Exquisite Ruin (The Labyrinth #1)

Chapter 11

IT JUST had to be a spider, didn’t it?

I kick Pogli aside, launching him over the slick stone and into the shallows of the pool. In the same motion, I send a blast of force into the spider-creature, stronger than I did at the sheet of rock wall that was crushing Deos back in the maze above.

The horror merely leans into the blast as if into a strong gale, when it should have flown to pieces. It clicks, replanting its hideously jointed legs of human-shaped elbows and knees, and clatters for me once more.

I draw one more time on the memory of surrender, from the last of that power, to launch myself over it with a downward burst of force when it would have trampled me, landing in a crouch behind it. I send an even stronger gale into its bulbous backside, attempting to throw it over the waterfall, but it merely slides along the stone, digging in with its limbs—which are tipped in awful human-shaped hands and feet.

Gods.

My reserve of power is gone. Before the creature can right itself, I bite my tongue. Tears spring to my eyes.

I try to shatter the stone it’s composed of, but my attempt has less effect than the wind. I already know that fire won’t burn it.

And then it’s upon me. Horrible hand-feet glance off my shoulders with bruising force as I try to dodge, slipping over my damp tunic but pinning me to the ground by the material, tearing it even more. At least they’re not spearing through my flesh—not yet. The spider-creature raises four other legs alongside its abdomen like swords, ready to stab down and pulverize me, while that hideous mouth running down its middle leans in, gaping wider to gobble up whatever will be left of me.

Pogli, his head bigger than a lion’s now, clamps massive jaws onto one of the spider-creature’s legs. Jerking his whole body, he hurls the stone monstrosity into the pool he just emerged from. The one leg stays behind in his mouth—in the shape of several human legs, interconnected—and he shakes it viciously back and forth before spitting it aside and shrinking back to his usual size.

The spider-creature rights itself in the pool with barely a pause. The water, deeper than I am tall, slows it somewhat, but it comes skittering right back for me. I realize its leg has regrown . I didn’t see it happen, but it’s back all the same.

Pogli roars at it, the force curling in a miniature tornado from his jaws, but the thing simply braces itself and takes only a glancing blow, even as a channel as wide as its horrible body is blown into the water around it. I can see its many eyes shift blankly to the chimera. Focusing on the bigger threat.

It lunges and swipes at the same time, sending Pogli flying into a stalagmite with such force that the stone pillar breaks in half. I cry out before I realize I’ve made a sound.

I’m moving before I realize it, too, digging my nails into my palm. Just as the spider-creature is about to trample Pogli, I scoop the little chimera out from underneath it and spring away with a burst of force. One of Pogli’s wings hangs unnaturally, and he screeches in pain as I leap even farther with him. The cry wrenches at me more than my nails, which I shape into even sharper points to gouge viciously into the meat of my hand.

The spider-creature is already coming after me, its many-eyed sights set on Pogli. But I don’t attack. I form a cushioning shield around the chimera—a barrier that traps even air within it, in case he needs it. It’s more than I’ve ever protected anything, even myself.

And then I hurl him over the waterfall. His little body sails out of sight, vanishing into the tumble of water and darkness and thundering noise.

It’s all I can do. He might die if— when —my shield fails, but I’d rather he has a chance than die here trying to protect me, which I know he would.

The horrible eyes seem to trace his movement, and for a moment I’m afraid the spider-creature will go after him. Perhaps, if I were more of a monster myself and loved Pogli less, I would have hoped for that. But the thing turns back to me, its rolling eyes freezing in my direction, though it’s hard to tell exactly where they’re pointing. I dance back as quickly as I can, my voice taunting, even though I’d rather be screaming. “What did your mother fuck to make you so ugly?”

“My, my, what a mouth on you!”

I risk a glance over my shoulder. Daesra is standing where the stream widens and deepens into the pool, Deos farther behind him. Of course it wouldn’t have taken the daemon long to find me after the tumult began.

“I have you to thank for inspiration,” I say.

