The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4)

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The Poisoned Veil (Accessory to Magic Book 4) Page 23

by Kathrin Hutson


  “Say that again?”

  “The giant worms.” He kept moving toward the potential tunnel, the light following him and dragging away any attempt to investigate the piles further.

  Not like she actually wanted to, but a little more explanation would’ve been nice.

  “They look more like owl pellets,” she muttered, picking up the pace to catch up with him.

  “As far as ingestion and digestion goes, the two aren’t entirely dissimilar. The Skirra do in fact have an advanced method of waste disposal. For giant worms, at any rate.”

  “Advanced.” Jessica scoffed. “Looks like a mess.”

  “Well, if we find ourselves with the misfortune of stepping into an active Skirra nest or even one of their current tunnels, you would find a complete lack of those so-called pellets.”

  “So...” Despite the lack of waste-matter stink or an indication that anything at all was down here decomposing, Jessica wrinkled her nose. “You’re telling me we fell down the pipes into a sewer for suicidal larva.”

  “I find no amusement in these banal comparisons, but if you insist, I’d say this is more like a septic tank.” The fae flicked his hand down the narrowing passage in front of them, and the white orb shrank before zipping forward to light the way ahead. “And that particular Skirra was not suicidal.”

  Jessica moved closely at Leandras’ side, listening for movement around them and scanning the approaching bend in the tunnel for the flicker of moving shadows indicating they weren’t alone. So far, it seemed they were. “That was a metaphor.”

  “For what?”

  “Look, I don’t know a whole lot about insects, but any animal dumb enough to bash through solid rock and throw itself into a pit probably doesn’t have the capacity for feelings.”

  But that worm-thing definitely would have felt the sentinel’s teeth at the last second.

  “That may be an accurate assessment for most wildlife on Earth,” he replied slowly, “but it does not hold true for Xaharí creatures.”

  Jessica stopped. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you can expect to encounter only sentient beings in this world, no matter their form. Including the Skirra.”

  “Okay, now you’re just talking in circles.” She quickened her pace again to reach his side. “Unless you’re about to tell me sentience and stupidity aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  “Well I’m pleased to hear you’ve finally recognized the catalyst for your poorer decision-making.”

  She turned her head to glare at his profile. “I wasn’t talking about me, and you know it.”

  “The Skirra are sentient, Jessica. Intelligent. Precise. What we saw on the cliff face was not a creature flinging itself to certain death in a fit of madness.”

  “Then what the hell was it?”

  “A territorial battle, most likely. The victor got exactly what it wanted, and the sentinel happened to make a convenient snack of the defeated all at once.”

  Jessica cocked her head, trying to fit those pieces together. “Wait, you mean that thing was thrown through a rock wall?”

  “By a much larger, much stronger, far more capable Skirra. Yes.”

  Jesus.

  Floating stink bombs made of flesh and teeth. Sentient worms that killed each other over territory but dumped their crap down a waste shoot.

  Jessica didn’t even want to try imagining what else they’d find while they were here—sentient or not.

  A low rumble rocked through the walls of the tunnel, raining down more bursts of dust and larger chips of stone. The sound of something heavy and probably indestructible churning through the earth above them grew louder, the tunnel shuddered violently, then the noise faded again behind them. If it weren’t for the cascade of pebbles and dust falling directly on her, Jessica would have looked up to search for movement in the tunnel ceiling; that was how close the source of all that rumbling had come.

  She also didn’t feel like being an eyewitness to the tunnel caving in on them before they had a chance to keep moving.

  Leandras, though, turned to peer through the fading light behind them, his eyes wide and glowing silver in the semi-darkness. “We need to move quickly now.”

  “Yeah, I’m not interested in being buried alive, thanks.”

  “These walls are too solid for that. Buried alive is an unlikely outcome.” He shot her a dubious frown before another deafening rumble from behind the tunnel walls headed toward them on the right. “But being eaten alive is still very much on our list of possible dangers.”

  Chapter 24

  Jessica stared at the fae man’s silver eyes while the groan and rumble of something very large and very close seemed to get even larger and closer. “The giant worms eat magicals...”

  “They eat whatever they can find.” Leandras tugged gently on her arm and led her down the tunnel again. Small rocks fell from the walls and ceiling, but at least his claim of impossible cave-ins still held true.

  “Well, hey. If they’re as smart as you say they are, just tell them not to fucking eat us!”

  “It would hardly make a difference.” They had to practically shout now over the rumble of rock bursting around some other tunnel above them and growing obnoxiously louder. “Relations with the Skirra were precarious at best before I left this world. I can’t imagine the Dalu’Rázj has offered them anything to maintain their previous status, let alone improve it.”

  “Their status?” Jessica leapt away from the stone wall on her right when a huge chunk of it broke free and crumbled at her feet.

  “They’re useful allies for masonry and an occasional strategic attack on one’s enemies, if necessary. As long as one can also overlook their longstanding disdain for anyone remotely humanoid in nature.”

  “Disdain except for when it comes to eating them.”

  “Yes.”

