by Mark Albany
It was hard to focus on anything else, but I was trying to keep myself from losing it, hence the focus on getting my heart to calm itself down as we moved through the unnaturally warm tunnels. Taking long, slow breaths while trying not to think about what might be out there in the darkness was all that was keeping me from wanting to scream.
If the monsters would just come for us, just attack and make it happen. What were they waiting for? If they were so damn powerful, so damn terrifying, why were they waiting?
I couldn’t believe that they just didn’t know that we were travelling this deep into their tunnels. It just didn’t make sense in my mind.
Were they waiting for us? Toying with us? Or maybe they just weren’t quite as powerful as Norel appeared to remember them?
No, that didn’t seem right to my mind. There was something happening here that I didn’t understand, but it was tugging at the back of my mind. The same feeling that had been plaguing me the night before, and the same kind of feeling that had been digging into my skull for the past few weeks.
It still felt annoyingly familiar, and I just couldn’t place where I had felt it before.
There were more bodies to be found as we moved along the tunnels, that were starting to branch out and heading out into the different spots in the mountain, but all were guiding us towards something that was climbing gently upwards and into the mountain.
The heat was getting more and more intense as we moved in deeper, and was starting to grow overwhelming. It didn’t help with how we were creeping along just waiting for the creatures to find us. The sweat coming down from my forehead and dripping down into my eyes made it difficult to see, not that there was much to see for the moment.
Just more and more bodies. The closer that we got to wherever it was that we were headed, the more bodies were there to be found. More of them looked fresher too, like they were only a few months dead, though there was little left other than bones and sinew clinging to the armor. All showed signs of having been hit like the first one that we found, and it appeared that they had been eaten, somehow.
Just the sight of them was making me sick, but I needed to stay focused. Keep myself calm. Not let the creatures get inside my head, and stay aware and ready for the fighting that was probably coming.
Another deep breath, trying to bring my heart beat down a bit as we continued to move in deeper, following the tunnels that were guiding us further into the heart of the mountain.
It was almost an hour into our trek before the truly terrifying aspect of what we were facing could be seen. A group of bodies were found, collected into a small clump and pushed up against the wall. Only the bones and armor were left, but all were bound up by a sticky, silky thread that glowed white when touched by the light of my sword.
“What the fuck?” I asked, not brave enough to lean in and inspect the threads, and none of the others were any braver than I when it came down to it.
“It looks like a spider’s webbing,” Braire said, narrowing her eyes. “But... leagues and leagues larger.”
All of a sudden, the shuddering that I’d seen from Norel every time that she thought of the creatures started to make sense. We’d been dealing with the horrifying and the impossible when it came to monsters and unnatural creatures, but I was beginning to realize that none would come close to the horror that I was now feeling about these creatures.
“Why?” I asked under my breath. “Why did it have to be spiders?”
“What was that?” Norel wondered.
“Nothing,” I replied. “It’s just... spiders have always made my skin crawl, even when they were the regular-sized ones.”
“Me too,” Norel said softly, placing a hand on my shoulder and squeezing gently as we continued on our way.
More bodies were found, some bound up in webbing, and others left out in the air, and the further inside we went, the more I realized that the humid air was starting to fill with a stench. It smelled like rotting eggs, and rotting flesh, mushed together and delivered through the thick, wet air, making it almost impossible to move forward without covering our faces.
Not long after that realization, the tunnels opened up around us, peeling away into an open area, widening out further than our lights were able to reach.
The smell was almost overpowering in the chamber, but unlike the tunnels, this whole place looked natural. There were stalactites dripping down from the roof, looking like pillars that supported the ceiling of the room when they met the stalagmites on the ground. What looked like massive pools of water were visible taking up most of the ground, and clouds of steam could be seen rising up from its surface.
I was sure that if some more lights could be set up in this place, it would be gorgeous, a true wonder of nature, with the steaming water rising up from however deep. The smell did take out some of the wonder, at least in my case.
I couldn’t make out if the smell was coming from the steaming water, or if it was some kind of result of all the bodies of those that had been killed in the proximity.
I looked around to Norel, a hint of dread spreading over her over the connection, one that I knew to trust only too well.
“Yes,” she whispered, and I could see bolts rushing around the orbs of light that she still had in her hands. “This looks about right.”
“Get ready for a fight,” I warned the rest of them, keeping my voice down as we continued moving through the chamber, steering clear of the steaming pools.
Moving in deeper revealed a few details that were missing. A couple of the walls were visible through the darkness, and from those, it was clear to see those same silky strands spread across the rock, leading upwards to the ceiling of the chamber.
I raised my sword, guiding a bit more energy into the blade, watching the runes glowing brighter and the light spreading deeper into the chamber, lighting up the room and extending upwards where I could see that ceiling. I wasn’t surprised to see that the ceiling was covered in the same webs as the walls, but suddenly I spotted a flutter of movement just at the edge of the light.