His lips twist as he takes in the spider-creature. “What a mouth on you both . Did the little abomination finally get eaten?” I don’t have a chance to answer before he beckons for the thing to come closer. “Perhaps you’ll find me more palatable.”

His hand is bleeding, gouged like my own. But the force that erupts from him is twice as strong as anything I’ve transmuted yet, stronger even than Pogli’s roar, blasting up waves and rock in its path. The burst of air does nothing but make the spider- creature sink into a defensive crouch. I can’t help feeling slightly vindicated.

“I tried that already,” I snap, “and I don’t want your help!”

“Never mind that you desperately need it,” Daesra drawls. “But who says I’m helping you?”

The spider-creature has turned its stony, blank eyes toward the daemon. Its underside mouth lets out a terrible grinding hiss that makes my skin prickle in warning. Unfazed, Daesra reaches casually over his shoulder, withdrawing, somehow, a gleaming sword from the thinness of the air.

It is, indeed, lovely.

“I don’t like to use my mother’s gift if I can avoid it,” he says, flipping the pearly black hilt in his hand and throwing light off the quicksilver blade. “But the situation might call for such extremes.”

The sword of Sea. Proof of Daesra’s divine birthright.

He keeps twirling it, his motions mesmerizing, as if he’s trying to hold the spider-creature’s attention. He has it. The thing springs out of its crouch in an explosive leap, flying several times my height through the air, breaking through smaller stalactites as if they’re nothing. The heavy stone spikes rain down onto the ground with shattering force.

Giving me an idea.

Daesra rolls out of the way as the creature comes down, swiping out with his sword and cleaving the thing’s front two legs from its body. Its bulk crashes into the ground in a grinding shriek of stone on stone. Instead of trying to strike while it’s down and hack the whole grotesque eyeball-head from its mouth-body as I would have done, the daemon takes the time to sidle between the creature and me .

“What are you doing?” I shriek. If he’s trying to somehow take me captive again, my next attack is going to be aimed at him. But he doesn’t turn on me, only leaves his back exposed to me while he holds his gleaming sword at the ready. The spider-creature straightens in sickening jerks on its many elbows and knees.

“I’m very, very angry with you,” he says without looking at me, the flat calm of his voice more frightening than any outburst, “but we can discuss that later.”

“I’m angry with you for a hundred reasons,” I cry back at him, “but firstly because you haven’t removed that thing’s head!”

His shoulders twitch in a shrug. “I thought two legs was a nice start.”

“No—” I begin, but by then the spider-creature has regained its footing—on all of its horrible feet—and faces us.

Both of its front legs have grown back.

“I also tried that!” I spit.

Rather, Pogli did, but there’s no time to explain. Pogli , I think with a flare of useless agony. I can’t afford the distraction right now, so I shove all thought of him away, even though it tears at me.

Instead of hand-shaped feet, the spider-creature’s front legs now have a spread of wicked-looking claws. A segmented tail also rises behind it. Instead of ending in a tuft of hair like Daesra’s, it’s tipped in a stinger as big as a sword. The thing clicks and shifts as it feels out its new balance.

Again, Daesra doesn’t strike when he should. “I was fine with a spider, but I don’t like scorpions,” he says.

Spider or scorpion, my mouth has gone dry at the sight. “I was going to say it looks like you.”

“Amusing.”

“I’m serious. This place drank from both of us in the cistern, just as it consumed the statues. It must know I fear spiders, and it gleaned your strengths and weaknesses, too.”

Or perhaps it has always known.

Daesra glances back at me then, worry lighting his eye, and he shifts—away from me. “Get out of here, Sadaré,” he snarls. “Over the falls.”

The creature hesitates, trying to decide between us, but Daesra swings ferociously at it as he goes, drawing its attention away from me. Leaving himself open to attack to appear the more appealing target.

But I can’t run. Not after the thing’s tail dives down as quick as a whip and catches Daesra, spearing his shoulder through and pinning him to a massive stalagmite. His sword drops from his nerveless fingers with a strange clang more like a chime. And yet he barely looks at the wound that might have killed me. That he took for me.

