Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Aria
Kaelen’s arm tightened around me, his grip so fierce it bordered on pain, but I leaned into it.
I needed the pain. It was a tether to reality, a sharp reminder that I was here, breathing, alive, and not back on that cold metal table in the Citadel’s sanitarium.
The silence seemed to stretch between us and I didn't know what to say to make it feel lighter, less like the very air around us was trying to crush us.
"They will not touch you again," Kaelen swore, the vow vibrating through his chest and into my spine.
His voice was low, a rumble of subterranean fury that made the stagnant air in the cavern shiver.
"If they try to create this... this abomination.
.. I will turn the Citadel into a crater so deep they will find magma before they find the foundation stones. "
"We will help you," Thane added, his voice heavy as a boulder rolling downhill.
He had gone back to sharpening his piece of obsidian, but his movements had become jerky, violent.
Scrape. Scrape. Snap. The stone broke in his massive hand, shards tinkling to the floor.
"The Bear does not forget a grudge. And stealing life.
.. that is a grudge I will carry to the end of time. "
Elias was pacing again, his movements fluid and agitated, like a caged bird throwing itself against the bars.
"The vision is darkening," he muttered, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.
"The woman in white... Marissa. She is moving.
She has a box. It glows with preservation magic.
If she reaches the Gate site... if she uses the residual energy bleeding from the rift. .."
"She won't," Kaelen snarled.
"She might," Elias countered, dropping his hands. His turquoise eyes were wild, swimming with panic. "Magic seeks a vessel, Kaelen. You know this. The world is flooded with it now. If they have biological material, Aria’s material, and they introduce it to that chaotic energy..."
"Stop," I whispered. The nausea was back, rolling through my stomach like a tide of oil. "Please. Just... stop."
I couldn't think about it. I couldn't think about parts of myself, stolen and put into some kind of stasis, before being twisted into something else. Something that wasn't human, wasn't a keeper, wasn't me.
Kaelen pressed his face into my hair, inhaling deeply. "Breathe, fireheart. We are here. You are here. What the bird talks about is a possible future. Not what is happening right now."
He was trying to ground me, but his skin was burning. The dragon inside him was pacing, scratching at the back of his eyes, demanding blood for the offense. It was a volatile comfort, like hugging a volcano, but it was better than the cold void of my own thoughts.
A sound cut through the spiraling tension.
Click. Clack. Slither.
It came from the tunnel entrance where Thane had been guarding the perimeter, or rather, just slightly past him, in the shadows where I vaguely sensed the Skal.
Alert, a voice rasped in my mind.
It didn't sound like the telepathic bond I shared with the princes. That connection was gold and fire and warm, woven light. This voice was wet. It sounded like bubbles popping in thick mud, or the squelch of boots walking through a swamp. It tasted of salt and pressure.
Alert. Biological signatures detected. They are close.
I stiffened, my head snapping toward the tunnel mouth.
Kaelen felt my tension instantly. He shifted, putting his body between me and the darkness, his hand dropping to the hilt of the stolen sword he had laid across his knees.
"What is it?" he demanded, his voice dropping to a combat whisper.
"The Skal," I murmured, staring into the gloom.
The creature emerged from the shadows, dragging its bulk across the stone floor. It moved with a strange, scuttling grace, its multiple limbs coordinating in a way that should have been clumsy but was terrifyingly efficient. Its chitinous armor scrapped softly against the rock.
It stopped just outside the circle of firelight, its three sets of eyes adjusting to the glow. They were no longer the muddy yellow of submission, but a pulsing, alert chartreuse.
Master, the mental voice gurgled, directed solely at me. Intruders. Not-Wolf. Not-Pack.
I blinked, surprised by the clarity of the communication.
When I had first rewritten its command structure, it had been a sledgehammer blow, a crude, desperate forcing of will.
Now, it felt nuanced. I could feel its agitation, a cold, reptilian shiver in the back of my brain.
I could taste the briny flavor of its thoughts.
"It says there are intruders," I told the others. "Not Flynn."
Thane was on his feet in an instant, his bulk filling the tunnel entrance, a wall of living earth. Elias vanished into the upper shadows of the cavern ceiling, moving with silent, unnerving speed. Kaelen rose, pulling me up with him, keeping me tucked behind his back.
"How many?" Kaelen asked, staring at the monster.
I looked at the Skal. "How many?"
The creature shifted its weight. Its heavy, wet tail thumped against the ground as it raised one of its massive, serrated claws and clicked the pincers together.
Many, it projected. Small. Soft. Smelling of iron and fear. They carry the sun in tubes.
"Torches," I translated, a strange fascination warring with my fear. "Or magic lanterns."
They hunt, the Skal added. They taste of the White Room.
My stomach dropped. The only white room I could think of was the one we had just been discussing, but how did the Skal know about that? Whether it was the same room or not didn't matter. Not now.
"The Keepers," I whispered. "They found the tunnel."
The Skal pulled itself closer, ignoring Kaelen’s low, warning growl. It stopped three feet away from me and lowered its massive, armored head to the floor in a gesture of abasement. Its mandibles clicked softly, a sound that oddly reminded me of knitting needles.
Permission to consume?
The thought was hopeful. Eager, even. Like a dog asking for a treat, if the dog was a three-ton crustacean nightmare from the abyss.
I stared at it. It was hideous. Wet muscle exposed between black plates, eyes that rolled independently, a stench of low tide that made my eyes water.
But looking at it, really looking at it, I saw the way it trembled with the desire to please.
I felt the simple, brutal loyalty I had burned into its psyche.
It wasn't just a monster. It was my monster.
"No," I said, and the disappointment radiating from the creature was palpable. It actually slumped. "Not yet. Stay. Guard."
