CHAPTER 132

"Oh, fuck me!" Yukie swept her arm in a wide arc and a giant wall of ice appeared just as the middle head opened up its mouth and roared. A large stream of fire danced across the ice, melting holes in it before the gout disappeared.

Yuki was already busy tossing out a couple more cards. She grabbed Mike by the collar and pulled him behind a tree as the cards unfolded into human form and took off running in opposite directions. She sent her fireball after one of the figures, and the three-headed dog chased that one, its feet thudding heavily on the forest floor.

"Was that Cerberus?" Mike whispered.

"No, it was fucking Micky Mouse, and this is the magical kingdom of Disney!" When she looked at him, he saw that her eyes were wider than he had ever seen. "Yes, it was Cerberus! We have to get back, now!"

"Don't have to tell me twice," he muttered, and they began picking their way through the fog. Without the fireball, it was even harder to navigate the trees, but luckily they had gone in a relatively straight line, which meant they rarely left the path. As they moved, he heard howling in the distance, and Yuki flinched.

"He got that first one," she whispered, then kept going at a faster pace.

As they moved through the fog, he saw a dark figure keeping pace with them and pointed it out.

"That's the other one," she said. "I don't know how it's tracking us, but if it gets close, that one will lead it away."

"How many of those do you have?" he asked.

"Just that one." She looked over her shoulder at him. "Maybe we should have awaited those extra decades after all."

"Not funny," he told her.

"And I'm not laughing. Cerberus can use Hellfire, and that shit will burn your actual soul. It's one thing to die and move on. It's another to spend an eternity with third degree burns."

"Seriously?"

"That's what the legends say, and I have no desire to find out how true they are."

She continued hurrying forward, and he followed as best as he could. Every now and then, he would hear that loud sniffing sound somewhere behind them.

"It has to be able to smell us, right?"

"Maybe." She showed him a tarot card that was pinched between her fingers. "I've been scattering our scent, just in case."

"Let's just hope that thing doesn't notice what you did to its trees," he muttered.

In the fog, Cerberus marched around them, growling and sniffing. It was clear that it was becoming agitated about being unable to find its prey. At some point, he noticed a pair of red orbs in the distance, and when he pointed them out to Yuki, she sent her tarot figure toward them. There was a loud growl and a jet of Hellfire in the distance, but when he heard the Cerberus turn away and run, he let out a sigh of relief.

"That fog is doing us more help than harm, currently," he noted.

"We'll see." She tightened her grip on the sword. "If it comes for us, I want you to run. You get that, right? You're the one who needs to make it, not me."

"Yuki, I—"

She grabbed his hand and pulled him forward, her pace accelerating. It was difficult to keep his feet under him, but they were moving as if by instinct now. Behind them, he heard a series of growls, roars, and more fire, and chanced a look back to see a dark shadow trying to navigate the trees behind them. Cerberus was large enough that the woods were keeping the beast from catching up, but only barely.

Walls of ice were forming along their sides while they ran, climbing higher in height until the forest to the sides of them had disappeared. Yuki was zig zagging now, and Mike could hear the ice crunching shut behind them. He was going to ask what she was doing, but he could hear the stream of fire boiling away the frozen walls.

Under her breath, she was muttering a stream of words, and snowflakes were now falling around them. Between the snow and the fog, it was becoming hard to see, and the sounds of pursuit were fading away behind them.

That also meant they had lost the path they were on. Yuki stopped and turned around, her green eyes searching.

'We lost it, but now we're lost, too." The ice walls were behind them now, and Mike could hear the Cerberus stomping through them, searching for its prey. "Which way should we go?"

"Um..." Mike looked back, then scanned the fog. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. His magic was rumbling around inside of him, warning him that danger was on its way, and he wondered if he could use that.

He took a step forward, then shifted left. The feeling intensified, so he stepped right, and he felt it diminish. For better or worse, this was the way they should go. "C'mon," he whispered, then ran that direction.

Behind them, the roar of the Cerberus intensified, then was followed by the sound of a tree being ripped free of the ground. Mike pumped his legs, his heart beating loudly in his chest as he surged forward. Yuki was already falling behind, and she almost tripped over a downed log that Mike jumped over without even noticing it.

"I didn't know you could run this fast," she said, then her hand disappeared from his. A bright red fox with three tails appeared on the ground in front of him, and the two of them sprinted through the forest, avoiding large rocks, downed trees, and even squeezing through a shattered boulder. Behind them, the Cerberus growled, and Mike grabbed Yuki by the tails and jumped to the left.

A geyser of fire swept through the ground where she had been, and he slipped between a pair of trees that had grown too close together. He heard the Cerberus crash into it, and then made a mad dash toward a dark shape that appeared through the fog.

Ominous turrets appeared first, followed by the body of the house. The stone wall surrounding the back gate looked washed out, and was covered in dark moss. The back gate was shut, and when he crashed into it, the doors slammed open and he crashed onto the back lawn.