Chapter 8 Hannah
Hannah
"Of course it's following me,” I breathed, because apparently my life had decided subtlety was no longer a requirement. Well, ever since I’d gotten dumped into this world, things had gone from bad to worse. I didn’t want to challenge Fate and ask if she was done yet.
My boots slipped as the passage curved sharply to the right.
I slammed a hand against the wall to keep from eating crystal face-first and kept moving.
My lungs burned, and my ribs protested every breath.
The tunnel narrowed, then widened just enough to trick me into thinking I had space before splitting into two separate paths.
Left or right.
Left or right.
My brain stalled. Then voices echoed from behind me, warped but unmistakable. “She’s down here!”
Oh, absolutely the fuck not. Let the catfish gator eat those bastards alive. If they could entertain each other, I might be able to find a way out. “Yeah, they can deal with you.”
I veered left, choosing the path that angled away from the voices and deeper into whatever fresh disastrous hell waited for me. The steady pull in my chest shifted.
Behind me, something massive slammed into the junction.
The impact shook the walls, sending dust and glittering silt cascading down around me.
The creature’s snarl fractured through the crystal again, louder and closer now.
I didn’t look back. Looking felt like an excellent way to trip, fall, and die in the least dignified way possible.
Not that dignity mattered at this point.
The passage angled upward this time. Good. Up was good. Up meant away from the pool and the nightmare gator-catfish hybrid, as well as everything that had already tried to kill me in the last five minutes.
I pushed harder, ignoring my burning thighs and screaming lungs. Every breath dragged against my ribs, and each step sent jolts of pain through my hip.
Behind me, the creature kept coming, its body scraping the walls and its claws clicking on slick crystal. Its horrible wet hiss seemed to vibrate through the stone and into my bones, but it was moving more slowly now, enough that hope flickered in the back of my mind.
The walls were narrowing. Please let that be a problem for it. Aunt Maureen, I’ve learned my lesson. You can stop with the games. I’d rather you go back to stealing something!
A frustrated groan made the crystals around me hum in discordant waves. I risked a glance over my shoulder and wished I hadn’t.
The creature had wedged itself into the narrowing passage, its bulk too large to move easily. Its jaws snapped, and its whisker-like tendrils thrashed as it tried to force its way through. It wasn’t stuck. But it wasn’t moving fast anymore either.
I could work with that.
I forced my legs to keep going even as they threatened to give out on me.
The tunnel twisted, the crystals shifting from deep violet to something darker, richer.
Indigo. At least, that’s what I hoped. The colors blurred together under the unsteady torchlight until they all looked like variations of “Don’t mess this up. ”
The passage climbed higher, then suddenly opened.
I stumbled out onto a narrow ledge overlooking another junction and damn near fell off before I caught myself. With a deep inhale and a desperate grab for the wall, I managed to find my balance.
Four passages branched out in front of me.
I blinked, trying to steady my vision and my breathing as I lifted the torch. The flame flickered, casting uneven light over the openings, each framed in crystal that glowed faintly from within, colors shifting with every movement of the fire.
Four choices.
All of them terrible.
My arm trembled from the effort of holding the torch steady while my entire body screamed in protest as I tried to focus.
“Great. Just what I need. A multiple-choice question with death as the penalty for getting it wrong.”
I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath while attempting to listen to my surroundings past the thundering of my own heartbeat.
Everything still sounded wrong. Voices drifted toward me from multiple directions, broken apart and thrown back by the crystal until they became a mess of warped noise that made my head pound.
Someone was shouting, maybe orders, maybe warnings, but the words stretched and bled together until they barely sounded like language.
“—down the eastern—”
“—she may have gone—”
“—the pool, something in the—”
Then shrill whistles sliced through the garble.
The crystal caught those too, and my skull throbbed with the force of them.
Maybe it was a signal, and they were coordinating.
Or they were just as lost as I was and shouting into the dark because panic was contagious.
I had no way of knowing. In this place, ten feet and a hundred might as well be the same distance.
“This is a nightmare.” I pressed a palm to my forehead like that might somehow shove my thoughts back into order. “A real, honest-to-holey cheese nightmare.”
Standing here wasn’t a plan, so I pushed off the wall and picked the passage that seemed to angle away from the loudest concentration of voices. The crystals around its entrance glowed a deeper blue-violet hue than the others. I prayed that meant Dusk and not some new level of terrible.
The passage sloped downward again.
Of course it did.
My stomach clenched so hard that my ribs hurt worse, but I kept moving.
Behind me, the whistles shrieked, louder this time, and even through the warped echoes, I could tell they were closer than before.
The torchlight guttered and jumped, throwing shadows that bent wrong and slid too fast, making my heart jerk every time one of them moved in the corner of my vision.
The voices followed me in fragments that the crystal chewed up and spat back out.
“—this way, I heard—”
“—can’t have gone—”
“—the creature, it’s—”
That last one hit harder than the others.
The creature.
So they had found it too. Good. I hoped it took a bite out of all of them. Served the bastards right for wanting to sacrifice me and all.
I pushed faster. The passage curved left, then right, then opened into a small chamber that glittered with jagged crystal growths jutting from the floor and ceiling like teeth.
I didn’t pause long enough to do more than register that it existed before taking the next tunnel out.
It narrowed quickly, forcing me to angle my shoulders so I didn’t slam into the walls.
The farther I went, the worse the sound distortion became.
Whistles turned into warbling cries. Voices became groans and half-formed hisses that no longer sounded entirely human.
