Chapter 18 #2
“Goad me in whatever way you must in order to get my attention? Any stinging lizard within a league will know where—” I gasp. He’s stopped, the toes of his boots peeking over the edge of where the floor drops away. Again. “Why does it keep doing that?”
“I have a theory. But I hate being wrong, so better hold onto it for now.” He moves to sit, dangling his legs like he’s going to lower himself down.
“Wait!” Something about this one does feel different. Like a weak branch, or a predator on the wind. “Can you see the bottom?”
“Yes—hmm.” He sweeps the torch at his feet, peering down hard.
“No, actually.” His brow scrunches. “There’s a lip at about the same distance down as the others, but it drops off again after. I’ll go down and check before helping you follow.”
I’m already shaking my head. My limbs nearly vibrate with pent up tension. My legs want to spring, but I wrestle my voice into annoyed resignation. “Just hold on.”
I take the torch and leave him in the dark as I retrace our steps, grabbing a few of the loose stones.
When I return, he’s laid back on the ground, eyes closed, his hands laced behind his head.
The torchlight illuminates him slowly at first, then all at once.
His shirt is lifted, exposing the taut strip of skin just above the waist of his trousers.
“Enjoying yourself?”
I snap my attention away and move to the edge. When he sits up, I lift an arm and arc two of the stones into the void.
One. Two. Three. Four—
My eyes widen as Rune’s face twists with concern.
There’s a splash below. Faint.
“At least I know how to swim?” he says to my unimpressed look. The drop has to be at least a hundred feet.
Both our faces glisten with a sheen of sweat. “You were going to a watery grave—”
“There was a lip!”
“You would have taken a single step and fallen in.”
“Oh, Odi, I’m flattered you care—“
“With our only torch.”
He barks a laugh as he stands, but his eyes catch behind me in a way that has me spinning, dagger already drawn.
“What is it?”
“A ledge,” he says. “Horrible things really. I’m not sure your borrowed blade will be quite enough to save us.”
I ignore him, peering harder into the shadow. The light falls on a hint of narrow pathway barely cleaving to the wall. The light doesn’t reach the other side.
“We’d be walking blind.”
He breezes past me. “Let me go first. Once I find the other side I’ll come back for you.”
“I’m not waiting,” I hiss. Waiting is an invitation for things more terrible than mere reality.
In my minds eye, we’d both die a hundred deaths before he could cross, and a hundred more as he returned again, the constant threat of bitter, forgotten stone giving way beneath him propelling me into thoughts more horrifying than acid-tongued toad creatures that could be banished with a well-timed sword.
No greater beast than a man’s mind, and the fear that seeks to claim it.
The riddle’s warning all but says if terror lies in wait, we’re going the right way. “Together, then.”
I pass him the torch, following close behind as he moves to the wall.
His feet overlap the ledge as he stands with his back to the stone and begins to inch sideways.
One misplaced step and we’ll be down. Maybe we’d survive the fall, if we hit the water right, but something tells me we’d be stuck treading in stagnant darkness until our bodies finally gave out.
If we were lucky enough to not get eaten.
Once he’s an arm’s length down, I press into the damp-streaked stone.
The animal inside me panics, finally overwhelmed by the dread of the tunnels, but caught fast in the trap of my human mind.
There’s no time to do more than lock her down before she gets us killed.
She quiets, muzzled, restrained by years of practice and the wall I’ve built between us.
We move, slowly, until the start of our path is swallowed by darkness, until nothingness surrounds us on all sides, the torch cocooning us in a bubble of light.
The fear in me turns to deadly silence. Everything in me turns to silence.
A sanctuary of unfeeling. This is where Nisse reigns.
Where blood sprays warm on my face and intolerable weakness means a quick death.
Rocks tumble from under Rune’s feet, and we freeze, waiting to hear them fall.
A couple seconds later, they shatter over stone.
“Multiple levels, then,” he quips, as if both our muscles aren’t on fire with coiled energy.
Sweat drips down my neck, into my eyes, the air so tight in my lungs I fear I’ll be dizzy soon.
“Fascinating.”
For the first time since we started, he turns back to look at me, his lips pressed tight.
“Watch your step here. It may be a stretch for you.” He lifts his long legs across the gap easily, but he’s right; I’ll have to leap.
On the other side, he turns and points the torch towards where the ledge has crumbled away.
