Chapter 23 #2
Bhreena shoved through the crowd with Daeryn at her side. Fresh vines uncoiled from the ceiling and brushed her shoulders, new growth spilling through the tunnel. She slapped one away, glowering toward the dragon.
“The prisoners?” Bhreena asked. “I’m told Elashor was taken alive.”
The faint glow of earth faded from Jassyn’s fingertips. He straightened, the First Keeper closing over whatever Farine had left behind.
Lykor’s molars ground together. The mountain could split itself open, dragon power could feed them from stone, and still Bhreena had found a way to make Jassyn bleed for an answer.
Not this time.
“I’ll handle that interrogation personally,” Lykor growled, frost crystallizing over his knuckles. “We’ll bury Elashor so deep in this mountain that Galaeryn would need the stars themselves to find his bones.”
Bhreena’s nostrils flared. “That’s it? We lost Asharyn, and this is your answer? Question Elashor while that dragon digs us a grave and the king gathers his armies?”
“No,” Jassyn answered. The quiet patience he’d used to coax food from stone vanished behind the First Keeper’s voice. “Fear doesn’t change the plan. We shelter here, tend to the wounded, and stabilize food sources. Then we scout the Aetherveil, find Veyrix, and free him.”
Bhreena’s lips thinned as she measured Jassyn. Her weight shifted forward.
Lykor stepped into her path. Enough to make himself the first body she’d have to get through.
“Speaking of dragons,” she said, scowling past him at the druids. “Cinderax still hasn’t offered his fire to those of us—”
Daeryn lifted a hand.
Bhreena went quiet.
Lykor wondered how long that would keep working.
“That is between us and the dragon,” Daeryn said. “You have your answers. Report to Mara and see the survivors settled.”
Bhreena’s attention lingered on Jassyn long enough for Lykor’s lip to curl.
Then she exhaled harshly and disappeared down a side tunnel.
Stone shuddered ahead, and Daeryn remained where he was, studying Blossom as another chamber arched open beyond them—the same steady stare as Jassyn but set in another color. Lykor had noticed the resemblance the first time they’d met, and it still unsettled him.
“The current tunnels are charted,” Daeryn said. “I’ll walk the new tunnels myself and have the routes marked by nightfall.”
Jassyn nodded. Whatever history lay between him and Daeryn stayed sealed in the silence.
Daeryn pressed a fist to his heart and turned toward the groaning stone, already dispatching scouts after Blossom’s magic as it tunneled deeper.
Jassyn started after the dragon, and Lykor fell in beside him.
Kaedryn matched their pace, wings drawn tight enough to rustle with each step. “Some of the guilds do not wish to abandon Asharyn.”
Lykor scoffed. He understood the instinct to bare fangs over the last piece of claimed ground. He also knew a dead city when he saw one. Asharyn could be mourned later. It couldn’t be defended now.
This wasn’t his battle. Though he would’ve given every ugly answer himself if it meant Jassyn could stop holding the mountain upright for everyone else.
But the druids wanted their First Keeper, not a half-wraith with frost on his knuckles and Farine’s blood crusted under his talons.
So Lykor stood silent beside him and let Kaedryn carve another piece from what little Jassyn had left.
“You know the city isn’t safe,” Jassyn said finally. “Not while Centarya can portal their forces into its streets without warning. The tunnels are defensible, and Blossom can keep changing them beneath our feet. We hold here until we free Veyrix.”
Kaedryn’s wings twitched. “And if we fail?” She clutched the satchel strapped against her ribs, where the Heart of Stars meant for Veyrix waited in her keeping. “Even if we free him, what then? Galaeryn still hunts us. He has five of our hatchlings—he’ll want more.”
Five.
Lykor’s beastblood writhed.
Five hatchlings in the king’s grip. Five small throats waiting for a leash.
Kaedryn’s eyes glowed as she watched Blossom’s path ahead. “What if they’re already…”
She didn’t finish, her silence landing heavier than anything Bhreena had thrown.
Lykor heard the fracture under it. Asharyn’s guilds wanted a city to defend, their hatchlings safe, a familiar place to shelter.
Fear would sharpen every need into a weapon, and without an enemy to aim at, they would turn those edges on each other.
“Galaeryn told me himself that he wants one of every elemental dragon chained,” Lykor growled.
Jassyn missed half a step beside him. His attention stayed on Lykor, quiet with concern and full of questions Lykor had no intention of answering in front of Kaedryn.
Lykor kept his eyes locked on the druid leader.
