Chapter eleven
Fallyn
My lungs burned now along with my shoulder, and my bootless foot.
I tried to step gingerly, lightly, on that side, but running for your life doesn’t leave much room for being careful, even as I’m bleeding everywhere, leaving an easy trail.
It felt like the forest itself was trying to aid the demon, branches and foliage working in tandem to trip me, it was only blind luck that I didn’t fall to the ground as vines wrapped themselves around my feet, desperate to bring me to ruin.
I’d been running for what felt like hours, but I wasn’t any closer to the forest’s edge that bordered the city.
The sun couldn’t reach me here save for the occasional, all too brief peek, under a thick canopy of dark green foliage.
If I weren’t headed back to Este Valnor, I could only hope I was headed north to the city of Greylark Rest. Seeing approximately which direction the sun was travelling would help me immensely.
Too bad I didn’t have the time. All that panic had to stay wedged down somewhere in my mind, superseded by the fact that the spider demon was still coming for me.
Terror washed over me like water over a rock, slowly eroding me with each wave.
My sense of logic, my sense of hope, everything.
It was pure will that kept my legs moving, and pure stubbornness that kept me from screaming against the rioting burning pain in my shoulder.
I fought not to look at it. It was still attached, and I could still sort of move it, though the pain spiked to the point of my vision going black, but that had to be enough for right now.
My surroundings changed once I burst through the trees into a small clearing, a river wound swiftly through, taking with it anything that happened to get caught in it. And a cave that lay beyond.
My grey cloak was torn from the brambles and thorns, my long hair getting caught several times too.
I was bleeding all over the place, leaving all too easy a trail for that thing to follow.
It was only a few more minutes of jogging that I came upon a stream.
I dropped to my hands and knees, drinking deeply from the water, sighing in blissful relief that the water cooled and soothed the ravaged desert that was my throat, ragged from all the running.
I hoped crossing the stream would make it harder for that thing to track me.
But this was a demon, not a common dog. It would catch me at this rate; I had to switch tactics.
I eyed the cave with reluctance. Who knew what may or may not yet be home inside?
The choice was clear, keep running, or hide and hope for the best?
Covered in shadow, and dark within, there was no telling if anything horrific dwelled within.
But an idea began to form, even if it were a stupid gamble.
I wrenched the cloak off despite the cool temperature and threw it into the stream, watching it be carried away. A new scent trail for the demon to track.
A scream of what could only be delight and anticipation sounded, far too close for my liking. My brief reprieve was over. And I made my choice, even as I found myself regretting it. The thing is, the other choice to keep running, I knew I would regret more, and sooner.
I had two shit choices. I’d die regardless, what did it matter which monster tore me apart?
I couldn’t help thinking it was still better than the male in my dreams, but I didn’t understand why.
When I told anyone about him, they all think me crazy.
I agreed with them. But there was something about that male in my nightmares that set every fear alive within me that I just couldn’t shake.
Something that stopped my breathing and my heartbeat.
Something that married terror to all-consuming sorrow.
Perhaps it was his anonymity that forced my waking self to watch every single face as I moved through life, perpetually on the edge of fear.
“Hope nobody is home. Here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself and made my way inside, sending up a prayer to the gods before I could change my mind.
It wasn’t pitch black, but the amount of available light was minimal this far into the forest, so the darkness that swallowed me was close to complete.
I ran a hand along the wall, my left hand keeping to the wall so that when the time came to leave, I knew I would only need to turn right.
My shoulder throbbed, a painful reminder.
Assuming I was alive enough to do so.
It wasn’t pitch black, not with my magic thrumming over my skin, giving off a subtle glow. Just enough to notice before I walk into a spider web. But not enough to stop walking into it.
Even though pain and terror were the only things driving me forward right now, it was nice to know things could still be worse.
Stifling a disgusted shriek, I shook off the sticky substance, grateful it wasn’t the stuff that I’d escaped previously, even more grateful that something hadn’t answered the call of the ruined web.
My foot throbbed fiercely, as if to remind me further.
The floor of the cave was blissfully, thankfully smooth, not like the tangled undergrowth of the forest. It was nothing short of a miracle that I didn’t puncture my foot on something.
Thorns. Brambles. Pickers. Upright branches, anything would have done the trick.
One sound had me strung so tightly I thought my spine might snap. A familiar screech followed my clicking that echoed off the walls. It knew I was in here.
Fuck. Of the highest order, fuck.
I picked up my pace, moving quickly now through the cave, surprised at how many caverns and tunnels there were. Had I more clothing on, I would have tossed something far down another tunnel, in hopes of drawing it a different way.
When the tunnel abruptly ended, my heart stopped and leapt into my throat. A dead end. I turned course, only for another dead end to leer at me.
