Barclay screamed at a pitch so high, the crows nestled in the surrounding trees cawed and fled to the sky. He dashed toward Viola and clung to her arm as the Beast came into full view.
It looked like a giant snake, with bark instead of scales and eyes the color of tree sap. Its head, which had been buried in the earth, was caked in dirt and crawling with worms and beetles. It slinked closer to the pair of them.
“We should run,” said Barclay frantically. Running had always been his best and only strategy.
“It’s a Styerwurm, a Prime class. That means it’s—”
The snake stretched open its mouth, so wide that it actually turned its jaw inside out. Barclay stared in fright at its endless expanse of stomach—dark and pink.
“Yep, yep,” Viola squeaked. “We run.”
They took off. The Styerwurm slithered after them, tearing through the trees. Barclay, being smaller and faster, quickly outpaced Viola, and he was far too terrified to turn around to see if she was still behind him. The Beast was every bit as ferocious as the sort in stories he’d heard, and now they were about to be eaten.
Viola screamed, and Barclay finally looked over his shoulder to see her on the ground. She’d tripped and fallen, and the snake was catching up at an alarming speed. Its rootlike tongue stretched through the leaves and snow toward her.
“Help me!” she called.
Barclay, who was a pitiful, cowardly excuse for a hero, who didn’t particularly even like Viola, ran back to help her. He grabbed her arm and hoisted her up. A long cut stretched down her shin where she’d scraped it, and she hobbled a bit when she put weight on that leg.
“Thanks,” she breathed.
“Never mind that, let’s just go—”
Barclay’s words quickly turned to shrieks when the tongue wrapped around his ankle and yanked him back. He flew through the air, hanging upside down. Belongings from his bag toppled out onto the forest floor, and the world spun around him as the tongue whipped him this way and that.
“Viola!” he screamed.
“Just be calm!” she called. “The Styerwurm has a very weak stomach, so it shakes its victims to death before it eats them.”
“How can I be calm when you tell me that?!”
Indeed, the tongue switched from swinging Barclay around to shaking him like a piggy bank. Barclay attempted to kick and pull at it, but its grip would not budge. Spots of black bloomed in his vision.
“Just… just hold on! Mitzi, help!” Mitzi emerged from her Mark and appeared on Viola’s shoulder with a determined squawk.
A blinding light burst from Mitzi’s mouth, the same attack that she had used the day before to ward off the Lufthund. Barclay switched from prying at the tongue to covering his eyes, but the snake, if affected, didn’t stop thrashing him. Barclay’s breakfast from this morning threatened to return for an explosive encore.
“Is it working?” he shouted. “Because it doesn’t feel like it is!”
“I’ll try something else!”
The light faded, and Barclay opened his eyes in time to see Viola raise her hands, palms out. A faint beam of red light shot out of them directly at the Styerwurm’s forehead, and there was the sound of something sizzling. The snake wrenched back, dropping Barclay into a heap on the snow.
Barclay jumped to his feet and staggered, dizzy, to Viola’s side. He pulled his charm out of his pocket and waved it around, making the air reek of skunks.
“What are you doing?” hissed Viola.
“It’s a charm! It wards away Beasts.”
“That’s ridiculous. There’s not Lore in it!”
Of course it worked—he’d bought it from Mrs. Esser, Dullshire’s most respected charm-maker. But he agreed they needed a better plan.
“Can’t you trap it or something?” he asked.
“No. I don’t have the right ingredients for a Styerwurm.”
“What about bonding with it?”
“You think I want a Beast like this? It’s huge! And its brain is the size of a pine cone.”
Stupid or not, the Styerwurm only grew angrier at Viola’s attack, and it narrowed its eyes at them and slithered forward, paying no mind to Barclay’s charm. It opened its jaw wide, wide, wide, and even though Viola stood her ground, Barclay tore off in the opposite direction.
He turned around in enough time to watch Viola get swallowed whole.
“Viola!” he screamed, but he was too late. The Beast’s mouth had closed, and Viola and Mitzi were gone.
She’s been eaten, he thought wildly, and I’m next.
He wished that he could undo all the events of the past few days. That he had never chased after Selby in the Woods. That he had never demanded Viola stop her dangerous trap. That they’d never broken any rules.
But he couldn’t take any of that back. And now he was going to die.
“Barclay!” he heard something shout. It sounded an awful lot like Viola, and Barclay realized with extreme panic that it must have been her ghost. “Barclay!”
He looked around for a glimmer of her spirit form but saw nothing. His gaze fearfully fell back on the Beast, who was writhing uncomfortably after eating something it had not had the chance to shake to death first.
“Barclay!”
It was then that he realized that Viola’s voice was coming not from the life beyond but from the Beast’s stomach. Something jutted out and punched at its abdomen, and it was not indigestion. Viola was alive. And she was trapped inside.
With the Beast distracted by its queasiness, Barclay raced to its side, where he’d seen her move. “Viola! I’m here! You need to get out!”
“Of course I need to get out! Do something!” Her voice was muffled by the low groan of the Beast’s unhappy stomach.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Anything!”
Barclay reached into his pocket and grabbed his dull mushroom knife. He plunged it into the Beast’s side, but it was too small. It didn’t even go past the barky scales.
“I can’t!” he screamed.
“Use your Beast! It’s a higher class!”
Barclay could think of many reasons why that was a terrible plan. First off, he didn’t even know how to summon his Beast. And even if he did, they were already dealing with one vicious monster. They certainly didn’t need to deal with two.
As he hesitated, the Styerwurm whipped around, whacking Barclay on the stomach and sending him flying down a hill. He tumbled to the bottom and landed painfully at the edge of the creek.
A red light burst out of the Beast’s stomach and beamed into the sky. As Barclay climbed his way up the hill, he watched in horror as its flesh broke apart and a bloodied hand appeared out of it, reaching for freedom. The slice grew bigger and bigger until it was human-sized. First Mitzi fell out, then Viola after her. Barclay caught them both before they took the same tumble down the slope.
The Beast, in a considerable amount of pain, let out a moan and turned around. It slithered away, and far in the distance, Barclay saw it once again bury its head in the earth.
“Yuck,” Barclay said. Viola and Mitzi were covered, every inch of them, in stomach juice. He held one hand to his mouth and used the other to wipe the filth off his clothes.
Viola’s curly buns were soaked, and the wispy hairs around her temples were plastered to her face. She wiped the pink gunk off her forehead, only for Mitzi—perched on her shoulder—to shake herself off and fling bile everywhere.