The Ritual of Blood and Bone

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chilling silence hangs heavily in the dense air. Seraphina's breaths are loud and muted against the thick fog. She gulps, trying not to let her fear creep up. In her chest, her heart pounds wildly and shivers run up her spine. All the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

The smell of decaying flesh burns her nose, making her gag. She brings her hand up to her mouth to try and stop herself from being sick.

She steps forward, her foot squelching in the thick mud that comes up to her ankles. It is dark brown and with every movement Seraphina makes, the stench of rotting eggs flies into the air.

Seraphina reaches for a tree low-hanging tree branch. The bark is a strange shade of sickly grey. Large spikes protrude from it and Seraphina is careful to avoid them as she pulls herself up onto it. She looks down at the mud and decides to climb a little higher, wanting to be as far off the ground as possible.

A tickling sensation dances across her muddy feet now they are free completely from the mud. She looks down and screams as thousands of tiny, black bug-like creatures crawl across her skin.

She reaches down, trying to brush them off as she kicks her legs. Panic bubbles up inside her. Especially as little spots of stinging pain begin to erupt across her skin.

They're biting her.

Panicked tears spill down Seraphina's cheeks as she tries to thrash them away. The pain grows more and soon, her feet are burning. Large welts already begin to form and the bugs still on her skin start to shift further up her legs.

Seraphina cries out and summons sunlight to her palms in a fit of desperation. Bright, burning light erupts from her hands and she runs them over her legs. The bugs scream, the sounds so high-pitched that Seraphina feels her ears begin to bleed.

But, as the light hits them, they shrivel up and smoke before falling off her body. Seraphina can barely breathe as adrenaline pumps through her, making her body violently tremble.

She sits on a thick branch and looks at her legs. Her skin is red raw and bleeding. The deep red blood mixes with the thick mud still clinging to her skin and drips into the ground below. Welts, oozing with a mixture of blood and a deep yellow substance ooze out of them.

Yet, despite the vile injuries, the pain begins to ebb. At first, Seraphina thinks it's the adrenaline. But a strange heavy numbness begins to sweep its way further up her legs. A tired, lethargic feeling sweeps over and she struggles to keep her eyes open.

She almost doesn't hear the strange bubbling beneath her. 

She looks down from her spot on the branch, barely able to focus on the mud below her. She narrows her eyes, trying to stop her vision from spinning.

A hand slowly claws its way out of the ground.

Seraphina doesn't process it at first, confusion clouding her mind. She tilts her head, watching as the skeletal hand claws at the mud, trying to find something to latch onto. The skin is a strange shade of yellowish-grey. The nails are long and brown, its tips ending in jagged squares.

Seraphina wretches again as a slab of skin peels off its palm and sags loosely. A thick brown goo oozes out of the wound.

Another hand appears from the mud beside it. This one is just as vulgar.

Seraphina gulps as the hands wrap around a tree root and pull. Slowly, arms begin to appear. Just as skeletal and sickly as the hands, Seraphina gags once more as more skin peels away.

A strange clicking and grinding sound fills the air, but Seraphina can't look away as the creature drags itself slowly out of the mud.

It isn't until its head appears that Seraphina realises what's happening.  For a second, she can't look away. Tufts of thin, mangy grey hair protrude from a sickly grey scalp marred with deep gashes and patches of peeling skin. Its face is gaunt, clinging to its bones making its small yellow eyes look hollow. Its mouth is too big. Lips that are deeply cracked as they stretch out over large, blunt, square yellow teeth that are chipped and cracked. It sniffs at the air, despite it only having a hole where its nose should be.