10. Chapter 10 #2
A hiss—like a sand cat but more guttural—made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Another dark beast flew out of one of the side tunnels.
It crashed into Dhara’s back, toppling her to the ground face-first. She tried to grapple and roll, but with its six legs writhing and her unable to see it, the tricrith managed to keep her pinned to the ground.
Its tails curled, ready to strike lightning fast, and my heart leapt into my throat.
This one, while not big enough to be fully grown, had three gleaming stingers, wet with venom.
My hand snuck into my sash and grabbed my dirk.
I didn’t even take a moment to aim—there wasn’t a second to spare—before my wrist snapped forward.
The blade whistled across the short distance and buried itself between the head and body segments of the tricrith.
With another hiss of pain, it whirled on me. It clicked its pincers menacingly, but with its attention on me, Dhara managed to scrabble up off the ground. My sword already in hand, I lifted it just in time for it to lunge at me.
I plunged my saber straight into its open maw, and the tip burst through its head right between its elevated eyes. Black blood bubbled out of it and dripped down my wrist to my elbow. I nearly gagged as I wrenched my blade free and let it topple to the ground.
I certainly wasn’t precious about blood—having spilled enough of others’ and seen far too much of my own throughout the years. But this was different—dark and sticky like tar. It felt diseased. Like it carried death.
Silence fell again, only broken by Dhara and I panting as we took in the collection of dead things around us, ranging from the pearlescent young tricrith, smaller than most horses and relatively easily dispatched, to the massive form of the abandoned armor, speaking to a tricrith even larger than the one Erix and I had faced at his mother’s funeral.
“I’m glad I’m such a good teacher,” Dhara huffed.
I glanced at her sidelong as she dusted herself off, hopeless as the cause might be.
She shrugged. “If you hadn’t been able to throw a knife, you might not have been fast enough to save me. Still, I like to think I would have been able to get it in the eye.”
Despite the direness of the situation, a huff almost like a laugh escaped my lips. “You are welcome to try, next time.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think there will be avoiding a ‘next time.’” Dhara grimaced at the corpse at her feet, and I shared her sentiment.
My hopes of stealth had been thoroughly dashed. The beasts were simply too omnipresent in their lair, the tunnels crawling with monsters of all ages. We needed to search these tunnels for a way out, and we wouldn’t get very far if we were trying to avoid the monsters at all costs.
“We seem to have stumbled across a brood,” Dhara said, toeing the curled up body before her. “A place where they come to breed. What else do you know of these creatures?”
I tried to picture the entry for the creatures in the bestiary of the tower of Kelvadan.
The memory twisted painfully in my chest. It seemed so long ago that we had been trying to get the Heart, thinking it would be whole and Kelvadan’s troubles would be short lived.
My heart clenched painfully at my naivety.
Erix’s voice as he read the entry came back to me though, the thought of him washing away some of the pain.
“There are really only myths and tales to go off of,” I admitted. “But the legends say that all tricriths come from a single mother. A queen.”
“If that’s true, she can’t be far,” Dhara pointed out, gesturing with her sword tip to the obviously young tricriths.
I shuddered, even as the spark of a plan lit in my mind. “If they are like fire ants, killing the queen will destroy the hive and scatter the workers.”
Dhara raised a brow at me. “A bold plan.”
“A foolish one?” I asked. I feared leading us to disaster. Perhaps it was an unnecessary risk, born of my tendency to think with my sword and cost people their lives.
“A good one,” Dhara corrected. “Sneaking about continuing to get separated will be a war of attrition. Scattering the brood will help Erix and Aderyn too and clear our path back to the surface.”
“It will be a risk,” I pointed out, even as a trace of steal worked its way into my veins at her words.
“We are strong warriors,” Dhara pointed out. “And all wars require risk. It’s part of the job.”
“It’s different when I’m the only one facing the danger, but I’m risking more lives than my own these days.
” Indeed, I wished I could march on Kelvadan and retake the entire city myself, without forcing anybody else to risk their blood.
But such was not the way of war, and thus why I had been hesitant to lead the attack on the city.
I itched for battle—to rip the walls down around Calix’s ears—but I did not relish the bloodshed of my own people.
“If you do not choose to take some gambles, you will be forced to take others later that you might rather have avoided.” Dhara’s dark eyes glittered in the light from the flickering flame in her palm, and I knew she spoke not just of our fight against the tricriths.
“And even if some risks lead to loss, it does not mean you didn’t calculate the odds right, just that it was not the desert’s will today.
You must still show up and take more risks tomorrow, or the sands will devour you whole. ”
Her words imbued strength into my spine, and I stood up straighter. I may not be ready to forgive myself for the disaster of Kelvadan, but Dhara was a true warrior, and together with our swords in hand, we could be a force to be reckoned with.
“The bigger tunnels will lead to the nest,” I said, looking around at the many branching paths.
“The smaller ones can only fit the youngest tricriths, and our goal is the largest beasts. Hopefully we will encounter the others along the way or at least clear the way between us when we leave the tricriths disorganized and leaderless.”
Dhara nodded. “Let’s go kill the queen.”