“Run!” Gork shouted. The bone walls, woken by Nyan-Nyan’s inquisitive touch, collapsed in a wave from behind, cutting off their only escape path.
Fleeing tonnerians gained ground far faster than Gork, Terras, and Ruby, passing them on both sides. They shed their packs as the bone hands reached out from the walls.
Gork, too, was forced to drop his pack with his supplies and water. He carried only his weapons.
“Terras,” Ruby called as the group accelerated, “Can you stabilize the walls?”
Terras’s eyes widened as he looked up at the enormous walls leaning in from both sides, threatening to collapse.
“Use the potion!” she ordered. “We won’t make it to the entrance.”
Terras pulled the last vial from his belt and downed a gulp of the fizzing liquid. He clutched his stomach and stumbled to the ground. Before Gork could turn to help him, Terras’s arms spread wide. Vines lashed out, threading the spaces between the walls like scaffolding. The fleshy green vines instantly hardened into woody fibers. More strands ran up the sides of the walls, webbing the scaffolding in coils of curling creepers. Terras’s eyes blazed with white light as he channeled the powerful magic. He stepped forward and began running. The still-growing vines shot along the path, keeping pace with Terras.
“There are the Tombs!” Nyan-Nyan cried, pulling on Ruby. “Hurry!”
Bone hands erupted from the ground, grabbing at Gork’s ankles in vain. He quickly stomped free. A hand with a golden ring seized Ruby’s leg but was crushed by the end of Gork’s slashing long ax less than a heartbeat later.
The sand underfoot was no longer yellow but a dull, brownish red, as if dyed by human blood—maybe even the blood of those who first fought the hordes of creatures enslaved by the Dark Consul. As the gently sloping ground leveled and turned downward, the walls widened into a large courtyard and the tip of a dark pyramid rose into view. A fine mist swirled around its base.
“Don’t breathe the mist!” Ruby called as loud as her voice would carry. But the first tonnerians racing at the front of the group were already grasping their necks.
“The mist is solidifying in their throats,” Ruby said. Hastily, she reached into the pocket of her dress and withdrew a bottle of perfume. She spritzed her own face and then ran from warrior to warrior, spraying their faces with the antidote. Gork, holding his breath, grabbed two of the gasping tonnerians and pulled them to their feet, dragging them forward.
He followed the tonnerians onto a raised granite platform and stepped over a rune mark scribed in stone. The black pyramid loomed in front of him.
The strangling mist coiled about his ankles as if testing him and then fled.
“Why did the mist retreat?” Meeraz asked.
“We’ve been marked by darkness,” Torbin said, turning up his palm to show a perfect replica of the pentacle scribed on the granite, “for death. It is the sigil of the Midnight Queen—the harbinger of the Dark Consul. Her sign has been spotted by our spies in every corner of Arcadia. She has placed curses here as well, it seems. We should be extra vigilant.”
Horrified, Gork looked down at his own hand to find the same marking scarred into his tissue.
Nyan-Nyan pulled off her gauntlet and licked furiously at the scar.
“It won’t come off,” Ruby said, though she had no such marking on her hand. “Quickly, the Dark Consul will know we are here. We must hurry.”
Without stopping to rest, the tonnerians darted forward, swinging their arms downward to extend the blades in their forearm guards with a click as they locked into combat position. Gork noticed the warriors’ pairing: a male and a female together. He wondered if they were mates or if the tonnerian battle patterns merely used a combination of yin and yang tactics. The slightly smaller females surveyed the scene, pivoting constantly, their eyes and ears searching every corner while the males made guarding motions with their arms, in perfect rhythm, protecting their blind spots.
Gork looked at Meeraz, who had taken a position with Nyan-Nyan. She didn’t know the formations, but having seen her raw aggression in action, Gork doubted she would be a detriment. Rather, he pitied the first creature to take a swing at her.
Terras was the last to cross the rune. He looked down at his hand where the scar appeared briefly and then faded away.
“How did you do that?” Gork wondered.
Terras gave a sly grin and twisted his wrist, showing the underside of the Deeproot, now riddled with glowing red lines. “Fools. They just filled me to the max.” With a howl, Terras leapt forward, his body ripping into the shape of the great snowy timber wolf. He landed on his paws and charged through the ranks of the smaller tonnerians.
“Follow the wolf!” Torbin cried. “He can smell evil better than us.”
“He’s chimera now,” Ruby noted, answering Gork’s wondering expression, “part light and part darkness. All chimera sense fallen creatures, just as you or I sense sunlight and wind.”
