Of Truth and Beasts

Chapter 24

To Chane’s dismay, the tunnel behind the breach went on and on, deeper into the mountain. Each time he thought Wynn’s perilous mission was finished, it began all over again. Worse, this tunnel was nothing like the ones above.

Roughly hewn, it had been gouged out in a rush, rather than skillfully excavated. Had someone been left alive after the seatt’s fall? If so, why dig here, farther into the mountain’s depths? Even more puzzling, the tunnel was surprisingly wide and without any supports, but the ceiling appeared sound. Chane could have driven a horse and wagon down this passage.

Ore-Locks still led them. Although his manic drive had resurfaced, he appeared less certain of his way, advancing more slowly. Wynn stayed right behind him, her breaths coming too quickly. When she looked back, her lips were parched.

“Drink,” Chane said, pulling the water skin off his shoulder.

She took a long swallow and tapped Ore-Locks’s shoulder. When he turned, she handed him the water skin. Once he’d finished, she dropped to her knees, set down her staff, and poured water into her hand.

“Here, Shade.”

As the dog lapped, Chane noticed even deeper gouges in the wall. He took a few steps past Ore-Locks.

“Look here,” he said.

Wynn joined him, holding out her crystal near the tunnel’s wall. In some places, three gouges ran parallel, each one so deep they made no sense. Multiple strikes along the same lines would have been necessary to cut paths so deep, but to what purpose? He remembered the blackened wall in one tunnel far above, and the human corpses.

“I do not like this,” he said.

“I know,” Wynn whispered.

He knew nothing would stop her but another end to this new route. When she retrieved her staff, Ore-Locks moved on. Within twenty paces, the floor became cluttered with debris, and their progress slowed.

Chane looked ahead over Ore-Locks, trying to see how far the tunnel stretched, and then Wynn gave a small cry. She fell forward on the tunnel floor, and Chane moved quickly to help her, but Shade dodged around him, trying to get to her first.

“I’m all right,” she said. “I just tripped.”

She pushed up onto her knees and reached back, pulling something long and dark out from under her ankle. Dropping it instantly, she scrambled up.

Chane leaned over with his crystal for a closer look. It was a bone, big enough to wield as a club, and so aged that it had blended with the debris.

“Not from a dwarf,” he said. “Thick enough, but far too long.”

Ore-Locks waited ahead, but for the first time since Wynn had entered this rough-hewn passage, her eyes glowed with that old, familiar excitement.

“It’s not human, either,” she said quietly. “When I had access to the ancient texts, I found a mention in one of Volyno’s writings that the enemy’s forces may have tried to come in from beneath the seatt.”

The knot in Chane’s stomach returned. “What mention?”

“It was difficult to make out, and he also wrote ‘of Earth ... beneath the chair of a lord’s song ... meant to prevail but all ended ... halfway eaten beneath.’ ”

“Eaten?”

“Ore-Locks, wait,” Wynn called out. “Shade, come help me.”

Chane was lost for a way to stop her as she dug through the rubble. Shade whined once and sniffed the debris, then huffed, scratching for Wynn to come look.

Puzzled, Ore-Locks came back. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for ... here!” Wynn exclaimed.

She held up a large skull, having to use both hands. Chane took it from her.

Its back half was gone, and it was heavier than expected. When whole, it might have been the size of a mule or horse’s head, but it was not shaped like any equine beast. Neither was it human or dwarven. Huge eye sockets were set wide to the skull’s sides, and the long upper jaw was lined with a few remaining, needlelike teeth.

Chane had never seen anything like it.

“What was it?” Wynn asked.

“I do not know,” Ore-Locks said.

“It must have been part of the enemy’s forces.” Wynn’s excitement grew again. “That means it was down here for a reason.

“But did it come before or after the seatt fell?” she ventured, as if talking to herself.

Chane could see her mind working, and did not like it. “Either way, more important is how it died,” he countered.

He looked to those three deep and long gouges in the wall. Shade huffed again, still digging in the debris, and this time Ore-Locks leaned over to grasp what the dog uncovered.

“I know this one,” he said, holding up what was little more than the upper portion of a skull’s face. “Shlugga ... what you call a goblin.”