Even the rock under his feet is cracked and tired.
“Back up,” I say, shooing him with a small wave of my hand. “This path isn’t meant for giants.”
“You think I'm giant, little doe?” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s worried, trying to distract us both.
“I know you’re giant.” Two can play at this game.
For distraction. “You were kneeling naked before me hours ago. Not to mention you have a habit of wearing soaking wet pants.” I leap as he laughs, not giving either of us a chance to think.
Loose rock slips under the first foot that lands.
The second lands true, but the damage is already done.
Gravity sinks its claws into my chest, and I feel the moment of no return.
Sinister darkness threatens below, concealing the death that waits in the form of concealed stone.
My lungs seize, heart leaping into overdrive, sprung free from my rigid focus.
There’s a moment of weightlessness.
Then an impact to my chest slams me against the wall. Pain flares through my head, sharp. Bloody iron floods my mouth. Rune’s citrus scent is close, but my vision is blurred. Then the ground is moving, crumbling. Rocks fall, echoing as if it were a rain of cannon fire.
“Odi—” His grip is on me, launching me around him, pushing me down the other side. “Run!”
I blink, shuffling sideways even as my eyes struggle to focus. Blood pounds in my head in waves of pain. But the word lives in me, and my feet move like they’ve waited a lifetime for me to let them.
Run.
More rocks fall, but I don’t stop. I feel him behind me, imagine the soaked stone giving way beneath him.
“Jump!” he shouts. But I don’t see the end, not with a guttering torch and the weak vision of my human form. He should have gone first. Shouldn’t have pushed me ahead where my reluctance to trust could kill us both.
The rock wavers beneath my feet and I leap, every hope and dream of freedom I’ve ever had suddenly small against the desperate will to live that floods through me as I’m airborne for a half second.
The opposite side isn’t kind when I land, full body into solid rock, catching me by my ribs and hip and sending a razor sharp pain through my injured leg.
I open my eyes to darkness.
And silence.
“Rune!”
The scream rips my throat, echoing in the inky black, fading into ripples, then into quiet again. The torch is gone. There’s stone everywhere my hands can reach, but I can’t see. I can’t see.
“Here.” The word is a grunt. Relief drowns common sense as I turn and scramble towards him on all fours, one hand slipping into nothingness. I gasp and pull back, then gingerly feel along the uneven edge.
“Where?”
“Just back up. Don’t come this way.” His voice is strained, and the pain in it ricochets through my insides, swirling the darkness into vivid nightmares.
“Fuck you, Rune.” I crawl along the edge until my hands find his, the worry having turned to anger in a breath.
He’s hanging off the ledge, holding on with the strength of his fingers.
I’m tired of his constant masochistic need to martyr himself.
I’m tired of him throwing himself into danger at every turn. For saving me when I don’t deserve it.
He grunts, and I hear his arm slap down on the ground. “Fuck me yourself.”
I laugh, and sit back, then a pair of useless, quiet tears streaks down my face, the relief bubbling over. “I won’t be able to pull you up.”
“You don’t have to.” He pants, but another strained breath later his head is nearly in my lap.
I raise on my knees and wrap my arms into his, tugging with all my might.
Then his leg is up and he propels himself forwards, falling over me as we go.
He catches himself with an arm, his chest brushing mine as it heaves between us.
His shirt is gone, and I wonder if he can tell how my nipples harden under his weight.
I can see nothing, but I don’t flinch when something gentle and sharp traces the drying streaks my tears left behind.
“You shifted.” It’s not a question. It’s instinct. The change is subtle, the difference between a kitchen knife and blood-soaked blade but impossible to miss, even in the dark.
“Half-shifted.” The words spirit over my cheek, down my neck, slinking low to the heat that already grows between my legs.
“It isn’t easy to hold onto out of water, but it can help with strength and speed, for a time.
” He pauses as I strain my eyes, trying hard to see his face, then rolls off of me, to his back, sprawling on the ground. “You should give it a try.”
The thought pinches something in my chest. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“We’ve got time.”
It’s strange to know my eyes are open, staring sightlessly ahead. I scan from side to side, but there isn’t even a hint of light. “You mean because our way back just disintegrated?”
“I bet you got top marks in pirate school.”
I kick his leg and he throws his knee back at me, but doesn’t pull away, letting it rest on my thigh.