by Martha Carr
“I don’t get it, though. How are we supposed to know where we’re going?”
“That’s the thing about it, fae.” Byrd turned halfway around as he walked and spread his arms. “You just keep going and going, and if the madness or the monsters don’t getcha on the way, ta-da! You get a prize.”
Lumil grunted. “That’s a stupid way to put it. It’s not a prize if that’s how this is supposed to work.”
“Hey, for some people, not dying in this place is a prize.”
In front of them, Corian growled softly as he scanned the landscape, which offered no discerning features to mark their way. “This is not the place for the two of you to spew your endless verbal diarrhea. Keep it up, and you won’t get a prize.”
“My bad.” Byrd raised his hands in surrender and flinched sideways into Lumil when a mound of colorless earth released a geyser of black smoke into the air.
The party walked for a time impossible to measure, keeping the conversation down to a bare minimum as they focused on staying together and keeping a sharp eye open for attack.
Ember patted Cheyenne’s arm hesitantly when a wet, slithering sound came from up ahead on their left. “What the hell was that?”
“Probably one of those weird-ass creatures. You guys hear that?”
Lumil stuck her hand in the air and flashed a thumbs-up without turning around. L’zar’s response was to slow down enough for them to group tighter together.
“Keep your eyes open,” Corian said, more for Ember’s sake than anyone else’s. “We shouldn’t have too much trouble making a statement if these things show themselves and hit first.”
The slithering sucking sound came again, then a dark, undulating shadow passed behind the drifting layers of black smoke moving across their path.
“Ha.” Lumil jerked her fists down by her sides and summoned the spinning circles of sparking red light and magical runes around her fists. “Bring it. I’m gonna whup your monster ass.”
“Keep walking,” Maleshi repeated, her voice tense with annoyance.
One after another, dark shapes drifted behind the screen of black smoke, almost as if the shapeshifting creatures of the in-between were lining up to form an aisle for the party of magicals.
Ember swallowed and tried not to look at the wavering shadows. “So, we just keep going and wait for them to attack us?”
“Pretty much.” Byrd leaned away from a particularly thick shadow on his right as they passed. “Sometimes they won’t.”
“Most of the time they do,” Lumil added.
Corian hummed in thought. “We’re not assuming anything about this crossing. Remember that. Everything’s changing now.”
L’zar led them farther across the nothingness of this partially existing realm between worlds. A creaking groan rose around them, making the invisible ground beneath their feet shudder. Then a gust of wind raced across the changing landscape and blew the thick black smoke away until only thin wisps remained.
Ember’s eyes widened as she stared at the creatures all around them. “Oh, crap.”
“Huh.” Lumil gestured toward black tendrils as thick as tree trunks sprouting from the ground. The light of her magic-enhanced fists cast flickering red shadows on the tentacles’ glistening surfaces. “We walked into a monster forest or a giant nest of black octopuses out of water.”
“Will you quit waving those around?” Byrd tried to bat down the goblin woman’s fists. “Genius idea to catch their attention with attack spells for gloves.”
“What? I’m prepared. These things obviously know we’re here, and they haven’t done anything about it by now, so my guess is they’re not gonna.” The creaking groan rose again beside the goblin woman, and she turned to see a massive tentacle five times larger than the others rearing back before it swung down toward her. “Dammit. You jinxed it.”
She leaped aside as the tentacle crashed to the ground where she’d stood. Lumil drew back one fist and smashed it into the tentacle. Another monster shrieked somewhere, and Maleshi spun with a hiss.
“What are you doing?”
Lumil’s other fist delivered a powerful uppercut to the underside of the tentacle as it peeled itself off the ground. Red light sparked across the thing’s glistening flesh, and the ground trembled again. The goblin woman shot a quick glance at the general. “That thing attacked me.”
Cheyenne and Ember raced forward. “I think we should pick up the pace.”
The urgency in the halfling’s voice made Corian turn around. “Why’s that?”
