“I’ll find a way out,” the Hunter told Garnos, “or I’ll bloody make one.”
“And here I thought Taiana was stubborn.” Garnos sighed and threw up his hands. “You are on your own. I can lend my aid to Taiana and help you find your boy, but I cannot break you out of the Pit. No human has escaped in my lifetime.”
“Lucky me, then.” The Hunter bared his teeth in a snarl. “Find the boy, Garnos. He is the most important thing in the world right now. I will be waiting for your word.”
“Fortune smile on you, Drayvin.” There was a note of finality in the Elivasti’s voice. Clearly, he expected he’d never see the Hunter again.
With a nod, the Hunter strode toward the lip of the Pit. He cast a glance at the towers of Hellsgate in the distance. He could see no guards on watch, no eyes following him. The Elivasti likely believed no one would attempt to enter this way—why should any seek to enter the Pit? According to Garnos, any who did ended up imprisoned or dead.
Anxiety thrummed within him as he willed himself to step up and stare down into the Pit. Instead of seeing a gaping hole into emptiness, there was solid, muddy ground thirty paces below. It seemed a far cry from the scenes of horror he’d seen in his memories, but in many ways it proved even more horrible. This wasn’t some celestial or divine being toying with reality—this was reality, a reality inflicted by flesh and blood upon people just like them. He’d always believed the gods were cruel, treating humans as their playthings. The sight before him proved that humans could match their cruelty.
Taking a deep breath, he lowered himself over the edge. The moans and cries of the poor souls below greeted him as he began the descent. Glowing crystals crunched beneath his boots as he clambered down, forcing him to step on the larger shards protruding from the walls. He hissed as the glittering edge of a crystal carved a deep gash into his right hand. The curse died on his tongue a heartbeat later.
The moment his blood dripped onto the glassy surface, the crystal flickered to life with an inner glow and filled the air with an even brighter crimson. The Hunter’s heart stopped as the gemstones seemed to consume the droplets of blood, until only clean stone remained and the brilliance dimmed to the usual luster.
What in the fiery hell? The Hunter’s mind whirled as he stared at the now-clean crystal where he’d cut his hand. He’d seen only one other thing do that: Soulhunger. The gemstone set into its hilt flared bright crimson—the same hue as the stones before him—and sucked up the blood that soaked its steel. As the Warmaster had explained, the steel simply served as the conduit for the magick of the gemstone.
The same magick that ran through the shards lining the walls of Khar’nath.
Confusion roiled within the Hunter. According to The Numeniad, the gemstone in Soulhunger’s pommel had been forged from the soul of his Abiarazi father, through an ancient Serenii ritual known as the ‘Lament of the Fallen’. His gut churned as he followed the curving walls of the pit around him. How many souls were consumed to form these glittering stones? More than lived on all of Einan, that was certain.
Or, and he found this more likely, had The Numeniad somehow gotten it wrong? The Lectern in the Vault of Stars had told him Eshendun, the author of what was supposed to be a “firsthand account of the War of Gods”, had in truth lived two hundred later. Like everything else the modern Einari believed to be divine doctrine was nothing more than fiction.
Could the gemstone set in Soulhunger’s pommel be the same as the crystals here? If so, do they serve the same purpose? He shuddered as he watched the glassy shards soak up another drop of his blood. Do they all feed Kharna? Horror writhed through him at the thought. The people imprisoned here had to number in the hundreds of thousands. How many more had died over the centuries to feed the mad god?
The Hunter’s revulsion turned to anger. Anger at the Serenii for creating such an abhorrent place. At Kharna, the Destroyer, Devourer of Worlds, for the misery he continued to wreak on Einan even thousands of years after his defeat in the War of Gods. At the Sage and the Warmaster for the pain they inflicted on the countless people imprisoned here and the Elivasti for their collusion with the demons.
He didn’t suppress the anger, but instead stoked the flames until his fury burned bright. The fire drove him as he clambered down the glowing, razor-sharp walls, and it pushed back the pain as more of the crystals lacerated the flesh of his hands, face, arms, and legs. He willed his flesh to heal, but he could not keep up with the damage done by the shards. Every step downward left him bleeding from some new scratch, cut, or gash. If any Elivasti watched from the battlements of Hellsgate, they would see the walls flaring bright as they consumed his blood.
