55th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

  Newt had taken another page from the book of Dandelion. After he closed the distance to fifteen feet, the stegosaurus turned sideways to greet the unseen opponent with its tail. Newt seized the chance and exploded with speed, his glaive stabbing straight for the base of the spirit beast’s head.

  The sudden appearance of an enemy from the dinosaur’s blind spot terrified the creature for the briefest moments, which were the rest of its life. Water-aligned spiritual energy rippled, but the sword-like spearhead sank into the dinosaur’s skull and cooked its brain before the shield fully formed.

  Newt twisted the glaive and pulled it out, his mind full of things he needed to consider, but first he checked whether the stegosaurus had a core. Ten minutes later, he found no core, only flesh over-saturated with spiritual energy surrounding the spirit beast’s second heart.

  With his butchery done, Newt slowly spun full three hundred and sixty degrees, sensing all directions around him. Roughly a third of the circle was safe while the rest spelled disaster. His mind made up, Newt headed straight for the center of the dangerous area, leaving the carcass behind.

  So, if the Valley of the Lost reverses a person’s or a spirit beast’s sense of danger, why were Obsidian and the rest unaffected? Wait. They said nothing unnerved them the same way it did me. Could it be that the entire danger zone was dangerous to them?

  Newt considered the thought and decided he was almost certainly correct, but left it as an open question he would discuss with his master the next time he saw her.

  But if that’s the case, why didn’t the spirit beasts we fought react to me? Because every direction was dangerous to them too, so nothing was dangerous to them? Why didn’t I sense them as safe? Is it because they weren’t dangerous to me?

  Newt considered everything that had happened in the past days, then recalled the shroud deinonychus.

  It looked straight at me when I attacked, but it didn’t have enough time to avoid my attack. Shroud deinonychus is a spirit beast indigenous to the Valley of the Lost. It makes sense that native species have learned how to overcome or compensate for the danger sense inversion.

  Newt sat down to meditate on his discovery, a part of his consciousness dedicated to minding his budding sense of danger, looking out for sudden changes.

  He was on the right track, definitely, he just had to learn that up was down and down was up. The fact that Valley of the Lost still felt hostile to him meant that he was still in a layer it did not deem correct for him, but if his guess was correct, spirit beasts would eat him long before the valley thought he was properly challenged.

  Now, how do I get rid of the headache I get from fighting my instincts?

  ***

  57th of Season of Fire, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

  The past three days would have been Jasmine’s nightmare incarnate, except everything was running smoothly, despite Newstar’s disappearance. The spirit beasts, she was certain would jump out and eat or crush them one by one had never appeared. What appeared instead were seven opponents, three of which the group had ambushed, and the remaining ones they confronted frontally without suffering a single injury.

  The fights were going well, excellent in fact, the problem was - Newstar was still missing. She did not believe Obi’s speech about overhunting spirit beasts for one second, but there was nothing they could do to help, save for pressing on as fast as possible towards the exit and getting help.

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  They had met their mission quota and then some, and their sole remaining reason for searching for more mist crystals was their own greed, which paled before the value of a human life. Rose said they were a mere handful of hours away from the exit, but the girl still checked her map every handful of minutes to confirm they were on the right track.

  Sensible, really. Jasmine wished she could be as sensible and just do her part of the job to the best of her ability. As things stood, she forced herself to keep a brave front and believe everything would turn out fine. Putting up a facade was easy. Keeping a certain memory from invading her mind, not so much.

  The face was different, but the memory was real. Instead of Blue, Newstar was shattered into chunks of gore by a flailing stegosaurus. It could have happened at any point in the past three days. It could be happening even as she suppressed her wild, grim imagination..

  Her baby brother’s startled scream snapped her out of her waking nightmare. In the fraction of a second it took for her to shift her gaze and observe Obi, a whitish-gray blur slammed into him, toppling him to the ground.

  The dinosaur was human-sized, slim and wiry. Its massive jaw was full of pointy teeth, half as long as her pinky finger. The massive claws on the dinosaur’s feet pierced the robe covering Obi’s abdomen, then, instead of tearing into his flesh, they screeched against his Stone Skin.

  The layer of gray stone spread across Obi’s body, but not quickly enough. The shroud deinonychus clamped its jaw around Obi’s shoulder, and the monster jerked its head back, splattering Obi’s face and neck with blood.

  Obi grunted and Stone Skin covered the wound, swiftly spreading down to encase his hands. The deinonychus scratched at Obi’s neck, but its strike only caused a handful of sparks.

  Jasmine lunged towards them, sword drawn. She slashed horizontally, careful not to hit her brother, but the agile dinosaur jumped out of her way, then pounced back at Obi, slamming its clawed feet into his chest. Obi, just trying to get up, slammed hard against the ground again, but Stone Skin held. The deinonychus slashed and scratched so fast Jasmine barely saw a blur. She counted the strikes by sound and sparks flying off her brother.

  Jasmine swiped her blade again, but the deinonychus retreated, then lunged at Obi, trying to use the added momentum to crack his stone shell.

  “Now!” Obi shouted, grabbing hold of the dinosaur’s ankles.

  The beast tried to jump out of the way, jerking Obi’s arms up, but Jasmine’s little brother held fast. The deinonychus raised its claw to block the massive sword, but its effort was futile. The blade severed the limb, then the neck, and blood gushed into the air.

  The headless spirit beast thrashed, then its twitching body fell to the ground beside Obi.

  “Let’s go.” Obi got up, ignoring the corpse and the potential core inside. The dinosaur was small, unlike the other seven they met since losing Newt, butchering it would have taken five minutes, yet Obi did not spare it a glance.

  “I need to heal your wound.” Rose forced herself to sound calm, but Jasmine noticed the faint quiver of her hands. “You’re bleeding, and a chunk of your flesh is missing.”

  “Can you do it while we walk?” Obi asked.

  “I,” Rose stuttered, before steeling herself and shouting. “No, I can’t dammit! Sit still for a quarter of an hour and let me heal you. Fifteen minutes won’t make a difference, whatever’s happening, and the difference between you entering a fight wounded and combat ready is a huge deal for us.”

  Obsidian looked like he was about to argue, when he sighed and his shoulders slumped, blood still flowing from his wound.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, I’m not thinking straight.” Obi sat on the ground, and Rose placed her hand on his wound.

  While her brother’s wound glowed with bluish light, Jasmine looked at the dead shroud deinonychus, then took out her butchering knife and got to work.

  She could not remember ever being as unenthusiastic about searching a spirit beast’s carcass. More importantly, even when she found the core, it barely caused a flicker of emotion.

  “Found a core,” she called out her find, but nobody cheered.

  Rose had stopped Obi’s bleeding, and was doing something to stimulate his natural recovery and prevent infections and scars, much like she always did, and Obi merely grunted in acknowledgement.

  Another five minutes and they were off. Obi’s wound was raw, flesh still missing, but the damaged muscles would regrow with time, and he was more or less ready for any other last minute encounters. The three of them advanced through the mists for two more hours when Jasmine’s skin crawled.

  She wanted to turn away, to leave the path they were on, but forced herself to follow Rose’s instructions.

  Then Obi disappeared. He was their vanguard, and he was gone. That could only mean one thing, he had left the Valley of the Lost.

  “Rose, you next, I’ll hold up the rear.”

  Rose obeyed, gave Jasmine the compass, and a handful of seconds later, all three of them had safely exited the valley.

  “Where is Newstar?” Hazel, Rose’s senior sister, asked.

  “Big sis!” Rose burst into tears, the suppressed fears and emotions finally free. “We got separated. He was tied with three ropes while searching for misterium, but…”