I nodded to show Wren that I understood, then mouthed, “Wraith Pits” to Tansy and Usim.
“Oh!” I thought back. “Thanks.”
I nodded at the light--the opening in the wall--until Wren followed my gaze. She indicated that she understood what she was seeing. Then I grinned at her and suddenly dove forward. I enjoyed the flash of panic on her face when she realized I was going to make a terrible, deadly clatter that would rouse the wraiths ... but I turned to smoke before I hit the floor.
I drifted to the left, spreading my cloudy self as wide as possible. Checking for other wraith Pits. Like, if there were three, maybe there were four or five or ten. I didn’t see any, though, not even from the most far-flung corners of my self. However, I did notice that these Pits were deeper than the first one we’d seen. More like six feet, maybe, though I wasn’t sure if that meant the wraiths were stronger.
I didn’t have long until my mana ticked empty, so I just tried to get a quick sense of the size and shape of the cavern as I wafted back toward Wren. And I felt a strange force pushing at me from the wraith Pits.
Not a breeze. Not strong. Just a faint and disconcerting ... pressure. So faint that I couldn’t even tell if I was imagining it.
Still, I wafted faster just in case. I billowed a few feet past Wren before I had to resolidify. She grabbed my forearm to steady me, then we gathered the others and backtracked fifty yards. Once we reached a safe distance, Wren explained what we’d seen and I added, “These Pits are pretty deep.”
“Their depth doesn’t matter,” she said. “The only thing that matter is staying out of range of their first strike.”
“Gotcha,” I said. “So I only saw three of them.”
“That’s great news,” Tansy told me. “Only three murderous non-corporeal untouchable soul-killers.”
“Non-corporeal?” Wren sighed to Usim. “What kind of person says ‘non-corporeal’?”
I ignored them both. “And I also saw a pretty clear path along the left-hand wall of the cavern. One that stays at a distance from the wraiths.”
“It goes all the way to that exit in the wall?” Usim asked. “That tunnel?”
“Yeah, but we’re going to need to climb the last part. The hole is halfway up to the ceiling. At least the wall’s not vertical. It’s at a pretty good slope, and I think I saw hand-holds.”
“So either we give this a shot,” Tansy said, scratching her trunk, “or we find a way around this cave, then try to approach the kobold cavern from a different direction?”
“We should take the shot,” Usim said.
“I thought you were a timid bookworm,” I said.
“Bookbug,” he corrected, with a devilish little smile. “And I was.”
I shot Wren a look and said, “Kids these days. They grow up so fast.”
She ignored me, too busy gazing at Usim with an embarrassing amount of maternal pride. She was simply oozing fondness, which didn’t fit my image of Commander Wren of the Sixcove Invaders.
Fortunately, Tansy said, “Grow up? He’s still ankle-high to an olifarn,” and the moment passed.
* * *
Wren stalked into the cavern first, her head swiveling.
Usim waited for three seconds, like she’d told him, then he followed her. Tansy stuck closerbehind him, not more than a half-step, right on his heels, with her hands free. She was ready to chuck him at his mom if necessary. She took her debts seriously.
I waited for another three seconds before advancing. The cavern was cooler than the rest of the Old City. Maybe chilled by the wraiths, or maybe just because it was a natural formation. I didn’t know how underground cities worked.
Tansy’s boots scuffed the rocky floor ahead of me. Usim’s shoes scraped almost as loud. Every sound made me flinch, but the wraiths didn’t react. At least not yet.
A handful of curious moths fluttered around my head, then returned toward the stalactites. I felt them with my webtouch, which meant I was getting more sensitive. I ignored them, focusing on the floor around me--and toward the Pits. I placed my feet on solid patches of ground, moving steadily but slowly. Too slowly. Impatience urged me onward. Like, part of me felt that if I spent too much time there, even without making a sound, surely the wraiths would notice me. I was better off just making a run for it now that I’d gotten halfway to the left-hand wall, I was--
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
<--doing a wonderful job,> Princess whispered in my mind.
With a huff she said,
I smiled softly and kept moving slowly, my urgency suddenly gone. Thank all the spider gods for Princess. By the time I’d reached the wall, Wren had already climbed halfway up the wall to peer through the tunnel entrance toward the kobold village. Well, I hoped toward the kobold village. If Usim hadn’t led us in the right direction, she could be looking at a random block of the Old City.
Except she beckoned us to join her.
Usim climbed first, then Tansy.
Easy, quiet, smooth ... until Usim’s left foot dislodged a rock.
