Crawling on his hands and knees, Evin scurried over the broken cobblestone street to their next hiding place. Rock bit into his palms and scraped his knees, but he didn’t care. All he could focus on was what he did best: hide. Behind him, he heard a great splash as the beast waded through the water.

Remnants of an old gazebo in what must have once been a park proved perfect cover, the park having long since been overgrown by tall weeds. Evin dived behind the gazebo just as the loud sound of the bell crashing against the ground rang out into the dusk. The monster must have tossed it aside.

Again Evin peered out from his hiding spot. Again he saw the beast. This time, it was farther away. Even though it was mostly in shadow in the fading light, the way it moved around in circles gave Evin the impression that it was confused.

Lowering himself down to sit behind the crumbling gazebo, Evin let out a shaky breath, then a small laugh. Looking at his companions, he grinned.

“See, stealth is the way to go. I think we lost it.”

Jorick shrugged, his hands clenching the hilt of his sword tight. “I’d feel safer if it wasn’t still moving around trying to find us,” he whispered.

Evin looked past Jorick at Betilivatis. “We need to look in—”

“Way ahead of you,” she said. Zendric’s A Practical Guide to Monsters lay open in her lap and she flipped through its yellowing pages so fast that Evin wasn’t sure how she could possibly be able to read anything. It was already getting hard to see with the sun going down.

“Ah ha, here,” she said. “Looks like our monster is called an ormyrr.” Smoothing the pages down, Betilivatis began to recite from Zendric’s writing. “‘They aren’t particularly aggressive, tending to keep to themselves.’ And looks like they prefer to eat river animals, not humans, usually.”

“Tell that to this ormyrr,” Jorick muttered.

“Tell us what else it says,” Evin said. Leaning over Jorick, he looked down at the book to see a painting of the ormyrr. Grublike body, four arms, sharp teeth—it was definitely the same beast.

“Well,” Betilivatis began.

The ground rumbled and the gazebo Evin sat against was uprooted and flew into the air.

Evin fell backward into dry dirt squirming with worms and pillbugs. Beside him, Jorick and Betilivatis fell backward as well.

All three looked up into the dimming sky as they heard a great crash in the distance as the gazebo landed somewhere in the ruins. The ormyrr towered above them, its red eyes glowing in the light from the setting sun.

The creature stood in silence for a moment, watching the three kids who lay frozen in terror.

Then, its lips pulled back to reveal its sharp, yellow teeth.

Chapter Ten