Even Chane knew of goblins, having encountered a pack on his journey across the world to find Wynn. She had told him that some sages believed the Ancient Enemy had used these two-legged beasts during the war.

He kept his thoughts to himself. Unlike Wynn, he had never believed any war could have covered the world enough to blot out history. Before the Guild of Sagecraft, history would have always been a fragmented thing, subjected to “revisions” according to the desires of those who preserved it. But the scale of destruction and death here was beyond any territorial conflict exaggerated over ages to mythical proportions.

Multitudes had died here over a short period of time, at a guess. He could not help wondering what had happened. And what of these foreign bones in this deep, raw tunnel? What had made those distinct, deep gouges in the wall, and why?

Chane did not voice any of this to Wynn. Instead, he rose, peered down the dark tunnel ahead, and sighed in resignation. He knew they would simply move on.

Sau’ilahk drifted to the open portal of a hall filled with immense basalt statues like coffins. This chamber appeared to be a dead end, except for the gaping breaches in the end walls, but Wynn was nowhere in sight.

He went to look into the wide left-end breach and found a shaft going up and down. Carefully approaching the hall’s other end, he found that this taller, narrower breach led into a tunnel. A good ways down it to the right, he spotted the faintest flicker of light.

About to slip in, he paused and looked back. Chuillyon and his companions would come soon enough. No doubt Shâodh was tracking Wynn’s group. Sau’ilahk did not want to openly engage all three elves, but neither would he tolerate their interference. It was time to do something about Chuillyon.

But when Sau’ilahk looked down the tunnel, the faint light bobbed and winked. Wynn was moving again. There was no time to feed on Chuillyon here and now. What a disappointment, but perhaps something less personal but still deadly was required.

A simple servitor of Air would not be enough. Fire, in the form of Light, would also be required. It needed to be encased in Earth drawn from Stone, as well. A servitor of multiple Elements, in three conjuries, would cost him dearly. Then a fourth conjury had to intertwine with the others to give his creation the necessary spark of sentience.

He began to conjure Air. When its quivering ball manifested, he caged it with his incorporeal fingers and embedded it with Fire in the form of Light. A yellow-orange glow radiated from within his grip. Forcing his hand to become corporeal, he slammed the servitor down into the hall’s floor stones.

Sau’ilahk’s black form wavered as exhaustion threatened to overtake him. He was only half-finished, and the final two conjuries must be done simultaneously.

Around his flattened hand, a square of glowing umber lines for Earth rose on the hall’s floor stones. Within that, a circle of blue-white appeared as he summoned in Spirit and inserted a fragment of his consciousness. In the spaces between the shapes, iridescent glyphs and sigils of white appeared like dew-dampened web strands at the break of dawn.

Sau’ilahk called on his reserves, imbuing his creation with greater essence.

His hand began to waver before him. He exerted his will to remain present and straightened, lifting his hand from the floor. All glowing marks on the stone vanished.

Awaken! he whispered in his thoughts.

Another glow rose beneath the floor’s surface. It shifted erratically, as if swimming inside the stones. He raised his hand above it, fingers closing like a street puppeteer toying with strings, and the glow halted.

Stones bulged over it, and that light began to emerge. It rose out of the floor like a worm as thick as his wrist. Gray as the stone that birthed it, it wriggled away across the floor. Sau’ilahk had created such a servitor once before, with a gaping maw at one end, its body a vessel for poisonous gas.

Stop, he commanded. As it halted, he focused on its spark of sentience, and he drove it through the tall breach and into the tunnel beyond.

Hide in the wall facing the opening. When a life passes through, expel what you hold.

It would obey these simple instructions, drilled into its limited consciousness. Even if the two younger elves survived, without Chuillyon, they would turn back. Shâodh would insist.

Sau’ilahk drifted into the breach, weakened but satisfied, and he turned right down the tunnel to trail Wynn.

Wynn’s thoughts turned over and over as she followed Ore-Locks. She wasn’t as dismissive of Chane’s concerns as she pretended, but her concerns differed from his. Clearly, he suspected that something had happened here after the seatt’s fall, though just what, neither of them could say.