  Jessica hurried to match the fae’s pace as the tunnel dipped even farther into the earth and curved sharply to the left. At this point, it was impossible to tell if this passage was leading them toward Leandras’ goal of getting to the bottom of the sinkhole chasm or if they’d end up somewhere else entirely and have to find an even more dangerous route back to the beginning.

  And now they had giant, intelligent, territorial worms with a taste for humanoid flesh and a grudge against magicals literally coming at them from all sides.

  “Leandras, I’m not kidding, if I end up as one of those worm pellets in the tunnel, I’m gonna kill you.”

  “We’d both be dead at that point, wouldn’t we?” There was no humor in his voice, and when he stopped at three tunnels branching in front of them, his scowl darkened.

  No, he didn’t look very amused by this discussion, either.

  A blast of cold and much crisper air hurtled toward them from the center tunnel. “That’s fresh air, right?”

  “Fresher than in the cavern behind us, at least.” They both looked up when an overwhelmingly large thud sank through the earth toward them and shook the walls again. Leandras shot a streak of pale copper light one at a time down each of the three passages ahead of them. “However, fresh air isn’t necessarily the best option at this juncture.”

  Juncture.

  Jessica would’ve laughed at the ironically timed double-meaning of that one word if it didn’t feel like the whole place would still come down around them at any minute. The fae wasn’t all-knowing, and there was still a chance he was wrong about the tunnels holding firm.

  “Getting out from under a bunch of giant worms still seems like the best idea.” She headed toward the center tunnel, but Leandras snatched her hand again and pulled her quickly back.

  “Not yet.”

  “What are you talking about? Those things are literally—”

  A warbling bellow seeped through what sounded like only a few yards of earth above them, echoed by another grunting cry coming from the branching tunnel on their right.

  “Time to go.”

  “Just a moment longer,” Lean
dras snapped, gazing urgently from one tunnel entrance to the next. “It won’t be long.”

  “Yeah, until we’re crushed or eaten!”

  The darting copper light of Leandras’ last spell whizzed back down the tunnel on their right and into his outstretched hand. He curled a fist around the light, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “So close...”

  “Okay, forget this.” Jessica took off for the middle passage. “Everybody knows you follow the fresh air to get out of the underground maze.”

  Another copper light streaked from the righthand tunnel and into Leandras’ hand. He sucked in a hissing breath and darted after her. “Jessica, that’s not—”

  The center tunnel exploded in a burst of pinging rock and churning dust. A massive flesh-colored head emerged toward their intersection, opening a toothless black hole in the center to let out another bellow.

  Whatever the Skirra was trying to say with that one, Jessica let out an unintended cry of her own as she skidded across the crumbling rubble and tried to stop in time.

  The intersection of passages lit up with a brilliant flare of silver light, the worm roared in rage and pain before bashing its head side to side against the tunnel walls in its attempt to retreat, and Leandras roughly hauled Jessica away from the wreckage with a hand clenched painfully around her upper arm.

  She almost hit the ground right then, but he helped her right herself before they darted toward the left-hand tunnel.

  Apparently, he thought that was their only option. There should have been a better one.

  Beneath the white orb of light bobbing madly along behind them, Jessica saw the floor of the tunnel drop away a foot in front of them.

  Not nearly enough time to stop.

  Leandras hissed as they toppled over the edge of the drop but made no other sound.

  Jessica’s limbs flailed in the darkness. The white light apparently couldn’t keep up with their descent, and as the air rushing around her sucked the breath from her lungs, she was acutely aware of how much farther away that tiny round ball of light became by the second.

  She couldn’t even see the floor rushing up to greet her—had no idea when she’d hit the ground of whatever other cavern existed below the first, and this next fall would be impossible to survive.

  Except it wasn’t.

  Two seconds later, a warm, soft thickness enveloped her. It definitely didn’t come without impact, but the landing felt more like flopping face-first onto a hard mattress than the bottom of a chasm dropping away so much farther beneath the earth. It still knocked the wind out of her, and Jessica only managed to draw in a ragged breath of surprise when she found herself flying upward again at the exact same speed. Neon-orange light blinded her to everything else, then a ripple of bright yellow, green, pink, and more orange flared up around her.

  She couldn’t tell anymore which way was up and which was down.

  Cold, hard ropes shot out of the darkness toward her, flickering to life with the same neon-colored lights like those flashing LED strands hung across rooftops at Christmas. The ropes coiled around her arms and legs, snatching her up around the waist, tightening just enough to keep her from falling again but not enough to actually hurt.

  It all happened in the blink of an eye, and Jessica was too surprised to struggle against what now looked like dozens of flickering vines holding her suspended above a massive neon-orange flower. The petals of that flower below her—or maybe it was some kind of mushroom—unfurled slowly with a rustle. More glowing lights streaked across each individual petal from the center to the outer edges.

  That must have been where she’d landed. What she’d ... bounced off of before finding herself twisted up in vines that moved on their own and thrummed with energy pulsing in rhythm to the flashing lights. Honestly, she expected the flower below her—which rivaled the dimensions of a king-sized bed—to open up another gaping, reeking mouth like one of the sentinels. And this time, instead of a dejected Skirra, Jessica would be the prey.

