It reappeared on my right.
“Hey,” shouted Delph. He was waving his arms at the manticore. He picked up a skull and hurled it at the beast. It shot out a lungful of flames and the skull disintegrated.
“Impacto!” I screamed, my wand pointed straight at the manticore.
The thing was blasted off the ground, soared backward and slammed into the wall of bones behind it. It slid down the wall and lay still. And dead.
“You did it, Vega Jane,” gasped Delph. He was kneeling on the ground, holding his arm.
The walls on either side of us shook and then started to tumble down.
“Harry Two,” I screamed and struck the harness. He leapt and I attached him to it. I grabbed Delph and took to the air. We soared along, dodging and spinning past bones, skulls and other debris. Chunks and pieces still hit us, but I kept my gaze resolutely on the end of the maze.
And then a tower of bones collapsed in front of us and the small square of black that I knew represented the end of the maze disappeared.
I pointed my wand and shouted, “Engulfiado.”
The bones were blasted out of the way by a tidal wave of water and we soared through. I landed too fast and we all sprawled on the ground. I unhooked Harry Two from his harness and stood.
“Delph, you okay?” I said urgently.
When he didn’t answer, I looked at him. “Delph?”
He turned his face to mine. It was a sheet of pain.
“Delph, what is it?”
I ran to him, then stopped dead when he held up his arm.
“G-guess it got m-me.”
The manticore had gotten him. His left arm was burned nearly black; the skin was bubbled and cracked.
I immediately pulled the Adder Stone from my pocket, waved it over his arm and thought good thoughts.
“Thanks, Vega Jane,” he said. “Pain’s all gone.” He stretched his limb.
Well, the pain might have been gone, but the arm was still blackened. The skin was still popped and cracked like meat kept too long over the flames. When Delph followed my gaze and saw the state of his arm, his face turned pale.
“Delph,” I said. “I’m sorry. I guess the Stone can’t fully...” I could not finish.
“ ’Tis okay, Vega Jane,” he said softly. “No more pain. That’s what’s important, eh. Like you done for me dad. Even if it don’t look... if it don’t look so good no more.”
I felt tears creep to my eyes, but his look told me they were unwarranted.
He gripped my arm. “We’re alive, Vega Jane. We’re ALIVE.”
He opened his tuck and slipped on another shirt.
I looked around as the walls of trees sprouted on either side of us, soaring up so high they seemed to touch the sky. In a few moments, we were totally engulfed in another maze.
“Oh no!” I said, my spirits plummeting. I drew my wand and prepared to say the spell that would straighten the maze, when I started to feel funny. No, funny was the wrong word. I was feeling terrified. But what was making me terrified were things that I knew had not happened to me. I was a beast and then something was tearing me apart. I was a bird and I was being devoured. I was transformed into a hideous lycan and then I was disemboweled.
With a rush, my mind cleared.
A wendigo!
I looked behind us and there it was, soaring straight at us.
I grabbed Delph’s hand at the same time he scooped up Harry Two.
“Go, Vega Jane. Go!”
We shot upward until we had nearly cleared the maze’s treetops. Then I pointed us forward. I looked back. The wendigo was right behind us. The skylight spear and the resulting thunder-thrust hit so close to us that it nearly knocked us out of the sky. And I knew why.
I was flying over the Quag. The storms had arisen to stop me, as Astrea had said they would.
“Delph!” I screamed. “I can’t fly up here. The storms will stop me. We’ll have to go back into the maze.”
Delph had been gazing down from his high perch. “Before you drop, light up the maze down there,” he called over the punishing noise of the storm.
I had been glancing behind us to see the wendigo gaining, but I did what Delph asked.
“Illumina.”
The maze was suddenly brilliantly lighted. I saw Delph run his gaze over all of it. Another skylight spear hit a tree directly behind us. The force of the collision sent shock waves out that tumbled us across the air.
I lost my grip on Delph’s hand, and he and Harry Two fell away from me.
At the same instant, my mind was filled once more with the terror of another. When I glanced back, the wendigo was within twenty feet of me. The storm seemed to have no impact on the ghastly thing.
I forced my mind to clear and shot downward into the darkness, scanning everywhere for the falling pair.
“Illumina!”
I saw them and blasted toward them, the crown of my head pointed nearly straight to the ground. I had never gone this fast before and still it didn’t seem it would be fast enough. I was convinced we were all going to die and the bloody wendigo would feast on us.
I put on a burst of speed at this thought, reached out my hand and snagged Delph by the back of his shirt. Harry Two was still in his arms. I started to head back up, but Delph cried out, “Keep in the maze, Vega Jane. Keep in the maze.”
I looked at him and then back at the wendigo, which was still right on our tail.
I could feel my mind seizing up with terror, none of it mine, but that didn’t make it any less horrible. I must have slowed down because I heard Harry Two let out an enormous growl that made every hair on my neck stick straight up.
“No!” I screamed, as Harry Two leapt from Delph’s arms and directly at the wendigo, which was so close now that I could see its ghoulish, transparent shape nearly next to me.
I snagged Harry Two with my hand and redoubled my speed, leaving the wendigo behind, at least for now. When I looked down at Harry Two, I gasped. Part of his left ear was missing. While Delph held on to my leg, I put my canine in his harness, snatched the Adder Stone from my pocket and waved it over the spot where Harry Two’s ear had been. The stone could not regrow parts of the body, but it ceased the bleeding. And my canine seemed all right otherwise.
“Left, left!” screamed Delph.
I hung a left so sharp that our boots smacked against the trees.
“Right, then another right,” directed Delph.
I did as he said. I marveled that he had apparently memorized the maze from looking at it for only a few moments.
He kept barking out directions and I followed them. But the wendigo was still behind us and I intended to do something about that right now.
“Hang on, Delph,” I said, lifting up his hand until he was able to clutch part of the harness that was keeping Harry Two affixed to my chest.
I pointed my wand behind me and cried out, “Embattlemento.”
Then I went into a dive. The wendigo managed to avoid the spell shield by veering to the left, but it had allowed me separation. I flipped over so that I was flying on my back, made the mark of the X in the air with my wand and shouted, “Omniall.”
The light hit the wendigo directly on its transparent chest and then it literally went berserk. It immediately spun out of control and slammed into a wall of the maze. I watched it plummet and crash into another section of the wall. It kept doing this over and over, its mind and thus sense of direction gone, until it fell to the ground in a crumpled heap, dead.
I turned back around and soared off.
Twenty slivers later, following Delph’s directions, we shot free of the maze and into the open air. I quickly landed and detached Harry Two from his harness. I immediately hugged my canine and gingerly touched the spot where part of his left ear had once been. It pained me as much as Delph’s arm.