Chapter 25 #3
I shushed them all and kept both my hands up, one with a second flashlight from Fable’s stash, the other with my ‘finders keepers’ rune. Ten minutes of walking with the path sloping down and down, and finally the tunnel opened into a cavern.
We didn’t need the flashlights here. The walls were set with torches that burst into flame as we stepped into the room, including a massive chandelier hanging from the center of the cave’s peak that had to have a hundred or more candles on it alone. All of it like a welcome . . .
Which in my experience was a sure sign there was a trap of some sort.
“Whoa.” Gary let out a low whistle and went to take a step.
I snapped my arm out, stopping him. “Gary, not so fast. Look down.”
We stood on a lip of rock that had a sheer drop ten feet below. Water flowed past our feet in a circular moat, like a lazy river, wrapping around a platform in the middle. I wouldn’t call it an island as it was on stilts.
“A bridge over there.” Zeed pointed to our right.
“That’s not a bridge. That’s a death trap,” Ross muttered.
They were both right. A single rickety-looking wooden bridge spanned the narrow walkway around the cavern over to the platform held up with stilts.
It felt like we were in a tiny, other world hidden beneath the school.
And, of course, my spell fluttering along, crossed the water and went right to the middle of that stilted platform.
“Calypso?”
“Now you want to talk?”
“Don’t sass me,” I pulled the locket out, and opened it. “Any suggestions?”
A low hum from the back of her throat. “Probably a trap. But . . . the coin is close.” Her voice hitched and I wondered just what it meant to her.
I motioned for the others to stay where they were. “You guard the entrance and spot for me. I’ll go check it out.”
Zeed put a hand on my arm, briefly, the material of my shirt between us. “Be careful, Harlow. I know we have to do this but try not to die.”
I grinned. “That’s what I do best. Not die.”
Funnily enough, not one of them laughed.
“We’ll spread out along the edge,” Ross said, “that way we’ve got you covered from all angles.”
I slid my way around with my back to the wall, toes hanging over the edge of the path. “Here we go.”
The water was pitch black even with all the torch light, and no doubt as cold as the loch.
Nerves tugged at me as I made my way around to the start of the bridge. So far so good.
I put my hands on the rope railing, tried to laugh but it came out like a croak. Fuck. I stared down into the dark swirling moat and saw . . . something float by . . . bit of ice? No, worse. A rune.
I swallowed hard.
The bridge swayed with each step, the ropes and wood creaking, but it held.
I glanced down again and shouldn’t have. The water below me was picking up speed, a flash of more runes within the darkness. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I picked up my pace, almost to the other side when Gary spoke.
“I – something’s off,” he said. “Do you guys hear that?”
“Hear what?” I stepped carefully onto the little platform, the whole thing swaying a little.
I pulled my flashlight out and sent the beam over the space that should have been lit up by the torches and candles. But it was hidden in a strange shadow despite the chandelier above.
“Almost there,” Calypso whispered.
The beam of light fell on a large wooden chest at the island’s center. Half-sunk through the platform, at a distance it didn’t look like anything of import. Except my rune had plastered itself to the top of the chest and then burrowed through it. Blood rushed in my ears and I swallowed hard.
Score.
“Grab it, quick!” Calypso urged.
Before I could take another step, a cluster of little figures scurried into view, charging right toward me.
Snatchlings.
They ranged from a foot and a half to two feet tall at most and looked like little elves or leprechauns.
They had super-long pointed ears, like those of a mule, that were nearly half their bodies’ length again.
With their spindly bodies and overly long fingers that splayed across the platform there was a stretched look to them, despite their diminutive size.
Their joints clicked with each movement, bending at odd angles as they scuttled toward me.
“That’s ours, stay back!” the lead Snatchling yelled at me, sounding as if he’d been sucking on helium which rather ruined the fear their scuttling approach had initially given me.
On his head was a minuscule crown that was loose enough it bobbed from side to side with each step he took. The only thing that kept it on was his giant donkey ears.
I started laughing, I couldn’t help it, the nerves of crossing the water had made me giddy. I tried to swallow the laugh, but it was too late.
Rage flickered over his face and the Snatchlings attacked with a speed that only added to the spider imagery. But they didn’t just attack me, they attacked my friends, leaping across the water in a single bound, forcing everyone into a fight.
Fuck, I was an idiot.