“We can keep running, keep burrowing deeper into the earth, but distance won’t change what he’s hunting.
Blossom is the only Bramblemaw. Sooner or later, we’ll run out of tunnels.
We can wait until the fight comes to us, or we can prepare and choose where to stand. ”
“For now, we survive the next hour,” Jassyn said.
“Then the one after it. Small teams can go back to Asharyn for whatever can be carried, but every trip risks more than the people we send. If one of them is taken, these caverns are exposed. No one goes back to stay. Asharyn is marked, and this refuge survives only while it stays hidden.”
Kaedryn absorbed that, throat working once. Then she bowed without another word and turned toward her waiting guildmasters.
Lykor tracked her, but he and Jassyn continued on.
They followed the curved tunnel deeper into the mountain, until it opened around them.
Blossom had carved a vaulted cavern, its stone ribs veined with bioluminescence.
Slender trees rose from moss-softened ground, dividing the chamber into fragile territories families had already begun to claim with bedrolls, salvaged packs, and bundles of ash-stained cloth.
Children clambered over rock ledges and roots thick enough to serve as benches. Wraith hauled cauldrons into place above smokeless flames, drawing water from a shallow stream that wound through the stone.
Near a far wall, unclaimed children from the prisons huddled away from the others, underfed and glassy-eyed. At the edge of their gathering, a druid girl crouched and offered one of them a piece of dried fruit, careful and wordless.
Lykor hadn’t realized he’d stopped walking until Jassyn touched his arm.
“The magus have already tended to the worst of the wounded,” Jassyn murmured, nodding toward strands of Essence weaving from a healer’s hands. “We might actually stand a chance.”
Lykor said nothing. They were surviving. For now. He’d seen enough to know what borrowed time looked like, and this was it—warm and temporary.
The hours ground on as Blossom led Lykor and Jassyn deeper into the tunnels, leaving root, lichen, and pale light threaded through the mountain’s dark. Wherever people gathered, questions and reports followed.
Zaeryn advised that the dracovae had been concealed along the lower slopes, where the air was warmer.
Velinya confirmed that the hatchlings they still had were secure with Cinderax in chambers below.
Koln appeared with bowls of steaming soup and a curt account of scavenging Asharyn with Fenn and their squads.
Even Lykor added his own burden to the pile between strides, beginning with the strike he’d led on Kyansari.
Jassyn’s attention snapped to him, questions already gathering, but Lykor kept moving through the rest—Essence the wraith had harvested in the capital, the Vallende stockpiles his warriors were securing as they spoke.
When Blossom turned her power toward the prisoners, Lykor broke away to inspect her work.
Koln’s squad had already delivered Elashor and the flame-haired female into a temporary holding area.
Lykor sent them away as Blossom carved deeper into the stone, driving the captives into two cells before the dragon drew the walls shut.
He stayed with Elashor while her power sealed the chamber into the mountain. Rock flowed across the entrance, thickened, and fused with the surrounding stone until it became a buried pocket of darkness.
The general sat silent, his stare burning crimson. Jassyn’s work.
Elashor deserved worse, but that wasn’t what gnawed under Lykor’s ribs. Whatever Jassyn had made himself do, Lykor would stand between him and the cost of it.
He portaled out, leaving the general alone without comforts.
The cavern system had doubled since they’d entered.
Hot springs now steamed where Blossom’s claws had split the stone and fresh water spilled through channels she’d opened.
She communicated with Jassyn alone, but Lykor’s beastblood sensed her magic winding through the rock, a deep hum of her contentment vibrating through his bones.
At last, the dragon halted.
She exhaled once, then folded into a crescent in the last chamber she’d shaped. Moss crept over her scales as she settled, the earth reclaiming its own.
Then her power stilled.
Lykor’s body ached with exhaustion he’d been outrunning since the mountain prisons. They’d eaten twice, though he couldn’t remember tasting either meal. Down here, time had no sky to answer to.
“We should rest,” Jassyn said quietly.
Lykor blinked against the burn in his vision. He’d spent the day measuring Jassyn’s every falter and missed his own. Jassyn hadn’t.
“Where?” He didn’t want to retrace their path or wedge himself into some packed grotto where questions would find Jassyn before sleep did.
Jassyn tilted his head and pressed a hand to the wall. Vines unfurled from the ceiling, braiding into a living veil across the chamber mouth, thick enough to conceal the tunnel beyond. “Why not here?”
Blossom already slept, her breathing rumbling through the stone. Steam curled from a stream she’d unearthed nearby, seeping warmth through the cavern.