“Incoming flying things.” Cheyenne stuck her thumb over her shoulder. “Fair warning.”
An ear-splitting screech ripped through the air before a thick black shadow sailed over the group.
“See?”
“Damn.” Byrd gazed into the lightless gray sky streaked with black smoke. “I didn’t know they could fly.”
“They can do pretty much anything.”
“Keep moving.” Corian waved them forward. “Whatever comes at us, however it comes, keep moving.”
The tentacles lining their apparent path shuddered, undulating faster as the group picked up the pace. Another monster wheeled overhead, hidden by the black smoke but casting a shadow through it.
“What are they waiting for?” Maleshi muttered with raised eyebrows.
“No point in trying to answer that question.” Corian stepped away from a quivering tentacle. “The only thing we need to worry about is—”
A massive crack echoed through the in-between, and all the waving, trembling tentacles shot up into straight, rigid spikes lining both sides of the travelers’ path. “Shit,” Lumil whispered. “That’s never good.”
“It doesn’t mean anything yet.”
All at once, the rigid tentacles splintered, cracked, and shattered into thousands of tiny black shards. Like broken glass launched from an explosion, the fragments pelted the travelers.
“What the hell?” Cheyenne covered her head and kept moving forward at a crouch. Even as she walked across the broken pieces, she felt them moving along the invisible ground beneath her feet and around her ankles.
“They’re shifting,” Corian said. “Weird way to do it, but that’s what’s happening. Keep—”
“Moving.” Lumil waved him off. “Yeah, yeah. We heard you the first thousand times, man.”
Another shadow swooped toward them, and the flying beast decided to land. It crashed into the ground between L’zar and the nightstalkers behind him. The creature opened a beaklike mouth to reveal razor-sharp teeth and red sludge coating the inside and shrieked at the nightstalkers, making them reel backward. Glowing heat rose in the back of its throat.
“Lumil, this is being attacked first.” Corian extended his claws on both hands and slashed the faceless creature’s throat. The light and heat died, but the thing let out a deafening screech anyway.
Two more flying creatures landed where the tentacles had once stood, and the tiny scattered fragments of those tentacles clicked and clacked into place, assembling themselves like robotic pieces into new and larger shapes.
Like the war machines. Cheyenne summoned two churning orbs of black energy in her hands and waited for the monster-thing that looked like a bat with dozens of two-foot spikes on its back instead of wings to come a little closer. The bat hissed at her, and she sent one black orb straight into its mouth. It burst into thousands of shards again, and she kept moving.
Lumil smashed her fists into one of the flying creatures over and over, sending red sparks along the thing’s flesh. It snapped at her with razor-lined jaws, and she brought her fist down on top of its head.
“Hey!” Ember jerked away from a tiny, thin tentacle lashing out of the black smoke to whip against her face. “Ugh. Get off me.”
Cheyenne blasted the tentacle with her other energy sphere and grabbed Ember’s wrist. “Come on.”
A wall of dark flesh darted up from the ground in front of them and reared back, hissing. Cheyenne sent two more
crackling black orbs into its open mouth, but they didn’t do anything. The creature lurched forward and sprayed the air with hundreds of barbed projectiles. They bounced off Cheyenne’s well-timed shield, and the halfling tugged Ember after her and around the attacking creature. Maleshi brought her four-inch claws up through the creature’s side from behind, and it shattered too.
“Piece of cake.” Byrd hurtled balls of bright-green fire into the floating masses of black shards as they tried to rearrange themselves. Each of his attacks made the creature start all over again until it finally spat a glob of black slime at his arm. “Ah! Asshole!” He shook off the slime and attacked faster.
Cheyenne blasted the creatures materializing in front of her, sending black energy spheres left and right. When the closest winged creature snapped its black-slobbering beak at Ember, the halfling’s tendrils whipped from her fingertips and coiled around the thing’s beak and its neck, and she jerked down. With a shuddering crash, the creature toppled sideways on the ground, giving Lumil the perfect opportunity to land a flying punch in its heaving side. The in-between monster exploded and fizzled away.