“What is that?” he asked from behind her.

She saw black on the walls and floor again, but it wasn’t the same as before. Her crystal’s light caused it to shimmer.

“Chlaks-álêg,” Ore-Locks answered. “‘Burning stone’ ... a vein of raw coal.”

It crosscut their path where the tunnel floor dipped slightly in a circular hollow, as if a good deal of the coal had been dug out and removed from the floor and both side walls.

Chane slipped past Wynn into the left-side hollow. “And again here, look.”

Both Ore-Locks and Wynn watched Chane trace his widely spread fingers along deep, long gouges in the black wall. This time there were four parallel grooves.

Wynn spotted places in the coal vein where it looked like chunks bigger than her head, or even Ore-Locks’s head, had been gouged out.

“Ore-Locks, do your people use ...” Chane began. “Do they use ... beasts of any kind in mining?”

Wynn blinked at such a notion. What was he suggesting?

“No,” Ore-Locks answered hesitantly. “Not that I have ever heard of.”

Wynn didn’t like where Chane was going with this. She glanced up the tunnel, thinking of those broken skulls. Did Chane believe something had survived the seatt’s fall, something large enough to kill anything that remained or arrived later? Even so, any creature among the enemy’s forces couldn’t have survived all these centuries with so little to feed it. Unless ...

Wynn began to worry. What if whatever it had been had taken away the orb for its master? Was the orb already long gone, as far back as the war? Her thoughts turned back to the few scant lines she’d read in the volume by Volyno.

... of Earth ... beneath the chair of a lord’s song ... meant to prevail but all ended ... halfway eaten beneath.

Something else came to her. Before leaving the guild at Calm Seatt, she’d stumbled on a forgotten dwarven ballad with one obscure word—gí’uyllæ, the “all-eaters” or “all-consumers.” Even so, whatever had been here was either long dead or long gone.

“A’ye!” Ore-Locks said breathily.

Wynn swung around at his exclamation. His large hand was pressed into another depression in the coal. That hollow was so large that his hand looked small as he drew it along the depression’s inner surface. Wynn slipped in, trying to see into the hollow as Ore-Locks withdrew his hand.

Under her crystal’s close light, the hollow’s back was smoothly cut in parallel grooves. These marks weren’t like the ones Chane implied were made with claws. These were smoother, closer together, like ... like teeth had bitten through the black coal.

She shook her head, reminding herself that whatever had been down here couldn’t still be here. Then she heard a low, rumbling whine.

Shade stood off behind Wynn, not drawing near. The dog’s jowls quivered as she flattened her ears, looking at that huge hollow under the crystal’s light.

Wynn decided not to move on just yet. Whatever happened here warranted further investigation.

Chuillyon walked right through an open portal into a chamber similar to that of the Fallen Ones back in Dhredze Seatt. But this one was huge.

It still surprised him that Ore-Locks was leaving these portals wide-open. Such negligence would shock Cinder-Shard, though Chuillyon certainly could not complain. He could not have opened them himself, but how had Ore-Locks done so? How could even an errant stonewalker know the combinations for locks used a thousand years ago?

“What is this place?” Hannâschi asked, looking around with clear worry on her smudged face. “These effigies are ... different from the last ones.”

Shâodh examined pieces of a broken effigy lying on the floor. “What do the carved bands represent?”

This was the first openly curious question he had asked in a long while. Chuillyon had no time to explain dwarven vices or the place of the Fallen Ones in their beliefs.

He saw no other ways out of here except for two jagged breaches in the walls. The wider breach to the left of the entrance was just another vertical shaft, as in the hall of the Eternals. He doubted Wynn or the others had the equipment or skills to climb down.

He looked at Shâodh and asked, “Which way?”

The glance Shâodh cast back seemed almost hostile. The young man closed his eyes with a thrumming chant. When his eyes opened, he looked to the taller, narrower breach.

Chuillyon scowled in frustration. Perhaps he had again underestimated Wynn. As he approached, he held his crystal through the opening. It did not open into a shaft, and instead, he found a rough and raw tunnel running in both directions.

Hannâschi came up beside him and leaned in to see around the opening’s sides.

