Chapter 30 Shadow Terror
SHADOW TERROR
Lark fell into the darkness. A memory flashed through her mind’s eye.
In the vision, Lark was falling through open air, looking up at a great black dragon flying overhead.
He stared down, his alabaster eyes, ringed with gold, were solely focused on her.
Pain flared up her side. Lark’s flight leathers were torn and slick with blood.
As she continued to fall, death felt inevitable.
Panic overrode all other emotions and the instinct to survive drove her to reach within herself to touch the vibrating energy that was their bond.
She tugged on that tether of magic, channeling it like light through a magnifying glass, passing out of her with a surge of explosive power.
The vision vanished when Lark hit solid ground, slamming onto her back.
Pain ripped through her once again, reminiscent of that she’d suffered earlier in the week.
But she wasn’t broken, not yet. Lark stomached the nausea with effort.
To her left, a small flame ignited and for a split second, Lark thought Nix had returned to her.
It was Ezra, however. He got to his feet holding a ball of fire from a rune-carved stone in his palm.
“Lark, are you okay?” Ezra asked, stepping over the broken beams that had supported a section of the mine shaft.
“I’m good,” she said, checking herself once over again. “And you?” she asked, her eyes starting to adjust to the darkness.
“Not injured, but I am far from good,” he said, sweeping his hand toward the tunnel they’d dropped into.
Timbers bolted with heavy lags extended down the length of the shaft.
Discarded tools, thick canvas tarps, rope and pullies littered the sides of the tunnel.
The shaft had collapsed in the area where they’d been swallowed by the ground.
Rubble from the support beams lay strewn and broken before a mound of stone and dirt that clogged one side of the passage.
“What happened?” Lark asked, peering up at the seamless rock overhead, seeing no trace of the opening they’d fallen through.
“We set off a trap,” Ezra said, shaking his head. “This shouldn’t have happened. The last time I corresponded with my clan, the mines were thriving under the forest.”
“How long ago was that?” Lark asked.
“Only five years,” Ezra said.
“That may not be long in a dwarf’s lifetime, but a lot can happen in five years,” Lark said. “Can we get back up to Hardin and Venrick?”
“Working on it,” he said, switching to his native dwarven tongue to enact his stored magic.
Using his war hammer and the runes etched into it, Ezra probed the rock, looking for a way out. Lark attempted to locate her bond with Ingamar. She felt nothing humming along that bond that she’d felt in her vision.
A cast of blue light cascaded out from a Sapphire embedded into Ezra’s hammer shaft. The light rippled over the stone like the underside of water’s surface. No trace of an opening remained. It was solid granite overhead.
“That’s just my ashy luck,” Ezra cursed.
Before Lark could respond, deep groans and a sound like claws grinding against stone drifted in from somewhere down the mine. Ezra stiffened at the noise.
“Ezra, what was that?” Lark asked, her imagination inventing a monstrous beast lurking within.
“That did not sound like the pounding of pickaxes,” Ezra answered, aiming his glowing hand our into the darkness toward the sound.
“Your people reside down here, right?” Lark asked, with a flicker of hope.
“The way back to the surface is sealed with a spell too complex for my abilities, I’m afraid. If we’re going to get out of here, we’re going to have to pass through the tunnels.”
“And what about Ingamar, Venrick, and Hardin. We’re just leaving them?”
“A trap was set at this access. They will not be able to pass through. If they are wise, they’ll continue north to Red Lodge. They have the map. Perhaps they will meet us there in few days, if we can navigate through these tunnels.”
Lark brushed her hand over the side of her clothes, searching for the brismil scale.
Her heart sank when she realized she hadn’t put the scale in the harness when Venrick asked her to.
The magical armor was still packed away in the saddle bag.
Ezra shouldered his war hammer, advancing wearily into the darkness.
A strange clicking sound echoed off the stone.
Lark drew the sword from the scabbard she wore on her back, wishing she hadn’t taken off the brismil. She followed Ezra.
Discarded tools, piles of wood and half-filled barrels of unrefined ore littered the shaft.
