She said nothing, sliding carefully out of her seat. Far from preparing to fight, her muscles tensed so she could run away. But what would she be running away from? She couldn't see anything, just a shadowy forest. Shouldn't she see a glint of a glass lens at some point? The shady government organization would probably want to shoot her from a safe distance.

Then they charged. Lotus screamed, as space that looked empty except for a few shadows resolved into half a dozen—shapes? It was no wonder none of them had noticed the eyes on them, because they didn't look like living creatures. Instead, Lotus saw a creature composed of bits and pieces of rotten wood, connected by a spindly array of vines and ivy. They wove between large and small sections of wood, each one covered with white mildew and fungus and crumbling at the edges.

With the creatures charging at her, they didn't look like rotten wood anymore—they looked like wolves, baring mouths filled with tooth-shaped chunks of wood, sharpened and pointed inward. If they got a good grip on her body, she had no doubt about whether they would rip her apart.