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Exploding heat, light, and power attacked the cyclops’s round, boulder-sized eye—ripping out a scream that shook theisland. He clapped his hand over his eye, bellowing, thrashing, flinging himself against the cave walls.
Did it work!? Did we blind him?
He ripped his hand off, and his red, scorched cornea rolled in his head, until it landed right on me.
“Ruuuun!”
Theron burst out of the cave, speeding down the hill as we rolled off Nitsa’s back. The top of the cave blew apart—a fist ripping through earth and stone like tissue paper. A deadly rock shower rained down on us, falling within inches of killing us, but horror-struck we stood.
How did the cave hold all fifteen hundred feet of him? How did the ground hold him up? How did we stand a chance?
It wasn’t just his height. The cyclops was a couple football fields wide, lugging rolls of leathery, tanned skin; three-trunk arms; massive feet tipped with lethally long, cracked, yellowing toenails; and a powerful stench that watered my eyes. All of it was terrifying, yes, but none so terrifying as the unrestrained, lip-curling hatred in his eye.
We turned tail and ran away screaming. It wasn’t coordinated, or pretty, or something you wanted to look at. It was just four pant-wetting terrified teenagers fleeing through the forest like their lives depended on it. Because it did.
We thrashed through brush, collided into trees, windmilled through hanging branches, and screamed our heads off the whole way.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“He’s following us,” Nitsa shrieked. “Gods help us, he’s coming!”
A shadow fell over us. He was already here.
We burst through the trees onto the beach. Daciana and Ionna knelt over Tycho, redressing his wounds. Three frantic voices shouting their names snapped their heads up... and up.
“Ahhh!” all three sounded off.
“Door!” I held the key out in front of me, screeching at it. “Open the door. For hate of the gods, open the fucking door!”
Boom!
A foot stomped down next to us, exploding a wave of sand and water in our faces—tossing us off the skin of the earth.
I tumbled head over feet, landing hard. The key flew out of my hand. “No!” Cracking my eyes open, I fought to see. Sand coated me toe to eyeballs. I couldn’t make out the hands trying to rub it away. I couldn’t see my friends. “Guys? Daciana? Theron? Can you hear me? Are you okay!”
Boom!
I was thrown again—flung clear across into the sea. The cyclops was stamping us out. We weren’t even meals. We were scurrying ants destined to be scraped off the bottom of his feet.
“Give me the key!”
There wasn’t time enough to be shocked that he spoke English. I forced up on hands and knees, squinting for my friends, the key, and the door to get us out!
He punched the water, and a tidal wave rose from the seas—coming straight for us.
I opened my mouth to scream, and sea water filled it. Flooding my throat and lungs, claiming, then throwing me away. I soared through the air and crashed into a tangle of spears, fronds, and leaves.
Nitsa flew past me, colliding with her tree, then thudding to the ground. Theron landed next to me. All around, my friends dropped from the sky.
Theron was right. He was so terribly, heart-breakingly right. There was no winning against a creature like this. I could undo our deaths a million times, and he’d kill us a million and one.
“My key!” He raised his foot over us, blotting out the sun. “Thieves, die. Die!”
This was it. The end of our doomed rescue mission. The end of the line.
The end of our threads.
“Arrgggh!” His roar echoed through the prison, flattening my ears to my head.