“Ha! There!”
Cheyenne faced the direction they were headed, and her eyes widened.
“Is that normal?” Ember squeaked.
“No clue, Em.”
Byrd stopped when the massive creature rising in front of them cast its shadow across his body, and he turned too. Maleshi and Corian stepped toward each other, blocking the slavering beast with four gnashing sets of jaws from the goblins, Cheyenne, and Ember. Glowing red eyes spewing smoke rolled in the giant head. Between the nightstalkers and the creature stood L’zar with his hands clasped behind his back, which was turned toward the newest threat rising taller every second behind him.
“L’zar.” Corian cleared his throat. “We have to keep moving.”
Lumil growled. “If he’s not gonna bash that thing to bits, I will.”
L’zar’s glowing golden gaze settled on the goblin woman, and he raised an eyebrow. “That’s enough.”
He slowly turned to face the snorting creature. All four of its mouths dripped with glowing black ooze. Its red eyes centered on the drow, and its jaws spread wide to bellow in four different voices. The force of that roar whipped L’zar’s white hair away from his face and cleared the black smoke that had filtered back into the area.
L’zar stared at the creature without moving. He didn’t even flinch when the thing came down with its open mouth as if it meant to rip him apart with each one. Two feet from the drow’s head, the creature froze, shrieked in rage, and splintered into a million fragments that shot to either side of L’zar like he’d tossed them aside with his own hands.
The creature Byrd blasted with his green fire screamed and withdrew behind the black smoke. The rearranging pieces of black creature unfolded themselves and scattered. The flying creatures that hadn’t been vanquished screeched and took to the air again.
Turning around to look over his shoulder at the rest of the party, L’zar dipped his head. “I’d say we’re close.”
Without commenting on the monsters, the drow gazed at the lightless sky and swung nonchalantly around again to continue in the direction they’d been heading.
“That’s it?” Cheyenne muttered. “Did he even see those things?”
“I mean, he did stop.” Ember moved quickly beside the halfling, searching through the trails of black smoke snaking through their party. “Other than that, yeah. Didn’t look like he noticed anything.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Cheyenne picked up the pace, skirting around Byrd and Lumil until she fell in line between Corian and Maleshi, slightly behind them. “What was all that about?”
“We keep moving, kid. That’s all this is.”
“He didn’t lift a finger to help us fight those things.”
Corian shot a quick glance at her over his shoulder. “The beasts in this realm are the least of the threats we’ll face today.”
“Can he see them?”
This time, Maleshi turned to gaze at the halfling. “What would make you ask that?”
“Because L’zar looks like he’s floating through la-la land up there. No reaction to us fighting or to that giant thing about to rip his head off in four different pieces.”
Corian raised a finger beside his shoulder. “But it didn’t.”
“Yeah, and I wanna know why it and all the others scattered like that. Did you guys know that would happen?”
“Not explicitly, no.”
“But you expected something.”
“Hmm.” Maleshi tilted her head from side to side. “Interesting line of questioning while we’re crossing through, kid. Makes me wonder why you’re so curious and why it can’t wait.”
Cheyenne snorted, blinking in surprise. “Because it’s weird. It doesn’t feel right.”
“To whom?” Corian asked softly. “Looks to me like everyone else is feeling just fine about not having to fight those things.”
“Well, everyone else is just passing through this place like regular magicals, aren’t they? But I got moved by this plane to a different exit the last time I was here. The creatures saw me in drow speed, just like the last war machines. They knew I had the activator. Now L’zar’s just breezing on by without a care in the world, and the things existing in here just give up. What’s going on?”
Corian sniffed, his tufted ears twitching atop his head, and shrugged. “Must be in your blood, kid.”
“No, that’s not an answer.” Cheyenne shook her head and peered at the tall shadow on their left. For a moment, she thought she saw the Nimlothar tree from her vision, then the black smoke thickened and blocked it from view. “And I’m sick of hearing about my blood.”
