Chapter 20
Carys Moon-Spun did not know how to hold a sword. She had never thrown a punch in her life. Her hands were made for turning the delicate, crystalline pages of ancient texts and holding a calligraphy pen steady under the dim light of a library candle.
But as the colossal, calcified mass of the Leviathan dragged itself through the dark, its gaping maw opening to swallow the crushed Vanguard, the Lore-Keeper did not run.
She stood directly between the monster and the basalt slab.
Her knees were knocking together so violently she could barely keep her balance.
The erratic violet light of her cracked focus crystal illuminated the sheer, horrific scale of the beast. It was a moving mountain of rotting meat, petrified wood, and rusted academy metal.
The stench of battery acid and decaying flesh washed over her, thick enough to gag on.
She was going to die. The mathematical certainty of it was absolute.
But Carys looked down at Vael, bleeding out into the mud, and something within the timid scholar snapped. The academic detachment evaporated, replaced by a frantic, terrifying clarity.
The Leviathan let out a deafening, organic roar. Its massive head swept downward, the jagged obsidian teeth poised to scrape the cavern floor and scoop them both into its dark, acidic gullet.
Carys dropped to her knees. She didn't reach for her magic. She reached into the mud.
Her ink-stained fingers found the heavy, shattered brass casing of the academy terminal she had dragged from the rubble.
The machine was dead, but the internal battery core was still wildly sparking, leaking raw, volatile Spireheart aether into the damp air.
It weighed nearly forty pounds. Carys strained, letting out a primal, uncharacteristic scream of pure exertion as she hoisted the jagged metal console up to her chest.
The Leviathan lunged.
Carys didn't flinch. She waited until the cavernous, foul-smelling darkness of the beast's mouth was inches away, until she could feel the heat of its putrid breath on her face.
She hurled the sparking terminal directly into the monster's throat.
The reaction was catastrophic.
The highly unstable, pressurized academy battery collided violently with the boiling biological acids pooling in the Leviathan's gullet.
A muffled, concussive THUMP echoed from deep within the beast's chest.
A split second later, a massive eruption of blinding blue light and foul-smelling smoke blasted backward out of the monster's maw. The localized aetheric explosion didn't kill the Leviathan—it was far too massive for that—but it acted as a devastating flashbang set off inside its skull.
The beast shrieked, a high-pitched, agonizing sound of tearing vocal cords. It violently reared back, its colossal head thrashing blindly in the dark, smashing into a towering ribcage of an ancient skeleton and bringing the massive bones crashing down around it.
Carys collapsed backward into the mud, covering her head as fragments of calcified bone rained down on the basin. She had bought them a window. It was a tiny, fragile sliver of time, but it was real.
Fifty yards away, lying broken in the dirt, Riven Cale watched the explosion.
The blinding blue flash cut through the absolute darkness of his despair. He saw the eccentric, terrified scholar throw herself into the jaws of a god to protect a fallen comrade. He saw the sheer, unadulterated courage of a woman who had every logical reason to run away.
I am a coward, Riven thought, the realization burning hotter than the aether that had fried his veins.
He was lying in the mud, waiting for death, simply because his magic had failed. He was letting the mountain dictate his worth.
Riven refused to die a sweep.
He forced his right arm to move. The golden circuitry etched into his skin was dead, resembling black, necrotic tattoos, but the muscle beneath it still belonged to him. He dug his ruined, bleeding fingers into the freezing mud.
He pulled himself forward.
The physical agony was immediate and blinding.
His shattered ribs ground against each other with a sickening friction that sent hot spikes of white light shooting behind his eyes.
His left arm, strapped to his chest, throbbed with a dull, heavy ache.
He dragged his dead weight across the jagged rocks, his heavy leather duster catching on shattered limestone and ancient bone.
Every inch was a battle against his own failing biology. He tasted copper and ash. He left a thick, dark trail of his own blood in the dirt behind him.
Move, he commanded his body. Move.
He didn't need the Lexicon to cross a room. He didn't need a deep-earth battery to drag his broken body through the dirt. He had spent twenty years scrubbing floors on his hands and knees. This was his element. This was the mud he was born in.
He crawled past the shattered remnants of the centrifuge tunnel. He crawled through the freezing, stagnant puddles of subterranean water.
Finally, his bleeding hand brushed against the cold, unyielding surface of the massive basalt slab.
