Lach tried to sit up, but Trace put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back down. “Hold on there, buddy. Let the potion work just a little bit longer before you get up.”
Lachlan relaxed back into the softness of the leaves beneath him. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks, ma.”
I chuckled, grabbing one of the large man’s hands and pressing it between mine.
As Lachlan rested, Merrick opened his hand, revealing a small piece of paper.
“I found this too. It’s a clue. It looks like a small part of the map.” He held it aloft, tilting it slightly so that Lachlan could see it too. “It’s hard to make out what’s going on here; part of the map is missing pieces. But from what I can make out, the lower portion is where we started, Giant’s Pass. The others went to the right, and we went to the left. This, in the upper left-hand corner—I believe that’s where we are now, and from the looks of it, the gem is somewhere in this general direction. That means the others went the wrong way, but we went the right way.”
“I knew that all along. All part of my master plan.” Lachlan laughed as he sat up slowly, his lips quirking up in a devilish grin.
“Yeah, good thinking, Lach,” Trace said.
“That’s not what we’re here for though, is it?” the Irishman asked, rolling his shoulders experimentally, as if making sure everything truly was healed.
“No,” I agreed. “It’s not. Let the others fight over the gem if they want to. I want answers, and to get those, we need to find the gods.”
“That means we need to get out of the Gods’ Challenge playing field,” Merrick said, glancing down at the map piece again. “Maybe we can use this to get closer to where we want to go.”
“You good?” I asked, glancing at Lach. I wanted to tell him to lie back and rest more, but I knew he’d never go for that. I wouldn’t either in his shoes.
We gathered our things, and I helped Lachlan to his feet.
His skin was healed and unbroken, as if he had never been injured. He seemed to have even more energy than he did before the bird took him. My heart squeezed with happiness, something warm and sweet spreading through my stomach.
There was no denying it anymore. I cared about these men so much more than I had expected to in the beginning.
Merrick shouldered the pack again, and the four of us kept our magic ready at our fingertips as we turned away from where the clue was pointing us, and instead headed toward the outskirts of the Gods’ Challenge playing area.
We were heading deeper into the godly realm, with no idea what we would find… or what would find us.
Chapter Fifteen
Sitting down on the edge of a rock, I pulled open the pack I had found.
The men gathered around, waiting to see what exactly was inside. Merrick’s pack was mostly practical items—charms and healing potions, and wilderness gear. I had found a second pack earlier in the day, but with the man-eating plants everywhere we turned, we’d decided not to stop until we found a safer area. It was midday, and aside from a small break to nap around dawn, none of us had slept. We had been hiking for what felt like a million years.
Since we knew that traveling in the opposite direction of the gem would draw unwanted attention and suspicion, we had created illusions of ourselves that would move slowly toward the gem. I wasn’t sure how convincing they would be, but hopefully they would keep focus off the four of us until we made it out of the challenge playing area. I was fairly certain the magical surveillance wouldn’t follow us beyond that.
Because no students were expected to leave the playing area. Ever.
“So, what’ve we got in there?” Merrick asked excitedly, drawing my attention back to the pack in my hands.
Trace chuckled. “It’s amazing how out here in the jungle, and the desert, finding a backpack with some random shit in it could actually make us excited.”
“At least while we’re out here, we can appreciate the small things.” Merrick shrugged. “When we get back though, I’ll appreciate large plates of bacon, orange juice, and clean sheets.”
Lachlan scoffed. “The first day we were back last semester, I just appreciated walkin’ around the corner and not havin’ some sort of creature try to eat my fuckin’ face.”
We all chuckled as I began to pull things out of the pack. “A canteen that seems to already have water in it, a knife, some rope, and…”
Everyone sat there staring at me, waiting to see what else I was about the say. I pulled out a black satchel and opened it up, reaching my arm elbow deep inside even though originally it fit in the palm of my hand. I smiled as I gripped what I knew had to be rations and pulled them out, tossing one to each of the men.
“It might not be plates of bacon and orange juice, but I’m starving enough to eat anything. If I had to eat another bug, or the insides of a moving vine, I told myself that Trace’s arm would be the next thing to go.”
Trace wrinkled his nose, then brightened. He gave me a bawdy wink as he opened up his rations. “I’m going to take the fact that you’d eat me first as a compliment, Snow.”
We all laughed and sat there comfortably as we ate the same tasteless granola bar-type things that we’d had last time. Whatever. They were just as gross as always, but I hadn’t been kidding about being hungry enough to eat anything. After I’d finished my share, I leaned back against a nearby boulder.
“So, how long have we been walking?” I asked.
Merrick took a sip of the water and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth “A little over a week since we got Lach back. I didn’t even think it was possible to walk through the godly realm for that long.”
I nodded. “From what I read in the library back at the school, the godly realm is roughly the size of earth. A portion of it is given to the Gods’ Challenge, and while it’s not a relatively large piece, it’s very broad and spread out. Only here, it’s constantly changing and someone else has control of what we see.”
Everyone sat in silence for a moment, thinking about just how large of an area we had traveled. Exhaustion seeped through my bones like lead, and I groaned. “As good as it feels to just sit here, we’ve got to get going. Remember, once one of the actual contestants finds the gem and claims it, we’ll all be brought back to the academy. So we need to find what we’re looking for before that happens. Last time, we were here for almost a month, but it’s already been a week. I really don’t want to have come all of this way just to miss out on it because we took too long.”
All the men grunted and nodded, and we heaved ourselves to our feet. Sitting for too long was dangerous. We needed to get a move on, and we had to find that same sense of urgency we’d had at the beginning. The answers to our questions were so close, it was almost as if I could feel it. There was a pulling in my chest, a strange sort of surety that filled me, growing stronger every day; I wasn’t even sure where it was coming from.
I packed all the things we had found back into the bag, and Lachlan swept it out of my hands, throwing it over his back before heading out. I swatted his well-toned ass, but didn’t object. He’d let me carry it for the past several hours, so I could accept his chivalrous gesture without feeling like a slacker.