They kept walking.
The clicking continued somewhere ahead in the dark, wet and rhythmic and patient, and nobody talked about it because talking about it meant acknowledging it and acknowledging it meant dealing with it and none of them were ready to deal with it yet.
Then Zhang started singing.
"Two blacks in the back, ohh yeahhh—"
Andre, walking backwards with his eyes fixed on the creature, could not turn around. This was the only reason Zhang survived what came next.
"The fuck you mean two blacks in the back."
"It's true," Zhang said simply. "Plus black rhymes with back. It works."
"You could have said I got a mac in the back," Andre said, and his voice shifted into something else entirely, something with rhythm and weight behind it. "Pack you in a sack, this is a rapid rap attack, you bout to get smacked like a snack attack—"
The forest went quiet for a different reason.
Connor and Diego both clapped. Zhang clapped twice, stopped, then clapped again.
"Ok," Zhang said. "That was actually impressive."
"Well yeah," Diego said, nodding with great authority. "Because all Black people can rap."
Andre walked backwards in silence for a moment. "I don't know if I'm supposed to be offended or take that as a compliment."
"Compliment," Diego said.
"...Ok."
"Guys," Connor said. "Come on. Lock in. No gyaats if we die in this forest."
Diego's head snapped forward. "I do need my gyaats." He paused. "Zhang. Do you know how to get us out of here?"
Zhang looked at him. "Diego. You taco brain idiot. How the hell would I know."
"Well aren't Asian people supposed to be smart. I just thought since you're Asian you'd—"
Zhang walked in silence for a moment. "I don't know if I should feel offended or take that as a compliment."
"Compliment," Diego said.
"...Ok."
The clicking continued.
Low and wet and rhythmic, coming from somewhere ahead where the path narrowed between the massive trunks and the shadows sat thickest. It hadn't gotten closer. It hadn't gotten further. It just persisted, the way things in this forest persisted, with the patience of something that understood time differently than they did.
Diego lasted about forty more seconds.
"OH MY GOD—"
"SHHHH." Connor, Zhang, and Andre all said it simultaneously, sharp and urgent.
"My fault, my fault." Diego dropped his voice. "But god dang. Are we even sure it's Mr Peek-a-Boo making that noise?"
Zhang giggled quietly. "Haha. Peek-a-Boo."
"I don't think so," Andre said from the back, eyes still forward on the creature. "The clicking sounds different. Further left."
"Then where is it coming from," Diego said.
Nobody answered. Because nobody knew.
Then all four Codex windows flickered open at the same time, unprompted, displaying a single line of amber text.
DON'T. LOOK. AT. IT.
Connor stared at his. "Don't look at it. What does that mean, don't look at what specifically—"
"Who knows," Diego said. "Who cares."
"Diego it might be import—"
The clicking got louder.
Close. Too close. Coming from the left now, just beyond the tree line, just past where the darkness between the trunks went from grey to absolute. Diego's eyes moved without him deciding to move them, pulling left the way eyes pull toward things they shouldn't, and he saw it.
It stood between two of the massive trees at the edge of the path, half dissolved into the shadow around it, and it was wrong in a way that took a moment to fully register. Tall. Extremely tall. Its body was skeletal and stretched, limbs too long, proportions that didn't resolve into anything that should have been able to stand upright. The torso was narrow and hollow looking, like something had been removed from inside it. Its arms hung low, fingers elongated into dark claws that grazed the soil without it seeming to notice. The legs were uneven, one longer than the other, and it stood on them anyway with a stillness that made the wrongness worse.
A long spear ran through its skull from one side to the other. Not a wound. Just there, the way it had always been there, the way everything in this forest was simply the way it was without explanation or apology.
Its head was tilted slightly upward, distant and detached, like it was listening to something above the canopy.
Then it stopped listening.
Its head rotated. Not turned. Rotated. Slow and continuous, all the way around, backwards, until its face was pointing directly behind it. The eyes opened.
Red. Both of them. Glowing faint and steady in the dark between the trees, fixed on Diego with the particular focus of something that had found what it was looking for.
"U-uh," Diego said. "G-guys."
It moved.
No warning. No wind up. One moment it was between the trees and the next it was in front of Diego, spear already swinging in a low horizontal arc aimed directly at his midsection, the displaced air arriving half a second after the creature itself.
Diego threw himself backwards.
The spear tip passed close enough to scrape the front of his armor, a sound like a fingernail dragged across metal, and then it was past him and he was on the ground and the creature was standing over him with its backwards facing head and its red eyes and its spear already pulling back for a second strike.
The spear pulled back.
Diego ran.
The creature came after him, those long uneven legs swallowing ground in strides that had no right to work, and the forest closed behind them both like a curtain dropping.
Andre was still facing backwards, eyes fixed on the dark behind the group. He hadn't turned. Couldn't.
"Guys. What's going on."
"Diego is being chased by a tall tall monster." Zhang said it like the words hadn't fully assembled into meaning yet.
"THEN HELP HIM, MAN." Andre's voice cracked out hard and urgent. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE!"
Zhang was already turning. "Connor, come on, I need you to—"
Connor stood completely still. His hands were shaking, both of them, a fine continuous tremor that he didn't seem aware of. His eyes weren't fixed on anything. His body had made a decision separate from him and the decision was simply: not yet.
Zhang looked at him. Looked at the tree line. Looked back.
He shook his head.
"Fine. I'll do it myself."
He pulled the bow off his shoulder, nocked an arrow, and found the creature through the gap in the trees. Drew. Breathed. Released.
The arrow died in the air thirty feet out, dropping limp into the undergrowth well short of anything. And it didn't matter. The creature was already gone, the space between the trunks holding nothing but the empty dark where it had been a half second before.
Zhang lowered the bow.
"Aw, shit."
The clicking resumed. Somewhere ahead. Patient and low and wet, moving through the trees without hurry, without direction they could map.
Diego was gone. Where, none of them knew.