Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
Yara is breathing heavily, leaning back against Vaughn like she might fall over without him there to hold her up.
“Not feeling”—she wheezes—“particularly lucky”—her eyes press closed as pain washes through her—“right now.”
“She can’t carry on, not with that wound.” My lips press into a frown as my mind races. “Bretiax, Harpina, get her up the stairs into the guard tower. Keep pressure on that wound and don’t let her slip unconscious. If she worsens, get her to the dinghies. Can you do that?”
Bretiax hurriedly signs her affirmation, already moving to her friend’s side.
“Bre, can you get her up those steps alone?” Harpina asks, her voice full of resignation. “I want to help, I do…but I should go on ahead. One of the Paexyrian should be there. For Arwen.” She pauses. “And for Thisobei, gods rest her.”
A lump forms in my throat at the raw grief in her voice…and the vengeance beneath it.
Yara nods weakly. “Go on, Harpina. Bre and I will be fine on our own.”
Vaughn helps transfer Yara’s weight onto Bretiax, maneuvering the redhead’s arm over her shoulder. It is lucky Yara is so compact. Still, it will be a struggle to make their way up without Harpina’s help.
“Melité,” I force myself to say. “Maybe you could—”
“Absolutely not.” The half-siren’s lip curls in distaste. “I’m much more use in the dungeons than up in the tower playing nursemaid.”
I bare my teeth at her in a grimace. “Yes, because you’ve been so useful thus far.”
Vaughn snorts.
“We need to move on,” Alaric murmurs, his handsome face a portrait of worry. “Someone will have heard that door break, as well as Yara’s screams.”
We all fall silent again.
I look at Yara. She is pale with blood loss. Her hand is at her side, where the arrow protrudes from her leather bodice. Two inches lower, it would have struck a vital organ. My worry must show on my face, for Yara rolls her eyes at me.
“Go! I’ll be fine. Bre won’t let me die. Will you, Bre?”
Bretiax sighs.
My lips twitch. “Very convincing.”
“It’s Arwen you need to worry about.” Yara looks from me to Harpina and back. “You get a chance to gut the bastard who did this, you take it.”
“I will,” I promise.
Harpina’s freckled nose wrinkles in annoyance. “I don’t need your convincing, Yara.”
“Good. I’m counting on it.” The redhead attempts a smile, not quite managing through the pain. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I nearly laugh. Is there anything Yara would not do? “We will see you soon, either at the tower or on the boats.”
She nods. Bretiax shoots me a soft smile, then starts walking. Her slender form is bowed beneath the strain as they hobble back the way we came.
I look from Soren to Vaughn. “What are the odds of more traps in this corridor?”
“Probably the same as the odds of Melité pissing me off,” Vaughn says.
The half-siren’s gills flare as she huffs.
The pit of dread in my stomach spreads outward, eroding throughout my abdomen and chest cavity as we begin to move again, slower this time, our steps ginger on the flagstones.
There is no easy way to avoid setting them off, but after a few near misses we learn to do it in a more controlled manner—sliding a toe out across the stone, applying pressure while your body remains safely out of range.
Before we’ve traversed the length of the passage, Vaughn has narrowly ducked a volley of arrows headed straight for his skull.
Alaric dodges a swinging bar of spikes that drops from the ceiling by the skin of his teeth.
Even Melité has to spring out of the way when a faulty floor panel plummets into a bottomless pit.
“Your stepbrother certainly has a flair for creativity,” I mutter, leaping over the void into Soren’s waiting arms. “A shame he didn’t channel it into something a bit less evil.”
Our progress is infuriatingly slow, grating on all our nerves.
Every time we reach a corner, I brace myself for enemies lurking out of sight.
But the prison seems almost abandoned as we move deeper and deeper, following set after set of damp steps into the earth.
Only the occasional distant screech from the dungeons below disrupts the silence.
The air grows even staler as we near them. Musty and moldering in my lungs. Yet there is another scent here, too—one that grows stronger with each step until it waters the eyes and burns the throat.
The distinct, coppery tinge of blood.
We soon locate the source, stepping into a room I can only describe as a torture chamber.
Tools line the walls, on racks and shelves and stands.
Some I recognize from my Life Guild days.
There are saws for limb amputation, tourniquets to control bleeding.
Needles for stitching. And blades of every variety.
Serrated, curved, pointed, double-edged.
Some shine, freshly polished. Others are caked in gore.
