She looked up at him with venom in her eyes.
Then she blinked. Now that she was out of the wagon, she could see for the first time where they were. Her suspicions had been correct. She had been taken far underground, and ahead of them shone the faint blue glow of subterranean fungus. The unseelie stood around her, some bleeding from thorn punctures, and behind them waited a throng of reptilian humanoids. Troglodytes.
She forced herself to her feet and faced Athaym.
“Black Dragon or not,” she said, “your greater self is dead. You are not Klrain. What is it you hope to gain from me?” She managed to keep her voice strong, even though she still wrapped her arms protectively over her belly.
“For now, servitor,” he said, “I would have your silence.”
She opened her mouth again, but a smoky substance filled her lungs, making her cough. She closed her mouth and could breathe once more.
Sidhna stepped forward. “I want more,” she said. Her fangs extended.
Athaym shook his head. “It is no longer necessary that you sedate her,” he told the vampire. “You’ve had your revenge. She belongs to me now.” He turned back to Aradma. “Look around you,” he told the druid. “What do you see?”
She glared at him, confused.
“Look!” A flash of pain jolted through their dark bond.
She complied, turning her head to see the unseelie and the larger horde of troglodytes. She stared back at him. “I don’t—” she started to say, but the smoke returned, assaulting her lungs. She doubled over as she coughed, forcing her mouth closed and returning breath through her nose.
“I can see it in your eyes,” he stated. “Look again. What don’t you see?”
She glared in fury but obeyed. What was his game? What did he want her to notice?
“You bear the Seal of Life in your soul,” he said. “I might sever your connection to the elemental source, but I can’t take away the authority that Graelyn passed to you. That is something of a higher nature, and it makes you special.”
What is he talking about?
“Your seal grants you the authority to see that which no one else can see. Look through it.”
Then comprehension dawned on her. There was no matrix of golden light anywhere among these people. The divine light didn’t touch them.
He saw her understanding in her eyes. “Yes,” he hissed in a low whisper. “These are a people without faith. They have no hopes or fears. They are only instinct and calculating minds. They don’t—they can’t—feed the gods.”
Athaym came over to her and put two of his fingers under her chin, lightly inclining her head. “You will embrace my purpose, in the end,” he said. “But first, you must unlearn all that you have learned. You must unbecome all that you think you have become. You will remember, in time, that we are allies.”
One of the troglodytes stepped forward heavily armored with metal plates that interlocked seamlessly and silently flowed with his movements. They were bulbous and smooth, like beetle shells. “She is the one whom you promised?” he asked. “She is the one who will restore and unite our mothers?”
Athaym regarded the reptilian man thoughtfully for a moment. “No,” he finally answered. “She is mine, but her daughter will be yours.”
“No!” Aradma shouted, but then the smoke returned and she doubled over as she choked it out.
The troglodyte looked down at her. His eyes glittered in the faint fungal light of the caves. “She is weak. The tower will not accept her.”
“She will be made strong,” Athaym responded.
“You know what the tower demands,” the troglodyte stated, still studying her.
Athaym nodded. “She is choros-nalcht, with the rest of them.”
The troglodyte abruptly turned his gaze back to Athaym. “As it should be. You are prepared to withdraw your protection?”
“She will learn, or she will die,” Athaym confirmed.
The troglodyte gestured to two of his men. They came beside Aradma and tore away her gown until she stood only in the thin cotton shift that fell halfway down her thighs. The cavern air chilled her shoulders and the backs of her knees. The troglodytes placed a cold metal collar around her neck, attached to a long chain. The one who’d spoken to Athaym walked away from them, dragging her with him.
Forced to follow, she glared at Athaym as she passed him.
The troglodyte chief grabbed the length of her chain and pulled her to the ground. She fell to the stone floor, scraping her knees and palms.
“Choros-nalcht do not meet the eyes of the named!” the chief shouted at her. “You are an animal, and you will live as an animal. Only when you accept this truth can you ever hope to rise to be more.”