“ Go ,” he shouts. “I’ll manage!”

I don’t go. I once more form my fingernails into claws and drag them up my arm in four bloody tracks. One for each of the four massive stalactites that cut loose from the cave ceiling overhead with cracks that split the air. Their sheer mass does the rest, coming down with earth-shuddering force.

One misses entirely, but the largest spears the monstrosity straight through its abdomen, coming out the underside mouth and pinning it to the earth. It also severs its tail at the same time, leaving the end stuck in Daesra. Another one crushes two of its back legs on one side, and the last one of its front legs, coming perilously close to the daemon. It turns out to be a boon as the thing flails wildly with its remaining front leg, the stone shielding Daesra from the slashing claws that would have shredded his skin, at least momentarily.

He’s having a difficult enough time as it is with the severed tail still pinning him.

“ Fuck ,” he spits, his face twisted in pain, “I can’t heal when it’s in my godsdamned shoulder, and I can’t—” One-armed, he tugs at the stone stinger, unable to dislodge it or disintegrate it.

I’m about to break the rock behind him—or tell him to, if I can’t—when the creature’s remaining legs suddenly plant into the ground. Slowly, grindingly, they straighten, lifting its body—the horrible underside mouth opening wider as it goes—off the stalactite. Even with five legs, it manages to turn somewhat unsteadily toward me. It ignores Daesra entirely, while he’s still trapped.

Ah , I think . His biggest weakness.

Daesra only has time to yell for me to run before it lunges at me. I hurl the stalagmite that broke against Pogli—that broke Pogli’s wing—straight for its head, but I only give the creature a glancing blow when it ducks. It skitters at me again, and I think its horrible eye-filled countenance might be the last thing I ever see.

Until it stops in its tracks.

Deos has hold of one of its back legs, his marble limbs squeezing tight. I cry out as the creature turns on him, slamming him into the ground with both front legs and plunging its abdominal maw toward him, almost like a wasp would a stinger.

It bites off one of the statue’s arms. The thing chews and swallows in rapid succession with hideous bobbing and crunching.

For a moment, I’m too horrified to scream.

It must be too furious to finish Deos, because it throws him aside with shattering force, its legs rapidly regrowing. That bite must have nourished it, somehow. Deos lies still, one-armed with a deep fracture through his chest where it was merely cracked before, staring placidly at where his limb used to be.

Daesra shouts wordlessly. He’s straining against the broken tip of the tail, not to pull it out, but rather to pull his shoulder off it—much like the monstrosity did with the stalactite—dragging the stone shaft through his flesh until he wrenches free with a roar. He’s made the pain his now, and with a wave of his uninjured arm, he sends all of the rock I dropped from the ceiling, and quite a bit more besides, hurtling into the creature in a mountainous cascade.

For a moment, there’s something like silence beneath the roar of the waterfall. The daemon and I meet each other’s eyes. Both of us are bleeding. Breathing hard. Relieved to see each other standing, despite everything.

But then I hear the rattling of loose stones. Seemingly unfazed by the massive pile of rubble, the creature stirs, beginning to shift the weight off itself.

I almost want to laugh, even as a sob rises in my throat. It’s just like Daesra—the thing can’t die. And it’ll come back for me, I have no doubt.

Daesra glances at it and then at me, as if he’s thinking the same thing. And then he charges me.

I briefly wonder if he wants the pleasure of killing me first.

His blurring dash carries him right into me, his arms coming hard around my chest and under my shoulders, scooping me up.

His momentum takes us both over the edge of the waterfall—nearly the same thought as I had with Pogli, to protect him. Though it doesn’t feel very protective, now that I’m experiencing the same.

I see the stone ceiling, the falls, and then churning water with jagged rocks far below rushing toward me. And maybe something even more frightening waiting beyond, before I’m engulfed in too much mist to see clearly. We fall a long way.