I would’ve laughed if it wouldn’t hurt to do so.
Instead, I tipped my head skywards in a sneer through the rock above me at the gods, the new and the old, the fates, all of them.
I bleakly wondered who would weigh my soul in the end?
I gave it to neither sect, Hades nor the Morningstar.
Would Rhadamanthus weigh my sins for his king of the Underworld or would I burn eternally in the Morningstar’s Hell?
If I didn’t find a way out, I’d surely find out sooner than I’d like.
My mind stumbled in its attempt to make sense of my circumstances. How had it come to this? Pain ricocheted in my shoulder with each movement, adrenaline no longer chasing and sequestering it.
The creature’s metallic legs scraped stone down the corridor behind me, a sound not unlike a whetstone on steel, trapping me against the tunnel wall.
Points to that fucking thing for being persistent.
Hope fizzled in my chest, and like a flame that was out of tinder, extinguished.
With death creeping up behind me, desperation urged me to find a way forward.
I raked my hands over the tunnel’s end, my panic pausing momentarily when some of the stones shifted beneath my pressure.
It’s not a dead end, I realized, it’s a cave-in.
I set to work, almost immediately ripping my fingernails into progressively bloody shreds.
My weakened shoulder protested, slowing my progress.
I ignored the lashing of pain, tearing into the rocks, pushing with magic, clawing at everything in a feral frenzy to survive.
A jagged rock I could barely see in the dim ripped open a chasm in my useless hand, blood turning the rocks slippery beneath my grip.
I cursed louder than was probably safe and forced the pain further down the pipeline of my mind, focusing solely on my task.
Dust flew as more rocks tumbled down, invading my already sore lungs.
I resisted the urge to cough, to further give away my position.
I just continued to dig and wrench rocks away until there was light visible from the other side.
New hope sprouted in the space between desperation and terror, blooming in my chest.
Hades take me. Light!
I pushed with renewed vigor and urgency, shoved with all I had left in me, my will to survive, my will to fight.
I shoved a little more magic into it, forcing dirt and debris outward, and I burst through the wall, rocks falling down around me, narrowly missing me, but sealing the exit off again as more rocks tumbled down from above, buying me time.
I wasn’t outside. My heart plummeted, taking my hopes of escape with it and smashing into pieces.
I looked around. It was a massive round room that was open above to the outside, explaining the dim light, spanning several feet across, as if it had been carved out.
The opening above where the ceiling of smooth rock gave way to the outdoors was impossibly high and out of reach, and offered no visible escape.
It was like a mouse stuck in a large bowl, the surface too slick to climb.
By the faded light, the tree canopy still choked out most of what might have otherwise filtered down to me.
The room was slowly cast further and further into shadow.
I was a sitting duck.
Worse—I felt the hair on my neck standing on end, felt it in the oppressive silence—I wasn’t alone.
But I was, in a way.
The male behind me was skewered an inch off the ground in the heart by a dagger to a stalagmite in the center of the room. His head lolled lifelessly to the side. Dead. Ominous.
It looked like a witch’s rite. The way the sky was allowed to rain light overhead, but shadow still fought and held dominion over him.
In the forgotten foothills of the mountain, he looked timeless, as ageless as the realm itself, despite the dagger that secured him so.
Give him a crown, especially a black obsidian crown, and he’d look like a fallen prince.
The baffling part was it didn’t appear to be death that held him under, but sleep.
The color in his cheeks sang a song in direct opposition to the dagger in his heart.
Fate is a constantly swimming thing, ever changing, ever temperamental.
There are moments we are predestined for, that no matter how hard you fight, no matter what choices you make, you will always end up at that destination, one way or the other.
The heaviness, the crackling tension, the ceremonial stillness of the air, the slowing of time itself, the black shadows spilling around the blade all united under one banner, leading me to believe deep in my bones that this was one of those moments.
I felt my brow furrow as I approached cautiously on light feet, compelled forward by a gravity I didn’t understand.
I examined him from my place a few feet away.
His skin was light but covered in a layer of ash and soot, blending perfectly into his dark hair.
He wore torn, dusty leather armor, light and perfect for traveling swiftly.
There was no blood under him, dried or otherwise.
What sort of otherworldly treachery is this?
I stepped forward, my face pulling from a frown into a grimace, watching intently for him to wake up. Nothing.
So, I took another step. Close enough to touch him. Nothing. So far, so good.
I reached out with hesitation, scared to touch him lest he attack. But was he alive? I checked his pulse at his wrist, easy to get away if need be, certain I was being ridiculous.
Thump-thump.
I didn’t touch it long enough to feel a second heartbeat, withdrawing my hand to my chest as if his skin were acidic.
He was fucking alive.