Unable to respond, Aradma steeled her eyes to stare at the ground between her hands. Her captor started moving forward again, and she was forced to crawl forward lest she get dragged along the stone ground. With every step, she stumbled over her knees and palms. Her skin bled and her joints pounded from the pain, but she kept moving.
For my child, she told herself. I will survive this.
The rest of the group started moving behind her.
“My lord.” She heard the troglodyte chieftain’s voice faintly from somewhere behind her. “We’re being followed.”
“Go take care of it then,” Athaym responded.
“As you command,” the reptilian humanoid hissed.
Aradma’s breath quickened with hope.
Oh, Kaldor, hurry! I need you! Our daughter needs you!
7 - Abandoned
Arda crouched behind the outcropping of rock. She was being hunted. She had sighted the caravan moving along the winding path far beneath her on the crevice, and she had become careless in her haste. Now, several of the troglodytes had doubled back and slowly crawled up and down the walls behind her.
She thought about drawing her revolvers, but there was no telling what else moved in the depths. The farther they descended, the greater the chance she would attract the attention of more than just troglodytes. Light was risky, but the loud report of gunfire was even more so. She drew her sword.
Lowering its single-edged blade slowly in front of her, she closed her eyes to find her center. The calm certainty of the Light filled her, and she heard the hesitant pause in the troglodytes’ approach as the Light flowed through her zorium blade, emitting a soft glow over the subterranean rock.
Arda allowed herself the privilege of a deadly smile, yet still she didn’t open her eyes. In that calm center of the moment, time seemed to slow, and she heard every movement, every scrape of troglodyte claws over the rough stone.
Suddenly they were on her—four of them, powerful warriors with silently interlocking armor and cruelly curved chitin scimitars. They moved with the speed of reptilian predators, darting forward with such blinding instinct they almost caught the darkling paladin off guard.
Almost.
She stepped to the left and whirled. Her tail smacked one of them on the snout, and she brought her sword down in a deadly arc.
He caught her blade with his sharp chitin scimitar, meeting the force of her blow head on and stopping her attack.
She opened her eyes, and for a brief moment their gazes met as they looked into each other’s spirit. The creature was pure, as Arda remembered from prior encounters with troglodytes. He acknowledged her as well, and they both knew that one of them would not leave the battle alive.
Then the moment was gone. She hopped as his companion passed beneath her, and then kicked down, planting her foot into the pouncing troglodyte’s back and slamming him to the ground as she launched herself into the air. She soared in an arc extended by the Light that surged through her body, tucking in her limbs and rolling in midair to land gracefully on a far rock ledge.
Two troglodyte warriors dropped to all fours and scampered towards her over the cavern walls. They were on her before her next breath, but she was ready for them. A quick step to the side, and she was not where they e
xpected. One of them slipped on loose gravel, and her sword descended, removing his head.
His companion did not flinch at his comrade’s death. He twisted, swinging an open hand with his clawed fingers extended. Filled with the Light’s strength, Arda caught his wrist with her left hand. She clenched her fist, digging her darkling claws into his skin. His eyes widened in surprise as his blood welled up from her fingertips and she bent his arm back.
“Didn’t expect me to match your strength, did you?” she quipped. “You’re not the only monster in these caverns.” She grinned ferally, revealing her sharp darkling teeth.
The troglodyte head butted her, his square, thick chin slamming into her forehead between her horns. Her head snapped back on her neck, and she fell onto her rump. The armor-resin stiffened on the impact, saving her backside from smarting pain. Her enemy abandoned all caution and leaped onto her, claws stretched and jaws open, not even bothering with his sheathed weapon.
She still proved faster, instincts guided by the Light. She pushed her hilt forward, and the blade ascended into the troglodyte’s open jaws. The top half of his head slid clean off, and hot blood spurted down on her face. His heavy body fell on top of her, but she had already curled in her legs, planting the bottom of her feet on his chest and pushing him away to fall over the ledge’s side into the chasm’s depths.