The nightstalkers exchanged knowing glances.
“Be that as it may, Cheyenne, we have to focus.” Corian peered behind them to check on the others, then centered his gaze on L’zar’s broad back as the drow’s long strides took them farther and farther through the shifting in-between. “This wasn’t the portal we’d planned on crossing, so we’re gonna have to adjust wherever we come out on the other side. File those questions away for another time when we don’t need your head in the game with the rest of us, got it?”
Cheyenne looked at Maleshi, hoping the general would give her something more than that, but the nightstalker woman remained silent, facing straight ahead like she had her marching orders. This isn’t about them wanting to keep secrets from me. No, they’re doing this ‘cause they have no idea how L’zar’s got that kinda grip on this place. They’re blindly following the crazy drow.
Ember floated faster to catch up with the group, falling in line on Lumil’s left. “So, that’s it, then? Just a quick fight that wasn’t even hard, and now we have an open path?”
“Sure is what it looks like, huh?” Lumil shook her head. “That’s what I call anticlimactic.”
“Oh, please.” Byrd hissed in irritation. “It’s okay for you to say. Is that it?”
“I never said you couldn’t say it. I was just commenting. Endaru’s balls, goblin. Did your parents not give you enough battle clubs growing up? I swear, it’s like you have this constant need for conflict.”
Corian’s four-inch claws extended in a flash, and the next second, Lumil found herself swallowing against the points of the nightstalker’s weapons held against her throat. “Last warning. Keep up the bickering like a couple of suckling pups, and I’ll finish what that noose started in Karu Ga’abil. Do we understand each other?”
Lumil glared at the nightstalker, who was at the end of his patience. Beside her, Ember stared at the huge glinting claws poking against the goblin woman’s green flesh.
“We’re good, nightstalker,” Lumil muttered, her upper lip twitching in a sneer. “Takes two to tango, as they say. Don’t tell me you’re lettin’ Byrd off the hook.”
Corian’s silver eyes flicked toward Byrd, who also stared at the silver claws against Lumil’s throat. The night
stalker retracted his claws with a metallic ring. “I was talking to both of you. You just happened to be behind me.”
He turned and walked swiftly to close the distance L’zar had gained on them, oblivious to the tension rising among his little band of rebels. Maleshi shook her head and chuckled.
The goblins, Cheyenne, and Ember followed close behind. Lumil tapped her throat, then jerked the collar of her leather jacket up around her neck. “Gonna take a lot more than manicured nails to get through this neck.”
“You passed the deathflame once already, sister.” Byrd clapped the goblin woman on the back. “He ain’t gonna throw you into the fire.”
“Yeah, I know. He’s too much of a coward to try.”
Cheyenne met Ember’s gaze and nodded for her friend to join her behind the aloof nightstalkers. Ember looked at the goblins over her shoulder and whispered, “Are they gonna try to get him back for that? That will be a serious problem if we’re all supposed to be on the same side.”
“No, they’re fine.” The halfling frowned at the back of Corian’s tufted ears. “That was his version of the way those two nag each other all the time.”
“Huh.” Ember swallowed and raised her eyebrows. “Nightstalker-intense all around, huh?”
“That’s pretty much how they are.”
“Shit. Good thing they’re on our side.”
Cheyenne cast her friend a sidelong glance. “Mostly, yeah.”
Chapter Eighty-Nine
There’s no way to tell how long we’ve been in here. Cheyenne gritted her teeth and trudged behind the nightstalkers following L’zar. No one had said a word for what felt like a long time because there wasn’t much else left to say. Except for how the hell L’zar can just walk around like he’s taking a stroll through the park.
Corian lifted his chin and peered around the drow leading them forward. “There. See it?”
Maleshi tilted her head. “Hmm. Moment of truth.”
“Truth about what?” Ember muttered.
“Where in all the corners of the fell-damn Gape this portal opens on the other side.” Corian let out a slow breath and nodded. “We’re about to find out.”