They vanished into the library, followed by Hansa, Jax, Caia, Blaze, and Caspian. Pheng-Pheng and I were last, right after Fiona and Zane.
Only then did I notice all the wiring. I’d been so busy running and fighting off daemons and pit wolves that I hadn’t even seen the dozens of added fuse wires stretching all the way back down, halfway through the tunnel. Dollops of shimmering explosive paste were mounted on the ceiling and walls along each fuse wire, at even distances of ten to fifteen feet.
“Holy hell, it’s about to get epic,” I breathed, then passed through the cloaking spell wall.
I had known about the explosives and all, as it had been a part of the plan from the very beginning. What I hadn’t known was the level of skill and dedication it had taken both Laughlan and Vesta to put it all together, as well as to mount it inside the tunnel. And I was willing to bet that Laughlan had also added some of his Druid mojo to the explosive mixture, too, for good measure.
We were now in stage three of our plan: disabling the tunnel. Stage four was the one I was most worried about, as I hoped the pacifists were going to get as many of the prisoners out of the way once we set it in motion.
In the meantime, however, I was mentally and emotionally ready to let stage three unfold.
Almost there.
Fiona
I was still reeling from the surprise of seeing Velnias upstairs with Laughlan and Vesta. Zane and I had been the first to reach the top side, just a few minutes ahead of the rest of our team. We’d yet to hear about how he’d made it safely away from the daemons hunting him, but there wasn’t any time for chitchat at this point, anyway.
Once we were all reunited in the cloaking spell, Vesta hugged her parents, while we briefly confirmed what each of us had accomplished, though most of it was clear as day, since we had all the delegation prisoners safe with us, as well as Zane.
“We let some of the pacifists loose and left them with our skeleton key,” I said, prompting Harper to chuckle.
“We did the same,” she replied with a grin.
“Great minds think alike, obviously,” Zane chimed in, smirking.
“Okay, we need to go. Now,” Vesta cut in, then nodded at Laughlan and Velnias.
From what I could see, they’d connected all the fuses to two thick bundles. They held both of them up, motioning for Caia to do the honors.
“Once these babies are lit, we’ve got a couple of minutes, tops, to get as far away from the palace as possible,” Laughlan said.
We could hear the rumbling of boots and angry growls echoing through the tunnel. More daemons were coming, but we’d managed to significantly slow them down, given the pile of charred bodies that Caia and Blaze had left behind.
Caia then flipped her lighters on and sent out two wisps of amber fire at both fuse bundles. They lit up in white flames, burning fast as Velnias and Laughlan dropped them on the floor. I watched the fires consume the dozens of strings, then vanish beneath the faux-bookshelf door.
“Go!” Vesta breathed.
We slipped through the cloaking spell and ran fast. We glided down the palace stairs, having one last look at its beautiful interior architecture. It was truly a shame that it all had to come down, but we had no other choice.
The first moon was up, with the second one gleaming somewhere in the east, just above the horizon. There were plenty of daemons out roaming through the city, too, but we were all invisible and fast. Harper used her True Sight to scan the surrounding area, looking for red lenses as we left the palace behind us.
As soon as we reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard the first boom. It was low, seeming quite distant, but the ground shaking beneath us reminded me that it came from inside the library. The second boom followed, reverberating throughout that entire section of the city, swiftly followed by the third, which prompted us to hold still while trying to stay upright.
The tunnel collapsed, the thundering of stone crashing and crumbling sending shivers down my spine. The screams of daemons echoed out of the palace but were muffled by a fourth explosion. That one took place in the palace. The shockwave caused the stained-glass windows to explode outward. The walls started coming down, disintegrating like sandcastles, as bright orange rolls of fire swallowed everything in their path and cast an amber light against the tourmaline sky.
I held my breath, watching the splendor of Kerentrith’s palace consumed by fire. Ashes and black dust sprayed out through every possible hole, as if the building had suddenly turned into a volcano, spewing its fiery bowels outward.
“The secret is figuring out where the structural pillars are,” Laughlan said, staring at the disaster unfolding before us.
When the ground floor collapsed and the rest of the palace came crashing down, I understood what they’d done with the explosives. Sure, they’d rigged the tunnel halfway through, sealing the daemons and condemning them to death by crushing, but they’d also loaded the palace’s main pillars, the ones supporting the upper levels, with the same mix of explosive powders.
It brought the entire building down in a process similar to that of a controlled demolition, only much louder, more dramatic, and downright fiery. On top of that, the flames were quick to spread into the surrounding areas. The blaze traveled through every wood beam, every tree, plant, and bush growing carelessly through the city.
“Keep moving, kids,” Velnias said. “It’s not over yet!”
I immediately understood what he meant, when the angry roars of daemons rippled through the other parts of the city above us. We headed down to the ground level, just as another throng of daemons poured through the central market and spilled through the cobblestoned alleys.
“There’s at least three hundred more of them,” Harper breathed as we continued to run down the main street. “Blaze is still injured and we need to keep the prisoners safe, but I think running away is still our best option!”
“We’ve got the horses waiting for us, hidden on the western side, right?” I asked, occasionally stealing glances at Zane running by my side.