Just watching them move was enough to make my skin crawl. They were too quick for me to catch a good look, but there was no mistaking the long, spindly legs and fat, heavy abdomens that were just a little too slow in escaping the light. It seemed like they didn’t want to be seen, and less like the light was painful to them. I could hear chittering and buzzing up above us, still making my skin crawl as I gripped my blade a little tighter.
“Look familiar?” I asked Norel.
She didn’t say anything, but the nod was all I needed to see from her to know that these were the beasts that we had come here to find. I swallowed a lump from deep inside my throat, pushing myself forward and trying to approach the monsters, wanting to get a better look at them, wanting to know, against every instinct in my body, what we were facing in this dark, stench-filled hole of the world.
They seemed curious, hugging the edge of the light and watching us closely as we approached. I could see the runes on my sword being reflected back at me in dozens of eyes from at least two of the monsters, studying us, keeping their distance.
I could see the legs, eight of them each, tugging and moving along the webbing laid thick on the ceiling, climbing over the stalagmites and crevices. They looked like spiders, but again, a good deal larger than regular spiders, the size of small ponies, in fact, but I could make out what looked like a pair of wings on their backs. Small and ineffective, at least for the purpose of helping the beasts to fly.
But the wings were buzzing anyways, and in quick repetition, pausing and then buzzing again, like they were communicating with each other in their own kind of language.
Those eyes, dozens of them, shifting and gliding out of view only for a couple more to appear, watching learning, waiting.
“What are they doing?” Braire asked.
“Waiting for an opening,” I said, not sure where the certainty was coming from, but for the first time since we had started moving through th
ese damn tunnels, the dread in the pit of my stomach was gone. There was more than enough fear and my skin was still crawling just from watching the beasts, but the terror of the unknown was gone.
And what a relief it was.
“Come on!” I shouted, taking a step forward. “Come down and fight, you pieces of animal shit!”
No reaction. I wasn’t sure if they could understand me, but there was something that all beasts knew how to react to. And I was done waiting for the monsters to react to me. I rushed another gasp of power into my sword, and launching a blast of it into the air, cutting into where the beasts were hiding from the light.
The rush of energy illuminated the room for a moment, showing the monsters to me in a sudden blast of light. Illuminated, they looked less like spiders and more like massive, bloated wasps, grown fat from gorging on the rotting flesh of the creatures that they had managed to lure down into these tunnels.
They were intelligent, flickering away from the light, away from the blast as it tore through their webs, rocking the stone ceiling as I could see runes suddenly lighting up on their skin, a dull, sickening green, and the beasts disappeared.
Instinct. A warning. I turned around almost before I knew what I was doing, seeing the other end of the portal coming open behind me, and one of the monsters rushed at me, thinking that it had caught me by surprise.
Maybe it didn’t know that I knew what it could do. Maybe it didn’t realize that two people had escaped their grasp decades before and knew what they were capable of.
Or they didn’t care.
I brought my blade down to attack the creature as it tried to rush me, slamming my blade down on it.
It moved fast, impossibly so, shifting to its right as the massive abdomen swung around, trying to stab me with the horrifyingly thick needle of a stinger at the back. My blade glanced off of the abdomen as I suddenly lost my balance, trying to avoid being struck myself.
The needle missed me, but the body still crashed into me, sending me tumbling to the ground as the beasts turned around. Norel launched the bulbs of light at them, trying to catch the beasts off-guard, blasting into them, but as the blasts approached them, I could see the runes on their skin lighting up again.
The portal was formed, and Norel’s blasts slipped through, crashing into the wall on the other side of the room as the monsters rushed at the others.
“No!” I called, pushing myself up to my feet, but the creatures appeared to be ignoring me, rushing at Norel, Braire, Lyth, and Faye.
Braire was the first to be attacked, although it seemed like there was no intention of killing her immediately. Her dagger barely scratched the surface of their hardened outer shells as they quickly pulled the webbing from a gland near where the stingers were and as Braire screamed, wrapped her quickly into the strands, pressing her back into the wall, keeping her there as they moved on to Lyth.
The elf queen’s blade was no more effective on the outer carapaces than Braire’s dagger, and it wasn’t long before she too found herself bound and left on the floor as the creatures continued to defend themselves from Norel’s strikes by sending them to the other side of the room.
We’d made a mistake coming here. The realization struck me like a physical blow to the chest, and there wasn’t much that I could do but charge in, hoping to hold them off, and to give Norel and Faye the chance to escape.
I couldn’t get close enough. Just as I came within striking distance, one of the legs lashed out, catching me in the stomach and sending me crashing into one of the stalagmites as Norel and Faye were quickly bound up in the same webbed thread and stuck against the rest of the wall alongside the others, who were struggling to break free of the bonds as the two monsters now turned their attention to the single member that remained of our little team.
Me.
