Eternal Void (Isabella Espinoza Book 2)

by K Hanson

  “Amari, do you trust me?” I asked.

  She blinked at me. “After all of this, what kind of question is that? Of course.”

  “How do you feel about seeing where all of this shit started?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our way out. It’s through that portal. We go there, leave these fuckers behind, and find the Necromancer.”

  She turned to face the portal. “Do you have any idea what’s on the other side?”

  “No clue.” I shrugged. “It can’t be good. But at this point, I know those guards will kill us. Well, they’ll kill me, then capture you. Let’s go exploring.” I tossed her a bit of a crazy smile, then pulled her up with me.

  It was time to venture where nobody had gone and survived before. It was time to enter the portal.

  I took a deep breath, linking one hand with hers. Together, we ran forward and jumped into the inky blackness that waited.

  CHAPTER 22

  As Amari and I hit the portal, my hand separated from hers. I felt a cold sensation all over my skin, but I also felt warm at the same time. My nerves tingled across my body.

  I couldn’t see anything. My vision was black, and I felt like I was spinning and moving in every direction at once. Falling while also flying. My equilibrium had no idea what to make of it, and if it lasted much longer, I might have gotten sick.

  Finally, I tumbled out onto solid ground.

  Amari popped out a moment after me. Just above us, a similar portal to the one we had just entered sat, with its shimmering purple halo and inky black interior.

  We had made it through to the other side of the portal. Now we had to see what would await us.

  The ground felt solid enough, just dry, barren dirt. I hauled myself up and gave Amari a hand as she climbed to her feet.

  I stood in place as I scanned the area around us, taking in the strange world beyond the portal. Nobody I knew of had ever come this far and returned. I just hoped we would survive to be able to tell others about what we saw.

  We were in the middle of a darkness very similar to the Void. There was a weight to the air around us, feeling like it was almost oppressive. The glow from the tablet on my wrist was quite faint as the darkness sapped the light from it.

  Yet, the air had a slightly more purple hue than it did back in the Void of our world. And there was another quality to the darkness that wasn’t even visible and instead crept into my bones.

  The air was chill, of course, but it wasn’t that either. The atmosphere itself seemed to sap my spirit and take away any good feelings I might have. If I didn’t keep my guard up and remind myself what was happening, it could pull a person into a spiral of negative, destructive emotion, perhaps. But I grew a little sadder and a little less motivated even now.

  A dry, barren landscape stretched ahead of us, with craggy rock formations that jutted out of the ground and ravines that carved through the earth—probably not quite the way to put it now—and left jagged wounds across the soil. In a few spots, gnarled trees stretched their curling branches into the sky like the twisted claws of some nasty creatures that reached for their prey.

  In the distance, night stalkers called out with their all-too-familiar shriek. But there were the sounds of other creatures, too. Apparently, we hadn’t met everything that lurked on the bad side of the portal. I was thankful that they hadn’t found their way to our world yet. Even without knowing what they were, if they were of the same world as night stalkers, they couldn’t be anything but nasty.

  “Amari, how are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m all right, just feeling squeamish about this place.” She wrapped her arms around herself, running her hands up and down her upper arms. “Like it’s trying to crawl into my head in a way that I don’t like at all.”

  “I feel that, too. Are you sure you want to continue? I don’t know what’s ahead, and I doubt it’s going to be pleasant.”

  “Where else would I go? If I go back through that portal, those guys will just take me. The only thing to do is find what is happening on this side. Do you have a signal at all?”

  I glanced at the glowing tablet. The map, of course, showed nothing, but I did get a blip of a blinking orb on the edge of the screen. I glanced in the direction of the blip. A spire of a tower poked up in the distance. It seemed like it was a long way off, barely showing above the horizon. A few hills and rock formations stood between us and our destination.

  “Looks like what we’re looking for is over there,” I said, nodding toward the structure. “You see that tower?”

  Amari scanned for a moment. “Yeah. Who would make a base out here?”

  “No idea. Maybe it was here before the portal opened. Either way, anyone who would cross the boundary of the portal like this and survive what lurks here has to be willing to face some pretty nasty stuff. Be ready for anything.”

  “I’ll try.” She let out a huff of air with a small hint of a tremble in her breath.

  Fear. I could feel it coming off her.

  I couldn’t blame her. We didn’t know what horrors might be here. Maybe we had literally just jumped straight into hell.

  If we met the devil, I’d have a few choice words for him.

  We hiked our way over the rocky, barren terrain as we made our way toward the distant tower. We took our time, keeping our footsteps quiet as we listened and watched for any potential threat. So far, nothing seemed to have noticed our arrival in this strange new world, but who knew what lurked behind the rocks, under the ground, or even in the sky above. My vision was pretty good even in the deep darkness, but that didn’t mean something couldn’t hide far above us with even better night vision than I had.

  At each rock formation we came to, we crouched and crept along the side, making sure nothing hid behind it, and then continued on. Our journey took us up an incline, with one of those deep ravines carving into the ground alongside the right side of our path. As the ridge climbed higher and higher, twisting its way toward the tower, the ravine carved ever deeper.