“Well, onward again,” Chuillyon told her tiredly.

A shudder shook the hall’s floor, and he turned.

Shâodh still stood among the basalt debris, but his eyes widened as he looked toward the wide breach at the hall’s other end.

Ghassan reached an open portal and carefully peeked around its edge. There was another massive hall waiting beyond, but this one was filled with near-black faceless and formless effigies. Representations of bands were carved in the stone all around each one, but they did not keep Ghassan’s attention long.

Chuillyon’s young male companion stood at the hall’s center, while the old elf and the female looked into a tall breach in the right wall.

With no one looking Ghassan’s way, he slipped in behind the nearest tall, black effigy. From his hiding place, he tried to hear what the others said, but they were all quiet. In frustration, he thought of dipping into Chuillyon’s surface thoughts, hoping the old elf would not feel his presence.

But then Ghassan heard the sound of falling rock. Dust billowed from the wide breach in the hall’s end just behind him. The floor shook and vibrated as he heard more debris tumbling down the shaft.

Ghassan froze, ready to bolt from the hall.

“What was that?” Shâodh said.

A cloud of dust billowed from the wide breach in the hall’s end nearest its entrance.

“We should move on, as this place is not stable,” Chuillyon said, and turned as Hannâschi stepped through the taller breach.

A ripple in the tunnel’s inner wall caught Chuillyon’s eyes. He instinctively lurched back, trying to grab for Hannâschi.

A loud hiss came as a cloud of umber vapors filled the tunnel inside the breach.

Chuillyon covered his face with a sleeve, as the cloud enveloped Hannâschi. She wheezed and choked as he snatched the back of her cloak and jerked. Then he caught sight of a wriggling form protruding from the tunnel’s inner wall.

Only instinct kept him clutching Hannâschi’s cloak as he threw himself back and fell. Muddy orange vapors spilled out of the opening, rising over the breach’s top lip and drifting upward. Before Chuillyon could roll off his back, Shâodh knocked his grip free and pulled Hannâschi farther out on the hall’s floor. He dropped to his knees, and she collapsed in his arms, her head lolling to one side.

“No ... no!” Shâodh stammered, all composure gone from his horrified face.

Sau’ilahk saw Wynn’s glowing light ahead and even heard her voice. From what he could tell, she stood at some dark crosscut in the tunnel.

“Keep searching,” she said, her voice barely reaching him.

Sau’ilahk’s excitement grew. He longed to drift closer, but he was too close even now. Yet he could not bring himself to withdraw. What had she found?

Wynn suddenly appeared to drop out of sight, as if she sank lower than the tunnel floor. By the glow of a crystal’s light, Chane and Ore-Locks appeared to be on the crosscut’s far side, and a fair distance away from Wynn.

“What are we looking for?” Ore-Locks called.

“Any more of the same,” she called back. “Or anything unusual.”

Sau’ilahk’s urgency heightened. What did they search for?

A rumble carried down the tunnel from behind him, and he could not help turning to look.

Light spilled into the tunnel from the breach where he had planted his servitor. The elves must have come, but his stone worm could not have made that rumbling sound. He hung there, watching, until a crack like thunder echoed through the breach and down the tunnel.

Chuillyon regained his feet, prepared to repel whatever had assaulted Hannâschi. He drew his sleeve over his nose and mouth and looked through the breach, but he saw only the rough stone of the tunnel’s inner wall through the thinning vapors.

A crack of breaking stone filled the hall.

Chuillyon whirled as the sound pierced his ears. More stones crashed down the chute inside the wide breach at the hall’s other end. A billow of dark dust bulged out of the opening, and a charred stench filled the hall’s air.

It was not dust, but smoke.

Flame bellowed out of that breach, reaching toward the hall’s midpoint. Shâodh shouted something, but the fire’s roar drowned him out.

Before the flames had begun to die, a monstrous form crawled out of the wide breach on all fours, its bulk spreading the cloud of smoke.

As the flames erupted, Ghassan tried running for the entrance, but he stumbled as he was assailed by searing heat. Something charged right through the fire, and he ran back behind the first effigy, rushing to its far side to see what was happening. All he saw amid the flames was something huge and four-legged, with a massive head on a long neck. It charged straight toward Chuillyon and his people.