“How?”
Ruby shrugged. “Another mystery I haven’t solved.” She lifted the hem of her dress and hurried into the center of the throng of sixty tonnerians. The threshold of the pyramid rose in a triangle shape high over Gork’s head. A sense of deep foreboding passed over him as he stepped into the shadow. He realized a moment later that he had taken Ruby’s hand. He looked over, delighted to see that she was equally surprised. She gave his hand a reaffirming squeeze.
“Together we go in,” Gork said. “Together we come out.”
“Agreed.”
Holding Ruby’s hand, Gork moved ahead into the darkness. All around, tonnerian eyes shone at him in vertical slits. Only now, the irises glowed red.
“That’s . . .” Gork whispered.
“. . . disturbing,” Ruby said with a swallow.
“The darkness grows,” Torbin said from nearby. His voice was even more of a growl than usual. “The enemy comes.”
Like a passing wind carrying tones of distant singing, a deep moan rose up and fell—a wail so forlorn, so awful, it summoned instantly that primordial emotion.
Fear.
“The howling is from the doomed souls,” said the princess.
“It’s wind,” growled Corix. “Stop trying to scare us. It won’t work.”
Gork drew out a torch from his pack and struck the oiled tip with a shower of sparks from his flint. The single source of light cast shadows of lithe forms darting about in the semidarkness.
Not all were tonnerians.
“Wyrmling clutch!” a tonnerian cried, slashing down with his blade to stab an unhatched egg half the size of Gork.
Tonnerians closed in on the remaining unhatched eggs, but the shifting shadows at the edge of the cavern descended en masse.
The dragonettes were fierce, but the thirty pairs of tonnerian fighting partners distracted and dispatched their prey with astonishing speed.
In moments the battle was over.
“Report,” Torbin ordered.
“Two warriors dead,” said a voice. “The wyrmlings separated them.”
“Stay by your fighting partner!” Torbin shouted. “Discipline!”
“It’s Corix and Felion,” said a tonnerian, looking up from the bodies of the slain tonnerians.
Torbin’s glowing red eyes closed, disappearing from the scene momentarily.
“His son,” Ruby whispered. “By the Goddess . . .”
“Can you do anything for him?” Gork asked. “We can’t lose Torbin now. He’s their leader.” Gork had experienced Ruby’s mysterious magic before. She had a way of helping people find the strength within themselves.
“I can try,” Ruby said. She let go of his hand and touched Torbin on the shoulder. His face turned suddenly in her direction, his eyes wide and fierce. His fang-like canines shone in the flickering light of Gork’s torch, while behind him, the Druid wolf devoured the carcass of a slain wyrmling.
Ruby leaned forward and whispered in Torbin’s ear. The lion-like tonnerian blinked once and turned away. Then he gave a single order.
“Forward.”
The Druid wolf looked up, licked his jowls and bounded ahead, followed by pairs of Tonnerians.
“What magic did you do?” Gork asked as he caught Ruby’s hand again, glad to be reunited. He had made an oath to protect, and Corix’s tragic fall was merely a reminder of what could happen to Ruby.
“No magic,” Ruby said. “I just told him his son was watching from beyond.”
“Make his son proud,” Gork mused. “Brilliant. But it ought to be a son’s duty to make his father proud.”
“A father is a son,” Ruby said. “Only better at hiding his faults.”
It was odd that she knew so much more about people, even though he was technically thirty-some-odd years older. Gork consoled himself in the thought that she probably didn’t know much about swinging forge hammers. Her fingers entwined in his were soft.
Sensitive.
The Druid wolf gave a howl, and the company turned right into a corridor that descended in a tight spiral. Gork lost count of turns.
Going back up this is going to be rough, especially if we’ve got enemies above us.
Ruby’s soft-soled shoes slipped on the slick, cemented stones. She went down, pulling Gork after her. He struggled to keep his footing but toppled sideways just as a spear thrust through a tiny hole in the wall, passing right over his head.
“Watch the walls!” Gork cried as he slid down the canted spiral.
More pikes thrust in from holes in the walls, but whatever hidden creatures assaulted them from unseen hiding places, they were no match for the tonnerians’ astounding reflexes.
Forearm shields blocked spears, their swinging blades cut through some of the stabbing poles.
Gork and Ruby were lucky enough to slide under the attacks. Moments later, the spiral ended in a dark and dank room.
For a few moments, only the faint wailing of the doomed souls sounded in Gork’s ears. The sounds were now undeniably cries of terror and anguish.