  When it seemed like we were about halfway to the tower, we paused next to one of the trees to take a breather.

  Amari leaned against the bark, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.

  The branch above her swung down, wrapping its smaller branches around her. Like a gnarled, wooden claw, the tree squeezed her against its trunk.

  She let out a scream. The branches tightened, cutting off her air. I dashed over to her.

  With her right arm pinned to her side, she tried to pry the branches off of her with her left hand, but they wouldn’t budge. I drew my knife to cut her free, but another branch swept across my arm and knocked the knife to the ground. Amari desperately and futilely tried to push against the branches that constricted her body.

  I knelt down and found the weapon among the roots. As I grabbed it, sticky damp soil clung to my fingers.

  I stood back up, grabbing onto the base of the large branch that held her, and started sawing through it as I pulled on it with my other hand. Amari’s eyes bulged as she struggled in vain for air.

  A branch reached for me, but I ducked out of the way.

  Amari’s eyes closed as I sawed through half of the branch’s width. Maybe that would be enough. I grabbed it with both hands and pulled as hard as I could. The wood groaned, and then snapped free. I tossed the large branch off the ravine. Amari scrambled away from the trunk, and we backed out of reach of its longest branch as it swiped past us.

  “Shit, I guess even the plants will kill you here,” I said.

  Amari took another couple of breaths, slightly hunched over. “No kidding. When the trees are unfriendly, maybe it’s a sign we shouldn’t be here.”

  “Ready to keep going?”

  Amari gave half a shrug. “We’re halfway there. We can make it.”

  I gave her a nod. I wiped that sticky wetness on my jeans and glanced down at the soil around the tree. It was damp with what looked like night stalker blood. In the soil we
had disturbed around the base, the white of bone stood out. It was part of a skull.

  The tree seemed like it literally squeezed creatures until they bled, drank their blood with its roots, and left the bones behind to fertilize the soil. Did the roots even cover up the bones so that other animals wouldn’t suspect anything?

  Something shifted in the ravine below us. I grabbed Amari’s arm and pulled her to the ground. Where we lay prone, we crept over to the cliff’s edge and peeked down.

  From a large cavern entrance way down, several hundred feet below us, some sort of creature emerged.

  It looked like some sort of strange insectoid giraffe crab thing. It had four long and spindly legs, but its body was sort of like a crab, with a hard shell. Glowing green eyes peeked out from the sliver of an opening at the front of the creature.

  Another of those weird creatures came out behind it. They stalked their way along the floor of the ravine, letting out weird chittering sounds that made my nerves crawl. They were headed toward the exit of the ravine near where we had started our climb. I hoped they weren’t coming for us, but I’d rather not stick around to find out for sure.

  “Come on,” I said, climbing to my feet. “Let’s not mess with those.”

  Amari didn’t say anything and just followed along as I continued toward the tower, crouching away from the edge of the cliff. I didn’t want to spend any more time here than I needed. Carnivorous trees that would squeeze the blood out of us and giant crab weird things were not something I needed in my life.

  We kept going without talking to each other, moving as fast as we dared toward the tower. We were now close enough that I could see a faint purple glow at the top of the tower, similar to the glow that the siphons had been pulling from the portal. Maybe the tower had been sending a signal toward the other side? The structure stood out against the rugged background. It was the only thing that appeared to be made by civilization.

  As we continued our quick, quiet walk across the ridge, the deep ravine still on our right side, the ground started to shake. It was just a soft tremor at first, but as the seconds passed, it grew. Rocks bounced up and down. A strange digging sound filled the air behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder. A mound of loose dirt surged toward us.

  I grabbed Amari by the arm and tugged her behind me to the nearest rock formation. With the dirt racing closer, I leapt onto the largest boulder, and Amari scrambled to climb up after me. I grasped her wrist and pulled her up just as two pincers reached for her from beneath the soil.

  A repulsive creature burst from below the earth. It looked like some sort of cross between a worm and a scorpion. It had two big pincers and a stinger on its tail, but it had no legs, and it had a large round mouth with several rows of sharp teeth. It curled around the edge of the rock formation, looking for a way up to us. It let out a strange hiss and chittering sound as it crawled its way along the rocky ground.

  It curled back on itself and jumped up, nearly reaching the top of the rocks, but not quite. On its next attempt, when it hit the peak of its jump, I thrust my foot out and kicked it across the face. Or what I guessed was its face. It let out some sort of gargling cry and dropped down the ground. Slowly, it made one more lap around the rock, then burrowed into the dirt. The hump of soil pulled away from us, gradually sinking back underground.

  Amari and I waited, clinging to the rocks and breathing hard.

  “How long do you think we should wait before it’s really gone?” she asked.

  “No idea.”

  In the distance, beyond the ravine and across a large open plain, dotted with those gnarled trees and some spires of rock, a volcano dripped glowing molten rock down its sides in long red and orange trails. Occasionally, a blast of lava burst up from the caldera at the top. A moment later, the ground shook.