Monster parts are littered about like decor. Hacked-off arachnidae legs rot in puddles of black ichor; cleaved cyntroedi mandibles rest beside harvested vials of green venom. An octopaeron eye floats in a tremendous glass jar. I can only imagine what depraved uses Efnysien finds for them.
At the center of the chamber sit three operating tables, similar in design to what a surgeon might employ.
In a glance, it’s clear these are not used for any sort of healing.
They are not crafted of wood but massive slabs of granite, cleverly gouged along the edges to contain the blood before it spills.
Beveled trenches at the foot of each table funnel into a vat in the middle of the floor.
A vat full to the brim with dark, red fluid.
Soren stills at the sight. “I guess that explains how he managed to confound the portals. There’s enough there for a hundred journeys.”
“Arwen.” Alaric’s voice breaks on his wife’s name. His eyes bore into the center table, which appears to have been used most recently, if the smears of vibrant crimson are any indication. “Do you think—”
“This is far more than a few days’ worth.” Vaughn claps his brother-in-law on the back. “Come. Let’s keep moving. We must be getting close. The screams are getting louder.”
As if on cue, a muffled wail of agony echoes through the thick stone walls. It does indeed sound closer than those that came before.
We move on, leaving the gruesome chamber behind.
I keep one hand on the coiled whip at my waist, comforted by its golden weight in my hand even if my maegic is too muted down here for it to be of any use to me.
I find it strange that no one is around and, from the edgy energy emanating from him, I know Soren feels the same.
Where are the guards?
Where are the wardens of this prison?
We see none. Not in the corridors, not on the stairways, not even posted at the thick door to the cellblocks.
Vaughn makes quick work of ripping it off its hinges. He looks at Soren as he sets the wood panel aside. “Does this feel…”
“Too easy,” Soren finishes, teeth grinding together. “Definitely.”
“Perhaps Efnysien is so cocky, he thinks this prison cannot be infiltrated,” Alaric says, but his voice sounds unsure. “Between the guard towers above and the booby traps within, he must figure no one would be crazy enough to try.”
“Mmm,” Melité hums noncommittally.
Harpina says nothing, but I catch her making the sigil for protection from the Goddess of Fate out of the corner of my eye.
Soren looks at me. “Stay close, skylark. I do not like this.”
“Really? I’m having a splendid time.”
The ghost of a smile twitches at his lips. “How are your nerves?”
“Shot to all hell,” I answer honestly. I expel a thin breath, wishing the confinement was not affecting me so harshly.
“We’ll be out of here soon,” he promises. “Back in Hylios. Back in the sunlight. Think of that, not this place.”
I try to do as he says. To ignore the mounting panic. To put the dread out of my head. But it’s no use.
It’s not just me. We all feel it—that sinking feeling in our stomachs, that slow build of tension cinching tighter and tighter.
Like hapless mice who’ve snuck into the den of a deadly predator, only to see the gleam of eyes in the darkness and realize, too late, that they never stood a chance at stealth.
My heartbeat picks up speed, matching my strides as we move into a corridor lined with cells on either side.
The screams come in a chorus, moans and yells and nonsensical whimpers.
I grip my dagger hilt with one hand, the other at the ready on my whip.
My eyes trace the thick bars of iron, the dark shadows beyond.
Most are vacant. The few that are not make my heart plummet to my feet, for their occupants are either dead-eyed and nonresponsive or raving and frothing.
Regardless of their mental state, all of them share one commonality: they are horribly, horribly maimed.
No doubt the result of many visits to the chamber of torture.
A man—I think it is a man—peers out as we pass without blinking, as though he does not even see us. As though he is already elsewhere, his broken body a shell for a soul long fled.
“Shouldn’t we help them?” I whisper regardless, blinking back tears.
“There is no helping them,” Melité snarls softly. “Look at them. That one is missing both its arms.”
“Shut up, Melité,” Vaughn growls, sounding shaken. He looks back at me, green eyes saddened. “We’ve no way to transport them all out of here, Rhya. And no room on the dinghies, even if we could.”
I swallow thickly. “But—”
“Arwen!” Alaric’s cry cuts the air like a knife, bringing us all running. He’s at the end of the passage, rattling the rungs of a cell, paying no mind at all to the iron as it burns his hands. “She’s in here, she’s—Oh, gods, is she—”
“Move! I’ve got it.” Vaughn shoulders Alaric out of the way. “You’ll be no use to your bride if you singe your skin off.”