Sadness, the Skal projected, a wash of cold, damp melancholy hitting my mind. Hunger remains.
"It's... pouting," I said, a hysterical bubble of laughter rising in my throat. "Kaelen, look at it. It's pouting because I won't let it eat the Keepers."
Kaelen glanced at the creature, his lip curling in disgust. "It is an abomination, Aria. Do not anthropomorphize the calamari."
"It's kind of... I don't know," I said, tilting my head. The Skal chittered, its mandibles waving slowly. One of its eyes blinked at me, a lazy, sideways shutter. "In a horrific, nightmarish way... it's sort of cute."
Elias dropped from the ceiling, landing lightly beside the fire. He looked at me with genuine concern. "The magical exhaustion has finally claimed her mind. She is bonding with the deep-sea scavenger."
"It is useful," Thane grunted from the doorway. "And it has better hearing than us. If it says they are coming..."
A new sound echoed down the tunnel. The soft pat-pat-pat of running feet. Not the heavy, armored tread of guards, but the light, swift cadence of a predator.
Wolf, the Skal projected, perking up. Pack. He smells of ozone and trouble.
"Flynn," I said, relief washing through me.
A second later, Flynn burst into the cavern.
He wasn't moving with his usual sauntering grace. He was sprinting, his bare chest heaving, sweat slicking his skin and plastering his hair to his forehead. He skidded to a halt near the fire, his eyes wide and wild, the amber irises nearly swallowing the whites.
He smelled of digging, damp earth, crushed roots, and something metallic. Blood. Not his own, I realized with a jolt.
"We have a problem," Flynn announced, breathless. He didn't look at Kaelen or his brothers. He looked straight at me, devouring me with his gaze as if checking for injuries I hadn't sustained.
"We know," Kaelen said, stepping forward. "The Skal sensed intruders. The Keepers?"
"No," Flynn gasped, bending over to brace his hands on his knees. He took a deep, rattling breath. "Well, yes. The Keepers are in the upper tunnels. Lots of them. But that's not the problem."
He straightened, wiping a smear of dark blood from his cheek.
"I found where they went," Flynn said, his voice dropping to a grim tone I had never heard him use. "The remnants of the Order of Khaos. And the missing Keepers."
"Where?" Thane walked back toward the fire, his heavy club resting on his shoulder. "Are they regrouping?"
"They aren't regrouping," Flynn said. He pointed back toward the tunnel he had come from, his hand shaking slightly. "They're excavating."
I frowned. "Excavating what?"
"There is another chamber," Flynn said. "Deeper. Below the Cradle. I didn't know it was there until I smelled the... the leaking."
"Leaking?" Elias asked sharply.
"Magic," Flynn said. "Old, rotten magic.
I followed the scent. They've breached a wall into some kind of sub-basement.
" Use of words like 'sub-basement' felt wrong for a cave system, but his meaning was clear.
"And Aria..." He looked at me, his expression tortured.
"They have something that smells like you. Containers of some kind."
"Containers?" I echoed, my mind blanking.
"Glass jars," Flynn clarified, his voice harsh. "Dozens of them. Glowing with stasis runes. And they have a woman with them. Wearing white robes. She's directing them."
My knees nearly gave out again. Kaelen caught me, his arm banding around my waist.
"Marissa," I choked out.
"I was able to watch for a while before… Anyway, they seem to be setting up a ritual circle," Flynn continued, the words tumbling out faster now. "Not a binding circle. A gestation circle. They're drawing power from something in that sub-basement. Something... alive."
"Alive?" Kaelen demanded. "What could possibly be down there if they are having to dig to get to it?"
Flynn looked at the Dragon Prince, and the fear in the Wolf’s eyes was absolute.
"I think," Flynn whispered, "it's a piece of the Titan the Citadel was built on. A bone or something? I don't know. But it's bleeding energy, and this woman seems to be trying to draw something from it or is feeding it to something."
"They aren't waiting for a replacement," Elias said, his voice hollow, staring into the middle distance as if watching a tragedy unfold on a stage only he could see. "They are accelerating the growth. They are trying to force-grow a god-killer using the remains of a dead Titan."
The silence in the cavern broke.
Flynn spun to face Elias. "What in Zeus' name are you talking about, brother?"
"We don't have time to explain, but we have to stop them," I said, pushing away from Kaelen.
My exhaustion was gone, burned away by a cold, white-hot panic.
"If they make... whatever that is... using my.
.. my… my…" I tried to get the words out to say eggs, blood, tissue, anything, but all that came out was stomach bile as I turned and retched once more.
Flynn went as white as a sheet. He might not have been there for the conversation, but he was smart and had at least an inkling of what was going on.
"We will," Kaelen said as he rubbed my back waiting for my heaving to stop. His sword was in his other hand, the dragon fire already licking along the steel blade. "Flynn, how far?"
"Twenty minutes at a run," Flynn said, drawing his stolen dagger. "But there are guards. Cultists and loyalist Keepers working together. It’s a mess."
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Elias quoted bitterly. "Until they decide to eat each other."
"Skal," I said, turning to the monster.
It lifted its head, mandibles clicking. Command?
"Hunt," I said. "Protect the Pack. Consume the rest."
The Skal rose to its full height, towering over us, a nightmare of black armor and green eyes. It let out a shriek that vibrated in my teeth.
Hunt, it agreed with sadistic glee.
"We move," Kaelen ordered. "Now."
We started toward the tunnel, weapons drawn, magic flaring to life. But as I passed Flynn, he reached out and grabbed my arm, stopping me.
"Aria," he said softly.
I looked up at him. "What? We have to go."
"Are you okay?" The tenderness in his eyes almost broke me.
"Not in the slightest. But right now I don't have time to process any of that. Now I have to kill a bitch before she does something profoundly stupid."