No wonder none of the humans had survived an escape. The crystals shredded the soft soles of his boots, slashed the rough fabric of his tunic and breeches, and cut his flesh to ribbons. By the time he’d climbed halfway down the thirty paces, he was exhausted from the effort compounded by the loss of blood. It took all his fury-enhanced willpower to keep moving.
Finally, he’d had enough. He dropped the last ten paces to the muddy ground below and landed with a wet, squelching splash. Instinctively, he rolled forward to absorb the impact of the landing and came up covered from head to toe in muck that smelled far fouler than anything he’d encountered in Lower Voramis. The stench of it assaulted his sensitive nostrils with such violence that he nearly retched. The acrid stench of vomit would have been an improvement over the countless vile odors mingled in the oozing sludge.
Gagging, the Hunter stumbled away from the glowing crystal walls. He tried not to think of what was in the mire that seeped into his ruined boots or splashed onto his trouser legs.
He slipped out of his dark cloak, rolled it into a bundle, and glanced down at his shredded clothing. Now I look like everyone else here.
The people within the Pit truly were pathetic specimens of humanity. Soiled, tattered rags hung from their bony shoulders, barely concealing their gaunt ribs, hunger-distended bellies, and wasted hips and legs. Bites from a myriad of insects dotted their bodies, and pus oozed from dozens of festering wounds. The absence of fresh water and the abundance of filth would hasten disease and pestilence.
Not that any of the people seemed to care. Most of those he passed stared at him with vacant, hollow-eyed expressions, not even bothering to lift their heads from the mire or getting up from where they lay to empty their bowels. An oppressive listlessness permeated the air around him. So many of the men, women, even children around him had simply resigned themselves to their fate.
Sorrow drove a dagger into the Hunter’s heart. Not even the poorest beggars or most diseased lepers of Lower Voramis had looked like this. In Voramis, those who did not eke out a living succumbed to hunger, thirst, or disease. Here, the people had nothing to do but wait for death to claim them, so they did nothing to stave it off. They have nothing to live for, so no reason to try living at all.
The red light emanating from the walls of Khar’nath painted the scene with a garish ruby brush that made everything seem grimmer, bleaker, devoid of life.
Horror writhed like worms in the Hunter’s gut as he moved through the pathetic shelters. This was a fate far worse than he could have ever imagined. A life of imprisonment, a meaningless existence dominated by the languor that set in with the knowledge that nothing you did mattered. Children were born, matured into adults, and died in these squalid conditions. They had nothing to look forward to beyond death.
Until the day the Sage used them for whatever purpose he’d collected them for in the first place. It could hardly be worse than this, yet knowing the Abiarazi, it would be. The Hunter knew he had to find out what was the purpose behind the human herd penned up in this cage—a cage from which there was no escape.
But first, he had to find Kiara. He couldn’t let her languish in this wretched place. The question remained: how the twisted hell was he supposed to find her in the enormous hellhole? It covered easily as much ground as the Beggar’s Quarter in Lo
wer Voramis, and it could take him days to search it.
“You there!” The call came from behind him, edged with an arrogance the Hunter knew none of the pathetic wretches around him could summon. “Stop where you are!”
The Hunter shambled forward at a slow, steady pace and hunched to hide his height. He sucked in his stomach and cheeks in an effort to appear gaunter and more malnourished.
“Fucking wretch!”
Something struck the Hunter from behind—barely hard enough to hurt—but he sprawled to the floor the way any of the miserable men and women in the Pit would. A boot slammed into his lungs, and he folded up around it, clinging to the armored leg and letting out the most pitiful whimper he could summon.
“I talk, you listen!” Anger flashed in the violet eyes that stared down at him and twisted the Elivasti’s brutish features into a snarl. The man was tall, thick-necked, and had a paunch that struggled to break free of his mud-stained, rust-pitted blue armor. “I say suck my cock, you say ‘Yes, Setin’ and be thankful for it.”
