Chapter 6
The first thing I hear is shrieking.
My eyes fly open, terrified. Peeble is fatally injured. My body is pressed against cold stone, and I can smell mineral dust and wet rock and something faintly sulfuric. We're not floating in the Void anymore. We landed somewhere hard, and the shrieking hasn't stopped.
"Shit—Peeble, are you okay?" I scramble off the ground, palms scraping against rough stone. I don't even pause to take stock of the injuries on my body, knowing my left leg is definitely bleeding.
We've landed on some kind of massive rock outcropping, jagged slabs stacked and scattered like a giant kicked over a pile of building blocks. And it's cold. I rub my arms trying to generate some warmth and start frantically scanning the surrounding rocks.
"Peeble, please tell me you're okay. Where are you?"
A louder wail. High-pitched, agonized, the kind of sound that makes your stomach drop.
What the hell am I going to do? I don't know how to heal a bug. Can you even make a splint for something that small? Do beetles have bones? I don't think they have bones. They have exoskeletons, which means if something cracked—oh God, I can't think about this.
I clamber over another pile of rocks and spot Peeble lying on their back, all six legs flailing in the air. I skid to my knees beside them, gravel biting into my skin.
"Tell me what hurts. What's wrong? What can I do?"
Peeble's voice comes out in a whisper. "Elle… is that you? You sound so far away."
"I'm right here, Peeble. I want to help you. Please tell me how I can make the pain stop."
Peeble wheezes, a rattling sound that makes my chest clench. "I need you… to flip me over. I want one last look at the world… before the end."
Oh, goddess. Peeble is going to leave me.
I gently try to lift the beetle, not knowing where injuries might be. My hands are shaking. I've never been one to handle sickness well in others. One time, my cousin Jenny puked in my car and I gagged so hard she ended up cleaning it up herself while calling me pathetic. She wasn't wrong.
I set Peeble down on the ground right-side up and immediately start searching for some kind of visible injury. I scan their shell, their legs, their wings. Nothing. No cracks, no dents, no oozing fluids. Do beetles ooze? It must be internal.
"Peeble, help me out here. What am I looking for? I don't see anything wrong."
Peeble blinks their beady little eyes up at me. "Elle… oh, sweet Elle… the light is fading… it's all going da—"
They collapse and go limp. Legs splayed, antennae drooping, not a twitch.
My fingers fly to my mouth and I gasp. No, no, no.
I don't remember ever seeing any possibility where Peeble died like this.
Not a single one. This can't be right. My eyes dart around the rocky landscape, panic clawing at my brain.
What do I do with a dead beetle? Do I leave them here?
Do I bury them? How deep do you dig for a beetle?
Is there some kind of fae funeral rite I should know about?
Then I hear something that sounds a lot like an annoyed sigh.
I look down. Peeble has one eye cracked open, watching me.
"Elle, this is really depressing," they say. "Where is the wailing? Where is the traumatic grief of my departure? Shouldn't you be so distraught that you can't peel yourself off the ground? I was expecting at least a fetal position."
I stare at them for a solid three seconds.
Then I stand up and shove them. "Get up, you drama queen. I don't have time for your theatrics. That was a real shit move, Peeble. We have to find Kaelren."
Peeble rolls their eyes, and how a beetle manages to roll eyes that are essentially two shiny black dots, I will never understand.
"Kaelren this, and Kaelren that. Does no one care that I chipped a claw?
" They thrust one tiny leg toward my face.
"Look at it, Elle. It's dreadful. I doubt you were considerate enough to carry a nail file. My new look is ruined."
I get to my feet and spin around, covering my eyes to shield them from the sun. The wind is whipping my hair into my face, and I have to squint against the brightness. "Where are we?"
"Well, genius, that is called a mountain," Peeble quips.
I scowl down at them. "I know it's a mountain. But I don't remember seeing any mountains before in the timelines I watched."
"That's because we're in the furthest portion of the realm. Not many travel to the Skystone Mountains."
Interesting. Nobody ever mentioned these in any of the iterations I watched. "What's up here?"
Peeble clambers up onto my shoulder and settles in. "Well, you've got all the elemental creatures that don't live down in the garden areas. You know, like the Veinlurkers over there."
I whip my head around, and that's when I see them. Thin, threadlike crystal seams running through the rock faces around us, pulsing with a faint blue light. They're everywhere, snaking through the stone in patterns that look almost deliberate, like veins under skin.