Wynn tensed at the thunderous echo rolling down the raw tunnel. A soft, red light filled the passage’s distant end back where the narrow breach led into the Chamber of the Fallen. But she froze before calling to the others.

A dark silhouette stood in the tunnel between her and that pulse of orange-yellow light.

Shade spun and lunged two paces past Wynn. The dog’s growl began to twist into something akin to a cat’s angry mewl, and her hackles rose in the light of Wynn’s crystal.

Wynn’s mind went numb. She knew Shade’s sounds, but she couldn’t accept what it meant, and kept whispering, “It cannot be. It cannot be.”

Wynn couldn’t take her eyes off the black figure framed by the orange glow farther up the tunnel. Then a crack of stone erupted behind her, followed by the sound of falling rocks.

Wynn twisted about as billowing dust and dirt rolled toward her.

“Chane!”

Chane was farther down the tunnel with Ore-Locks when three sounds stunned him in rapid succession. Shade let out a loud mewl of warning, and Chane shoved the cold lamp crystal into his pocket, reaching for his swords. Before he could draw them, he heard rocks falling overhead, and then Wynn cried out, “Chane!”

A cloud of dust and loosened earth filled the coal pocket between him and her, nearly blocking out her crystal’s light.

Chane heard rocks crashing down within that cloud, and still he lunged forward. He felt Ore-Locks grab his cloak and jerk him to a halt.

“Let go,” he snarled.

He turned in a frenzy, but faltered at the dwarf’s gaping mouth and wide eyes staring upward.

Ore-Locks shouted, “It is coming from—”

The rest was drowned in a thunder of crashing rock. Dust filled the air around both of them. Chane grew wild to reach Wynn as he looked back for her, but that choking cloud obscured everything.

Something lashed at him out of the dust.

He caught only a glimpse of a great, snaking tail with a barbed end, and he tried to duck. Its bulk caught him across the chest like a swinging tree trunk and slammed him against the tunnel wall. As the world darkened for an instant, he heard a metallic clang, and then Ore-Locks cried out.

Chane crumpled to the floor as the snaking tail whipped away. He clawed at the tunnel wall, trying to get off his knees, but a sudden pain made him fear he had been broken inside. Dust began settling over fallen stones in the crosscut, and he struggled up, looking for whatever had attacked them. At first he could not see Wynn at all, for something blocked his line of sight.

He barely made out the huge tail as its barbed end scraped the stone floor. Though the creature faced away from him, he could see it was taller and broader than a draft horse. Its back nearly reached the ceiling. Wynn’s light from beyond it exposed something else shifting on its back.

Folded leathery wings covered its upper body.

Chane saw the glint of scales all over it, down across its flexing haunches to its taloned rear feet. But the light around it was the wrong color, orange instead of the white from a sage’s crystal.

The creature shifted suddenly, stepping away up the tunnel with a scrape of claws.

Chane’s panic sharpened as he finally spotted Wynn and Shade beyond the creature. But he also saw that the flickering orange glow came from far beyond them.

“Run!” he tried to shout, but his maimed voice was drowned out by an echo of falling stones. As he drew both swords, for an instant he thought he imagined ...

Someone stood in the tunnel’s darkness between Wynn and the distant orange light.

That light suddenly died, leaving only Wynn’s glowing crystal, and all that mattered to him was reaching her.

Wynn saw a monstrous head snake out of the dust cloud, and the whole creature followed with a grinding scrape of claws upon stone.

Shade lunged back around her, barking and snapping.

The reptile opened its long mouth, and an acrid stench stung Wynn’s nostrils. It hissed as clear fluid spilled out of its maw. A shower of spittle sprayed out as its large, sooty rows of teeth clacked together ... and sparked.

“Shade!” Wynn screamed, grabbing the dog and throwing them both toward the tunnel’s far wall.

Spittle ignited, and flame burned along the wall where they’d been standing.

