Chapter 10 Terra
TERRA
The Temple corridors swallowed us up.
Stone pressed close on both sides, carved smooth centuries ago but still holding the city’s heat like a living thing.
My boots scraped against rock as Lexa and I pushed deeper into the passages, our breathing harsh in the confined space.
Behind us, the sounds of Vega's distraction echoed and faded, replaced by the thunder of our own heartbeats.
I didn't let myself think about what was happening to her.
Couldn't.
The passage split ahead. Left or right, no obvious markers to indicate which led toward the sanctum. I chose left on instinct, trusting the upward slope to carry us closer to the Temple's heart.
Lexa followed without question, her knife already drawn. Blood ran down her forearm from a scratch she'd taken during our sprint past the Temple entrance. Not deep, but enough to leave a trail.
The corridor opened into a wider space, still narrow by Drakarn standards but enough for two people to stand side by side. Heat crystals embedded in the ceiling cast everything in dim light. The air tasted like smoke and old incense.
Movement ahead.
I threw up a hand, and Lexa froze. We pressed against the wall, making ourselves as small as possible. Footsteps approached, heavy and confident. Claws clicking on stone.
A green-scaled Drakarn warrior rounded the corner.
His wings were folded tight against his back to fit the space, and he carried a short blade that gleamed in the dim light. He saw us immediately.
His eyes widened. Then narrowed.
"Humans." He said it like a curse. "How did you get past the entrance?"
"We walked," I said.
His lip curled, showing fang. "Clever. It won't help you here."
He lunged.
The confined space worked against him. His wings scraped the walls as he tried to close the distance, slowing him just enough. I dropped low, blade coming up to meet his strike. Metal screamed against metal. The impact jarred up my arms, but I held firm, redirecting his momentum past me.
Lexa moved in from the side, her knife finding the gap between his scales at the back of his knee. Not deep enough to truly injure him, just enough to make him stumble.
He roared and spun, tail lashing. The appendage caught Lexa across the ribs and sent her crashing into the wall. She went down hard, breath exploding from her lungs.
I was already moving. I threw myself at his back, using his own height against him. My blade found the soft flesh of his wing and sliced through. Not a killing blow, but painful enough to make him forget about Lexa.
He twisted, trying to shake me off. I held on, wrapping my legs around his waist, one hand fisted in his hair. My other hand brought the blade up toward his throat.
"Yield," I hissed in his ear.
He bucked like a wild animal. My grip slipped. I went flying, hit the opposite wall, and tasted blood where I'd bitten my tongue.
Lexa was back on her feet. She threw herself at his legs, taking him down with sheer determination and no regard for her own safety. They fell together in a tangle of limbs and wings.
I scrambled up, ignoring the pain radiating through my shoulder where I'd hit stone. I crossed the distance in three strides and pressed my blade to the base of his skull.
"Back off," I repeated. "Or this gets worse."
He went still. His chest heaved. Fury radiated from him like heat from the crystals above.
"You fight like cowards," he spat.
"We fight to win." I didn't move the blade. "Is this over?"
He yielded.
We left him there, wings damaged, pride shattered. Lexa limped for the first few steps but forced herself into a steady pace. The cut on her arm was still bleeding. Her breathing sounded wrong, too shallow. Probably bruised ribs from that tail strike.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Fine."
She wasn't fine. Neither was I. My shoulder throbbed. My hands shook from adrenaline. The taste of blood in my mouth was a reminder of how close that fight had been.
But we were moving forward. That was what mattered.
The passage kept going. My calves burned. Sweat soaked through my shirt, mixing with the stone dust that coated everything. The heat intensified as we went on, pressing down like a physical weight.
Another intersection. This time, I chose right, following the sound of distant voices. Other participants, probably. The Skalanth was designed to force confrontation, to test warriors against each other as much as against the obstacles themselves.
We were walking into a meat grinder.
The voices grew louder. Multiple speakers, arguing or fighting or both. The passage opened into a chamber carved from solid rock, maybe twenty meters across. Heat crystals the size of my fist lined the walls.
Six Drakarn warriors filled the space.
They'd been fighting each other, that much was obvious. Scales were scratched. Wings torn. One warrior sat against the wall, ash mark already visible on his shoulder. Eliminated.