The Hunter let out a groan and an inaudible mumble, which only seemed to irritate the Elivasti. Sausage-sized fingers closed around the Hunter’s throat and lifted him upright.
The Hunter found himself staring into Setin’s purple eyes, their noses a finger’s breadth apart. But over the Elivasti’s shoulder, he caught a glimpse of two more figures.
One was a blue-armored Elivasti, no doubt the companion to the man that held him. The second was a woman, with long, dark hair and a full figure that looked utterly out of place amidst the malnourished wretches of the Pit. Even the bruises marring her face couldn’t conceal the beauty of her full lips and well-formed features.
Kiara!
Chapter Fourteen
Kiara hung limp in the Elivasti’s arms, her eyes closed and blood trickling from a cut in her forehead. A glance at the awkward angle of her left arm told him it was dislocated.
Anger flared like a volcano in the Hunter’s gut. Kiara had protected Hailen and this was her reward?
“You hear me?” Setin snarled, spraying spittle in the Hunter’s face. The Elivasti’s fetid breath flooded the Hunter’s nostrils and turned his stomach. “I said—”
“I heard what you said, you fat cunt.” The Hunter growled in a low voice edged with menace. “I just don’t give a shit.”
Setin’s expression darkened, his eyes narrowing in anger. “You little—”
The Hunter cut the Elivasti off with a single blow. His fist plowed devastation through Setin’s neck, crushing the cartilage of his windpipe and slamming into his spine with bone-shattering force. The purple-eyed man sagged like a sack of steaming cow dung and fell face-first into the muck, where he lay wheezing. His limbs gave a little twitch before falling still.
The second Elivasti, the one holding Kiara, had a single moment to react. His face creased into an idiotic expression of dumbfounded surprise as the Hunter’s throwing knife took him in one wide open eye. Kiara hit the ground hard as the man’s hands released her, and the Elivasti followed her unconscious form into the mud a moment later.
The Hunter whirled, his second dagger held at the ready, but no more blue-armored figures were visible. Only filthy, haggard men and women in their makeshift shelters. Barely a hint of surprise cracked the listlessness in their hollow-eyed expressions.
“Help me here,” the Hunter snarled as he tore the dagger from the dead man’s eye.
None of them moved. They simply stared, as if unable to understand what they were seeing. Either that, or their life of abuse and emptiness had rendered them senseless.
“What do you think will happen if more Elivasti come and find these bodies?” The Hunter glared at the men and women around him. “What will they do to you in vengeance?”
It seemed fear was one of the few emotions they could still understand; he could see it in their eyes, in the way their gaunt faces tightened.
One man in particular seemed less apathetic than the rest. He’d actually risen to his feet and taken a single step closer.
“You!” The Hunter crossed the distance in three strides and gripped the man’s arm. “Can you hide these bodies?”
The man was tall, with the dark skin common in Al Hani and a hint of muscle visible on his scrawny shoulders. “Aye.” His voice was dull, heavy.
“Then do it, now!”
The man’s dark brown eyes wandered past the Hunter to rest on Kiara’s unconscious form. “I told her not to try.”
“Try what?” the Hunter demanded.
“There is no escape,” the man said, as if he hadn’t heard the Hunter.
The Hunter seized the man’s shoulders and shook him. “Is that why they beat her?”
The man flinched at the Hunter’s touch and cried out in instinctive fear. Horror roiled through the Hunter at the sight. The Elivasti had broken these people thoroughly. Their minds and spirits were as withered as their bodies.
“Bring her inside,” the man said in that same dull voice. “Out of sight.” He lifted a hand in a languid wave to a small shelter a short distance away.
The Hunter released the man’s shoulders. “And what of the Elivasti?”
“They’ll never be found.” For a moment, a single spark of emotion—anger, defiance, hatred—burned in the man’s eyes. “In the shit pit where they belong.”
