Chapter 12
The stairs turn into an earthen slope, much like a wide mineshaft, as the camels carry us deeper and deeper underground.
The temperature drops a few degrees, becoming noticeably chilly, as if the walls are sucking the heat out of our bodies.
Our shadows dance along them in the flickering torchlight, and smog-like vapor in a strange, orange-hue pool on the ground.
For a moment, I worry it might be a noxious gas, but I can’t smell anything abnormal.
As I mull it over, trying to sort through all the chemistry knowledge in my head to remember what vapor is odorless and orange, it becomes even more dense.
If I had a jar, I could probably reach down to collect it.
Curiosity gets the best of me, and I decide to lean over and give it a good, long sniff.
Not my best idea, admittedly. It’s a miracle I passed my labs with this kind of unsound judgment, especially considering how I’m genuinely expecting something chemically unsound.
But, oddly enough, nothing smells out of place.
It’s all just dirt, wet rock, and burning torches.
Which, I suppose, is more manageable than fire and sulfur, but the ambiguity is probably even more disconcerting.
I stare at Dusk’s winged back ahead of me. “You’re sure this isn’t the road to Hell?”
“For the millionth time,” he starts with a sigh in his voice, even though he refuses to turn to look at me. “No, Kae. I am not the devil, and I am not bringing you to Hell.”
“I’ve only asked like… one other time,” I mumble.
“You’ve brought it up four times now, to be exact.”
I huff a noncommittal noise in lieu of a response. He says that, but I’m still not convinced this place didn’t inspire some of Dante’s Inferno. However, my skin isn’t burning, and it’s nothing like that one nightmare I had—
My lungs rasp for air through the ashen and sulfurous debris, each breath becoming less useful by the minute, every meaningless inhalation more bitter and agonizing than the last. I claw at my throat and chest, desperate for relief.
I would tear my own soul from my body if it could remove this unspeakable, unfathomable pain of drowning on land.
From dirt we were born, and to dirt we will return.
It is hungry for its last corpse, and there is no escaping the reaper of Earth.
I shake my head, letting the tension roll into my shoulders, shiver through my body, and wring out through my hands.
It’s too easy for me to get sucked into those memories. If I’m not careful, I’ll give myself a damn panic attack. The air here is fine. I am not at risk of suffocating to death.
For now, at least.
If anything, I should be focusing on the strange vibrations in the earth.
I’ve seen enough science fiction movies to be worried about giant underground worms, and because I really hope they only exist in said sci-fi movies, I thought I must have been imagining it at first. Unfortunately, the intensity grows with each passing moment. Now, it’s an unmistakable hum.
“Time to get off the camels,” Dusk calls, hopping down from his mount with a gentle ease. “We don’t want to run the risk of them getting spooked.”
I shoot him a look, skeptical. “I thought you had them charmed?”
“Yes, but the stronger their emotions, the more difficult they are to control. I’d rather not take my chances. You humans are fragile.”
I scoff, but make a mental note to ask him more about his enviable little skill later. If it’s at all possible for me to be able to talk to animals one day, I want to learn how. Even more than I’d want my own wings to fly.
But until then, I’ll just stay green with envy.
Before Dusk has the chance to help me again, I dismount. My feet hit the ground with a bit more impact than I’d like, admittedly, but still decently graceful.
I turn to where he’s standing, a breath away from having pulled me down himself, and flip my braid over my shoulder. My expression is smug. “I told you I can get down without your help.”
“Yes ma’am. Do you want to lead the camels, too? I can give you Jack’s reins.”
With a shrug, I feign indifference. “If you really can’t handle spooked livestock without magic, then yes, I suppose I can help.”
His eyebrows furrow as he immediately retorts, “It’s not magic. Magic is a made-up word that stage performers popularized.”
“Oh, really? Then what would you call it? Witchcraft? Jedi mind tricks?”
He doesn’t reply. Instead, he shakes his grumpy little head and mutters what I think is some long-winded complaint to himself, but it’s hard to tell. It’s in another language. Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s… Latin?
“You realize you’re in the twenty-first century now, right? Nobody speaks Latin anymore. It’s a dead language.”
