Chapter 2 #2
Even with no fae in sight, my heart pounds.
The old fireside tales of fae stealing humans away echo through my mind like a warning.
They covet rarity: beauty, talent, and power.
Once they desire something, nothing will dissuade them.
How many humans did fae drag through this very doorway before the war?
Did they kick and scream, or were they enthralled into obedience by a fae’s capricious whimsy?
I shudder.
I step through the collapsed entryway of what might’ve been a home.
A human skeleton is slumped against the wall, a corroded dagger between its ribs.
Beside it, a thumb-sized quartz statuette of Danu gleams in the wet dirt.
I’ve never found a relic like this before.
Not coins, jewelry, or a household trinket, but something unique.
Something that could have historic value.
To the right buyer, it could be worth an ox and a plow.
Maybe I should sell it to the college in Mythos.
I levitate it into my pack and take the dagger, too. Free blades are hard to come by, damaged or not.
“What did you find?” Evie asks.
“Nothing.” I don’t want her to see the skeleton. “Do you remember any stories about fae cities?” She likes folktales more than I do. “Do they usually live in caverns?”
“Many unseelie fae do,” she says. The implication of my question sinks in as she looks around. She pales. “If this is the Hollowlands, we should leave. Now, Cynthia!”
“Your Gift needs time to recover,” I point out. “And there’s no one here.”
She hesitantly follows me as I walk a little farther, exploring. All I find is junk. There are at least a dozen iron swords, shoddily forged and too rusted to smelt. In the shadows sits another impaled skeleton. Avedor must’ve waged a battle here, but why aren’t there any fae remains?
“Let’s go back.”
“Back home?” Evie’s face lights up.
“No, back to the other stairs.” I can’t leave yet. Even though I’ve found enough treasure to replace the coins the thief pickpocketed, it’s not enough to make a difference for our family.
She sighs and reluctantly follows me back to the tunnel, using her magic to push the water aside once again. “You’ve got to hurry. That gave me a break, but I can’t hold the water back forever.”
“Don’t worry, I will.”
The room down the other fork in the tunnel looks more promising. Worn engravings arch over the entrance. “All who enter, be warned,” I tell Evie, pointing up at it. “That rune there, I think it represents mallacht, some sort of ancient curse.”
Evie shudders. “You can read that? Maybe we should listen to it.”
“It’s just an older form of Avedoran.” I shrug, looking about the chamber before us for other runes or traps. “Remember when I asked to spend my seventeenth birthday in the Mythos Library? I studied it there.”
Her quiet laugh makes me smile. “Yeah. Mom joked you’d been swapped with a changeling. You despise reading.”
I roll my eyes. “I read when it could save my life. Come on, and don’t step on that flagstone there. It’s booby-trapped.” I point to the slightly raised stone as we cross under the threshold.
Stone slabs seal the alcoves set into the chamber walls, and two enchanted candelabras flank a chest in the center. Their infinite flames cast strange shadows.
Now it’s time for my Gift. We wait in the doorway as I lift the chest’s creaky lid with my magic. Nothing happens. No spear springs out from inside the chest. No rigged arrows fly from the walls. Nothing.
Even as I approach it, I expect an axe to swing down from narrow crevices in the ceiling. But the room is eerily still.
My throat clenches as I peer inside the chest. This is what I’ve been looking for—treasure that will help me add to Evie’s dowry.
Then she’d have her pick of any man in the neighboring villages, maybe even a merchant in Mythos.
She’s so kind, gentle, and beautiful. She deserves someone who would love her unconditionally.
The raw gemstones, silver ingot, and bronze helmet are a tantalizing cache.
But the real beauty is a silver bracelet with a lapis lazuli cabochon the size of a dove egg.
I snatch it like it might vanish if I hesitate.
This bracelet alone might be enough to get our family by for a year without my help in the fields.
Once I join the adventurers’ guild, I can take on paid quests and make a real income, one that would help us survive through another blight or famine.
I stuff my pack, but the ingot and helmet weigh it down until the seams threaten to burst, and the helmet is too small for my head. “Shit,” I mutter. Frustration coils inside me, but I force it out with a sigh. No problem. I can carry the helmet out.
A low growl echoes through the chamber, like a warning cry from a feral beast. The sound vibrates the floor.
“Stay behind me.” I retreat toward Evie without taking my gaze off the alcoves.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Evie says in one frantic breath. “We need to go, now!”
