A searing throb pulsed in Leonotis's leg with every shallow, ragged breath. Anansi's Forest, he thought with a detached sort of horror, more than lived up to its venomous reputation.
Sticky, silken threads, almost invisible in the gloom, clung to his clothes like ghostly fingers, and the air hummed with the unsettling, multi-legged skittering of things he fervently hoped were just hallucinations from the spider's poison, but feared were horribly real.
He leaned, shivering, against the gnarled, slimy trunk of an ancient, moss-covered tree, the damp earth chilling him to the bone despite the humid air. Hours – or had it been mere minutes? – had blurred into a nightmarish, disorienting cycle of stumbling through tangled, grasping undergrowth, his heart hammering, and desperately evading the clicking, hungry mandibles of spiders the size of his own head that seemed to drop from every shadow.
Panic, a cold and clammy serpent, coiled tight and suffocating in his gut. He was lost. Utterly, terrifyingly, hopelessly lost.
The arrogant confidence, the burning impatience that had propelled him into this green, whispering hell, had long since withered and died, replaced by a gnawing, bone-deep fear and a desperate, aching longing for Low's sharp, grounding wit and Jacqueline's quiet, steadying strength. He'd been a fool, a reckless, prideful fool.
He closed his eyes, forcing himself to ignore the kaleidoscopic, nauseating patterns that danced behind his eyelids. He focused on the faint, emerald hum that now resided within him, a nascent power that felt both alien and intrinsically part of him.
The green magic, still a wild and untamed thing, stirred hesitantly at his command, though his control, especially now with the venom clouding his mind and sapping his strength, was shaky at best.
He pictured Low's determined face, the fierce loyalty that burned beneath her cynicism; he pictured Jacqueline's serene gaze, the deep well of unexpected power she held. He needed to reach them, to anchor his desperate intent to their presence.
With a grunt of effort that sent fresh waves of pain lancing up his leg, he extended his root sword, willing the magic to flow, to obey.
A thin, vibrant green vine, no thicker than his little finger, snaked out from the gnarled tip, quivering with a nascent, almost desperate energy. It pulsed with a faint, inner light, a fragile, verdant beacon in the oppressive, suffocating gloom of the forest.
Low… Jacqueline… find me… he thought, pouring all his fading hope, his terror, and his desperate, urgent need into the living tendril.
He imagined it reaching them, a tiny green thread of connection cast across the vast, unforgiving woods. He imbued it with a whisper of his presence, a faint, almost imperceptible echo of his fear, his regret, and his desperate plea for help.
Slowly, painstakingly, fighting against the encroaching dizziness and the venom-induced tremors in his hand, he directed the vine upwards. He guided it through the dense, interlocking canopy, hoping against hope it would find a clear path above the suffocating, poisonous foliage.
It snagged on unseen leaves, twitched erratically as his concentration wavered, its precious light dimming and flaring like a dying firefly with each wave of nausea that washed over him.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of strained effort, the glowing tip of the vine reached a small, tantalizing opening in the leaves far above, a fleeting, pinprick glimpse of the pale, overcast sky.
With a final, shuddering surge of his will, his vision greying at the edges, Leonotis released the tendril. It drifted upwards for a breathless moment, a fragile green thread against the vast, indifferent grey, before being caught by a gentle, almost imperceptible breeze.
It spiraled away, a tiny, desperate message carried on the wind, a magical SOS cast into the vast, swallowing wilderness.
But the forest was immense, its secrets ancient and closely guarded. The tendril was small, its light weak, its magical signature fainter than a dying breath. It was a whisper in a storm, a single green leaf falling in an endless, uncaring forest.
The chances of Low or Jacqueline finding it, of them even noticing its fleeting, fragile presence in time, felt infinitesimally, terrifyingly small. Yet, it was all he had left. A fragile thread of hope cast into the deepening green abyss.