I try to scream before we hit the water, but Daesra’s hand clamps over my mouth as he holds me tighter to him, his body forming a ball around me. He must deem his own horns and hooves the lesser danger now.

For good reason. The force of our landing, the piercing cold, shocks me entirely, icy water blasting into my clothes, my ears, my nose, even my mouth under Daesra’s hand. Despite his dragging me to the surface with him, I can’t breathe with the wind knocked out of me.

If I could’ve, I might have tried screaming again, because the rush of rapids is carrying us toward a massive, craggy hole, which vanishes into the darkness of the earth. It makes my very guts recoil in much the same way as the spider-creature did.

I barely have time to try thrashing away from it before Daesra vaults us both out of the water—if into more water, because his dolphin-like leap actually carries us through the waterfall to the other side. The torrential force tries to tear me from his grip before he slams into a rock wall, again taking the brunt of the force with his shoulder. Which was quite a lot. Even though he cushioned me against his chest, my head swims.

Dizzily, my eyes dart around. Behind the falls, there’s a stone ledge wide enough for me to stand between his legs when he lets me slide through his arms, still keeping hold of me. The water makes a riotous, blue-lit curtain around us, the noise and mist overwhelming.

Until it suddenly grows muffled. Daesra doesn’t let me go, but I feel him relax somewhat. “I raised a shield against sight and sound, but we’re not safe.”

Oh, really? I feel like saying with a hysterical laugh.

Instead, I nod in the vague direction of the devouring hole in the earth and choke out, “I threw Pogli into that ?”

“And that’s what concerns you?” the daemon hisses.

I feel like shrieking in agony and hitting him, but then Daesra heals all of my wounds in one stroke, making me gasp in relief instead.

I glance down and realize he’s gouging his palm with his claws to keep his shield up. Repairing the rents in my skin likely didn’t cost him much more. The downside, I suppose, to being able to heal instantaneously, is that he needs to hurt himself over and over again if he requires extra strength. For one who doesn’t love pain, it would be unpleasant.

Despite his lack of enjoyment, it’s obviously a sacrifice he’s willing to make. He suppressed his godlike nature in exchange for this painful sort of immortality and power. It’s a trade I would happily make, if only so I could tear that thing up there limb from disgusting limb and ensure Pogli and Deos—and even Daesra—are forever safe from it.

I’m about to tell the daemon to do exactly that, or to even try to use my own limited power, when he seizes me tighter around the middle and clamps his hand back over my mouth. I trust his body, if not him—he’s frozen like a statue—so I don’t resist.

When I follow his gaze, I see it: a long, segmented stone leg—made of human legs and arms—parting the edge of the waterfall. The horrible thing has crawled partway down, hunting for us.

I hold my breath until it moves away, an unbroken curtain of water dropping back into place. It must not know for sure we went over the falls. That’s why Daesra covered my mouth—both times, though the second one was solely out of instinct as much as my holding my breath was, thanks to his shield.

“It’s gone for now,” he murmurs. “I can still see through the statue’s eyes.”

I’m surprised the daemon is sharing that with me. When I glance up at him, his expression is deadly serious. He releases me, digging for something in his tunic. His fingers next entwine with mine, startling me. In his palm, I feel my leather packet filled with needles.

“Prepare yourself,” he tells me.

“For what?” It must be terrible if he’s returning my needles, especially after I abandoned him. Even so, I’m still stunned that he did.

Maybe it’s a half step toward him trusting me. Or maybe that’s a fool’s wishful thinking.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But we need to work together or else you, at least, won’t survive this. We face a difficult choice on either side.” His hand is still in mine.

It’s harder to think straight, with it there. “You mean we’re caught between a rock wall and a waterfall?”

I hear his smile. “More like a disgusting abomination that can’t die and an underwater pit of unfathomable depth. If we try to retrace our steps, we face the creature. If we go into the hole… I don’t know what will happen.”