Riven collapsed beside the boulder, his chest heaving, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps. He forced his head up, peering into the dim, erratic violet light cast by Carys’s cracked crystal.
Vael was lying pinned beneath the stone.
The sight of the Vanguard shattered whatever remained of Riven’s defensive cynicism.
Her pristine, legendary Solar-Crest armor was crumpled like cheap tin, flattened impossibly tight against her lower body.
The golden enchantments that usually wreathed her in light were completely dead.
Her face was chalk-white, the golden-blonde hair plastered to her forehead with sweat and blood.
"Vanguard," Riven choked out, dragging himself closer until his face was mere inches from hers.
Vael slowly rolled her head toward him. Her golden irises were dimming, the fierce, predatory light fading into a dull, cloudy haze. She blinked, her eyelashes heavy with grey dust.
"You look terrible, Architect," Vael whispered. The boisterous, booming voice that had echoed through the colosseum was entirely gone. It was just a frail, wet rasp.
"I lost the sync," Riven said, his voice trembling. He reached out with his shaking, bloodied hand and gripped the cold metal of her crushed pauldron. "The Lexicon is dead. I can't lift the rock, Vael. I tried. I can't."
Vael let out a slow, rattling breath.
She didn't curse him. She didn't demand that he find a way.
"It's alright," she murmured, her eyes drifting toward the high, pitch-black ceiling of the cavern.
She was surrendering. The absolute hardest warrior Riven had ever met was letting go of the sword.
"It isn't alright," Riven said, desperation clawing at his throat. He pulled at the massive basalt block again, his fingers slipping uselessly against the smooth stone. "I dragged you down here. I promised you an army. I promised you Morne’s head."
"Morne won," Vael said quietly. A thick bead of blood rolled from the corner of her pale lips, tracing a dark line down her chin. "He always wins. The house always wins."
She turned her golden eyes back to Riven. The aristocratic wall she had built around herself, the towering persona of the elite Delver initiate, completely crumbled. Stripped of her titles, stripped of her armor, she was just a twenty-year-old girl dying in the dark.
"I was so afraid," Vael confessed, her voice breaking. "Every day in the Atrium. Every time I swung the halberd. I was terrified."
Riven froze, listening to the raw, unprotected honesty pouring from her.
"My father told me I was the spear of the Solar-Crest," she continued, a bitter, hollow smile touching her lips. "I thought if I was loud enough, if I fought hard enough, the academy would respect me. I thought my lineage meant something."
She squeezed her eyes shut, a single tear cutting a clean track through the ash on her cheek.
"I was just a price tag," Vael whispered, the profound grief of the betrayal choking her words. "A piece of meat traded for a few extra years of breath. They didn't see a warrior. They saw a battery."
Riven stared at her. He felt a deep, agonizing ache in his chest that had nothing to do with his shattered ribs.
He had spent his life thinking the highborn had everything.
He had resented their power, their warmth, their absolute freedom.
But looking at Vael, he realized the academy was a slaughterhouse for everyone.
The sweeps were the dirt on the floor, but the nobles were just the cattle led to the bolt-gun.
Vael slowly opened her eyes. She looked directly into Riven’s dark, human eyes.
"But you saw me," Vael said softly.
Riven’s breath hitched.
"In the colosseum," she continued, her voice incredibly weak, but fiercely sincere. "When the deadfall was coming down. You didn't see the Solar-Crest crest. You didn't care about my father's politics. You just saw a girl about to be crushed, and you stepped in the way."
She lifted her trembling, gauntleted hand. It was a massive effort, her arm shaking with the strain. She reached out and placed her cold metal palm against Riven’s bruised, dirt-streaked cheek.
"You were the first man to ever look at me," Vael whispered.
The touch anchored Riven. It pulled him out of the spiraling vortex of his own guilt.
"I'm not a god, Vael," Riven said, his voice cracking. "I'm a rat who found a shiny tool, and now it's broken. I can't save you."
"Fascinating hypothesis, but historically inaccurate."
A new voice, breathless and shaking, cut through the gloom.
Carys Moon-Spun collapsed into the mud beside Riven. The scholar was a mess. Her star-patterned top was soaked in dark, viscous Leviathan drool. Her knees were scraped raw, and she was panting heavily, clutching her heavy canvas satchel to her chest as if it were a shield.
She crawled forward, pushing her cracked glasses up her nose. She looked at Vael, then turned her wide, terrified eyes to Riven.