Wynn hit the far wall, toppling over Shade. She tried to keep Shade down as her staff clattered away across the floor. A curtain of fire spread along the far wall and the ceiling above from whatever the creature had spit at them. Wynn felt her forearm begin to sear.

Her sleeve was on fire!

She thrashed and whipped her arm against the tunnel floor, smothering her sleeve. While flailing, she caught a glimpse up the tunnel.

Before the flames died, Wynn clearly saw a black robe and wafting cloak illuminated by the fire.

She almost lost her fear of the beast coming at her as she saw him.

Sau’ilahk was there, watching her.

As flames suddenly erupted near Wynn, Sau’ilahk rushed halfway to her. She had not yet led him to the orb, and he could not let her die. Somehow she grabbed the dog and rolled clear, evading the worst of the fire.

Sau’ilahk still heard a roaring far behind him, but it did not pull his attention. He could only stare at the winged, reptilian creature filling the tunnel beyond Wynn.

That noise behind him, and the blast of orange light at the breach, could mean only one thing. There were at least two of these creatures down here.

Sau’ilahk did not think Wynn could escape them. Perhaps he could save her, but she had already led him into the seatt’s deepest place. The search could not reach much farther.

He had no fear of these creatures, no matter how long he remained. Their teeth and claws, even their fire, could not touch him. He could search at his leisure, ignoring them.

Wynn froze, staring at him, as if not believing her eyes. The sight of her stricken face sparked a sudden joy within him, and then he saw the creature behind her open its maw again.

A howl echoed sharply up the tunnel.

Shade charged toward Sau’ilahk. Chane rushed the creature from behind. Wynn scrambled for her staff.

Sau’ilahk had always hoped to kill her slowly. But the orb was all that mattered now.

Wynn would die, anyway, her last sight being that of him.

Sau’ilahk focused down the tunnel past Chane, past Ore-Locks, as far as he could see. And he blinked through dormancy.

Wynn almost screamed in anguish as Sau’ilahk vanished, and Shade snapped at empty air like a wolf gone mad. Amid terror, Wynn spun to face the creature behind her. She couldn’t help thinking that Chane had been right all along.

The wraith had survived and would now beat her to the orb.

The last thing that should happen was for the orb to fall into Sau’ilahk’s hands—to be reclaimed by the Enemy for whatever purpose it served. She couldn’t allow that at any price.

Whirling back, she saw Chane charging the creature from behind. She raised her staff, hoping to blind the creature before it spit fire again. Its maw was open and fluid dripped out, but it didn’t clack its teeth again.

The creature raised its large head, and its black orb eyes stared up the tunnel at Shade. Wynn was caught in hesitation when it suddenly snaked its head back around. Chane dodged aside, but the creature looked beyond him, fixating on Ore-Locks still lying against the tunnel’s side.

Wynn jumped a step as its head snapped back, but again it looked toward Shade. She heard scrabbling claws as Shade rushed by her, but her only thoughts were for the orb.

“Chane, no!” Wynn shouted. “Sau’ilahk is here, and he’s gone to find the orb. Don’t let him take it. Nothing else matters!”

Shade lunged in, snapping at the creature’s face. But the massive reptile only lifted its head out of reach. Chane didn’t stop at Wynn’s plea, and he came at the beast from behind.

The creature merely lashed its tail.

Chane ducked under, rolling to the tunnel’s other side. The tail’s barb shattered the wall where he’d stood, scattering chunks of rock everywhere.

“Chane, listen to me!” Wynn cried.

The creature fixed its eyes on her.

Chane regained his feet, still within reach of its tail. He held both his dwarven blade and the old, shortened one. His pale face was twisted like an animal’s about to snarl. She’d seen this before. He was lost in fury and a hungered drive to get to her.

How could she make him listen?

“Nothing matters but the orb!” Wynn shouted at him, and then ripped the cover off the sun crystal.

Chuillyon saw the reptilian monstrosity coming at full charge, and he bolted to the left. If he could gain its attention, he might draw it away from Shâodh and Hannâschi.

It came at him rapidly in a mass of scales, jaws, and thrashing wings. He ran between two of the huge coffins, but when he glanced back, it was not coming after him.