..or fae…or whatever they were here. Even my own breathing came back to me wrong, stretched thin and uneven, like someone else was panting in the tunnel just behind me.
My skin prickled. Then a gurgling roar ripped through the tunnel.
I stopped so fast my boots skidded.
Ice flooded my veins. The pool creature. It was close enough now that the roar still carried that same wet, guttural edge beneath the echoes, and my stomach dropped right through the floor.
“No,” I whispered, though the word came out thin and frayed.
Maybe it had found another way around, or there was more than one of them.
That thought hit me like a slap. A whole underground lake system full of nightmare catfish-gators was the kind of thing this world would throw at me, just to keep things interesting.
Because obviously, being kidnapped, nearly sacrificed, chased through a crystal death maze, and almost eaten once was not enough suffering for one day.
The roar came again, closer this time, and I tensed.
I backed up one careful step at a time, the torch shaking in my hand and throwing frantic light over the narrowing walls.
The passage curved ahead into a bend I couldn’t see around, and the sound rolled out of it, wetter and louder than before, tangled with the scrape of claws against crystal.
For one impossible second, it seemed to come from behind me too, from everywhere at once, because apparently this cave had decided simple terror was not enough and I needed surround sound.
Then the creature burst around the bend.
Its mouth gaped wide, dark blood still slick across its snout from where I’d stabbed it.
I hurled myself backward, and the catfish-gator’s nasty-ass jaws snapped shut inches from my face.
A rush of damp, rank air blasted over me, carrying the stink of rot and old meat and things I absolutely did not want to think about too hard unless I planned on vomiting.
“That smells worse than expensive cheese!” The words flew out of me as I scrambled backward with my torch thrust out in front of me like that pathetic little flame was somehow going to solve my many, many poor decisions.
The creature struck again, its massive body crowding the passage until there was barely space left for me to exist. Needle-like teeth flashed in the firelight, and before I could think better of it, I swung the torch at its face.
The flame kissed one of those trailing barbels.
The creature recoiled and shrieked loud enough that the sound rattled my skull. The barbel curled and blackened where the fire had caught it, and for one glorious heartbeat, a flicker of savage satisfaction warmed me.
Ha! Take that, you ugly-ass monster!
Then I turned and ran like the cops were chasing me for stealing something. Not saying that ever happened or anything.
I ran back through the twisting passage, back toward the small chamber and the branching tunnels and all the other terrible choices this place had offered me. The sounds of pursuit crashed after me, the creature’s awful gurgling growl seeming to bypass my ears and vibrate straight through my bones.
I turned sideways and threw myself into a gap.
Crystal scraped my back and chest hard enough to bite through the cloak.
Pain flared as jagged edges snagged the tunic beneath, but I shoved in deeper, holding the torch with my front arm while I twisted and sidled forward.
The walls pressed so close that my own breath brushed my face.
My shoulder blades screamed, and my ribs seemed to almost shatter.
Honestly, at this point, my whole body had unionized and was filing formal complaints.
Behind me, the creature hit the fissure.
Everything shook.
I twisted my head around at an angle my neck objected to, and my heart clenched so hard it almost stopped.
The thing was forcing itself into the gap.
Its massive body pressed against the crystal walls with a determination that felt less like instinct and more like personal offense.
A horrible grinding crack split the air, and the crystal began to splinter beneath its bulk.
Violet and indigo shards exploded and slashed its mottled hide, carving dark, bleeding gashes through the scales.
It didn’t care. It kept coming.
Those needle-teeth snapped at the air while the barbels lashed the jagged edges of the widening gap.
More crystal shattered and rained down in glittering fragments that flashed in the torchlight like falling stars, which would have been beautiful if I weren’t about to die in the middle of it.
Its eyes stayed locked on me with that same terrible, primal hunger.
Pain didn’t matter to it. Blood didn’t matter.
The only thing that mattered was getting to me.
Apparently, I had offended it on a deeply personal level by not letting it eat me. Well, fuck that.
I shoved myself deeper into the fissure.
Crystal tore at my shoulder blades through the cloak, and one sharp edge bit into my arm hard enough to make me hiss.
The creature roared again, and more crystal exploded behind me.
It was gaining ground. Its snout was fully inside now, blood streaming over its teeth.
I sucked in my stomach and made myself as small as possible. The torch shook in my outstretched hand, and in the light, farther ahead, for one blessed second, I thought I saw it. Space. A slight widening. Maybe enough room to squeeze through and leave this psycho murder-fish behind.
Hope flared sharp and stupid inside my chest.
I lunged toward it with everything I had left.
Every inch cost me. My body screamed in protest, my bruised ribs scraped against the crystal with each breath, and my hip ached so badly my leg tried to buckle, even in this half-crawling, half-shoving nightmare.
Behind me, the creature’s snarls mixed with the constant crack and splinter of crystal giving way under its weight.
It was still breaking through. Still far too committed to ruining my day.
The gap narrowed again.
So tight I could barely drag in air.
My torch hand shook as I pushed it forward, desperate for any sign that the fissure opened beyond the next bend, beyond the next shoulder scrape, beyond the next awful breath.
The torch hit something solid.
I stopped.
For one stunned second, my brain refused to process what I was seeing. The light spilled over a wall of deep blue-violet crystal directly in front of me, smooth and unbroken from floor to ceiling. No seam. No hidden turn. No gap.
Nothing.
The fissure just… ended.
It was a dead end, and the monster fish dickhead was getting closer.