Her eyes glazed over as she talked, and I knew she was reliving the memories. "When people started screaming to run, and the tigers and w-wolves came out, I ran with that group. We went the opposite direction of the ones who ran out from the thicket. Four of us were picked off right away, but we kept running. We thought it would've been smart to return to the gate immediately..."
Tears steadily streamed down her face as she recalled the tale, her voice completely void of emotion, which seemed eerily unsettling with the quietness of her tears.
"It didn't take long for us to get there. Another group emerged from the tree line just behind us, all of us locked in a dead sprint across the meadow. Meredith... one of the girls I'd befriended on the walk out to the stream—she was right next to me, along with a guard. His name was Axil... I don't know why, but I looked over to our right and spotted th-them."
She sucked in a shaky breath, and Becca patted her knee. "If you want to take a break, it's okay."
"N-no," she hiccuped. "I have to tell someone." Eliza took a deep breath and composed herself. "They were massive. Abnormally large.Fast."
"What were they?" I asked, my heart in my throat.
"Bears. Two of them... racing each other, almost as if they were competing against each other to see who could get to us first. I grabbed Meredith and Axil by the arm and stopped the three of us. I pointed to what I saw. Axil said we needed to run for the beach, and we immediately took off, breaking away from the group. I wanted to warn the others, but when I started to call out to them, Axil told me to shut up. That it was every person for themselves and that all that would do was lead the bears right to us. The first sounds of death reached us right as we hit the beach, and I didn't want to look. Oh, Goddess, I tried not to... but I did!" Eliza's whole body began trembling as she described an absolutely terrible scene.
"The bears were bad enough... they didn't slow down as they ran, they simply... ran right over people, knocking them down. But then... and I know this is going to sound insane, but it's the truth... the dragons came."
"You're not insane. We've seen them, too," Isla reassured her.
"S-some of the people made it to the gate, and they were banging on it, screaming... nobody opened the door. Why didn't they open the door!?" she wailed, and my stomach turned from the sheer pain in her voice, and much to my own surprise, I felt tears of my own sliding down my face. I was not a crier, but there was something so raw and disturbing in listening to Eliza and seeing the physical effects of her trauma, the way she shook and bounced all over the place with her emotions. From hysterical to zero feeling at all, it was haunting.
"Between the bears and the dragons, I doubt any of them survived. I haven't been back to look. Axil, Meredith, and I ran into the tunnels. We were so disoriented and traumatized that we didn't think to go deeper into them, farther from the beach. That first night we had fallen asleep, and I woke up to water rushing through the pathways, rising fast. We tried to escape the tide, but it was too much. We got separated, and once I was lifted high enough, I was able to climb out. I quickly found Axil and Meredith, and we had to regroup... But before we could do that, the wolves came. Meredith and I saw their yellow eyes glowing. We heard their low growls, their promise to kill..."
She trailed off, staring vacantly at the wall in front of her face. "What happened next... I keep wondering what I could have done to prevent it. What I should have done..."
Despair settled in my gut as I prepared myself for her words, but nothing could have prepared me in the end.
"A sound... a horrible thunk, then a crunch. Meredith crumpled to the ground—her limp hand slipped out of mine. Everything slowed down to a snail's pace. Axil, holding a bloody rock in his hand, yelling at me to run. My eyes going back to my friend, who had a massive dent in her head, dark blood pooling... The wolves howling as fresh blood hit their noses..."
I gasped in horror. We all did.
"He killed her?" Kael asked, his face sterner than I'd ever seen it.
"Yes. He screamed at me to run. That he only did it so we had a fighting chance at getting away from those wolves... I knew she was dead. Nobody could survive a blow to the head like that, but I struggled with leaving her! She was my friend! She didn't deserve that!"
Riv made a noise of disgust. "No, she didn't. But none of us have deserved any of this shit, Eliza. There's nothing you could've done for yer friend."
Eliza tapped her fingers anxiously against her legs. "I know that.Now,I know that. But in the moment... It was hard. I waited too long to run, and when I turned around, Axil was gone. I apologized to Meredith the entire time as I ran away blindly. Tears blurred everything. It wasn't until I tripped over something and fell on the rocks that I snapped out of my trance. I looked back to see what had tripped me, and I was horrified to find Axil there. He'd slipped down beneath a crevice and waited for me to run by. He tripped me on purpose, clearly trying to increase his own odds of surviving by offering me up as the next sacrifice.
"Something in me snapped. Like a bow that is tied too tight—there is a breaking point. That was mine. I'm still not sure if I actually was seeing red or if it was the blood dripping in my eyes from hitting my head during the fall, but I've never been so enraged in my life. I wiped my wound with my hand and flung the blood at Axil, knowing it would mark him just as much as me. He bellowed in rage and tried to wipe it off, but it was no use. Even with the ocean water, the wolves were too close. My vision began spinning, and I knew I was close to passing out. As Axil frantically tried to clean himself, I crawled on my hands and knees, hoping to find an opening large enough to slip through. Axil's sudden screams told me the wolves had gotten him, and I was next. With the Goddess' help, I fell through a crack. At least, that's what I think happened. I didn't wake up until the sun was high in the air. I was laying on my back in shallow water, maybe an inch deep."
"I can't even imagine how scared you've been," Isla said, shaking her head. "What a horrible thing to go through."
The mood was somber at best as we reeled from Eliza's tale, but if she'd fallen down here, then... "You've just been wandering around here ever since?"
"Yes. I was terrified to go back out. I've been on my own, thinking I might be the only one still alive. I knew at some point I'd have to try to get help, whether by thirst or hunger. Thirst is winning out at the moment," she explained. "What about you? What happened to you?"
I couldn't find it in me to retell our story, so Kael started explaining the events of our last twenty-four hours. I zoned out for most of it, not wanting to relive a single second of it. My mind was trying desperately to concoct some sort of plan. What were we going to do now? At least one of the ships was burned to ash, and those evil people within the walls of the Keep couldn't give a shit less about us—that was clear.
Suddenly, my stomach growled, the effects of lack of food making itself known. Just like a yawn starting a chain reaction, several other people grabbed their own stomachs as they twisted with hunger.
"We can't go on without eating something," Riv stated. "I can look for some more crabs?"
"No, splitting up and wandering these tunnels is too risky. It's too easy to get lost and we already lost half of our group in the ocean. I don’t want to lose anyone else." Kael paused then, rubbing his chin in thought. "The shite part of it is, it seems we're going to be out here for the foreseeable future, and if that's the case, we'll need water as soon as possible."
Eliza shifted. "You know, when we first got to the stream that first day, I did see a cavern near the base of the ravine. Maybe we could use that for shelter?"
"How large was the opening?" Riv asked, her eyes already hardening with the determination to survive.
"Not very. Definitely not big enough for th-thosecreaturesto squeeze through."