She kicked into the air and flipped to her feet in time for the remaining two subterranean warriors to rise above the rock ledge. They saw their dead companions and hung back, choosing not to mindlessly rush at her. They drew their scimitars and prepared to face the paladin in armed combat.
And then they were on her. She danced with them, a whirling flash of moving steel that parried and met their blades with rhythmic counterpoints. Neither gained the upper hand, but she held her own against both of them together.
The Light filled her as she had never known before. She remembered the seal Kaldor had bequeathed her. He said it would deepen her connection to the element in subtle ways. She felt energized, as if she could never tire. The strange, dull clang of metal on chitin rang out in an almost hypnotic manner, beating out the tribal tones of death as each vied to seize the mantle of hunter and bend the other into the role of prey. Dead prey.
She would not relent, and the troglodytes bent as the flow turned against them. The Light was unleashed inside her, and soon, they struggled to keep ground. Her arms and legs moved in unison, and sometimes her tail flicked one of their palms away to distract an attacking strike.
They couldn’t retreat. It wasn’t in their nature to do so. But they were purely on the defensive now. She owned the battlefield. She whirled and turned with joy, seeing their blades move and twisting around them with ease.
Finally an opening presented itself, and she thrust her sword through the troglodyte’s head, piercing from beneath his thick jaw through the top of his skull. In a fluid movement, she took his scimitar from his hand and stabbed it behind her, impaling the other subterranean warrior just above the collar of his chitin armor. The cruel blade parted a pathway through his flesh, pinning him to the solid earthen wall.
He was the same one that earlier had locked eyes with her. She walked up to him, blood from his comrades still covering her face. In his eyes she didn’t see pain or fear. As he died, he nodded at her with respect.
“Kaldrassa,” he whispered as his final breath escaped him.
She understood the term. It was the language of the Underworld, meaning “honored victor.”
She sheathed her sword, extinguishing its light. In the darkness, she could see the shapes of more troglodytes crawling over the walls of the chasm toward her ledge.
“Fuck me,” she muttered. There were quite a number more than four. She summoned a surge of Light and launched herself into the open chasm again, aiming to land on a far ledge on the opposite wall. The creeping mass of crawling monstrosities turned and started flowing towards her new position. Maybe sending Anuit off and thinking she would be fine on her own had not been such a good idea after all.
Dozens of the shadowy forms approached, maybe more. Even with the Light flowing through her body and guiding her actions, she knew she could not hold out forever. It was only a matter of time until they overwhelmed her from sheer numbers.
Not a good idea at all.
She saluted them grimly and raised her sword. Light flared from its blade. They leaped, and the dance of death began again.
The bodies piled as Arda moved from rock ledge to rock ledge. She could not block all their blows, and only her wondrous armor saved her from death. One of her attackers would have ripped her thigh open were it not for the zorium-weave cloth which blunted the troglodyte’s claws. As it was, he caught her and hurled her against the rock. The armor-resin hardened upon impact, distributing the force away from her body to its protective shell, and prevented her bones from being smashed against the hard stone.
In a second he was on her. He pinned her shoulders to the ground, and his iron jaw snapped at her face. She twisted her head to the side and jabbed his eye with the sharp point of her left darkling horn. He hissed and paused for a startled moment. Her sword lay beside her, but her upper arms were pinned beneath his weight. One more moment and she would be dead.
“Fuck it.”
Her hands flew down to her hips, and then her pistols were drawn, firing rapidly up into his gut. He fell to the side, and she thrust her knees, kicking away the large creature.
Two more climbed onto the ledge, and she laid them to rest with bullets between their eyes, acutely conscious of the loud reports from each shot. She reloaded, thumbs flashing in quick, memorized movements, and then re-holstered her right revolver as she knelt to retrieve her sword from the ground. At her touch, the Light flowed back into the blade, casting its white hue over the rock.