I shudder involuntarily. “A lovely choice.” Even my sarcasm is muffled and miserable. “You could just feed me to the creature and do whatever you want while it’s occupied,” I add.

His voice is quieter than I would have expected. “I don’t think either of us truly want that.” His hand slips away, his words growing sharper. “Why aren’t you already stabbing yourself?”

Maybe because his touch felt too pleasant. And, honestly, I’m so cold I can barely feel my hands, let alone handle my needles with any dexterity. I doubt I could offer up much pain with my numb flesh, even if I managed to maneuver them. My teeth chatter in response.

With a sigh, he folds me closer to him. Whatever it is he does, he starts radiating like a fire, lending me heat. If he tried to warm me directly, I suppose, he might just cook me.

The moment stretches, time almost slowing. Suddenly, I can feel every part of him that touches every bit of me. It doesn’t help that he burns with heat. Despite where we are, despite everything between us, I close my eyes and lean into him. I feel his chin rest atop my head. His second sigh blows over my face, his breath soft and warm. However begrudging he might be, he stays where he is.

We both simply stand like that for a short while. I wish I could stay here. Held. Warm. Safe… ish. But we have an impossible choice to make, fraught with cold and wet and pain, either way.

“Why do you hate my needles?” I ask suddenly.

He hesitates. “Aside from not finding them aesthetically pleasing and not caring to learn the trick of them, I—I always liked to be the one to hurt you.”

“Then hurt me,” I say. “Now.”

He jerks his head away to look down at me in surprise. “What?”

“I want you to hurt me. I’m asking you, which makes it my doing. I don’t want to use my needles.”

His expression shutters, becoming impossible to read. “Why?”

“Because I want you to do it,” I snap, losing the fraying thread of my patience. Or maybe it’s my sanity I’ve lost. It’s all I can do not to say, Because you want to, too. “Please,” I add, and his eyes soften ever so slightly at the edges, giving me enough encouragement to ask, “Is there something I used to particularly enjoy?”

“Many things.” He’s looking at me as if I’m a quizzical puzzle—but a not-unpleasant one, his expression bemused. “But this will have to be quick and brutal. I would usually warm you up first—and I don’t mean how I warmed you just now.”

I feel an answering heat in my cheeks. “Do it.”

That’s all he needs. He moves as swift as lightning, knuckling me in my shoulder, my upper arms, between my ribs—both of his hands a blur—and then finally digging deep into the flesh of my thighs. Each strike builds on the last. It’s as though he found the strings to pluck to make my entire body sing in agony—all without breaking any skin. Pain reverberates through me such that I can’t even make a noise as my knees buckle.

He catches me, folds me tightly to his chest, and breathes his words into my hair. “Try not to deceive me again, you utterly infuriating creature.”

I take a shuddering gasp, blinking through my tears, and grope for some sort of response, but speech evades me.

Gods , it feels incredible.

Despite my unsteady legs, his next words force me to plant my feet back under me. I can’t even appreciate the fresh bolt of pain that sends through me.

“That thing is finally going for Deos.” Daesra doesn’t register that he used the statue’s name. When I look up at him, he flinches at whatever he’s seeing. “It has him by the leg. It…” He grimaces, not needing to finish.

Nausea roils my stomach even as power from my pain glows hot and steady inside me. “We can’t just leave him up there!”

“He’s only me , Sadaré, an extension of myself. Little stronger than a finger, cut loose to do what it will.”

“The more reason to help him, if he’s part of you!”

Daesra blinks in surprise.

“He helped me,” I insist quickly, not wanting to wade into such murky waters. But I mean every word I’m saying. “He cares about me.”

My voice is on the verge of breaking. I feel the same for Pogli, but if I think about the little chimera, I’ll begin to sob, so I don’t let myself. I have no idea where Pogli has gone. If he’s even alive. Deos, we can still help. I hope.

Daesra holds my eyes for a moment, and then he curses under his breath. “Fine, but we need to act now. It’s about to take his upper leg.” I don’t have time to process that means Deos’s lower leg is gone before the daemon demands, “Can you handle the flow of the falls?”

