I pointed at the rail down below in the shadows; it looked like a dead snake from here. "So you're going to stop it?"
"I don't think Grandyr can be much clearer in his command." Myccael shook his head.
For a moment, I held my breath. Waited for a bigboom, me falling dramatically to the ground, or the ground to open, swallowing me. A lightning strike, something. Anything. But nothing happened. Eventually, I had to take a breath and realized I was still here, and so was Myccael, who didn't even seem to realize that this moment could have gone a lot differently.
"What's that?" My eyes caught a movement by the base of the mountain, on the other side of us.
Myccael's entire demeanor changed. He rose to his full height, his shoulders moved back, and he was all warrior in an instant, pushing me behind him. It was an automatic gesture. One born of many rotations of being a warrior; facing danger evoked the urge to protect. Pride swelled inside my chest for the male he had become. I might not remember him as a kid, or me raising him, but this male was someone to be proud of.
"Eulachs," he hissed.
"What are they doing?" I peeked around his shoulder. He stepped forward, not to block me, but to see better.
The Crowin moon cast only the faintest silver sheen across the slope, not nearly enough to paint details, but just enough to catch movement. I narrowed my eyes. Shadows rippled at the base of the mountain, unnervingly silent. At first, I thought they were just tricks of the dim light, but then one of them stood tall, too tall, its long limbs unfolding in a jerky, animalistic way that no Leander or human moved.
“They just came out of the rock,” I whispered. Unable to believe my eyes that told me these creatures had just climbed out of the mountain itself.
Not many, maybe six or seven. They moved like they were born from the stone, crouching low, then rising, some using their long arms to balance like apes, their posture half-hunched and oddly fluid. Even from this distance, I could feel the chill of wrongness. They were humanoid… but not. Their silhouettes were too wiry, their movements too erratic. Glints of jagged weaponry caught the moonlight, crude spears, machete-like blades. They didn’t need refinement. The violence was in their bodies, not just their tools.
They were carrying something. A crate or capsule of some kind, long and heavy-looking.
“What is that?” I asked, but Myccael didn’t answer.
More figures emerged from the forest edge across from them. These were different. Less hunched. Less monstrous, at least on the outside, inside they were just as rotten: Renegades.
Their body language was cagey, anxious. We were too far to see their faces, but I didn’t need to. They stood the way desperate people stand, half-starved, half-crazed, and on the verge of doing something irreversible.
“They’re trading,” I murmured. “A deal.”
Myccael exhaled slowly through his nose. “Snyg. That’s not just a crate of stolen wares.”
“Ney,” I agreed, heart hammering. It was impossible to see what it was, but my gut told me it wasn't something the Eulachs had made. I didn’t know how I knew it. I just did. The way they handled it, the way they positioned themselves, like they expected something to go wrong.
Iwatched Daphne and Myccael interact as they both stood on top of the overhang. My heart went out to them. The boy who had lost his mother and the mother who had lost everything. I watched them hug and hold hands, not even listening to the others as they talked about tomorrow when they would check the large screen and the box and anything else they hadn't dared touch until the susserayn had seen it.
Suddenly, something in Myccael's and Daphne's demeanor changed. I recognized the way he pushed Daphne to the side, the way his body coiled. Danger.
"Up there!" I yelled, pulling my sword and sprinting up the mountain to join my son and mate, to protect them from whatever it was they had seen. "Dragoons!"
"Kavryn, alert the males, send a legion around the mountain," I ordered. Whatever Myccael and Daphne had seen, it was on the other side.
As I approached, Myccael signaled to keep low. I echoed the order to the males following me and slowed down. Myccael seemed alert but not alarmed; whatever danger he had noticed, it was still far off. However, for me, it seemed to take an eternity to reach Daphne's side. I didn't breathe easier until I was able to put one arm around her, hold my sword in the other, and ask Myccael, "What is it?"
He pointed into the distance, by the trees, where a group of Eulachs was on their way to the mountains. Eulachs were plentiful, and they always posed a threat, but not to a group like us, so I wondered what had caught Myccael's attention about this particular group.
"They met with Renegades," Myccael filled me in. "They traded."
That explained his alertness. Eulachs were bad. Renegades were a scourge. Together, they meant a headache. It wouldn't be the first time our two enemies formed an alliance with each other, but being this close to the Pyme mountains, where we had now found out that the Zuten had…
"Snyg, the Zuten," I spat out.
Myccael turned his attention from the Eulachs to me, his brows creased, "What?"
I pointed at the site where the hole in the ground was visible as a black abyss, then at the mountain upon which we stood, and motioned to the distance between the two. "If there was housing there, I'm starting to wonder if these mountains are… natural. Or if they're rubble from a Zuten city." I stated.
It would make sense. An awful, disturbing kind of sense. We had always suspected that the Pyme mountains were riddled with caves used by the Eulachs. Where they lived and bred like therotten vermin they were. But what if those caves weren't just simply caves? What if they were filled with relics from the Zuten world? What if our digging had just uncovered what was never meant to see the light of day again?
"I need to talk to Tovahr," I said, taking Daphne's hand to lead her back down the mountain. I wanted her in Bantahar, away from this open area, but at the same time, I knew I had to stay, and I didn't want to leave her alone. And with Myccael here, I knew she wouldn't leave.
