover.

One minute, I was running for my life, glancing over my shoulder as the hisses behind me grew louder, and the next my blood felt like it was on fire, burning me from the inside out. My legs gave out from under me and I bounced across the spongy ground, which surprisingly hurt like hell. I curled up on my side as my blood betrayed me and felt like it was boiling, and I wasn’t being figurative. I was vaguely aware of the blood running out of my nose and dripping down my ears. Maybe I screamed, it was too hard to focus on much else other than being cooked alive from the inside out.

A pair of blissfully cold hands grabbed me and picked me up. I didn’t have it in me to move a single muscle, much less fight them. My eyes were squeezed shut against the agony, so I couldn’t see if it was one of those monsters. Whoever it was, they were drawing on my arms, their movements quick and efficient. Their cool fingers felt so nice against my heated body, but they did nothing to cool me down, or so I thought.

A moment after they stopped touching me, I felt a tingle of magic seep into my skin and race through my body, bringing with it an icy balm that soothed my singed nerve endings. My labored breaths eased into a normal pattern. My entire body ached and was drenched in sweat, no surprise.

I was sitting across someone’s lap, cradled in their arms and I would’ve tried to move had I not caught their scent. My eyes snapped open and met Ander’s familiar multi-hued eyes.

What? How?

My boiling blood must’ve fucked up my brain or something, because there was no way Ander should've been here with me. His back was pressed up against a tree as he sat with me in his lap. I numbly stared at him as he drew blood from his forearm, which seemed counterproductive when being hunted by a blood mage-like being, but what did I know?

He used his blood to draw sigils on his own arm and then used the blood that had yet to dry on my healing forearm to draw on mine. Before today, I’d never had a blood mage cast on me. It was so strange how the blood sank into my skin, along with the magic that spread throughout my arm and body, leaving tingles of electric energy in its wake.

I was still having a hard time coming up with words, opening and closing my mouth multiple times. Seriously, that spell most dickbag blood mages loved using must’ve fried my brain. Ander pressed a finger to my lips, telling me to remain quiet. I shot him a look that all but said, no fucking shit. Despite being in an unfamiliar and most likely hostile environment, a smile played on his lips.

Eventually, the hissing voices faded, leaving us in a deafening silence. I let out a long and relieved sigh, having been trying to keep my breaths quiet for the past ten minutes as I held still in Ander’s arms. The sound was like a shout in the silence, making me afraid it would draw attention right back to us.

“Are you alright?” Ander asked after standing and setting me to my feet. He scanned over my body as he held the tops of my arms, almost like he was afraid I’d fall over. Which wasn’t far off, my legs felt shaky from the after-effects of the blood-boiling spell. The jagged bite mark on my arm was healing a bit slower than usual, but at least it wasn’t bleeding anymore.

It was a testament to how far we’d come that I allowed him so close to me with my blood within his reach. Hell, he’d cast using my blood a couple of times, as he was doing right now. This time was different though. Rather than using my blood to draw the marks, he drew the sigils in the blood smeared all over my arm. Once he finished the final line, the blood sank into my skin in a dizzying rush that left my arm tingling. I looked up at him in surprise, my jaw dropping having not known he could do that.

A smirk tugged on his lips as he rubbed small circles on my upper arms.

“What are you doing here? How did you get here?” I wracked my brain, but I couldn’t remember seeing him in the clearing when the blood mage cast the spell. While I’d been distracted by fighting, I still felt like I would’ve noticed if he was there. I was fairly confident he hadn’t been inside the circle of bleeding trees when the spell was cast.

“The portal,” Ander said with a shrug and I gaped at him and his too casual response.

I grabbed a fistful of his shirt as I held his gaze. “Are you saying you jumped into a death portal on purpose?”

“We should keep moving, the spell won’t fool them for long,” Ander said instead of answering.