They all turned when we entered.
Silence fell like a blade.
Then chaos.
Two of them came at us immediately, seeing easy targets. The others went back to fighting each other, too focused on their own competition to care about humans. The chamber became a mess of bodies and violence, everyone trying to reach the exit on the far side that led deeper into the Temple.
I ducked under a wing strike, felt claws rake across my back. Fabric tore but didn't reach skin. Lexa was beside me, her knife flashing as she drove it toward a warrior's exposed flank. He twisted away, but the movement opened him up to another participant's attack.
We used the chaos. Stayed low. Moved fast. Let the Drakarn fight each other while we navigated the edges of the battle.
A massive warrior with brown scales blocked our path to the exit. He wasn't fighting anyone, just standing guard, waiting. Smart. Let the others exhaust themselves while he stayed fresh.
His eyes found mine. Recognition flickered across his features.
"The Warrior Lord's pet." His voice carried over the sounds of combat. "This will be a story."
"Get out of the way," I said.
"Make me."
Lexa threw her knife.
It wasn't meant to hit him. Just to distract. He batted it aside with one clawed hand, and in that moment of diverted attention, I ran straight at him.
But not to fight.
I dropped into a baseball slide, using the smooth stone floor and my own momentum to carry me between his legs. He grabbed for me but missed, his claws closing on empty air.
I came up on the other side and kept running.
Lexa followed, scooping up her knife as she passed. The brown-scaled warrior roared behind us, but he was too slow. We hit the exit corridor at full speed and didn't look back.
The passage beyond was narrow again. Single file. My lungs burned. My legs felt like they were made of lead. But I pushed harder, driven by fear and determination in equal measure.
Vega had sacrificed herself for this. I couldn't waste it.
The thought of her facing guards alone, getting captured, marked with ash and sent home in disgrace, it sat in my chest like a stone. She'd done it willingly. She’d be fine tomorrow. But that didn't make the guilt any lighter.
"Stop it," Lexa said from behind me.
"What?"
"Whatever you're thinking. Stop it." Her voice was sharp. "Vega made her choice. You don't get to feel bad about it. That's an insult to her decision."
The words hit harder than any punch could have.
She was right. Vega had chosen this path knowing exactly what it meant. Treating her sacrifice like something to feel shameful about diminished the strength it took to make that choice.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay?"
"You're right. Guilt is for later." I forced myself to focus on the passage ahead. "After we finish this."
"With an attitude like that, you’re lucky a therapist didn’t crash down on this heap with us."
I snorted.
The corridor opened into another chamber, this one vertical.
A shaft that climbed upward into darkness, but wall that wasn’t completely smooth, there were natural handholds at human-spaced intervals.
It was the kind of climb that would be trivial for a Drakarn with wings. For us, it was a death trap.
I looked up, trying to gauge the distance. Maybe fifteen meters.
"We can't climb that," Lexa said.
"We have to."
"Terra …"
"Do you see another way up?" I circled the chamber, running my hands along the walls. Looking for anything. Like for a hidden passage to appear out of nowhere.
Nothing.
Just stone and the mocking shaft above.
Voices echoed from the passage we'd just left. More warriors, heading this way. We were about to be trapped in a dead end with nowhere to go but up.
"I'll boost you," Lexa said. "Get you started."
"That's not going to work."
"It has to work. We don't have another option." She moved to the wall, lacing her fingers together to form a step. "Come on. We're wasting time."
She was right. Again.
I put my boot in her hands, and she lifted, grunting with effort. I grabbed the lowest handhold, pulled myself up. My shoulder screamed in protest. The muscles in my arms shook.
I reached for the next hold. Pulled. Reached. Pulled.
Below me, Lexa jumped for the lowest handhold. Her fingers caught. Held. She started climbing, her face set in grim determination.
The voices behind us grew louder. Warriors entering the chamber. Seeing us on the wall.
"Climbing?" Someone laughed. "This I have to see."
I didn't look down. Just kept moving. Hand over hand. The holds were rough against my palms, volcanic stone that wanted to shred skin. My arms burned. My shoulder felt like it was tearing itself apart.
Halfway up.