The monster swung its long head around, fixing on Shâodh, who stood between it and Hannâschi’s prone form.

“Keep moving!” Chuillyon shouted. “Give it two targets.”

With a quick blink, Shâodh appeared to understand, and he ran for the hall’s other side.

The creature swung its head toward him, fluid dripping from its mouth. A singular thought pounded in Chuillyon’s mind.

Someone had to survive.

He had not told anyone else of this journey. Even if they did not catch Wynn, one of them had to tell the guild of this place, about the proof found here, and that she’d come seeking something more.

Chuillyon glanced at Hannâschi on the floor, barely breathing, her long hair in a tangle across her face. Even at the cost of leaving her, one of them had to escape.

The creature followed his gaze. Its huge, dark eyes focused on Hannâschi’s prone form. It opened its jaws wider, as if about to spit.

Before Chuillyon could act, he heard Shâodh cry out, “No!”

Shâodh ran toward the creature, waving his arms. “Here! Over here!”

The creature pivoted at his noise, spitting, and its jaws clacked.

Chuillyon’s cry drowned under the flame’s roar.

Shâodh’s face filled with horror and his mouth gaped for an inhale. His scream never came out, and Chuillyon cringed back between two basalt coffins as the air ignited.

Flames erupted from the creature’s maw, lighting the whole hall in an orange-yellow glare. Amid fire, the barest shadow of Shâodh crumpled like cinders burning too quickly in a forge.

Everything happened too fast for Ghassan to react. He saw the young elf waving his arms and shouting to draw the creature away from the girl.

Ghassan dashed out to do something—anything—to help. Then fire burst from the creature’s maw, engulfing and incinerating the young elf.

The floor was covered in flickering, small flames, as if some ignitable fluid had been sprayed across the stone.

Ghassan’s mind raced. What could he do—what could anyone do—against such a monster? In desperation, he began drawing shapes and sigils in his mind’s eye, chanting quickly but softly as he focused on the creature. Perhaps he could befuddle its mind.

His thoughts hit a wall, and then a backlash struck him.

Ghassan reeled against the base of one basalt statue as the whole chamber dimmed before his eyes. He forced his eyes to stay open, and the blackness faded. He never had a chance to ponder what had gone wrong.

The creature swung its head again, this time looking at him.

Chuillyon watched as the creature looked toward the hall’s entrance. He silently crept forward between the immense basalt statues, following its gaze.

There was Ghassan il’Sänke. Still in shock, Chuillyon could not comprehend how the Suman sage could be here.

Il’Sänke pushed off the base of the basalt coffin, wavering as if injured or ill.

Chuillyon looked numbly at the flames still writhing from blackened stone around the lump of Shâodh’s charred remains. He could see no way to reach the hall’s portal, and the nearest breach held some trap that had struck down Hannâschi. Shâodh was gone, and Hannâschi appeared barely alive. And what could one Suman metaologer do against this thing that had come out of the other breach?

Again, someone had to survive to tell of this place. No matter Wynn’s reason for coming here, or what she sought, the guild had to know of the seatt’s existence and of a monster in its depths.

Something had to come from all that this had cost.

The creature’s head whipped back toward Chuillyon, and he peered around the coffin’s base. Its maw opened once again, spittle dripping from its jaws to the floor.

Ghassan gained his feet and took a stumbling step as he began to chant.

“No!” Chuillyon shouted.

Ghassan froze in silence.

“Go!” Chuillyon shouted. “Tell our own of this place. Go ... now!”

Ghassan’s brow furrowed as either anger or frustration passed across his caramel features. But Ghassan was so close to the open portal. He could escape this hall.

“Get ready to run!” Chuillyon called. “I’ll distract it.”

He steeled himself, hoping that when he died, it would be quick, if not painless. But he saw no choice. Ghassan was the only sage here with a chance.

Before Chuillyon could move, Ghassan bolted.

Chuillyon saw the Suman run straight for the wide breach from which the creature had emerged—and not for the exit out of this place. Chuillyon was stricken cold as he watched Ghassan launch himself into that opening and fall from sight down the shaft.