I gripped my blade with both hands, feeling the power pulsing through my body. I was ready for a fight and had more or less figured out how they timed the portals around them, using them as shields to keep them from the kinds of attacks that they knew would crack their shells.
I had a few ideas over how I was going to beat them, but I would need to time it just right. As they advanced on me, I started moving backward, keeping some distance between me and them, waiting for the portals that one or both would be opening to try and attack me from behind.
They were powerful and deadly in more than a few ways, but they were cowardly, as most wild beasts are. They wouldn’t risk being killed with a direct attack. They knew how to defend themselves and had perfected their feeding pattern over hundreds of years.
What did I know about them?
Well, they did appear to fear the sword that I was carrying. They knew that it would pierce their hide and didn’t want to risk charging at it blindly.
Suddenly, the creatures stopped in their advance. Not paused, stopped dead in their tracks, and after a few seconds, started backing away, their wings buzzing desperately as they pulled away.
I could hear footsteps behind me. Light but pinging like water dropping into the pools around me, easy enough to detect.
Turning around, the light from my sword revealed at first only the outline of what was approaching. Horns displayed, glowing a dull red, as the light flutter of her wings became clearly visible long before her face did.
“Well,” Aliana said, “that was a little inauspicious.”
15
There was something unmistakable about her voice. Something that would never change, no matter what happened to her. Seeing her there again made that chill run down my spine that made even the horror that was standing right behind me somehow more distant than it was before. Like it was something to be ignored, since it just wasn’t the most important thing happening around me.
Somehow, I knew that this was going to happen. Well, I hoped, and yet never quite believed. It had to be some kind of trick. Abarat playing with our minds, taking our focus away from the battle happening below.
Well, he could do that, and she could still be standing in front of me.
The white light from my sword’s runes illuminated the face that I had come to know so well over time, the features that had burned into my mind’s eye over the past few weeks, causing me physical pain.
And yet there was something different, something off. Something had changed in her, and I had to wait until she was closer to see what it was. I had noted that her wings were in better shape than before when she came to me in the dream, but they looked different now. Completely healed and fluttering above her like she could actually use them to fly.
Even so, there were more changes to her appearance. The shape of her horns, the way her hair glided around her shoulders like the strands were pulling away from the power that she had inside her.
But there was something else. The way her skin looked a little darker, even given consideration to our current surroundings, and the fact that her eyes were completely black, with her irises glowing a vibrant red.
Her appearance was reminiscent of the dark djinn that we had encountered before, with the same, oddly ominous smile that was playing across her full lips.
“Well, as I recall these two creatures were difficult to handle before, but this is just ridiculous,” Aliana said, looking around me to speak to the other four. “Norel should have at least known enough about these monsters to put up more of a fight, and now the human is all that is left to stand against them. Not that you stood much of a chance anyways, Grant, but you were a little more difficult for them to study. That and they seem to have a natural inclination to avoid that sword that you’re carrying.”
I took in a deep breath, trying to keep it from shuddering as it came in, closing my eyes and relaxing my shoulders.
“Have you nothing to say, Grant?” Aliana asked. “You know, before I tell my beauties to kill you and the others.”
I bit my bottom lip and looked deep into her eyes, those that still seemed so damn familiar despite the fact that they had changed so much.
<
br /> “I’m just so happy to know that you’re alive,” I whispered. It was a dark situation for us, in more ways than one, and it seemed inappropriate, but it was all I could do not to burst out laughing as the pain that had swamped every inch of me suddenly washed away just from hearing her voice again.
“Is that all you have to say?” Aliana asked, narrowing her eyes. “I’m sure that you’ve noticed but I have you and your friends in a literal bind.”
“I guess so,” I replied. “They are your friends too. In fact, they were yours before they were mine.”
Aliana smiled. “I must say that I have missed your naive and optimistic view of the world. I don’t mean it, but I feel that it must be said in order to make you stop talking.”
I shrugged me shoulders. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, Abarat did not want any of you at the site of the battle,” Aliana explained, looking around the chamber. “Either he didn’t want you to be making his plans run afoul, or he feels some hint of respect for his former comrades in arms and wants you all to survive the war and eventually have you brought under his wing. Well, maybe not you, Grant, but then, you knew that was coming. Abarat respects your bravery but has no real use for you.”
I nodded. “So, in the dream?”
“It was a trap,” Aliana said, smiling and tilting her head. “I’m honestly surprised that you didn’t see through it, maybe thinking that you would run into me and finding my darlings here instead. But it appeared to be the reverse. You expected monsters and found... well, me.”
Another smile touched my lips and I nodded. It made sense. It was how the creatures had been able to take on Norel, Faye, Braire, and Lyth so quickly and easily, with Aliana guiding them, knowing how they fought and how to counter each one’s abilities since she knew them so well. But she hadn’t let them take me as well.
Was that simply because Abarat had no use for me, and wanted to have me dead? Or was it because, as she said, the monsters just didn’t want to attack me?