Chapter Eighteen #2
If it wasn’t for the tug in my chest, I would have thought we were on a wild goose chase through a never-ending maze. But we were getting closer. I could barely breathe now, and every step felt like agony as my muscles began to stiffen and lock up.
“Noah, maybe we should turn back,” Raeth suggested as she flanked my side.
“No way,” I said through gritted teeth, and I forced my legs to move another step, then another. “I’m not leaving without my shard.”
I had no choice. Even if my own body was starting to shut down on me, I wasn’t going to turn around and call it a day. The shard was worth fighting for, and I wasn’t going to let it fall into the wrong hands.
I’d taken it from Drakar before. Taking it from the clutches of whoever had stolen it now would be a piece of cake. Even if my legs didn’t seem to think so.
I dug my nails into the wall and forced myself forward, but each step sent a powerful jolt of razor-sharp pain up my legs. It was like I was being electrocuted by the ground itself, but no one else was suffering the way I was.
All I saw when I glanced over my shoulders were the concerned faces of my girls and the men who had tagged along to help. I hated pity, and I hated people thinking I was weak, so I bit back the agony threatening to tear a cry from my lips and marched forward.
Just when I thought the tunnel system really was endless, I finally turned a corner, and the cave opened out into a wide area. It was like a giant meteor had struck the center of the space and formed a jagged crater half the size of Gladewood.
There were numerous holes in the walls that looked like black voids, and huge mushrooms as tall as houses sprouted from a strange purple-colored mud coating the ground.
The caps of the fungi hung like fluffy clouds, and I could see the shimmer of sparkles floating down from their frilled underbellies.
They glowed a soft, ethereal blue and illuminated the space alongside the boulder-sized chunks of yuriel sticking out of the walls.
The roof of the cave stretched high above our heads and was lost to the darkness, but it made me realize just how far we’d walked down.
We must have been at least a hundred feet below the surface, but as my gaze traveled across the wide expanse of the cavern, I saw something that made my blood run cold.
There, in the center of the cave, was the shard.
Its form was bound by some kind of magical shield around it. The crystal was completely encased by an orb of bright pink energy, and the barrier glowed as it kept what belonged to me ?pinned in place.
As soon as the shard noticed me, it began to shake rapidly.
The ground beneath our feet trembled, and the tug in my chest was even more violent than ever.
I stumbled forward just as eight men rushed from the sanctuary of the large mushrooms and attempted to soothe the shard by calling up to it in its raised prison.
But above them, standing on top of one of the towering mushrooms, was Shaar.
He stared down at the struggling crystal with those cold brown eyes that looked like charcoal in the dim light of the cave. Then he extended his hands out, and a pulse of bright pink shot out from his palms and wrapped around the shard.
I felt the blow as soon as it hit. My entire body locked up like I was being blasted with the magic directly, and as the shard shuddered in its prison, so did I. Ellyn and Raeth both gripped onto my arms to keep me upright, but I had no control over what was happening to me.
My teeth ground against themselves, and I thanked god my tongue was out of the way, otherwise I would’ve bitten it in half.
I glared at Shaar as his magic continued to pour out of his palms, and when he finally ceased it, I sagged in Raeth and Ellyn’s grip.
His mutilated face whipped toward us when I sucked in a sharp breath, and a grin tugged at the exposed sinew.
“It’s about time you got here,” Shaar announced in a loud, booming voice that echoed around the chamber and made the mushrooms wobble. “We’ve been waiting.”
“Let it go, Shaar,” I growled out in a hoarse voice as I regained my footing. “Now.”
“I don’t think you’re currently in any position to demand things, Noah Dawson,” the twisted man mocked. “Look at you. You’re trembling where you stand.”
I hated that he was right, but my body was still trying to recover from the blast of magic he’d just aimed at the shard.
I’d known our little symbiotic relationship had its crossover points, what with us being able to communicate without words and the pull in my chest, but this reached an entirely different level.
“Let. It. Go.” I took a shaky step forward. “Now.”
Shaar barked out a laugh that dripped with condescension.
“You fool,” he said through his amusement. “Can’t you see? This was the plan all along. I needed the shard to make digging here a little bit easier.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I snapped. “What are you digging for? There are tons of yuriel still untouched in this place!”