Lexa was maybe three meters below me, climbing with single-minded focus. Her injured arm left blood smears on the stone.
Something hit the wall beside my head.
I jerked back instinctively, nearly lost my grip. Looked down and saw a Drakarn warrior at the base of the shaft, another stone in his hand. He was using us for target practice.
"Keep going," Lexa shouted.
Another stone flew past. This one clipped my leg, sent pain radiating through my calf. I gritted my teeth and reached for the next hold.
The top of the shaft appeared above me. A ledge. Safety.
I pulled myself over the edge and collapsed, chest heaving. Every muscle in my body shook. But I was up.
Lexa's hand appeared at the ledge. I grabbed it, hauled her up with strength I didn't know I still had. She rolled onto solid ground beside me, gasping.
Below, wings beat. The warriors were flying up the shaft, taking seconds to cover the distance we'd spent minutes climbing.
"Move," I said.
We ran.
The passage here was wider, carved with more care. Symbols decorated the walls, religious markings I didn't have time to decipher. The air grew thicker with incense. We were close to the sanctum. Had to be.
The corridor opened into a final chamber.
Larger than the others. Circular. Heat crystals embedded in a pattern that made the whole space glow like the inside of a forge. And at the far end, through an archway carved with protective sigils, I could see it.
The blood-flame.
It sat on a pedestal in the center of what had to be the inner sanctum. Pulsing with internal light. Red and gold and alive. So close I could almost feel its heat from here.
But between us and that archway stood at least a dozen Drakarn warriors.
Not guards. Warriors in the Skalanth. All of them converging on the same goal. All of them willing to go through anyone who got in their way.
The chamber erupted into violence. Warriors fighting each other, fighting us, fighting anyone who got close to that archway. I lost track of Lexa almost immediately, caught up in the chaos of bodies and wings and claws.
A tail swept my legs. I went down, rolled, came up with my blade already moving. Caught a warrior across the arm, not deep but enough to make him back off.
Someone grabbed my hair from behind. Yanked hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. I twisted, drove my elbow backward into scales. The grip released.
The archway was maybe ten meters away. It might as well have been a thousand.
I fought toward it anyway. One step. Two. Using every dirty trick I'd learned in eight months of survival. Nothing honorable. Nothing fair. Just desperation and the will to keep moving forward.
A massive shape blocked my path. Purple scales. Yellow eyes.
The novice who'd cornered me in the corridor days ago.
Recognition flared in his expression. Then something uglier. Vindication.
"Say goodnight, human."
He raised his clawed hand, ready to strike.
Lexa's scream cut through the chaos. "Terra!"
I turned, saw her fighting off two warriors at once, saw the purple-scaled bastard's claws descending toward my head.
Then something gray and fast dropped from above.
Nyx landed between us, steel-gray scales gleaming in the crystal light. His wings spread wide, blocking the purple warrior from reaching me.
He intercepted the strike with brutal efficiency, his own claws catching the purple warrior's wrist and twisting. Bone cracked. The warrior screamed and fell back.
My heart stopped.
We were caught. It was over. A senior warrior had found us, and there was no way Lexa and I could fight our way past him.
Lexa appeared at my side, putting herself between me and Nyx. Her knife was out, held in a grip that shook with exhaustion but didn't waver.
"Run," she said. "I'll hold him off."
"Lexa, no …"
"Run!" She shoved me toward the archway. "Don't waste this. Go!"
Lexa lunged at him, and he moved to counter. They became a tangle of motion that blocked the other warriors from reaching me.
I ran.
Guilt tore at me with every step.
Vega had sacrificed herself. Lexa was sacrificing herself. I couldn't let those choices mean nothing.
The archway loomed ahead. The sanctum beyond it was empty. No guards. No participants. Just the blood-flame on its pedestal, pulsing like a heartbeat.
My boots hit the sanctum floor. The chamber was smaller than I'd expected, intimate. Carved with reverence. The blood-flame's light filled every corner, warm and alive.
I could see it clearly now. Multifaceted. Beautiful. The goal of the Skalanth. The symbol of everything I was trying to prove.
Victory was three meters away.
I ran toward it.
And stopped.
Darrokar stood between me and the blood-flame.
"Luvae."