Chuillyon could not breathe. His mind went numb as any frail hope withered, thinking that all this would die with him. Why would Ghassan kill himself in such a futile manner? Did he fear the creature would pursue him, and he preferred another death?

Chuillyon was alone as he heard claws upon the hall’s floor.

The creature rushed him, and all he could do was retreat to the wall between the coffins. The reptile came too rapidly for him to dart along the wall, and its head thrust in at him only an arm’s length away.

A sadness like no other crushed everything inside of Chuillyon.

Ghassan’s self-destructive act, Hannâschi’s helplessness, and Shâodh’s burned bones overwhelmed all other thoughts as he looked in the creature’s black glistening eyes.

He could not bear any more sadness and loss. All he had left was a moment to pray.

Chârmun ... fill me with your absolute nature ... in my sorrow of failure.

“Nothing matters but the orb!”

Chane heard Wynn’s shout on the edge of his awareness, but it brought only a ripping sense of denial. Hunger, fury, and his love for this woman tangled, becoming one and the same. Then he heard her chanting softly and saw her thrust out the staff’s uncovered crystal.

Chane lashed out at the winged creature’s tail with both blades, trying to make it turn on him.

“Chane, don’t!” Wynn cried. “Go!”

No searing light filled the tunnel.

He halted, looking to her. Why had the sun crystal not ignited? Wynn raised her shocked eyes to the end of the staff. Something had gone wrong. Chane would have screamed if he had a true voice.

But the creature did not spit fire again.

Shade snarled and weaved, trying to stay between it and Wynn. The scaled beast raised its head out of reach, but its attention was fixed on Shade.

Wynn bolted forward. She tried to slip by, but the creature’s neck snaked down and cut her off. It would not allow her to pass. She locked eyes with Chane, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

The desperation on her face knifed Chane in the chest. She grew still, looking at him, and her voice was frighteningly calm.

“If you care anything for me,” she called, “you will listen. What matters to me here is who I am ... and it matters more than even what I mean to you. Go after Sau’ilahk. Get to the orb first.”

Chane took another step.

Wynn shook her head, and this time her voice was barely audible.

“If you love me, then go ... for me.”

Chane shuddered.

Those words stung him more than if she had simply told him to leave her and never return. To deny what she asked and save her, or to do as she asked and lose her, was crueler than any choice she had ever forced on him.

He let out a hiss of anger and panic. The feral thing at the core of his nature struggled beneath the violet concoction that had kept him awake since they had first headed under the mountains. He could not take his eyes off Wynn, even as she turned to face the creature hovering just beyond Shade’s bared teeth.

The creature was poised in stillness, but for how long?

If you love me, then go ... for me.

Chane cringed in anguish as Wynn’s plea kept rolling through this mind. How could he deny what she claimed by not doing what she asked?

All he could do was turn and run down the tunnel.

Ore-Locks had barely regained his feet. As Chane rushed by the dwarf, he snarled.

“With me—now!”

Ghassan kept falling down the shaft, out of control, still dazed by the backlash of his failed sorcery on the creature. Chuillyon’s demand that he flee still left him shocked, but there was much more at stake here than just revealing the discovery of Bäalâle Seatt. Chuillyon had not seen the frightening hints in the translated poem.

Ghassan feared whatever Wynn might find and remove from this place. He had to learn her true purpose at any price. As he fell, he had no time to regret leaving the old elf to such a death.

Wynn did not yet know that the wraith had followed her. It had not killed her, so it could only be using her for the same purpose as Ghassan sought. If her search had anything to do with something left behind by enemy forces, the wraith could not be allowed to reach it first.

Ghassan had to survive, just as Chuillyon had said.

His shoulder clipped the shaft’s wall.

He tumbled as his body careened off the jagged walls. A rock protrusion ripped his sleeve. Even dazed, he knew he could hit bottom at any moment, and he forced his mind to focus amid vertigo.

Ghassan closed his eyes, seeing only the shaped sigils igniting in his thoughts. With air rushing past and ripping at his clothing, he pushed against the shaft’s walls with his will, trying to slow his rapid descent. But all he felt and heard were bits of stone breaking when he collided with the walls, and he barely heard clothing and skin tear as he plummeted through the darkness.