“Do the dwarves usually leave their equipment unchecked like this?” Lark asked.
“Not this clan,” Ezra said, stopped to grab a smooth rock that was affixed into a lantern hanging from a timber supporting the shaft. He hit the stone hard on the rock wall. It clicked, a soft yellow light gradually brightening by the time he inserted it back into the lantern.
“Your rocks are imbued with glyph magic?” Lark asked.
“No,” Ezra replied, headed down the tunnel off of the shaft, holding the lantern out in front of them to light the way.
“This is lumistone, a rare ore in Sataran. This mine is one of the few where they are harvested. Lumistones glow bright at any depth. Their luminescence burns hot enough that dwarves in this part of the world use them not only for lighting but for cooking and heating their hearths as well.”
Guided by the light, they followed the tunnel until it opened up into an expansive chamber reminiscent of a Keep’s Great Hall.
Lark continued to glance over her shoulder, peering back into the darkened tunnel behind them.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was there, lurking in the shadows, watching them.
At the center of the vast underground room a crack a few body-lengths wide split the floor. A stone contraption with gears and pullies had been constructed over the opening. A stone platform large enough to hold Ingamar was attached to it.
“What is that device?” Lark asked as Ezra inspected a broken stone gear.
“These are our platforms. They transport the dwarves up and down the shafts to access more tunnels deep in the mine. Normally, they run on magical energy from the runes,” he said, passing a hand over the ancient lettering carved into one of the thirty-foot wheels.
“Perhaps this is what caused the clan to leave this area of the mine.”
“How deep do these shafts go?” Lark asked.
“Some say they go so deep that they enter the realm of the fae,” Ezra said. “Cheyanne has told me that the elves believe these shafts dig right through to the underworld and creatures of evil use them to tunnel their way through to our side.”
“Is that true?”
“We dwarves know better. The only evil that comes down here is hiding from the Paragons above. Some wild dragons have been known to take up residence in abandoned shafts. It’s what gave rise to the human myth that dragons are treasure hoarders.
But I’d challenge you to find a dragon’s treasure hoard that was bigger than any belonging to the dwarves. ”
A groan echoed up through the opening in the chamber floor. The sound created enough of a rumble that rocks shifted and loose dirt fell from the ceiling.
Lark’s expression gave her away, prompting Ezra to try and calm her down, “Not to worry. The groans of the earth are not to be feared.”
“You don’t think that could be coming from an animal?” Lark asked, looking down the hole into the pitch black.
“Nonsense. I think I would’ve heard from the clan if there had been something like a dragon or shadow terror that had moved in,” Ezra said.
“Shadow terror?” Lark asked.
“Nasty creatures conjured by Nordraven magi to fight against fae creatures like dragons. They’re winged and two-legged like bats.
Their long, wolflike snouts are jumbled with sharp teeth.
They can grow as large as an adult human.
If you ask me, they look like winged devils with their blood-shot eyes.
They can’t spell-cast, but they have some levels of protection against magic.
Someone must’ve given them goblin blood when they were created because all it takes is one bite and your life will never be the same. ”
“Goblins target dwarven mines more than any town or village,” Lark said, the knowledge returning to her in confusing clarity. “They hate sunlight; mines are better suited to their kind.”
“They have been known to take over other mines, but not those belonging to our clan. We’re strong, and hardy, and our magical protections prevent such creatures from gathering in large groups,” Ezra said.
“Is it possible that one of these shadow terrors has chased off the dwarves?” Lark asked.
Ezra glanced over the edge into the abyss below the disabled platform. “It’s never out of the question,” he said quietly. “But if that were the case, we’d have no chance at surviving. Best not to consider those things when you’re trying to navigate through an abandoned mine.”
They exited the chamber through another tunnel and continued on, passing through more expansive chambers with broken elevators, again noticing tools scattered haphazardly.
Ezra’s confident disposition and cheerful conversation cooled to a stone-hearted series of grunts and voiceless nods the farther they went.
Whatever it was that had happened down here succeeded in clearing the inhabitants out and breaking the transportation platforms. It was evident that work had stopped abruptly.