“Is that so?” His head tilts to the side.
My eyebrows scrunch together, and I take a beat, choosing to steal his camel’s reins and take the lead in our slow march. Something about his demeanor makes me doubt myself. “Unless you and your angel buddies just speak it for funsies, it is to us earthlings.”
He barks a laugh. “My angel buddies? You underestimate the size of Elohim.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have to if you’d just tell me more about it.”
“Nice try, Dawn, but I think the Abyss is enough to wrap your head around for now.” As soon as the words come out of his mouth, my attention inadvertently shifts back to the low-rolling vibrations in the ground.
They’ve gotten even more intense since we started walking, and unease starts to spider crawl up my neck.
Some innate part of me is getting more and more frantic, despite my best efforts to keep swallowing it down.
This godforsaken tunnel is nothing more than a haunted house, I tell myself. Nothing is going to hurt me. It’s all theatrics.
“Before we get to—” Dusk pauses abruptly when I flinch, and his camel does as well. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump.”
“It’s fine,” I mutter, displeased.
“Are you alright? I can take the lead again. I was just kidding when I—”
“I said I’m fine. Continue.”
“Right.” He clears his throat, clearly not believing me.
“Well, there will be an open cavern where locusts guard the city gates. Judging by the sound, they’ve prepared a large welcoming party for us today.
I don’t imagine their reclusive king will bother to come to greet us, but if he does, just stay behind me.
He’s an uppity asshole, and I don’t trust him one bit. ”
“So… no giant underground worms?” I peer over my shoulder, cocking an eyebrow.
“What?” His expression is genuinely baffled. “Where did you get that idea?”
I can name exactly what movie spawned that fear, but I guess he doesn’t spend much time watching human movies. “Nevermind. So you don’t like the angel king. Considering his grotesque decorating style, I’m not really inclined to trust him, either. So how does the locust swarm come in?”
Dusk grimaces. “Listen, Kae. The locusts are… not what I think you’re expecting.”
Well, the Bible doesn’t explain the locusts in a way that makes a ton of sense, and I can’t quite remember the specific details, but I highly doubt that a horde of crop-eating bugs will be the thing to terrify me.
I’ve never been scared of bugs; my dad made sure of that when he got me a pet tarantula when I was a kid, since he felt bad for not getting me a dog or cat because of Mom’s allergies.
The little shit was mean, so I didn’t keep it long…
but still. Now would be an awful time to start getting queasy over insects.
“How bad could they really be?” I turn back around, looking ahead of us.
“Define ‘bad.’”
“Can I fit inside one’s mouth?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I scoff, waving him off. “I’m not scared of bugs.”
“If you say so…” His voice wavers with a sing-songy uncertainty, and I know he thinks I’m bluffing. It annoys the shit out of me.
“For the last time, I’m fucking fine. Quit worrying about me so much.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
We get to a part of the tunnel where the slope flattens and begins to round a corner.
The vibration is nearly deafening, rattling my skull around.
It’s not a rumbling, I realize, but the buzzing of enumerable wings.
So many wings that the noises of their movements have bled together into one singular roar.
We round the corner, an overwhelming metallic smell filling my nostrils, and—
My stomach catapults into my throat the moment I see the locusts.
They’re not bugs at all.
Thousands of bipedal, humanoid creatures fill the massive cavern to the brim.
Some stand on the ground, while others crowd the air with semi-translucent insect wings.
For every human-like feature they have, it’s either morphed in a grotesque way or they have an additional insect feature to counter it.
I grip the reins tighter, backstepping.
My eyes dart from locust to locust, taking in their horribly unnatural anatomy.
Though they stand on two legs, they have four arms: a more developed set of limbs sits on top while a skinnier, seemingly redundant pair is nestled beneath them.
Most of their lanky body is made of gold metal vaguely outlining a human skeleton, with sharp ridges imitating shoulders, ribs, and various other bones and muscles.
And then there’s the tails. Massive scorpion tails extend in chitinous segments from their lower back, nearly reaching down to the floor, before curling upward again.