The rest of the escort fanned out quickly, forming a perimeter around the clearing, weapons slung and eyes sharp.
The hole itself wasn’t wide. Not nearly large enough for a male to squeeze through. At its mouth, the rock dropped off into blackness like the throat of a beast.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Myccael muttered, crouching beside it. “Drone,” he prompted.
A dragoon moved forward immediately, cradling the compact scout unit in his arms. He deployed it with practiced ease, sliding a slim orb the size of a fist toward the hole, where it hovered. With his palmtop, he engaged the drone. Lights blinked before it dropped, spiraling smoothly down into the narrow shaft. It didn't take long for its lights to vanish into the dark.
A hush fell over the group as we assembled around the dragoon, watching his palmtop over his shoulder. Daphne stepped closer to my side, instinctively reaching for my forearm. Her fingers barely brushed the leather of my baldric, but the contact sent a ripple through me. I didn’t move. Just stood there, eyes on the screen as the drone fed back images of tunnel walls. Layers of sediment. Nothing of interest. Nothing, even as it hit the end of the hole.
"Alright, let's get to the next one," Myccael ordered.
By the time we visited two more, the sun stood high on the horizon. It was getting warmer, and I feared Daphne would get too hot. We stopped at a fourth drilling site, and I was mulling over taking her back to camp myself so that she could cool down, when Myccael suddenly exclaimed, "There!"
I was too distracted by Daphne's presence to have paid attention, and I was glad Myccael had. The dragoon moved the drone the way Myccael wanted, and then I saw it too. It would have been easy to miss. The drill must have dislocated a larger rock, one that had sealed another air pocket, barely discernible in the darkness.
"Send it in," Myccael ordered.
The drone flew through the opening, its beams illuminating not a room, but passages. Several. Untouched by time, the ground was still even, albeit filled with debris. Some walls showed signs of strain, cracked seams, rips, but otherwise they seemed to shine under the light.
I looked up from the palmtop and turned around, mentally mapping the passageways. I couldn't be sure, but more Pyme mountains rose to the left, and I was willing to bet the passageways led straight to them.
"Why do I have a feeling those mountains are crawling with Eulachs?" Myccael wanted to know, his eyes following mine.
"Because you're an excellent warrior," I retorted. Words I would have never thought I would say to him, but they made me proud now. More so because they were true. Myccael had become a great warrior, worthy of the title susserayn.
"I'll send for more dragoons," Myccael nodded to himself, "we'll clear those mountains once and for all."
Two rotations ago, Darryck and several of our strongest vissigroths had been dispatched to exterminate them, on Kennenryn’s orders. It was meant to be a purge. A clean sweep. Fire and steel. Nothing was supposed to have been left alive.
And yet here we were.
They had multiplied since. Spread. Like vermin—silent, stubborn, and impossible to root out completely. A scourge that slithered back through cracks the moment we turned our attention elsewhere. Deadly in their silence. Insidious in their hunger.
Too easy to miss. Too many places to hide.
I looked at the hole Torvahr had drilled with different eyes. No Leander would fit through this. But an Eulach would.
"We need to make this hole bigger. I want dragoons down there. I want this entire passageway mapped and charted." I ordered.
Myccael looked thoughtful and added, "And those mountains. If we have to pick them apart rock by rock, we will do so. Wewillfigure out how the Eulachs go in and out of them."
I nodded. Zyn. We just declared war on the miserable creatures.
Like the night before, I climbed up the overhang after dinner. Mallack had wanted to protest, but Myccael offered to accompany me. And honestly, after seeing how the Eulachs had seemed to just pass out of the mountain last night, I was glad for it. I might have wished many times during the last days for Leander to open and pull me through a dark hole, but I'd never expected to find Eulachs on the other side. So that wasn't something I was looking forward to.
"You like the view," Myccael observed when we reached where we had stood last night, before the Eulachs appeared. Overlooking the river.
"Zyn, it's peaceful." I agreed.
Something had been weighing on me since I met Myccael yesterday. I felt connected enough to him that I voiced my concern, like any mother would. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything," he turned to me.
"Mallack said you and Thalia had been switched at birth." I began. A shadow brushed over his expression, and I put my hand on his arm. "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."
"Ney, it's okay, ask away." He sounded resigned. He sounded like a male expecting a healer to cut him open and rebreak his bone after it hadn't healed properly.
"When you found out… when you realized you weren't Mallack's and my son… that must have hurt." I squeezed his arm, wanting him to know that I was here, that I understood.
