Extinction

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Pharaun lay on the forest floor, staring up into the angry eyes of five hissing serpents. Their fangs bared and dripping with poison, their mouths open wide, the red-and-black-banded vipers strained against the whip handle from which they grew.

The woman holding the whip stared down at Pharaun with tightly contained rage. Taller and stronger than the Master of Sorcere, she was an imposing figure. Pharaun could not see her face—the bright light streaming down from the sky above flooded his vision, turning her into a dark silhouette with bone-white hair—but her tone was as venomous as her serpents’ hisses.

“You stepped on that spider on purpose,” Quenthel said.

“I did not,” he spat back, wincing at the slush that was soaking through his elegant shirt, chilling his back. He was glad the other members of their group had scattered in different directions to search— that they weren’t there to observe him in such an undignified pose. “I can’t see a gods-cursed thing in this wretched light. Would I have let my trousers get into such a state if I could see well enough to step around the brambles that tore them? If there was a spider on the path, I didn’t know it was there.”

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