“Friends of the Hive, my clan will transfer you underwater,” she said in a burbling voice. “We will travel beneath the mountains and the desert for many miles until we reach the Gray Ravine. Come.”
I stared at the proffered hand, then warily at the water. The sulfur smell rose up from the steaming surface. The Hive vampires really used this route? Roxy scowled, looking just as dubious as I felt, but it was too late to go back now.
“Come,” the wildling instructed again. “We have little time to waste.”
“She seems overjoyed to be an underwater taxi for us,” Roxy muttered under her breath.
Dorian took one skeptical glance at the wildling, then waded in at the shallow end of the jetty, walking forward until his dark head disappeared beneath the surface. The only sign of his presence was pain as he passed me. Kane, not to be outdone, leapt past me magnificently and splashed water everywhere. He too disappeared under the water and didn’t bob back up. There were only the echoes of his thunderous entrance ricocheting off the cave walls. Briefly shaking her head, Laini sat on the jetty and dropped in, her nose crinkling as the water reached her neck, before she too was enveloped by the opaque liquid.
I walked to the edge with Roxy. None of our vampire friends came back up. I felt my throat tighten. No bubbles told me where they had gone, and the water was too colorful and cloudy to see anything a few inches below the surface.
“You go first,” Roxy said with a quirk of her eyebrows. “Ten bucks says those wildlings eat us for dinner once they’ve drowned us, and the Hive paid them to do it.”
I narrowed my eyes at her needlessly grim humor but couldn’t suppress the passing thought that she could possibly be right. “No thanks. Why don’t you go first? What happened to your tough-girl attitude?” Looking back at the waiting wildling, I saw her staring at us with mild amusement… or at least I thought I saw a bit of humor in those peculiar eyes.
Roxy placed an offended hand on her chest. “I am tough, but I’d have to be insane not to hesitate over drowning myself.”
Feeling the weight of the wildling’s eyes on me, I crouched and dipped my hand experimentally into the water. Despite the bubbles and steam, the water was not as hot as I feared. It was more like a warm bath after a day out in the cold. Somehow, it also felt different from the water I was used to, the texture more similar to oil.
“You will be safe,” the wildling promised. “Your friends will be getting concerned, waiting for you.”
Swinging my legs around so I could sit on the jetty, I let my legs dangle in the water like Laini. Apart from the fact that I couldn’t feel the bottom, the sensation of the silky water was actually very pleasant. I looked back at Roxy, then at my legs, cut off from my sight at the knee, and sucked in a deep breath. Swimming wasn’t my preferred form of exercise or leisure activity, but in the Bureau it had been mandatory to be able to swim a mile, so I knew I could do it. It wasn’t like I hadn’t expected this, since they’d told us we needed the help of aquatic wildlings. Apparently, they would help us breathe somehow, but I didn’t have the details on that.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered, then pushed myself into the water, feet reaching in vain for the floor. As soon as I let go of the rocky platform, I dropped like a stone. Somewhere to my left, I felt the water move, presumably as Roxy joined me. A soft webbed hand closed around my wrist, slimy in the way that seaweed and rockpools were. I kept my eyes tightly closed as I was pulled along, deeper and deeper into Lake Siron.
Something felt… strange. I could feel the water soaking through gaps in my clothes and filling my boots, but my face was completely dry. My eyes sprang open. I lifted a hand to my face and found a soft, pliable forcefield blocking my way.
Around me, everything was magnificently lit by the glowing water. Roxy waved next to me. The light beneath the surface traveled differently than it did above, and although my vision was limited—around ten feet clearly and then another ten slightly cloudier—I could see the rest of our group floating close by, each held around the wrist by a wildling. Their heads were also encased in a giant air bubble, as mine presumably was, giving us all the look of bizarre aquatic astronauts.
Beneath the surface of the lake, the muddied colors of the aquatic wildling scales glittered the same color as the water around them. Only the bright flash of their blue gills and the glow of their white eyes made them visible until they moved. They swished strong fish tails and swam around our group, their webbed hands reaching out to our bubbles.