The surface alarms started blaring. There were still too many daemons out there, and the alarms served to call back any of the grunts still patrolling the city and the areas around the hill base. Soon enough, they were all going to converge on our location.
“Dammit, we underestimated their remaining numbers,” Vesta cursed under her breath.
The fire from the palace continued to spread, giant orange flames licking at the sky behind us. The daemons were less than a hundred yards away, and it was only a matter of time before they got to us. The shrills of Death Claws made my blood curdle. The winged beasts climbed out from different corners of the city, then took flight, gliding toward us. Collared pit wolves snarled as they got ahead of the daemon horde, rushing down the street and rapidly closing the distance between us.
“We can make it,” Harper replied. “We can still make it!”
“Blaze, hop on Zane’s back,” I shouted at the dragon, who gave me an offended look. “Yeah, save your ego for later! Get on his back!”
“What about my ego?” Zane shot back with a raised eyebrow. I mirrored his expression, and it seemed to be enough. He put his arms out while running, in perfect sync with Blaze, who jumped and climbed on his back. Zane then coiled his arms around Blaze’s thighs and, unsurprisingly, started to pick up speed.
I glanced over my shoulder and noticed that, out of the delegation prisoners, Rayna and Ryker were the weakest, while Caspian was almost back at full capacity. “Rayna, jump on my back!” I said.
The fae didn’t wait to be told twice and hopped on. She was petite and light as a feather, poor thing, making my run virtually indistinguishable from before. If anything, both Zane and I were running faster than before, and getting ahead of the group.
Ryker jumped on Jax’s back, while the rest managed to keep up as we increased our speed. Harper pushed out several barriers, and Caia delivered an angry flurry of fireballs at our pursuers. Even Laughlan and Ryker rel
eased several orbs of blue fire that burst white hot when the pit wolves inadvertently ran through them.
It was enough to cripple the beasts, leaving Caia some room to focus on firing blazing projectiles at the Death Claws, which were now getting dangerously close. The city grumbled and trembled in our wake. Walls and towers collapsed as the flames from the demolished palace continued to spread.
“The winds!” I said, noticing the thick columns of black smoke billowing from the palace. “Vesta, the winds!”
Vesta nodded and put her arms out, the air rippling around her slender fingers. As a fae, Vesta had control over more than one element. While Caia fired at the Death Claws, Vesta was able to manipulate the winds around the city, pushing the smoke toward us. A sheet of dark fumes soon covered us, obscuring the view of the remaining Death Claws. It even made it difficult for the daemons and pit wolves to reach us, as the smoke reduced their visibility to one, maybe two feet in front of them, at most.
They were so desperate to get to us that they continuously scrambled against, bumped into, and tripped on one another, as they struggled to catch us before we hit the bottom of the hill. I looked ahead, watching the road get covered in black smoke. Gusts of warm wind continued to spread the plumes of smoke around, aiding us in our escape.
My heart thundered, my breath was cut short, and sweat covered my sooty face, but I had plenty of strength left. Almost there. I felt Rayna’s grip on me tighten. She was afraid, and I couldn’t blame her, but even an entire army of daemons and their monsters didn’t stand a chance against my will to live.
“Don’t worry, Rayna,” I muttered softly. “We’ll be out of here soon.”
Harper
We reached the hill base just as another explosion rocked the entire city from beneath. It came as a surprise, and it prompted me to look at Vesta, who seemed just as shocked as I was. Instinctively, I shifted my focus to Velnias, who was grinning ear to ear.
“The pacifists,” he said. “They finally did it.”
We all slowed down and turned around to look at the city of Kerentrith. The sea of daemons behind us had stopped running, too. Vesta frowned and waved the smoke curtain away to reveal the trembling mass of white marble buildings, just as a second bang erupted below.
“What’s happening?” I asked, noticing the daemons as they came to a halt, most of them no longer bothered by their companions on the front line writhing in agony as the blue flames of Druid fire consumed them.
Caia shot another Death Claw down. The creature landed somewhere to our right, its bones crushed upon impact. A third explosion tore through the underground, and we all gathered and took several steps back. I could hear the murmurs and gasps of daemons, all of them stunned and wide-eyed as they realized what was happening in Draconis below.
“The pacifists are sabotaging the support structures of the prison,” Velnias said, narrowing his eyes at the crowd of confused daemons. “What you’re looking at now is a bunch of confused idiots who don’t know whether they should keep chasing after us or go back down and see what’s going on.”
“Well, what exactly is going on?” I asked, wiping the sweat and soot from my face.
“We’ve always had this plan, you see,” Velnias said. “As long as we knew it wouldn’t all end with mass arrests and a botched rebellion, we were ready to do it. We rigged the four support pillars of Draconis a long time ago. There are hundreds of pounds of explosives embedded in the columns. We took turns hiding them and connecting the wires. It took decades to have it go unnoticed. Once you people came in and told me what your plans were, I knew… I knew it was time to do this. The one thing we’ve been waiting for.”
