The Path of Giants by B.T. Narro (best novels to read .txt) 📕

a huge snake slithering through the mix as the rest parted to make way.

It was nearly as thick as a tree trunk. The enormous serpent seemed unafraid of Eden as it slowly slithered toward her. She blasted it with dteria, throwing back the cluster of snakes around their queen. But the queen only coiled up from the force of the spell, and Eden saw just how big she really was.

Now taller than Eden, and with much of her still on the ground, the queen snapped at Eden. She was slower than the other snakes, making it easier for Eden to duck under the attack. But unlike the other snakes, the queen did not fall off the cliff. She coiled back and snapped at Eden again.

Eden had to dive to the side to avoid being bitten by the queen’s massive fangs, but a whole mess of snakes were waiting right there. She made a wall of dteria, the poison of their fangs wetting the clear energy as they tried to bite her face.

She swept the energy at them like a large broom, brushing them all away from her and sending many more off the cliff. She had just enough time to look back and put up her boot, blocking the queen’s mouth just barely, for the span of it was about as big as Eden’s foot.

She made a claw, squeezing dteria in the air. She surprised herself by actually grabbing the queen by her neck. Eden pulled with all her strength, dragging the queen off the cliff by her head.

But the queen was so damn long, and the massive snake wrapped the end of her tail around a tree trunk as the rest of her body swung out from the edge of the forest. Eden made a run for that tree in hopes of bashing the snake’s tail with her rock, but she screamed and fell flat to the ground as the queen’s swinging face came around and nearly bit her ear off.

Eating pushed herself up, blasted back the approaching snakes with dteria, and slammed her rock into the wrapped tail of the queen. The massive snake came loose and fell toward the sea with a loud hiss.

About half of the snakes jumped off the cliff after her. The other half lost their hesitation as they darted at Eden with pure aggression. There were too many for her to deal with. She hoisted herself up with dteria, something she wasn’t very good at. Accuracy was her strong suit, not power. She was slow to rise, but she made it just high enough for all of their strikes to miss her feet.

And then her head struck something hard.

She fell, dazed, realizing only too late that she must’ve hit a tree branch. She thrashed and blasted dteria in every direction she could, but she was bitten a few times before she could get back to her feet.

Panting, she was still ready to fight, but all the snakes were now backing away. They hid behind trees, poking their little heads out, their forked tongues dancing as if they were taunting her.

She looked down at bloody wounds on both her arms, then at a couple holes in the lower half of her pants. Her whole body felt hot as if a fever was coming on.

Her muscles started to give out. She fell to a knee, then toppled over to the ground. She wanted to scream for help again, but the whole world was going dark.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Eden tried to fight the snakes as she came in and out of her slumber, but she lacked the strength to move. Time passed in jolts, moments of consciousness almost springing her awake, but something kept blocking her. The poison.

Suddenly she sat up with a gasp. She wasn’t where she’d been before but in some sort of small structure. There was a terrible taste in her mouth. She slightly remembered drinking something, and maybe hearing a male voice?

She seemed to be sitting on a soft mattress. Fearful it was the spider-like creature trying to entrap her, she jumped off and rolled across the wooden floor, her muscles weak.

It turned out she really was inside a walled and roofed structure, as she had first thought. There were no creatures here, but there was a strange-looking man poking his head around the doorway from outside.

He drew his knife as he stepped toward Eden. He looked human, but something was off about him. She couldn’t quite figure out what it was. It wasn’t that his tanned skin was strange, nor his light blue eyes or the shape of his head and his muscular body. It was his hair, she realized. There was a golden hue to his blond locks.

“Are you wishing to run?” he asked. It wasn’t so much that he had an accent, but he did speak the words differently than she was used to hearing. There was less of a pause between them and more of a mash of syllables, like he had a constant hum droning behind the words.

“No, I’m fine here,” Eden said politely.

He kept his bright eyes on her.

“Although,” she continued, “it would help me to know where here is.”

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Dorrinthal.”

“So it was you who opened the portal?” There was anger in his tone. “For that, you will die.”

“Wait!”

But he was already coming toward her with aggression in his eyes.

Eden struck him with dteria, knocking him across the floor of the small room. She stumbled past him and out the door, but she slid to a stop. Or she tried. There was nothing beneath her.

Her feet slid over the edge. She started to teeter forward. She turned as she screamed, trying to find something to grab but only finding the small one-room structure she had come from.

She was as high up as the trees. She couldn’t fall from this height and survive. She didn’t have the proper skill with dteria to catch herself. She thought to move dteria around her body and