Fable screamed as she kicked and booted at them, and water surged up from below as Marina sent it across the bridge, blasting it at them in a wave. Caterina and Ellie worked in tandem holding those that attacked the two of them at bay.
The platform tipped precariously, hiding my friends from view as if we were on a boat deck. Both the Snatchling king and I slid all the way to the edge.
I hit the deck and grabbed the last plank of the platform, dangling so that my feet hovered just above the water.
I looked up.
The Snatchling king stood over me, dual swords held in his hands. “Not laughing now, are you? Intruders die here. Dwimmer or not.”
He stabbed the swords down into the backs of my hands, and I yelled as I let go, falling into the water below.
Ice cold, I flashed back to the depth of the loch. The pressure. The darkness. Only here, there wasn’t just that.
Eyes wide open, I stared as the runes within the water shot toward me, like piranhas. They drove into me, aiming for the meat of my thighs and belly, sinking into me.
Pain erupted.
Teeth tearing. Fire burning. Razor blades slashing. Bones snapping. Every physical wound I’d ever had in my life lit up at once, remembered through the attacking runes. My mouth opened in a silent scream, bubbles rising to the surface.
I don’t know how long the pain went on, only that my past injuries were merging with the fire in my lungs. How much time did I have? Not enough if I wanted to live.
I had to stop this attack somehow or I was going to die and my friends . . . my friends would die. My back arched and I fought to get to the surface, pushed through the remembered pains. They weren’t real, they couldn’t be.
But it sure fucking felt like it.
I gasped a breath of air as I broke the surface but was shoved back by the many little feet of the Snatchlings. Marina was screaming from the other side. “Hang on, Harlow!” and then I was under again.
“You have to fight this!” Calypso’s voice came through the water, amplified like it had been in the loch. “The pain is not real, Harlow, you can beat this! You are better than all those little freaks!”
More runes buried themselves into me, and one slammed hard into my chest. Right where Typhon had hit me all those years ago. That wound . . . I’d almost died from that one.
Calypso was screaming at me as my body sank to the bottom of the moat. Heartbeat slowing . . . agony radiating outward from my chest . . . and then the water was gone, and I hit the bottom of the mucky moat.
Gasping and coughing I looked up to see Marina with her hands over her head. “Harlow!”
I stumbled upward, the pain gone with the water, and ran for the bridge through the muck of the bottom. Like Moses and the Red-fucking-Sea, Marina held the water until I pulled myself up onto the swaying boards.
The Snatchlings retreated to the platform, making a circle around the treasure. I glanced at my friends.
Blood flowed freely off every one of them. Ross’ left eye was swollen shut, Fable cowered inside the entryway, and Gary stared at the Snatchlings on the platform. His low murmur broke the silence.
“I can hear the voice again, Harlow. The one that sounds like a baby.”
“Marina, soak them,” I pointed at the Snatchlings and she flipped her hand so the water washed over them.
“Water won’t hurt us!” the Snatchling king snarled.
“But this will.” I snapped back. Clinging to the rope with my left hand, I pulled my right hand tight against my chest, then flung it forward, palm up, fingers outstretched. The freezing rune that one of the Runecoats used on the kids.
“Freeze, you little bastards!”
I didn’t think it worked – not at first.
Until the liquid cold snaked down my arms, stealing my breath as it ripped from the tips of my fingers, no longer liquid, but a smoke that resembled dry ice. The gossamer cold raced through the room, as if driven by a storm wind.
Marina’s water went white, freezing every single Snatchling in place in the blink of an eye. Every bit of them that was wet became solid. Eyeballs followed me but none of the creatures moved.
“I won’t let you take our treasure!” yelled the king, bending his wrist – the only part of him not frozen. He flicked one of his swords uselessly through the air between us.
“We’re not going to take it all.” I took a limping step forward, my chest aching with residual pain from the waters and that damned old wound. My gaze stayed fixed on the treasure chest as I stepped around him. “We’re just here for one thing. A kraken coin. You can keep the rest.”
“Don’t matter, you can still die.” The Snatchling king began to laugh. “You see, we have more magic than you know, stupid Dwimmer.”
A loud rumble shook the cavern, and the platform began to dissolve beneath my feet, the boards disintegrating like sand.
“Hurry!” Calypso yelled even as my friends were yelling at me to get back.
I dashed forward, across to the sunken treasure chest.