The fourth explosion startled us. It came from the underground pillars that were closest to our location. The ground shuddered beneath us, prompting me to grab Caspian’s shoulder for support. It was then that I understood the length to which the daemon pacifists were willing to go for the sake of a new world that didn’t involve eating souls and tormenting innocent creatures. They were bringing their entire city down, in the name of freedom.
They were ready to kill scores of their own, as long as they had the guarantee, or at least enough faith, that someone would help them bring the entire regime of King Shaytan and the Exiled Maras down. We were the outside force they’d been waiting for.
“And now, we need to go,” Velnias added, staring at the daemons. “They’re about to find out the speed with which an underground city can collapse in on itself.”
We didn’t wait for him to say that again. We darted off to the right, running along the base of the hill, as the entire city of Kerentrith crumbled, all at once, like a majestic sandcastle suddenly left without a beach to stand on.
I could hear Draconis howling underneath as its domed ceiling came down. I could only imagine what it must look like from up close. The surface daemons roared with fury and dread, struggling to reach the base but failing miserably as the stone pavement cracked under their feet, then opened up and swallowed them whole.
We kept running, with some surviving daemons stumbling onto the ground level and scrambling to get to us, though the smoke made it difficult for them to figure out where we’d gone. They were probably in shock, anyway. Their entire city had been blown apart, from top to bottom. I doubted they had any mental strength left to come after us. And, if they did, they were far too enraged to try to take us alive. They were bound to ache for revenge, and rage was something that always made it easier for me to kill them. Rage made them reckless and predictable.
“Most of us went to prison before we could link the pillars to the main detonator,” Velnias continued. “Once Cayn interrupted us the other day, and my identity as a pacifist was revealed, I had to finish the job before they got to me. I didn’t think you crazy kids would come back, though. Imagine my surprise when I saw this little vampire sneaking into Zane’s cell, just as I was about to do the same,” he chuckled, pointing at Fiona. “I knew then that you’d set up base somewhere close in that palace library, so I left word with the others and went upstairs, only to find Vesta and Laughlan fumbling with fuses.”
“Were there any escape routes for the prisoners?” Hansa asked, running closely behind me. “The city is surrounded by lava lakes. If they have nowhere to go when the city comes down—”
“There are three tunnels leading out of Draconis, beneath the lava lakes,” Velnias replied. “We’ve had centuries to think it all through.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the destruction unfolding to our left, as the collapse spurted giant rolls of dust and ashes all around the hill.
“They probably got as many of them out as they could before we detonated the tunnel,” Velnias added. “I didn’t have time to warn the pacifists about it, as I’d already come to the surface and both Laughlan and Vesta needed some help with the wiring, but they figured it out. We were always ready to sacrifice ourselves and the others, anyway. We’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but we had to. They had to. We couldn’t let Draconis come after you.”
My stomach churned painfully, thinking about the prisoners who most likely didn’t make it. From what I could remember about the city’s layout, the outer meranium boxes were probably going to survive the collapse. Most of them, anyway, depending on the force with which the ceiling came down on them.
The central penitentiary was doomed, as it stood in the middle. The ceiling was at its highest point above it, and, by the basic laws of gravity, that height gave it time to increase its speed in the fall. The building was bound to crumble beneath the chunks of black stone.
“Are there any mechanisms in place to evacuate the penitentiary?” I asked.
“There should be,” Zane interjected. “All prisons have them, including the small one in Infernis. But it won’t guarantee that they’ll all survive. Many are too weak to move, anyway, after having their souls nibbled on. Besides, there wasn’t enough time to evacuate everyone.”
If they spent so long planning for such an uprisi
ng, I had to hope that they’d also planned their escape routes from the prison cells to the three tunnels beneath the lava lake. It was the only thought that gave me some sort of comfort as we made our way back to the western gate.
“One thing I can guarantee is that the pacifists will have definitely tried to get as many creatures out as possible,” Zane added, noticing my furrowed brow.
“This really was our best shot to secure your escape from Draconis,” Velnias said, though I could hear the sadness in his voice. He wasn’t pleased with the choices he’d had to make, but we were at war here. Unpopular decisions had to be made. Some people had to be left to die in order to ensure the survival of the many.
Once we got Lumi out, everything would change for Neraka and we’d be able to go back home. As bad as it felt in that moment, I took my sadness and turned it into strength and determination. “No one will have died in vain, I promise you that,” I muttered. “We will free this world and end this reign of terror.”
Blue flames exploded behind us as Laughlan and Ryker took out several of the surviving daemons still chasing after us.
“I’ve got to give them credit,” Laughlan said, slightly amused. “They’re really persistent.”
“That will change once the king falls,” Velnias replied. “They’re all brainwashed into thinking there is no life without eating souls. That the weak must suffer and die, while the strong will thrive and live forever. It needs to stop. It’s time we stop it.”
“Oh, rest assured,” I scoffed, “this ends with us, one way or another!”
The whole of Kerentrith finally came down then, with the sound of a thousand thunders banging as the city was utterly destroyed. The fires were swallowed by ashes and dust, with black clouds billowing from beneath. Rays of orange light pierced through the mass of rubble, flickers from the lava lakes below that consumed every pebble and every chunk of Kerentrith freefalling in the process.
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