The Fragile Tower - Book 1 of the No.1 magical fantasy series

The Fragile Tower Chapter 11 - The Evanescents

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Grace couldn't help looking behind her, despite the urgency of the book's command. Her eyes struggled to find anything to lock onto, and then she realised that the patches of mist were moving towards her, rapidly, across the open snow.

She willed her legs to move, but they felt heavy and slow like they did in her nightmares.

She turned to face forwards, losing sight of the mist, even though it made her whole spine crawl. She just had to run.

Her legs and her lungs hurt within thirty metres, and her mind threw up a protest.

I thought it was supposed to be green fog? But she shoved the thought away. The book had told her to run, and she trusted it implicitly. She just hoped it had some kind of opinion on where she might find safety.

            As the thought hit her, she raised the flapping book towards her face, trying to focus on the map as it jogged around in front of her vision. It took her a few moments to see that it had changed now, showing a single pulsing point within the trees at the crest of the hill, and as she looked, the word "Here" spread out above it.

            She looked ahead, up the snow hill, and felt like she might vomit. It looked impossibly distant, and she was exhausted already.

Come on, it's not even a mile, she told herself. You run way further than that in cross country every week.

But it was a mile uphill with a heavy pack, and her coat was flapping uncomfortably against her legs, a book held awkwardly in her hand. Those floating forms looked as if they had no weight at all. How could she outrun them?

She risked a glance behind her, and they were much, much closer. They were drawing in from each side, their hazy forms travelling impossibly swiftly over the snow. She was suddenly reminded of the scene in Jurassic Park where the raptors converge on their victim through long grass.

It was enough to push her harder, and to find speed in her legs she had never known she had. Agonizingly slowly, the trees grew closer, and she gritted her teeth against the pain of her heaving breaths and the itching sweat that was soaking into her clothes. She wasn't going to be beaten by a gas.

As she dragged air in her lungs and prepared herself to sprint the last twenty metres, she smelled a sudden chemical odour and almost retched again. How could they look so harmless and smell so awful?

She couldn't afford the time to look again, but she knew they must be close. For a moment she had the sickening thought that she might be breathing in their poisonous fog already without realising it, and that she was already dying breath by breath.

But then she flew into the relative dimness of the trees. Her eyes were so dazzled by the snow that she didn't see the ground drop away until her foot met emptiness and she was suddenly falling, sliding and tumbling down a slope.

The world twisted and righted itself three times before she struck something, hard, and she came to a stop, thanking heaven for the backpack. Her vision was having trouble settling, and her lungs hurt like fury, but she could see a tree looming over her and a steep drop a little way away. She had fallen into a gully.

Her head span when she lifted it, and she thought fuzzily that she needed to do something. Those misty shapes would be on her soon.

Her eyes caught a green glow pulsing from the book, which was wedged in the snow next to her. She pulled it out and opened it again. A symbol had appeared on the map, encased in a circle. It was one she vaguely recognised from having read the thirteen of them over twice, and she knew what she had to do.