A slab bursts into rubble, smashed from the inside. Bony hands reach through the dark gap, and a draugr emerges. Evie shrieks.
Rotted flesh clings to its skeletal face. Chainmail armor hangs from its limbs, and its milky white eyes search the room for us. The fetid stench turns my stomach, and bile rises in my throat.
I fling my dagger at its neck. My aim is off.
The draugr catches the blade between the bones of its hand.
It studies the dagger with slow curiosity, as if trying to remember what it is.
Panic squeezes my heart, so I squeeze it back.
The terror locking my limbs gives way to an exhilarating burst of energy.
I smile. The God of Death is not reaping our souls today.
“Evie, use the water to separate yourself from that thing and me.”
“But—”
“Now!” I square my feet to charge, hoping she’ll listen. But the draugr clenches my dagger, opens his mouth of decaying teeth, and screams.
Ice crackles across the wall of water. Evie grunts as she tries to stop it, but her Gift only lets her move water, not control its form. The chamber grows cold. I don’t dare turn away from the draugr, but I hear Evie banging her fists against the ice. We’re trapped.
I don’t understand. Draugr aren’t supposed to keep their Gifts after death. Not unless the rumor is true that some are more powerful than even the necromancer who made them—a draugr wight.
Magic prickles my body as I hurl the chest at him, crushing him against the alcoves. I risk searching my pack, each precarious second hitching my breath. Where’s my flint and steel? The gemstones cut against my hand as I search. Time. Not enough time.
I throw my pack at Evie. “Find my flint and steel!”
“That tiny lantern can’t burn through ice!” she cries out, her voice so high it’s a screech.
“Fire kills draugr!”
The draugr throws the dagger, and I’m too distracted to dodge. The blade sinks into my shoulder, red-hot pain screaming through my body. I grit my teeth as I pull it free. I can’t spare a weapon. Blood seeps into my tunic. Don’t look at the wound. Don’t pause to bandage it.
The draugr’s teeth clack in a smile. It throws the chest across the chamber, where it splinters. Then it cocks its head and watches me with its necrotic milky eyes.
I have to burn it or cut its head off. Before our lungs tighten from the frigid air. Before the draugr can devour us alive.
I slip my daggers into my thigh sheaths. My wound throbs as I unsheathe my sword from the scabbard strapped to my back. The village guards drilled the basics into me, but I’m still lousy with it. Cold seeps into my feet as I shift my weight, waiting for the right moment.
The draugr lunges into an alcove and pulls out an axe. Definitely not how I want this fight to go.
“Cynthia!” Evie shouts. “Kill it!”
“I’m working on it!” I charge and slash its left arm until there’s a satisfying crack of bone. With one arm maimed, the draugr’s clumsy swing misses my head, but I feel the air whoosh past my ear. My heart thunders. A better plan hatches in my mind. I need that axe.
I sheathe my sword and retreat, looking back once to make sure Evie is behind me. Then I throw a dagger, striking its eye socket by mistake. No good. Nothing matters if I don’t sever its neck.
Enraged, the draugr stomps and roars. The chamber shakes, stones crumbling, and ice cracking.
I lunge as rock falls from the ceiling. A cave-in was not what I wanted—as if drowning wasn’t bad enough. Yet I’m invigorated as adrenaline surges through me. Even with my odds of survival lessening, I don’t feel more afraid. I feel alive.
Magic hums through my body as my gaze connects with the debris from the fight.
It gives me an idea, and I stretch my mind to raise all the rubble.
Rock and wood float around me. Evie gasps.
I pelt the draugr with a mighty barrage, pinning it against the alcoves.
Then I run to it and try to pull its axe from its grip.
It refuses to let go.
“Give up!” I scream at it.
Evie throws a rock at the draugr’s head, stunning it just long enough for me to wrench the axe away.
I race to the wall of ice and hack. The force vibrates from the axehead to my shoulders with unforgiving pain.
But I hack again, and again. Evie shouts as the draugr stalks toward me.
The ice chips, then splinters into a web of cracks.
I swing again, frigid water rushing from the widening fissure.
The draugr wraps its hand around my neck and squeezes.
“Evie!” I rasp as pain crushes my throat. The water roars against the draugr and me, shoving us back. I can’t inhale before the wave swallows us whole.
The current rips the axe away. Time’s running out. The draugr’s nails dig into my throat. My submerged body screams for air. The water is cold and stings like a thousand needles piercing my skin. I have to escape. I won’t die like this. My hands find my neck, prying at the draugr’s rotten fingers.