Page 49 of While the Dark Remains
I itch to move faster, uneasy in the echoing cavern and the winding tunnel beyond. The mountain suffocates me, and I can’t shake that sense of watching eyes, somewhere in the dark, the itch of magic under my skin, foul and forgotten.
We walk for hours, that first cavern and tunnel blurring into countless others. Multiple passages lead out from every cavern, and we choose the westernmost ones, though they don’t always run true. Many of the tunnels are painted with breathtaking murals depicting the gods and scenes from the old stories, or covered in line after line of colorful Iljaria script. The walls seem to live and breathe.
The shadows do, too.
We come out of a tunnel into another cavern that’s half as big as the first one, crowded with stalactites and stalagmites that look like rows of giant teeth. That sense of being watched grows stronger, and there’s a rustling noise somewhere over our heads.
Saga notices it at last. “Brynja,” she says carefully. “Whydoes no one live here anymore? Why did the Iljaria abandon the tunnels?”
I don’t want to tell her, fragile and unsteady beside me. But she can guess the answer anyway, so I do, low and tense. “The stories say the shadows grew wings and claws and teeth. The Iljaria fled because of the monsters.”
She whimpers and I gulp stale air. I give Saga the light to hold; she cradles it in her palm while I draw my knife, hardly adequate protection against whatever lurks in the dark.
“My life for a sword and a foot strong enough to stand on,” says Saga.
But all we can do is inch forward, bit by bit, and pretend we’re not frightened out of our minds. Saga prays to the Prism Goddess and the Red God and the Yellow God, her words tripping over themselves, endlessly repeating.
Halfway across the cavern, I trip over something, and Saga lowers the light to reveal scattered bones, yellowed with age, and among them a sword.
I stare at it, heart pounding in my ears, while Saga whispers a prayer of thanks and lets her broomstick clatter to the floor.
Wordlessly, I pick up the sword and give it to her. We stand back-to-back, the Iljaria light in Saga’s left hand not nearly enough to banish the dark.
“The gods are with us,” says Saga, low and tense. “The gods will protect us.”
I don’t see how.
And then a shadow peels itself off the cavernous ceiling with a scrape of leathery wings and dives straight for us, knocking the light from Saga’s grasp. It clatters among the scattered bones and she shrieks, slashing at the thing with her sword while I do the same with my knife.
Neither of us wounds it, and it hisses and flies out of our reach, then wheels and dives again. It’s about the size of a cat, and I glimpse dark wings, teeth as long as my fingers, and thick, needlelike hairs that cover its twisting serpentine body. Its head is narrow and lupine, its tail ends in a knot of white bone, and it has wicked, gleaming claws on each of its four scaly feet. Its eyes are bloodred. But worst is the sensation of its oily magic, writhing under my skin.
“Yellow God, Save Us!” Saga cries as she swings the sword again, throwing herself off balance and landing hard on her broken foot. She screams, scrabbling to get away from the bones, her hand closing once more around the light.
Saga holds it up, and the creature emits a high, eerie screech that seems to shake the whole mountain and reverberates down to my soul.
The monster wheels above us, still shrieking, and I get the feeling that it’s calling to its kin, that soon the whole cavern will be swarming with these creatures, or something even worse.
Saga pushes herself to her feet, the sword in one hand, the light in the other. She holds it high.
I eye the winged monster, heft my knife, and hurl it upward.Fly true, fly true,I beg, but whether to the blade or the gods, I don’t know.
The knife hits its mark, and the creature falls, screaming, to the stone floor. Foul black liquid leaks out of it and it grows still, but thered eyes don’t close; they seem to watch me as I snatch my blade back, wiping it clean on the leg of my trousers.
Saga’s eyes catch on mine. Sweat pours down her brow, and her body is taut with pain. Her wound is oozing again, and my gut clenches. She tightens her grip on the damn sword.
I stand back-to-back with her once more, heart ramming in my throat.
We hear them before we see them: a rush of leathery wings, a clatter of claws on stone. Saga shakes. “Gray Goddess, guard our souls,” she whispers.
I try not to think about the bones on the floor. I try not to think that we will join them soon.
Then there’s no time for thinking.
The monsters come all at once.
There are too many of them; they block out the light. All is whirring wings and clacking teeth, scraping claws and thrashing tails, bone-shattering cries and awful magic that slides into my veins and eats me from the inside.
All is dark, dark, dark.