“Good.” The Hunter hurried back to Kiara’s side, but stopped next to the dead Setin. An idea struck him, and he quickly stripped off the Elivasti’s blue armor, the padding beneath, and heavy boots—which turned out to be a surprisingly good fit. Setin carried only a heavy wooden cudgel for a weapon, and no personal items. But he didn’t care about coin or trinkets. He just needed the armor and boots.
That, and Setin’s face, of course.
He remained crouched over the Elivasti’s corpse for a long moment, studying his features. A thick nose that had been broken and set poorly, ears flattened by bare-fisted fights, piggish eyes set close together, and a too-strong jawline covered in scruffy stubble. He committed the man’s face to memory—he’d need it to get out of here.
He stripped the second Elivasti as well, and bundled both sets of armor and clothing into a bundle. He slung the bundle over his shoulder, gathered Kiara into his arms, and carried her into the shelter—little more than four tattered blankets hanging from crooked wooden poles—the man had indicated. The pitiful shelter had a few ragged blankets piled on the ground as a bed, with a round stone to serve as pillow. The Hunter shifted the blankets with his foot and set Kiara down as gently as he could. He bundled up his cloak and slipped it under her head.
He grasped her dislocated arm. “Sorry about this.” A quick twist shoved the bone back into its socket.
Kiara awoke with a cry of mingled pain and fury. Her uninjured right arm lashed out at the Hunter, and her fist caught him a surprisingly strong blow on the cheekbone. Her next punch struck him in the chest, and she would have gouged out his eyes had he not caught her wrist.
“Easy, Kiara!” He held her firmly. “It’s me.”
Kiara struggled for a moment, until her eyes came into focus and she seemed to see him for the first time. “H-Hunter?” She spoke in a weak voice cracked by hunger and thirst. “What are you doing down here?” She wrinkled her nose. “You look like crap, and smell worse.”
“Thought I’d come down here, see the sights, take in the local culture.” He gave her a wry grin. “Best wine and pastries in Enarium, I’m told.”
Kiara snorted. “Tastes like piss, owing to the fact that it is.” A small smile twisted her split lips. “You here for me?”
The Hunter nodded. “The moment I found out what happened—”
“You thought you’d come and rescue me, did you?” The familiar stubborn defiance flashed in her eyes. “Like I told you in Voramis, I’m no shrinking violet that needs rescuing.”
“Clearly.” The Hunter raised an eyebrow at her bruised and bleeding face. “You had those Elivasti right where you wanted them,
did you?”
“Actually, yes.” A scowl deepened her face. “Right until they overwhelmed me and knocked me out.”
“You were trying to escape?”
Kiara nodded. “Got bloody close, too. All the way past the guards on the ramp and up to the gate. Which, admittedly, is where things went sideways.”
“From what I hear, once you’re in here, you don’t get out.”
“That’s what I’ve been told, too.” Kiara grinned in defiance. “But I’ll be damned if I don’t prove that wrong.”
Her expression suddenly changed, and a mixture of guilt and desperation flashed in her eyes. “The boy!” She gripped his arm. “They took him from me. I tried to fight them off, but there were too many to—”
“I know.” The Hunter nodded. “I saw the Elivasti corpses beside the gate.”
“Have you found him yet?”
The Hunter hesitated. “We know where he is.”
“So he’s alive?” She seemed relieved.
“Yes.”
“Good.” Her shoulders relaxed, and the tension drained from her face. “I spent the last day looking through this Watcher-forsaken place, but when I couldn’t find him, I feared they’d killed him.”
“No, he’s too valuable for them to kill,” the Hunter said. “They want him alive.”
“Because of what he can do, like back at those stones on the trail?” Kiara’s eyes searched his face.
“Yes. But we’re working on getting him back—”
“We?” Kiara’s eyebrows shot up. “Sir Danna?”
The Hunter shook his head. “Sir Danna…” He trailed off. “Sir Danna saved me.”
Kiara bowed her head, and a tear slipped down her cheek. Her mouth moved as if she whispered a prayer for the fallen knight.
When she looked up a moment later, she asked, “You’ve got friends in the Lost City?”
“Sort of.” The Hunter found himself uncertain about how to explain. “They’re going to help me find a way to break you out of here.”
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