14. Willow #2
“The core?” Dagny asks.
“In my dreams, that’s where I’m standing,” I say. “I think so, anyway. I didn’t understand what the visions meant before but… I think, somehow, for some reason, I’m supposed to go to the core. I think it’s the only way to save this world.”
Dagny looks skeptical. “What happens when we get there?”
“I… I’m not exactly sure. I just know that’s where we have to go.”
For some reason, I swear I hear a low chuckle in the far depths of my mind, but when I listen for it, it’s gone.
“The core is a dangerous place. No demon has ever dared to venture there,” Roark crosses his arms across his burly chest. “It is suicide. We have no plan, no real idea whether that is where we should actually go. I do not like it.”
“If my mate thinks we should go to the core, then we’re going,” Dravik says with a snarl. “I do not care what you like, purple one.”
Roark huffs and stomps his foot, a billow of vapor clouding around his mouth. Before he can speak, Dagny reaches out, pressing her palm to his chest to calm him.
“Roark, it’s okay.” She turns her head, looking straight at me. “I trust Willow. I think we should go to the core. If there is even a chance to heal this world… I’m taking it.”
Before anyone else can speak, Kevin comes tearing into the room, wailing and screaming. He snuggles up against my legs, shaking like a leaf, and the sight causes my heart to clench.
“Hey, hey, hey. What’s wrong, buddy?” I ask, crouching down to his level. He doesn't answer, obviously, but he does press his head into my chest.
Before I can figure out what's wrong with him, a scream rips through the tunnels.
Cin.
The heartbreaking sound causes everyone in the room to go still. Then we’re moving, tearing out of the room and down the hallway toward Cin’s horrible cries of pain.
He’s in the room with the pit. Why?
We burst into the cavern, finding him curled in on himself at the edge of the pit, his eyes wide with agony, fixed on nothing. His hands are curled into tight fists, his claws piercing his skin and causing blood to pool on the floor beneath his palms.
The worst thing, though, is his wings.
They’re bent at odd angles and look horribly painful. It almost looks like… like he broke them. Like he was trying to stop himself from flying.
"Cin!" Dravik is at his side first, dropping to his knees and trying to get a grip on his shoulders. Cin thrashes against the hold, swiping out blindly and catching Dravik’s cheek with one of his claws.
Dravik backs off slightly, and Cin curls back into a tight ball, rocking back and forth, murmuring under his breath. “Hungry… so, so hungry…”
The words come out broken, sending an iron spike straight through my heart. Cin…
Just then, the air fills with a low, monotone note, almost like a foghorn. It explodes from somewhere deep within the pit, shuddering through the air and shaking the ground beneath our feet.
"Get away from the pit!" Dravik shouts.
I try to move, order my legs to run, but I can't look away from Cin.
“Come on!” Rhune grabs my arm and hauls me back a few steps, his wings flaring wide as he prepares to take flight if needed.
Nyx and Dravik join my side in an instant, both scanning the room for danger.
Meanwhile, Cin stays curled in on himself at the edge of the pit, still rocking and muttering the same broken words over and over.
“We can’t leave him there!” I shout. “We have to help him!”
“We will not endanger you!” Dravik roars over the foghorn. “When we know it is safe, we will try to help!”
All at once, the sound stops.
Movement by the tunnel draws my eye. To my surprise, Dagny and her six mates burst into the cavern, fanning out to scan the room the second they clear the threshold.
“What’s going on?” she asks, rushing over to my side. “We heard the horn.”
I open my mouth to answer, but nothing useful comes out. My hands are still shaking, and I can’t seem to form the right words to describe it.
Dagny gazes toward the pit, and her eyes go wide. “Oh no. What’s wrong with him?”
I follow her line of sight, my heart jumping to my throat when I notice Cin has started convulsing again, and now, he appears to be foaming at the mouth.
Something's horribly wrong.
Before anyone can stop me, I break away from the ground and rush toward Cin, moving as fast as my legs will take me.
“Willow, no!”
But I’m not listening. I grab Cin by the shoulders and shake him hard, trying to bring him back from the edge. “Cin! Cin, look at me! Come back to me, please. Please…”
Cin blinks slowly, and some of the sanity returns to his gaze. “Willow…?” My name comes out broken, like some part of him doesn’t believe I’m really here. I tighten my grip on his shoulders, my voice cracking as I whisper, "I'm here. I'm right here, Cin. I’m with you. You’re not alone."
His face contorts in pain as he fights to get out his next words. A thin line of blood runs from the corner of his mouth, and his whole body shudders as he struggles to hold on to whatever's left of his consciousness.
“Willow…” His eyes hold mine, shining with something raw and desperate. “Run.”
I open my mouth to ask what he means, but his eyes have already gone unfocused, and I know he can’t hear me anymore.
My mates crowd around us, their voices overlapping with barely restrained panic.
“What happened?”
“Is he breathing?”
“Willow?”
“He just… he told me to run.” I hold back a wave of tears.
“To run? From him?” Dravik asks.
“I don’t know…” I shake my head. “He passed out before I could ask.”
Before anyone can say anything else, a scream tears up from the bottom of the pit. Then another. Then a thousand more, stacking on top of each other until they reverberate throughout the room in a chorus of horrible, nerve-wracking howls.
Unholy. Wrong.
“Watch out, Willow!” Rhune’s hand closes around my wrist, yanking me back from the edge.
Then they start climbing out.
Horrible, mutated creatures made of flesh, bone, and nightmare.
Too many limbs with joints bending in directions they shouldn't, skin stretched thin over ribs that don't quite fit their slender torsos.
Their heads are malformed, with jaws that hang wide and are packed with rows of blackened, decaying teeth.
I’ve never seen anything like them. But by the looks on my mates’ faces, I know for a fact they do not belong to this world or any other.
One of them lifts its head toward us and screams, the sound shuddering through the air and underneath my skin, causing raw panic to pulse through my veins.
Nyx glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “I think we should run.”