  “I don’t understand what this place is,” Amari said. “And why did it connect to our world?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the Necromancer found something that can give us some answers? He’s certainly appeared to learn more than anyone else about this strange world.”

  “I suppose there’s no point in waiting here for the next weird thing to find us and try to eat us,” she said with a sigh. “Might as well keep going.”

  “Sure, and let’s just take it slower so we don’t wake any more of those worm things.”

  We carefully climbed off the rock and continued our trek through the world’s worst hiking area. Down in the ravine, more of those large crab things moved around.

  In the distance, a soft buzz sounded, vaguely in the direction of the tower. The sound of the energy that was shining on top, perhaps.

  Just at the corner of my eye, one of the crabs teetered a bit, then fell, letting out a strange yowling cry.

  A loud crack sounded from the shadows at the bottom of the ravine, then the glowing green eyes of the crab went dark. Something huge with a shiny black exoskeleton had just killed one of those huge things. I started breathing more heavily. With all of the dangerous predators around us, and the weight of the darkness sapping at my spirit, I wondered if we had made a mistake. We were almost to the Necromancer’s tower, but maybe we should have turned back. Nothing good could be awaiting us.

  I shook my head. I had to keep going. We had survived so far, and we could make it the remaining half-mile or so.

  The buzzing sound kept growing louder as we approached, but it didn’t quite come from the same spot as the glowing purple light. Instead, it came from these strange shapes attached to the side of the tower. They almost looked like paper honeycomb structures.

  Wait, I had seen something like that before.

  Wasp nests. Except, these were much bigger, and the holes were huge.

  Some large insects probably called them home.

  I hated wasps. I had always been afraid of them ever since one of them had stung me while I was riding my bike when I was a kid. My finger had swollen up until it was twice the normal size. After that, I always steered clear of the fuckers.

  Something moved inside one of the nests. A large insect popped out of it. It looked similar to the wasps I feared, though it was at least as big as a person. It had odd glowing red eyes, much like night stalkers. And its stinger was nearly half the length of its torso. A second wasp emerged behind the first. And a third.

  A night stalker prowled just on the other side of the tower, a bit closer to the structure than we were. The wasp-like creatures descended on it, stabbing with their stingers. Their abdomens pulsed as they squeezed their venom into their prey. The night stalker let out the saddest cry I had ever heard from one of the things and fell still. The three wasps hauled it up and tucked the limp body away in their nest.

  I never thought I’d see creatures that would make me wish to face night stalkers instead of them, but I guess that was where we were.

  Slowly, Amari and I continued on toward the tower, veering toward the side opposite of the nest, even though they had disappeared back inside.

  Loose rocks under my foot clanged together.

  I halted, sucking in a breath, and jerked to look up at the nest.

  The three wasps poked their heads out, one at a time, glaring down at us. Before I could respond, they launched from their nest.

  CHAPTER 23

  The trio of wasp creatures descended upon us in a triangle formation, one of them leading the way while the other two followed just behind its wings. The hum of their beating wings filled the air as a prelude to their attack.

  As I stared at them, I felt like I was a child again with my fear of wasps. My mouth went dry, and my hands became sweaty as they closed in. I used my training and experience to shove my emotions to the side, though my heart beat at about a million beats per minute. For some reason, these things frightened me more than any of the other creatures we had seen here so far, even more than the damn worm thing that had almost eaten us.

  Amari tugged on my arm. “Come on, we need to run!”

  I didn’t know
where we would go. The wasps were faster than we were, and we couldn’t get ahead of them. In the area around the tower, there were a few rock formations, a couple of isolated trees, and then on the other side of the tower, a cluster of trees. The carnivorous kind. So the only cover we had would try to kill us. Great.

  I took off, leading us in a lap around the tower, heading clockwise. We still needed to get into the tower, even if that meant getting past the damned stingers.

  I drew my pistol and paused to take up a firing stance at the approaching wasps. I stared straight into the red eyes of the leader, the grip of the pistol slippery in my sweaty hands, and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck it in the center of the abdomen, and it spun out of the air, plummeting to the ground. At least I could kill the things.

  Except two more emerged from the nests to replace the fallen insect. Looked like I was waking up their friends. Shit.

  We ducked behind a rock as the other two nearly caught up to us. They flew around the rock in a pincer movement, trying to trap us between them. The one near me thrust its stinger toward me as I stepped to the side. The sharp point caught my shirt and scratched a hole in it, but it didn’t break any skin. Lucky for me. I took my knife and plunged it up and toward the creature, but it flapped its wings and pulled away, just out of reach. I whirled around and swiped at the wing of the one attacking Amari.

  The blade caught just the edge of the wing, but that was enough to make it back off. I pulled on Amari’s arm, and we sprinted away. With no cover, I took us as close to one of the deadly trees as I dared, just out of reach of its largest branches.

  The creatures darted toward us, and we ran so that the tree was between them and us. The wasps took a wide arc around it.

  I had to decide. What was more dangerous, the tree or the wasp? At least a tree couldn’t chase us. I dashed inside the reach of the tree, keeping an eye on its branches as they started to curl out toward us.