  “Well.” Leandras’ voice came from her left, and she struggled in her bouncing net of vines to get a good look at him. “I’d say this is a rather convenient surprise.”

  The fae man dangled in his own net, his face lit up by the pulsing neon lights around him. His silver eyes still glowed in the semi-darkness, their color unchanged by the illuminated plant life.

  This whole thing looked more like it belonged in a night club or at the very least glow-in-the-dark mini-golf.

  That thought made Jessica snort out a laugh. “You know what’s not convenient?”

  “Hmm?” Leandras studied the vines around him, looking almost bemused instead of relieved they hadn’t fallen to their death or even a little sorry that he’d led them right into another gaping pit.

  No. Bemused wasn’t quite the right word. He looked distracted, like he already knew what was coming next.

  “Leandras,” she snapped. Her voice echoed through the cavern a lot louder than she’d expected, especially because she had no idea what size or shape their new surroundings actually took. All she could see were the threads of pulsing lights and the neon flower directly below both of them. So she lowered her voice into a harsh whisper when the fae man didn’t respond. “Hey.”

  “I can hear you, Jessica. I imagine you’ve been heard clear across this chamber as well.”

  “By what, huh? The plants?”

  The vines creaked and groaned when he shifted to face her more fully. The guy actually lay back in the net of vines like he was spreading out on a freaking lounge chair at a pool party. “Of course.”

  “Okay, yeah, I heard you. Everything’s sentient. The flesh-eating flower down there has a brain. Fine. But you can’t honestly tell me this is better than facing those worms.”

  “On the contrary.” He chuckled. “This will be far more interesting.”

  Seething at their newest predicament, Jessica grabbed a handful of vines strung taught beside her head and had no problem picking up on the energy flowing through them. She could free herself right now. And then it would be another straight drop onto that orange trampoline-flower, and who knew what would happen after that?

  “Unless these vines are gonna swing us all the way to that matador-thing you need, we can’t just hang here.”

  “The Madraqór,” Leandras whispered, his attention now drawn somewhere across the darkness.

  “I don’t care what it’s called,” she hissed. “How do we get down?”

  “We wait.”

  “Great.” Jessica released the vines—not that it made a difference—and let out a massive sigh as she dangled fifty feet above the flower and what she assumed was the floor of this next cavern. “For how long?”

  “Not long.” The fae slowly turned his head to meet her gaze, and though his wrists were similarly bound by the neon vines, he flicked a finger across the cavern. “As long as our hosts don’t decide it more prudent to leave us up here for eternity.”

  “What?”

  Only then did she notice the rest of the glow-in-the-dark cavern coming to life.

  It happened slowly at first—thin pools of blue, green, orange, yellow, and pink light illuminating the pockets of shadow. Then more strobing pulses of the weird bio-LEDs raced across surfaces. Huge ferns with massive leaves larger than Jessica unfurled against the stone walls. Curtains of vines flickered to life, moving in impossible ripples down here where there was no breeze to move them. Three more giant orange flowers lit up on the stone floor, though these remained tightly curled up around their centers unlike the one directly beneath her.

  All along the cavern wall, the local flora glowed with its own internal light, revealing shelves built into the stone at interspersed levels and distances. Each shelf had its own dangling curtain of vines glowing in strands of different colors, every curtain similar to the next in shape and size.

  “Leandras,” Jessica whispered, her eyes growing wide as the cavern’s bioluminescent life lit everything up in pale light to show just how
far they’d fallen.

  “Jessica.” He said it calmly enough, but there was definitely a hint of wariness in his voice.

  “I can talk my way out of a lot. I know that.” She blinked against the intensifying light and turned to look at him. “But I have no idea how to convince a bunch of plants not to mulch us.”

  “The plants will not listen anyway.”

  “You said our hosts.”

  Leandras nodded toward the cavern floor. “I was referring to their masters.”

  A loud crack echoed through the huge chamber, and Jessica stopped worrying about whatever the hell the fae would have said next. If she had to, she’d blast these vines away from her and take her chances with the orange bounce-flower below.

  That crack, though, didn’t exactly sound like a welcome.

  It sounded like a warning.

  Two giant ferns across the cavern trembled and finally bent away from each other, curling to opposite sides like melting plastic. Then an incredibly tall creature on two legs strode through them into the light. The long stick in one hand clicked against the stone floor as he emerged, though nothing about his gait indicated he needed the gnarled, yellow-glowing staff for support.

  Nothing about him at all made much sense.

  Two large, round neon-orange eyes blinked up at them from a darkened face before the magical stepped fully into the bioluminescent brilliance. Dark, nearly black skin shone in the light, the stranger’s face studded with speckles and stripes of glowing white. His limbs were lean and impossibly long, as were his hands and bare feet—which, Jessica noticed with more amusement than anything else, also possessed opposable thumbs.

  And the new guy with the staff was clad in nothing more than a dark loincloth, though his long black hair braided down his back had been strung with small glowing flowers, leaves, and shimmering beads of light.

  He clicked his tongue, which glowed with faint pink light when he opened his mouth to shout something in the language Jessica had only heard Leandras use.

 

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