“There are torches here,” said a tonnerian.
Gork lifted his burning torch, which had lost a significant amount of its wood fuel in the frenzied descent. He was in a wide chamber with a low ceiling supported by round pillars every few yards. Halfway up each pillar was a torch set in a holder.
Gork approached one of the pillars. It was carved like a crouching gargoyle with two hands supporting the ceiling. A leather strap in the midsection of the gargoyle held a torch set in a metal bracket. Gork looked to Ruby for some idea of whether he should light the torch on the pillar. She gave no indication, only looked on with her ever-present, wide-eyed expression of hope.
His torch was already flickering—on the verge of going out. If he didn’t light another torch, they would all be plunged into complete darkness and unable to find either the portal or their way out.
Gork swallowed and pressed his burning torch to the one on the gargoyle.
The torch flames flickered, threatening to go out. Then red embers glowed, and slowly, a small yellow flame emerged. Gork gave a sigh of relief as, once again, light shone in the tomb.
Gork exchanged his dead torch for the one on the wall and followed the Druid wolf as he led a path through the disorienting maze of intricately carved pillars, his nose close to the ground.
Tonnerians fanned out protectively on both sides, darting among the shadows in pairs.
“How much farther?” Gork asked. He reached out and lit another torch in its holder. This torch sparked, giving off an acrid smoke. The black smoke rose and disappeared into the nostrils of the eight-foot-tall gargoyle. Red light flared in the gargoyle’s eye sockets, like stoked coals in a forge furnace.
“That’s not good,” Ruby said.
The gargoyle collapsed. Or rather, it appeared as though it was collapsing, dropping several inches from the ceiling into a squat. The head turned in Gork’s direction. “Who dares to wake us with the ancient fire?”
“Not me.” Gork looked around for someone else to blame but found nobody in sight except Ruby. Gork gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. “Looks like whoever woke you is gone. False alarm.”
“Aarrggh!” the demon bellowed. Its mouth stretched wide, and a torrent of flame gushed out. Gork leapt aside, drawing the fire away from Ruby. The errant flames lit several other torches which gave off similar ominous sparks.
“Wake!” the gargoyle commanded. “Find those who disturb our sleep.”
“Run!” Gork cried.
Terras gave a howl from farther up, and Gork raced toward the sound of the wolf. Ruby was lost to his view.
“Princess!” Gork called as a red glow from behind him cast long shadows against the array of pillars blocking his view like trees in a dense forest.
“Gork!” Ruby cried. Her voice echoed from every direction.
Gork darted around a pillar, finding nothing. “Ruby! Terras!” he called.
A tonnerian darted up behind him and grabbed his arm. “This way. Quiet.”
Terras gave another howl, not in the direction the tonnerian was leading him.
“What about Ruby?”
The tonnerian gave a hiss to silence him.
The sound of crumbling rocks and the thump of stone footsteps reverberated through the chamber. Gork realized what was happening. Terras was luring the gargoyles away.
Glad that the pillars offered enough cover to keep his torch, Gork followed after the tonnerian, joining the others after a dozen more paces.
Ruby!
The princess wrapped Gork in a tight hug as she came into his torch’s circle of light, just behind the female tonnerian that had found her.
The tonnerians led the way through pillars at a pace Gork could barely manage. Ruby, who carried precious little beyond a water skin and the few magical things hidden in the pockets of her dress, kept up amazingly well, if not better than Gork. He began to be jealous of the human girl’s long legs. Despite being spry for a human, she was a few inches taller than him and lightly built—though not as light as the Wood Elves. Whereas, Gork, who wasn’t quite five feet tall, weighed far more than the princess with all his tightly knotted muscle and dense, iron-like bone.
But none of that would avail him if the stone gargoyle fell on him. From the floor came the vibrations of the crushing footsteps of the approaching fire-powered gargoyles.
With a yip, Terras darted between two pillars and joined the tonnerians just ahead of Gork.
Where are the gargoyles? Gork wondered. Did he lead them away?
He was answered with a storm of rocks and debris as the pillar to his right exploded. Gork dove forward and rolled. He caught the princess’s hand as she rolled to safety beside him.
Together they stood just as the stone fist of a gargoyle swung again, clearing the remains of the pillar and showering Gork and Ruby in a hail of rock fragments.
Ruby gave a cry of pain.
The huge creature stepped into view. “Who dares wake us?”
Gork swallowed. The expedition was not going well.