Free The Reward of The Oolyay by Liam Alden Smith

killed.”
    As Teftek looked down, the path narrowed to the size of his body, only wide enough that one person would fit across at a time. He stayed right behind Iquay as she pressed on at a steady pace. On each side of the trail, the ground tapered off in a deep descent, but the fog did not reveal how far or how steep the descent was. He kicked a rock down the side of the ledge to hear it drop, and a whole five tense heartbeats passed before he heard distant
    Thump.
    His assumptions turned dark. The rocks behind him shifted and slid, and before he knew it, one of the young soldiers who had tried to defect was falling from the path, grasping for life and screaming out for help. Teftek dropped to the path, and gripped his hand into the unsteady ground, getting as much traction as he could. He reached his other hand out and grabbed the soldier’s backpack, feeling his body almost lurch over the side from the soldier’s weight. Everything stopped. The soldier held onto the steep sides of the path and smiled in relief at Teftek, laughing nervously. Teftek let out a huge breath.
    And then the fog parted and the jaws of a screaming translucent wraith smashed into the soldier’s waist and clamped down. The soldier screamed in pain as the invisible jaws turned purple with his blood, and massive invisible spikes lashed into his torso. He was yanked from Teftek’s hand and pulled into the bleak white emptiness. Teftek’s terrified soldiers gawked and shuddered as their comrade disappeared from sight. They listened to his screams as he was dragged down into the abyss, until he went silent with one foul crack!
    A moment of terror gripped them as the moaning and shrieking of other shades continued around them.
    “Come on, keep...“ Teftek started to say. Before he could finish, a huge shade, only visible because it was half covered in gravel and mud, smashed into the middle of Teftek’s squad and knocked off two of his soldiers. It released a hissing, gravelly growl and began to crawl forward, twisting and scraping along the small path.
    Iquay yelled “run!” and darted forward into the fog. Teftek and Aljefta turned to follow her, but another Shade dropped in front of them. The soldiers in back pushed back toward Inlojem and Iogi, but Inlojem pushed them forward.
    “Don’t go back. Shoot it, you fools!” He yelled at them, and pushed on their backs to go toward it. They fired wildly at it, ripping it apart with bullets, but it still managed to sink its teeth into one of them, and drag the soldier off the side. Another Shade dropped down behind Iogi and growled hungrily at the child.
    “Whats that, Inlojem?” he asked. Inlojem put the child on his back and felt Iogi grip him tightly, swinging his sickle-blade around in one fluid motion. The Shade’s jaws split in half, and translucent fluid spilled along the path. He could now call two Shade kills his own. Inlojem spun back around on the narrow route as another Shade scrabbled up the side of the path and grabbed the soldier in front of him. He leaped up and felt his sandal press against the slimy back of the prehistoric creature, and then he plunged his sickle-blade into its head, making his count three, before springing off of it and dropping back down onto the path.
    Aljefta’s arm was grabbed by the Shade behind him. The creature thrashed smacked his repeater away, but Aljefta punched it with all his might and dazed it, sticking his pistol in its mouth and obliterating its minute brain with a massive shell. It went limp and slid down the side of the path. Teftek pumped fifteen rounds into the one shade, then two shades, then three shades. Their bodies piled up in front of him, blocking his way, and Teftek grabbed Aljefta’s arm to pull him forward. Aljefta grabbed another, much heavier repeater that had been abandoned on the path and fired off several rounds as Teftek pulled him forward.
    Inlojem worked his way along the path, noticing that there were no more soldiers