The one from earlier gently touched my bubble, and the barrier thickened before my stunned eyes. She touched me with her hand and pointed to her shoulders, an action mimicked by the others. We were going to be pulled through the water.
Things just kept getting weirder.
I latched onto the aquatic wildling. Her scales were rougher than I’d expected, like a pinecone before it opened. With a flick of her powerful tail, she propelled herself forward. A current of warm water pushed us along, and soon the pack of us sped through the water. Occasionally, the wildling, her scales shifting color to match the color of the water we were in, reached back to tap the bubble. I spotted Dorian farther up ahead. The distance between us meant no heartburn, but I wished I could see his reaction to all this.
It was probably wrong to be jealous that an aquatic wildling could touch him, but I couldn’t help it.
When I looked around, the underwater landscape danced with life. Small fish-like creatures with leopard scales and no visible eyes rode the current with us for a while, breaking off when they grew bored. We passed charmingly weird collections of black-and-crimson coral where mustard-colored eels peeked out at us. When they opened their mouths, long blue tongues curled out and snapped back. Later, a whale-sized shadow lurched out of the hazy surroundings to swim alongside us. The wildlings made no motion to dart away, giving me a chance to admire the hulking fish’s dazzling scales, which glowed deep red. Similar creatures joined the giant fish, weaving in and out of the current, some disappearing in a flash of blue light only to reappear several feet away, popping in and out of existence on a whim.
The current carried us faster than we could have swum. Along the way, the wildlings gestured to air bubbles rising from the depths and showed us how to aim our bubbles into these streams as we passed. The rising bubbles helped refill our oxygen, ensuring we had enough air, but stank of sulfur and blood. I tried not to gag at the metallic taste in my mouth, the thought of being stuck in the bubble with my own vomit a powerful incentive.
There was no way to track time under the water. All I knew was that my arms ached from holding the wildling’s shoulders, my hands slowly being rubbed raw against her scales. Sometimes, we had to request that the wildlings breach the surface to give our poor arms a break. They only did so in tunnels deep underground, never risking putting us out in the open. We floated in the pitch darkness for a few precious moments breathing air that, though stale and dank, was still more pleasant than the inside of our bubble helmets.
The water shifted to a blue-gray as we went along—the wildlings gradually taking on the same shade—but it never grew colder. It was like swimming through the Immortal Plane’s weird sky. I couldn’t tell up from down. The wildlings began to move more cautiously, weaving around stone columns that loomed in the darkness. I got the sense that we were reaching the end of our journey.
Finally, we reached a cliff face of rock almost the same color as the water. With no warning or communication, the wildlings pulled us through narrow tunnels winding through the cliff. Scraping against rock in the tight spaces made me claustrophobic, but it didn’t last long. My wildling shot to the surface after only a few minutes. The bubble popped around me, and I sucked in a grateful breath of fresh air.
My bearings returned slowly. The wildlings had brought us to a pool where the slate-colored water bubbled around us more softly than near the Hive. Though there was barely any light, I could just see the edge of the pool about twelve feet away, so I swam over
to protect myself from Dorian’s presence. The glow of the water here was pearlescent and struggled to filter through the mist that lurked around us. As my eyes adjusted, I realized there was another source of light. All across the uneven walls, amber soul-lights were nestled in the stone surface. Looking farther out, I held back a surprised exhale as little pinpricks of orange light flickered as far as I could see. The entire canyon teemed with souls that were slowly leaching their darkness into the stone.
Laini grimaced, her lips pursed. “It’s sort of beautiful, but also… unsettling,” she said. “Only the heaviest of souls would find their way this deep into the ground.”
The pool appeared to be at the bottom of a narrow canyon, and I studied the dull, blue-gray rock that nearly matched the color of the water. It was easy to guess why they called it the Gray Ravine.