“You think it’s for the yuriel?” Shaar cocked a wispy eyebrow and barked out another laugh. “Oh, how quaint.”
“Quit beating around the bush, Shaar,” I seethed as I gripped the butt of my Glock. “Tell me what you’re doing with my shard.”
Part of me just wanted to whip out the pistol and shoot him, but I knew that wasn’t a good idea for several reasons.
One, my body was still shaky, so my aim would be shit.
Two, if Shaar wasn’t here for the yuriel, and if the shard was only a means to an end, he wanted something even more nefarious, and I needed to know what that was before it could be used to harm Gladewood.
“Men, the time has come!” Shaar drawled in a commanding tone. “Protect our project with everything you have, or die trying!”
The men who had gathered around the imprisoned shard turned toward us. Each of them was wearing all sorts of different armor, ranging from leather to shining steel.
A dark look crossed their faces in unison as they pulled out a plethora of weapons. Scimitars, falchions, cutlasses, rapiers, and each of them was sharper than the last.
These weren’t the unequipped whelps that we’d stumbled across in the Mist Woods before. These were seasoned warriors Shaar had picked out to fulfill whatever Drakar wanted them to do.
Before I could size them up any more, they charged toward us with snarls and steel raised above their heads.
My small party acted immediately. Vilrun charged forward to meet the enemy with his golden axe raised and a cry of something in Dwarvish. Kri’osh, Raeth, and Rennick were a few paces behind him, with their own weapons drawn as they rushed to meet the men.
Tirii had started to scale one of the mushrooms so she could fire her bow, and Ellyn’s hands moved in a circular motion as she conjured an icy breeze between her palms.
It was seven against eight, if we didn’t include Shaar, and I liked those odds.
Karrida also unsheathed her shortsword, but I held her back by her arm as I waited for the first wave of our party to clash with the bandits.
Steel hissed against steel as their blades met, and once Tirii was perched on top of the pulsing mushroom, she loosed an arrow and hit one of the bandits square in the eye.
With one down, I let Ellyn move to the corner of the cave, where she could get some direct hits with her magic without harming our people. Her hands swirled in front of her before she sent a gust of icy wind straight toward the three men who had bypassed Raeth, Rennick, Vilrun, and Kri’osh.
The ice froze the men’s boots to the ground, and the force of the wind made their backs bend despite being rooted in place.
Their swords swung out haphazardly, and one of the bandits accidentally sliced his scimitar into the back of the falchion-wielder’s leg.
The injured man cried out and elbowed his comrade in the gut in return, and the hard impact made the ice surrounding the scimitar-wielder’s boots crack.
His body hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, but it didn’t take him long to scramble back to his feet and attempt to stomp the ice off ?his companions’ boots.
This was my opportunity. My body had finally stopped trembling, so I unholstered my pistol, aimed at the only freed bandit, and fired. The shot rang out as his body dropped to the ground once again, and he clutched at the hole in his chest as it spouted blood.
The other two men glanced at my first victim before their wide eyes met mine. They frantically tried to pull their boots free from the ice encasing them, but just like the shard, they had nowhere to go.
“Fools,” I heard Shaar hiss from above. “All of you resting, emerge now! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Just as I was about to take out the two stuck bandits, hands suddenly emerged from the black holes around the room. More armored men pulled themselves through the voids and dropped down to join in the fight.
Just like the others, these men weren’t being controlled or manipulated by Shaar. Their movements were precise and fluid, so they weren’t zombies or puppets. They were well-trained soldiers fighting of their own volition, and that made them even more dangerous.
Raeth, Rennick, Vilrun, and Kri’osh were still dispatching the four that had attacked them, but we were about to be overrun.
Tirii did what she could with her bow, but no matter how many arrows she fired, more men continued to pour out of the holes.
I quickly fired my gun at the stuck bandits and put them out of their misery before I turned my attention to the onslaught heading our way. I finally nodded at Karrida to go ahead, but I was still anxious about her fighting in such close quarters.
Ellyn sent more icy gusts of wind toward the sprinting men, but she was kind of limited in what she could do down here. Forming a fireball could ignite the entire space thanks to the fleshy mushrooms, and the lack of air would probably suffocate us if the fire didn’t finish us first.