“We have to get my Chest first,” I say.

“Then we’re going to have to split up,” Six says. With her soot-covered sword, she points at the two sections of forest the Mogs disappeared into. “Bernie Kosar, you’re with me.” Bernie Kosar shrinks into a hawk, and he and Six head left.

Sam and I enter the forest in the other direction. Soon we hear twigs cracking, and we run in that direction. I speed ahead and hurdle a series of dead trees to see four Mogs trying to escape through a small clearing. In the moonlight, I still can’t see if any of them hold my Chest.

I slide down the hill on my side, crushing saplings, creating a small landslide of loose rock. I hear Sam crashing after me.

They’re halfway through the small clearing. It’s dense, with grass six feet tall, and I run through it at full speed. Sam yells for me to tell him what direction I’m headed in, but instead I keep running and aim my lit palm straight up into the sky as a beacon. “Okay! Got it!” he yells.

Finally, right before the clearing becomes forest again, I can almost reach one. I dive for his legs and slice through the bottom of his muddy khakis and sever his Achilles tendon, causing him to roar onto his back. I climb up his flailing body and stab him in the chest, killing him.

Sam trips over my legs and falls on his face. “You get it?”

“No. Come on!”

Using one hand as a flashlight and the other as a machete, I race through the forest with ease, not caring how close Sam stays behind me. In less than a minute, I see another Mog struggling over a fallen log. From twenty-five yards away, I lift the log high off the ground, tip it, and force the Mog to teeter and fall headfirst. I crash through weeds to find him motionless on his stomach. I can already tell he doesn’t have my Chest. I kill him with two stabs of my dagger.

“John?” Sam yells in the darkness. “Dude?”

I again shine my palm in the air, and I’m scanning the trees when Sam arrives.

“Tell me you got it?”

“Not yet,” I say.

“No Chest,” Sam mutters.

“I just hope Six had better luck.” I reach behind me and pull the white tablet out to show Sam. “But I do have this.”

He grabs it out of my hand. “From the well?”

“That’s not all we found. Wait until I tell you what else—” I suddenly recognize where we are. I stop walking. I even stop breathing.

Sam grabs my shoulder and says, “Whoa, dude. What’s going on? You feeling something? Like maybe somebody just opened your Chest?”