“Lovely sliver of sky,” Roxy reported next to me, her head tipped back to stare through the crack in the earth we were currently sheltered in. I looked up, seeing a wave of amber soul-lights for barely a second before they disappeared into the thickening mist. Everything in the Immortal Plane seemed crafted for misery.
A slight movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention, but before I could say anything to the others, the mist swirled and something pale and ghostly suddenly appeared above me at the edge of the pool. Roxy swore and kicked away from the rock ledge, splashing messily. I flinched, surprised by the speed of it, not entirely sure what the shape in front of me was.
“A little warning would have been nice,” Kane said hotly to the wildlings, swimming to the edge beside me and hauling himself out of the water. “No one enjoys being surprised like that.”
The wildlings ignored him.
“Hello, harvester,” they all croaked in unison.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The harvester’s human-shaped body was clear like a jellyfish, showing off a few pale pink organs and ghostly bones. When I tried to focus on their form, they blurred in my vision. Was this a he? Everything around him swung out of focus. In the center of his nearly transparent chest, a dim soul-light glowed and shadows flickered up and down his body—it was like watching blood running through a circulatory system.
The face looked half-formed. He had the most basic outline that suggested features, but there were no real details… like a staring theater mask completely void of any emotion.
“Welcome to my ferry,” the harvester announced, his voice raspy and thin. He spread phantom arms, almost as though he were embracing the mist.
“Thank you for having us,” Dorian said, his formal tone and manner almost amusing considering we were all bedraggled, bobbing in the water in front of a literal phantom.
I nodded, trying to keep my distance and be polite at the same time. “It’s nice to meet you.” I wondered if the harvester found mortals as strange as I found the creatures of the Immortal Plane.
Kane crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “These things always freak me out.”
“He’s funny.” The harvester’s whisper of a mouth turned up slightly. “There’s no need to fear. Your secret is safe with me, vampire.”
“I don’t have secrets,” Kane snapped back in a surprisingly sincere tone. “So, stop poking around in my aura.” He waved an accusatory finger. “See, this is why nobody likes harvesters.”
The harvester gently inclined his head up to the mist and whispered, “He didn’t mean that, did he? People like me. I have friends.”
I shared a wide-eyed look with Roxy, who seemed equally taken aback. She had swum to where Kane stood on the edge, and he lowered a hand. She ignored it, easily hauling herself from the water.
“Usually, I’d make fun of you for being creeped out by a sentient blob of aloe vera gel,” she said quietly to Kane as the harvester continued murmuring to the mist, “but my kneejerk reaction is to flick holy water on this thing, so I’m going to let you have this one for free, okay?”
“So generous of you,” Kane growled.
The harvester brought his vague suggestion of a face back to look at us.
Dorian—currently squeezed against the opposite side of the pool from me—cleared his throat. “Will you grant us passage on your ferry?” The hint of discomfort in his voice surprised me. He’d faced down far worse than this. Maybe he was worried about needing to be in close quarters for the next portion of the trip and how that would put us at risk of pain.
The harvester bobbed his head up and down. “He wants passage. Isn’t that nice? Yes, of course. Let me help you.” He extended a hand to me first, as I was closest, and after hesitating for a moment, I took it. It felt like falling through the ice of a frozen lake and being submerged in the bitterly cold water. Looking at him now, while holding his ice-cold hand, the form appeared more solid and the face gained detail. A gaping black oval of a mouth hung open, framed by lips as blue as a corpse’s. The eyes, yellowed and bloodshot, held such a depth of pain that I wanted to weep, but he still managed to look at me with a kindness I couldn’t fathom. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t speak, yet somehow my body clambered up out of the pool to stand, dripping, on the narrow path running down the canyon. As the harvester released my hand, I felt tears on my cheeks.
“You can never be too careful around these parts,” he said, returning to his nearly invisible form. “The souls are so loud.”
I swiped at my tears, nodding. The harvester was… interesting. After seeing his true form, I was less afraid than I had been before. Something about a creature containing that much suffering made it feel like less of a threat.