I nod, hoping I’m right. “But water comes more naturally to you—”

“But to you, too, because it’s more malleable than stone. Let me handle the latter.”

Easier or not, it’s a terrible amount of water to manage, but my body is still ringing like a struck bell with the resounding pain of those evil little taps. Besides, I have to do something. Anything.

It’s eating Deos.

“Good,” Daesra says, seeming to take my word for it, just like that. “Throw the falls at it—everything you can—after I hit it.”

“How—?”

I don’t have time to finish the question before Daesra stomps his hoof and the sound vibrates up through the rock, cracking the wall behind us and shuddering the ground under my sandals. I realize his shield has dropped.

The horrible creature will have heard him.

Daesra curses again. “Deos tried to grab it again, and—”

I hear something hit the far wall with a horrible crack, just above the gaping hole boring into the earth. Then a distant splash.

“That was Deos,” Daesra says. “I can’t see anything now.”

I can—the horrible shadow of the creature looming through the falls above us. Daesra sees it, too, and raises a bloody fist, shielding my head with his other arm.

“Ready?” he breathes.

I’ve barely nodded when a massive chunk of the rock wall punches like a giant’s fist out from behind the waterfall. It catches the spider-creature directly in the abdomen and launches it like a stone from a catapult. The protuberance parts the falls enough for me to see the thing hit the distant wall above the hole just like Deos did, drop… and then catch itself with its widespread legs at the entrance.

“Now!” Daesra shouts, but I’m already throwing everything I’ve got at it. The waterfall suddenly curves in midair, defying the forces of nature, and slams into the spider-creature. The torrent pummels it farther into the hole, but some of those hideously segmented legs are still gripping the edge through the flood—a flood I can’t hold for much longer.

“Daesra,” I gasp.

“Trying,” he says shortly, and rocks begin to hammer the creature.

I can see where those spider’s legs have latched onto the rough surface. Maybe if one of us could smooth out the stone…

But my grip on the falls starts to slip first, and the monstrosity shrugs and struggles its way back out of the hole, despite the rocks and the water barraging it. Just before the falls crash back into place, drenching me with enough force to wash me away if not for Daesra’s hold on me, the spider-creature leaps free. Flying straight for us.

Daesra dives, dragging us both into the current, the cold hitting me once again. Even under water, I hear—feel—the monstrosity crashing into the rock face where we’d just been.

When we surface in the choppy, rushing waves, Daesra shouts, “Take a deep breath. I’ll shield us.” He takes one himself just as I do, and that’s all either of us has time for before the waiting maw of the underground tunnel swallows us. We tumble and fall into darkness.

The world is black, churning chaos. Violent. Even with Daesra’s body and shield wrapped around me, I can feel us careening off rocks. At least the torrent feels less like certain death and more like more like a buffeting wind as we’re swept along.

But in too little time, I need air. I jerk, my body starting to struggle involuntarily, but Daesra only holds me tighter. I thrash in his arms, shoving at his chest, but he shakes his head alongside mine, and then pulls me back by my hair.

His lips meet mine. It takes me a moment, coughing under water, to empty my mouth, and he his own, but then it’s just our lips together. And he breathes into me.

I can hold my breath for a very long time , he once said.

He also doesn’t possess the lungs of a horse. He only has so much breath to spare. Still, it’s enough for me to stop panicking as we bounce off the tunnel walls and slam into invisible rocks in the cold, wet darkness.

Pogli , I can’t help but think now.

When I start to tense, Daesra breathes into me again, squeezing the back of my neck in a soothing motion. It helps, but it doesn’t ease my panic for long. I’m not sure how much longer we can keep this up.

I begin to struggle once more, my lungs screaming for air. His lips press against mine for what I know will be the final time.

And then everything turns silver.

No , I think, even if it means safety. I don’t want to know.

But then it’s as if I’m someone someplace else, and that thought has never crossed my mind.