Chapter 19 #2
That snagorn would certainly catch us before we reached it.
Terror dried my clammy skin, worsened from knowing we needed to veer right—to take the passage we’d avoided. As I ran down it, I found out why it was so dark.
The ground gave way to a violently steep hill. Almost a hole.
Shrieking, I stumbled and nearly fell down the hidden incline. A sharper and more horrifying shriek followed, splitting the oppressive air and my ears. Close. Beneath it, Brey’s curse echoed into the void as the incline tried to trip him too.
I grabbed for the wall. I couldn’t see a rotting thing. Taking another careful step, I met nothing but air.
“Get on your ass and slide, Ethel,” Brey ordered. “Now.”
Hesitating, I looked up into the cave—and felt my heart plummet into my stomach when glowing eyes lit the dark behind Brey.
I didn’t just slide.
I slipped and dropped through the air so fast, my scream stayed lodged in my throat.
Something hard broke my fall.
Numerous hard somethings that brightened the dark and clacked, yet I kept falling. Falling through them until my foot encountered a thin obstacle, like a tree branch. Clacking came again with Brey’s arrival. Somewhere above me, he grunted.
Then his arm breached the endless pool of ivory engulfing me.
Bones.
A pit of bones.
Brey pulled me to the surface. Stalactites gleamed like diamonds dripping from the domed ceiling.
As we waded toward the side of the massive cavern, Brey attempted to drawl, “Well, this certainly explains the lack of remains in their lairs. Tidy monsters.”
But his voice was rasped—perhaps pained.
Before I could ask if he was injured, he swept his hands over the sea of bones until he found what appeared to be some large creature’s tibia. A hiss echoed from the chute we’d fallen down as Brey scraped the long bone upon the stone wall, sharpening the end.
He gestured across the cavern to where a splash of shadow interrupted the walls.
Another cave. It sat directly opposite the one we’d fallen through.
“Climb up there,” he whispered. “I’ll distract it.”
He was mad if he thought I’d leave him to contend with that snagorn alone. Leave him to die. I might loathe him, but we were bonded. If he was killed, the fading would come for me, and I’d die too.
And that was absolutely the only reason I said, “I’m not leaving you.”
His sharpening faltered. As he resumed, he said, “I have a plan, but it hinges on you getting into that cave.”
Twitching wings—akin to the whispering snap of an insect’s—drew my attention to the chute we’d been spat from.
“Wait,” Brey said.
Not a tremulous breath later, the snagorn’s head bobbed into the pit.
Deep blue scales and split yellow eyes created more light. Enough to better see our surroundings—how the pit stretched past the snagorn and the cave entrances into an endless river of ivory and brown.
The snagorn blinked, pupils swelling. Its forked tongue left its maw, long and black and flicking across the bones heaped before it.
“You’ll need to find ridges or wedge your feet and fingers into the soil to get up there,” Brey warned, eyes cast upon the beast. “In three, two, one…”
We both swam through the bones.
One snagged on my tunic. I didn’t bother pulling it free, and the bone grazed my skin as the thin material tore. I pushed and jumped through the pit, causing a raucous, and hoped the clacking wouldn’t lure more snagorns to us.
The cave entrance was indeed much taller than my six feet, looming high above the waves of bones.
When I reached it, I tried to climb—and quickly fell back into the pit.
The snagorn hissed.
I didn’t dare look at it. I knew if I did, then I would freeze. A lengthy bone prodded my cheek. I snatched and thrust it into a patch of soil above my head before finding a thicker bone to smack it until it met stone somewhere deep within the dirt.
More than half of the long bone protruded, but it would need to do. I gripped it, pulled, and attempted to push off the bones beneath my boots.
Rolling and clacking, they gave way.
As silence settled like a cool breeze, I realized Brey had ceased moving.
Another hiss came from the snagorn. Louder.
Closer.
Dread stiffened every limb as I foolishly looked over my shoulder—to find the snagorn sweeping its head across the bones.
But Brey had a plan. One that wouldn’t work unless I got out of this rotting pit. Again, I gripped the overhanging bone and pushed up. Again and again, I pushed and pulled while the snagorn watched and hissed and grumbled.
It appeared to be torn on who to target, its glowing eyes continuously flicking to me and searching for Brey among the bones.
On the fifth try, I found enough purchase to get my elbow onto the protruding bone and pull myself up. My legs dangled. My hand reached for the ledge of the cave entrance. Groaning, I seized it, nails snapping.
Then I pulled until my boot encountered the bone I’d stuck into the wall. It snapped beneath my weight, clanking into the pit.
But I kicked and squirmed into the cave on my stomach.
I crouched and turned to look for Brey when he called, muffled, “Get back, Ethel.”
As I retreated over the slick stone and up the slight incline, a bone flew toward the watching snagorn—smacking it in the eye.
The beast screeched. The pit shivered.
I slipped up the slope, falling onto my back as the snagorn surged across the cavern.
Growling, the beast exposed numerous triangular teeth—preparing to snatch me within its black maw. The torrid reek of it warned of the venom awaiting.
I failed to move. To even breathe as a distant yet vicious roar advanced from somewhere in the pit. Not another snagorn.
Brey.
Exploding from the sea of bones with his sharpened tibia in hand, he landed in the snagorn’s open maw.
Little more than seven feet before the mouth of the cave, the snagorn stilled.
As did my heart.
Then, pushing at the roof of its maw with his other hand to keep it from closing, Brey shoved the long bone upward…
Straight into the snagorn’s head.
The beast screeched and thrashed. Brey jumped free of its maw just as it clamped shut, which only served to push the bone deeper into its head.
But Brey wasn’t done.
Gripping the snagorn’s slit nostril, he pulled himself onto its snout. The beast tossed its head—up and down and side to side—and he slipped over the scales.
“Brey,” I screamed.
But he held on before clambering between the snagorn’s eyes. The beast went cross-eyed trying to see him. Brey used the bone poking through its head to climb atop it. He grasped it to secure his footing.
Then he pulled and pulled and pulled at that sharpened bone until a hissed whine filled the cavern.
And the snagorn collapsed.
As it went limp over the pit, Brey slid down its snout and leaped onto the ledge below me.
Shoulders rising and falling harshly, he slouched against the curved stone wall and watched the dying snagorn.
It grumbled and hissed where it lay atop the bones.
Giant dragonfly-like wings twitched, the only part of the beast that moved.
An almost fluorescent blue ichor flowed from the wound in its head.
I climbed to my numb feet. Speechless, I looked from the snagorn to my husband and back again.
“Onward,” Brey rasped.
We ran up the incline into the cave, and we didn’t slow until there was only the sound of our boots and labored breathing.