A boat awaited us. It was a long, narrow, flat-bottomed vessel with no benches or covering, barely large enough to fit our group and the dripping packs on our backs. It was a good thing we’d left the others behind at the Hive. We never would’ve fit.
It was odd to find a ferryman out here in the middle of nowhere—I couldn’t imagine this path was well traveled. I eyed the harvester, thinking again of Bryce’s comment about Kharon, the ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology, when we’d first seen the souls in the Immortal Plane. The harvester whispered wordlessly to the mist above us as we all lined up to climb aboard. It was unnerving to realize that I couldn’t tell exactly where he was looking.
I gripped the railing of the boat while I waited to board. The surface was as rough and porous as a pumice stone, and I winced as it scraped my hands, which were already sore from the wildling’s scales.
“Thank you for your help,” Laini called to the aquatic wildlings still floating in the pool. “We’ll make our own way from here and will call you when we need to return.”
The wildlings nodded and disappeared beneath the surface of the water, leaving no trace that they’d ever been there at all.
“How far is it to the city?” Roxy leaned in to whisper to me. Kane heard her.
“A night’s journey,” he said with a shrug. “Probably. I asked some of the scouts before we left, and they said the Gray Ravine goes almost right up to Itzarriol. The Immortals avoid the ravine, though, because it’s haunting. Whatever that means. Those guys have probably lost their minds.”
“Haunting?” I echoed doubtfully. The entire Immortal Plane was full of horrifying things. I didn’t want to find out how the ravine could terrify even Immortals.
The harvester chuckled, the action made creepy by the way his organs bounced slightly. “Don’t you worry. The crack only haunts the darkness in beings. Isn’t life fun? I told my brother that once. Wait. Do I have a brother?”
Roxy and I stared at the harvester, then each other. A cryptic piece of advice from a seemingly mad creature who talked to mist failed to give us much confidence. I shifted my weight uneasily. I’d never cared much for horror movies, and this felt suspiciously like the start of one.
I waited until last to get on the boat. Dorian had gone first, and I hoped we would be far enough apart to keep the heartburn manageable. As I went to climb in, however, the harvester suddenly reached out to me.
He
gently placed a ghostly hand on the front of my shirt. “Ooh, this is like me.”
Dorian’s stone warmed in its pouch around my neck. My stomach flipped nervously.
“Easy there, buddy. I know you don’t get a lot of visitors down here, what with the haunting atmosphere and all, but she’s taken,” Kane muttered wryly. Roxy and Laini swatted him on each side.
I stared up at the harvester. “What do you mean?” I pulled back slightly, not afraid but still a little nervous. Although I wished his face were more expressive so I could tell what the hell he was thinking, I didn’t want to touch him again and have the same icy, despondent experience.
The harvester smiled down at me. Even in this form his mouth had no teeth, only phantom gums. “I swallow things, and I give back different things,” he said and gestured all around as if that would mean something to me. “You can get on the boat now.”
I forced myself to move. I had no idea what had just happened. I gave Laini a questioning look, and she shrugged, eyes wide.
The harvester hummed happily as he wandered to the canyon wall. His movement was something between floating and gliding. “Funny how things find you,” he muttered dreamily, reaching for a speck of amber embedded in the canyon wall, slightly brighter than the rest. He plucked the soul from the wall. The light flickered as the harvester pulled it closer.
I stared, horrified, as the harvester opened his gummy mouth impossibly wide like a snake unhinging its jaw. He dropped the soul into his mouth, swallowing it whole. Worse, we could see the soul through his ghostly body.
The amber squeezed down the harvester’s throat. An incredible burst of light exploded, then an inky trail of darkness slithered away from the amber glow and spread throughout the harvester’s form, for a moment making him more solid. Reaching back into his mouth, the harvester yanked the soul out, holding it almost tenderly in both hands before letting go. The soul drifted into the air.
Darklight 3: Darkworld Page 30