I wanted to press the subject and figure out why he jumped into a dangerous portal, but I knew he was right. This wasn’t the place for a discussion, not when we were being hunted by something that had enough of my blood to cast a spell on me. Hopefully, they didn’t have any more of it.

Ander’s face was unreadable as he grabbed my hand and urged me to start walking. I hadn’t been expecting the contact and I jolted, nearly yanking my hand from his from the shock. He didn’t comment on my reaction or give an explanation, and just threaded his fingers through mine. Our pace wasn’t leisurely, I was half jogging just to be able to keep up with his long strides. Even though he was moving fast as hell, I had a feeling he could’ve gone faster but didn’t so I could somewhat keep up.

Bouncing across the ground was starting to get annoying. If the whole world—realm, wherever the hell we were—was like this, I’d lose my fucking mind. Walking on it was like how I imagined it felt to be in those human bounce houses. Only less fun and more obnoxious and inconvenient.

As we continued our long hike through this annoying and way-too-silent forest, thoughts kept invading my mind. Like how perfectly my hand fit in his large calloused hand. It felt right and natural.

As soon as I had the thought, I shoved it aside. It was dangerous to think like that and was a recipe for disaster. I hadn’t even had time to wrap my head around the incident with the crazed blood mage in the village. The one that accused Ander of killing her daughter. Everything was a chaotic mess and was happening all at once. I couldn’t risk getting distracted by Ander or my nagging curiosity about his history with that woman and her daughter. If I was going to be attacked for associating with him, I had the right to know the full story. But now wasn’t the time or place.

* * * * * * * *

We’d been walking for several hours, and no, I wasn’t exaggerating. Despite how long we walked, the sky had yet to change and I wondered if it was stuck in a permanent twilight. My leg muscles were starting to feel the strain from moving across the awkward and bouncy ground.

Ander hadn’t released my hand once the entire time we walked in silence. I had to unzip my small travel pack—it was akin to the human’s Fanny packs, but wasn’t bulky like theirs and had an expansion spell—with one hand to retrieve my water bottle, thankfully I’d been prepared enough to bring it. He wouldn’t even release my hand so I could unscrew the lid. I had to hold the bottle while he twisted off the top. Even when he cast several times, he lifted our joined hands to cast on his forearm. Had he been left-handed, it might’ve been a different story.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was afraid to lose contact with me in fear of me vanishing. Or maybe he thought I’d run off.

A sudden thought came to me and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it earlier. “I’m going to need both hands,” I said with a sigh when I tried and failed to pull my hand free. While I might’ve sounded annoyed, and I sort of was, a big part of me liked how he kept touching me.

“For what?” Ander kept his focus on our surroundings, the same as I’d been doing the entire time but finding nothing. We’d yet to see or hear another living being, other than those inhuman hisses earlier.

“I want to check my wristband and see if I can call or message anyone.” Our wristbands could communicate between different realms, so hopefully, we’d be able to contact Seth or Roman.

Ander’s pace slowed as he squinted at our joined hands and his forehead creased with a frown. I thought he would release my hand to allow me to try and send a message, but he raised our joined hands and used his free hand to activate his wristband.

For several minutes he was quiet as he stared at the glowing crystal. If the frustrated expression or the way his steps became slower were any indication, it wasn’t looking too good for us. He powered down the crystal, letting out a long sigh as he raked his fingers through his hair.

Even though we were fucked in multiple ways, too many to count, I was still entranced by his movements.

“Nothing?” I pressed in the hopes of distracting myself.

I already figured it hadn’t worked, but I was still disappointed when he shook his head. Our wristbands were designed to be able to work between multiple realms, so it didn’t bode well for us that they weren’t working now. “What does this even mean?”

I knew the basics about our wristbands, but not their true limits or the intricacies that went into creating them.

Ander didn’t answer, but based on the contemplative expression on his face as he kept watch, he was thinking about his answer and not ignoring me. He didn’t get to explain his theory, not when the trees thinned out and the landscape changed.