They kept coming. Now that she had fired her first shots, there was no use keeping quiet any longer. She just hoped a cave worm wasn’t nearby, or she would have bigger problems. Literally bigger.
For the first time, her bullets streamed glowing beams of brilliance, also filled with Light’s charge. Now, more than the brief fire-flash from the gun’s barrel, each shot looked like a magical bolt cast from a wizard’s wand.
Archurion’s seal. It’s working within me.
But they kept coming, and Aradma kept retreating farther into the depths.
A troglodyte came too close. Its hand lashed out and its claws raked lines of torn flesh over Arda’s face. In her battle trance, she didn’t feel the pain. She seamlessly reacted, elbowing him in the gut and then turning back to shoot through his forehead, even as she extended her right arm behind her so that his comrade impaled himself on her sword.
Then she heard it. The crumbling roar of grinding rock.
A cave worm. Fuck!
The troglodytes heard it too. The remaining survivors scrambled away, leaving her suddenly alone with the fallen corpses.
Arda sheathed her sword and holstered her weapon, easing off her connection to the Light. She still wanted its heightened reflexes, but she extinguished any visible glow in order to let her darkvision readjust to the shadow.
She saw it bearing down on her ledge, a great worm of the Underworld. Its dark purple body was over fifty feet wide, and its length trailed back farther than she could see. Its mouth opened, taking in dirt and rock, remaking the cave’s structure as it moved, closing old passages and opening new ones.
She ran. Where to, she didn’t know.
At the ledge’s edge, she jumped out over the chasm’s abyss just as the worm consumed the rock on which she had been standing.
This is it, she thought as she plummeted into the depths. Armor-resin or not, she could only fall so far before her own body would shatter inside the suit from the abrupt stop at the end.
She fell, wind whipping through her hair. Her body tumbled, and she could see the rushing of cavern walls sail up past her. She felt a strange sense of calm reassurance through her link to the Light.
I’m sorry, Aradma, she thought. I’m sorry, Anuit, she added.
At least it would be a quick death.
She saw a faint flapping of shadow somewhere high above her. Had her senses not been enhanced by the calm discipline she found in the Light, she would not have noticed it. It shot towards her quickly, and she could distinguish the rustling of wool and thread through the falling wind that blew past her ears. The shadow made a direct line towards her, impossibly fast. It blinked in and out of existence, and each time it did, it reappeared with a thipping sound, closer than its speed alone should have taken it.
She looked down. She could see the bottom now, rapidly approaching. The rustling sound grew closer, accompanied by a thip… thip… thip…
too late…
The ground rushed at her. This was it. She was fucked.
too late…
THIP!
The flying shadow of wool and thread appeared beneath her. She fell into it, and it buckled, catching her in a soft, springy cushion before it straightened and rose back into the air.
She struggled to recapture her breath.
She was floating, gently floating.
She took a moment to reclaim her center, and her breathing returned to normal. She lay on the magic carpet, and Anuit, Attaris, Odoune, and Suleima stared down at her.
“Oh gods, she’s bleeding!” Anuit exclaimed. She knelt down and started dabbing Arda’s face with a cotton cloth.
Arda threw her arms around the sorceress. “Oh, Anuit!” she laughed. “You never listen to me. I love you.”
Anuit briefly returned the hug and then pushed her back. “You’ve gotten blood all over me,” she said.
“Most of it is theirs, not mine,” Arda grinned.
“That doesn’t mean I want it on me.”
“How in all the hells did you find me?” Arda asked.
“Your gunshots, lass,” Attaris answered. “Only you would be crazy enough to fire your weapons this far down. The others couldn’t make out your direction from the echoing, but a dwarf’s ears are never tricked by such things. Your ruckus led us to you, and the cave worm, and then we saw you leap over into the abyss.”
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 90