"Peeble. What does a Veinlurker do?"
Peeble has already floated back down to the ground and is using a rock to file down their chipped claw. "Hmm? Oh, yeah, so it's actually pretty cool. They redirect moisture through rock and flood tunnels by rupturing hidden water pockets. Mostly they hunt by collapsing ceilings from within."
I whip back around to stare at them. "They do what?"
"Yeah, we've probably only got a few seconds—"
They don't even finish the sentence. The ground swallows us whole.
One second I'm standing on solid rock, and the next everything drops out from under me.
We plunge into some kind of massive cavern beneath the mountain, stones raining down all around us.
I curl my body around Peeble and do my best to shield us both from the worst of it.
Rocks slam into my shoulders, my back, my arms. By the time I find Kaelren, he isn't going to recognize me through all the black and blue.
When the dust settles, I uncurl and look around. We're in a cave system. Tall ceilings, rough walls, the sound of dripping water echoing from somewhere deep. The only light comes from more of those crystal veins threading through the rock overhead, casting everything in a dim blue glow.
I glare down at Peeble. "You know, it would be nice if you gave some warning about things that might involve our death."
"I don't know why I should. You barely cared earlier when I was two seconds from my demise."
I close my eyes and count to three. "Okay. Tell me what you know about this tunnel system."
Peeble preens, straightening their antennae. "Of course! Well, rumor has it that there used to be massive trolls that ate anyone who wandered in here."
I look down at them, horrified.
"Relax, relax. Rumor has it that trolls used to eat anyone who wandered in here. Then the fae got smart and stopped entering, so the trolls ate each other instead. One by one, until only two were left. The final one died because he choked on the finger of his last companion."
My mouth is just hanging open.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Elle. You don't want the Veinlurkers getting in your system. They'll collapse your intestines from the inside, and then where will I be? Without a shoulder to sit on, that's where."
I clamp my mouth shut. "Right. Well, it looks like the trolls did a great job clearing out large tunnels for us to walk through. Where do you think they lead?"
"The northern part of the Wyrmwood reaches the base of the mountains, so if we travel south, that's where we should end up."
Good enough. The Wyrmwood is as good a place as any for me to start searching for Kaelren. I'm just hoping he's in this iteration, wherever that may be.
We walk for what feels like hours. Better yet, I should say I walk. Peeble rides on my shoulder and provides commentary.
"…And if you see something that looks like a stalactite, don't trust it. Cover your ears and run."
That gets my attention. "Why's that?"
"Well, those would be the Hollowhowl Bats. They live in the cavern ceilings, and they've got these creepy wings made of membrane stretched between mineral spines. Good news is they aren't normal bats. They don’t bite. They just shatter eardrums with sonic pulses amplified by the cave acoustics."
"That's terrible. Okay, note to self: no bats."
We enter a chamber where three tunnels split off in different directions, and I stop. "Which way should we go?"
Peeble doesn't even look up from inspecting their claw. "The one on the right."
"Wow, how do you know?"
Peeble sighs. "I don't know, Elle, but I do know that I'm always right, so right sounds right. You follow?"
I roll my eyes and pray to every goddess I can think of for patience as I start down the corridor on the right.
"So," Peeble says after a few minutes. "Tell me about this Kaelren. He wasn't in the first iteration, so I'm afraid I missed the whole sexy, broody male thing."
My heart cracks a little thinking about him. "Well, you've got the broody part down," I say, and I laugh to myself even though it hurts. "But he's so much more than that. He's fierce. Loyal. Protective. And no matter how much of an asshole he can be, he's mine. We balance each other out, you know?"
Peeble seems to consider that. "And what if you don't find him in this iteration? What will you do then?"
I haven't really thought about it. "I guess I'll see if I can find another portal to another iteration. Or hang around here until this one collapses."
At that, Peeble sits up straight on my shoulder. "Hold on, hold on. What do you mean collapses? This beautiful shell cannot be damaged."
I shake my head. "No, I mean more like this."
"Are you saying there's more than one of me?" Peeble's mandibles click excitedly. "How did you get so lucky?"
"Yes, well, I hadn't really considered ever having to deal with more than one of you at a time."
The tunnel widens, and we step into a cavern that stops me in my tracks.