A nice, roundish rock, about the size of my head. With shifted a few inches then balanced there, one eyeblink from tumbling down the cavern wall to smash against every inch of stone before slamming into the rocky floor--and waking the wraiths.
Tansy lunged to catch the rock. Too late. It fell suddenly, struck a jutting stone, and shot sideways. I reached out desperately, trying to blip it into my domain, but it was beyond my range.
“Sorry!” Usim whispered, as his mother reached down for him.
When the rock landed, it sounded like a bowling ball tumbling in a dryer.
With shocking speed, a gout of pale eels erupted from the nearest Pit then slapped to the ground. The chill behind me intensified and I hissed, “faster, faster!” then scurried up the wall behind Tansy, cursing her big, slow-moving ass.
The eels rose from the cavern floor like a stench, then braided together into a humanoid form and swept toward me. Well, maybe not ‘swept.’ The wraith didn’t move all that quickly.
On the other hand, on the terrifying and possibly-fatal other hand, I didn’t climb all that quickly.
Ten feet above me, Wren yanked Usim into the tunnel. With a trumpet of effor,t Tansy dove in a moment later. I heard her bulky form scuffing and scrambling away as the air grew colder behind me, and the pressure--that uncanny pressure--increased until my head pounded.
I flung myself into the exit, clawing at the dirt with my fingernails. When I glanced behind myself, I clocked the wraith still eight or nine feet away. Stretching toward the tunnel instead of preparing to climb the wall. It wasn’t exactly a safe distance away from me, but it was more than an arm’s length. Or an eel’s length. So safe enough.
I squirmed faster in the opposite direction. The tunnel stretched in front of me, though not for long. I already saw a brighter seep of light coming from the other side, which had to be a good sign. I crawled faster away from the wraith, until I no longer noticed the chill.
Tansy inhaled deeply as she peered ahead of us. “Smells right,” she whispered. “Smells like kobolds.”
Wren nodded and gestured for me to squeeze past the others in the cramped tunnel. Three seconds of smoke did the trick. Then I resolidified beside her. The tunnel doglegged once before it reached the exit ... and sure enough, we’d found the kobold crater. I recognized the opposite side of the ‘valley,’ where the walkway was intact, stretching across the wall and looking perfectly, treacherously, inviting.
The walkway on our side was still down, though. On the bright side, we were closer to the bisected steeple, the lighthouse ... and the kobolds were gone. There was no movement in the village, no activity at all. Just a pile of rock-headed corpses near the now-cold firepit
Which, oddly, upset me. I mean, I’d killed plenty of them myself, and I would’ve killed more. Plus, it was good news: the absence of kobolds meant we wouldn’t get swarmed by camouflaged rock-headed monsters. Yet still, seeing dozens of bodies lying in a messy heap disgusted me.
I frowned for a moment, then realized what I’d just thought, about camouflaged monsters. Even though I wanted to get as far as possible from the wraith, first I needed to check that the kobolds really were gone. I gestured for everyone to wait and scanned the valley with Intuit.
Dozens of boulders looked vaguely like kobold heads. I checked each one. Beside me, Usim touched his mother’s arm and pointed to pile of rocks. She stared for a moment, then grew a foot and stared again--then shook her head. “Just rocks.”
I kept pinging Intuit, expecting a message like Kobold, Level 19. Like they’d returned with reinforcements. Even at a ‘mere’ Level 11, they’d beaten like us like drum. And now we only had Usim’s golden beads left. We’d burned through the rest in the five minutes we’d fought them the last time and--
INTUIT: Kobold, Level 2
Oh! Down beyond the village, between two mounds of mushroom, a rock hugged the wall. Well, a head attached to a spindly body. Still, that ‘level 2’ told me everything I needed to know. At most there were two kobolds in the village. They weren’t remotely a threat, not anymore
“All clear,” I said.
“Getting chilly back here,” Tansy said, her voice tight.
Wren grunted, then took Usim’s hand and stepped onto the narrow, upward-facing edge of the fallen walkway. It was only like a handspan wide. She helped him balance and they headed forward, toward the lighthouse. Moving faster than I’d expected to put space between themselves and the wraith, if it was still coming.
Tansy squeezed next to me. “All good, boss?”
“So far,” I said.
She lowered one big boot on the walkway, steadied herself on the crater wall, then followed them.
I swept the village one last time, then glanced in the tunnel. Surely the wraith would’ve started retreating by now? They didn’t venture far from their Pits, right? Maybe, maybe not. I either felt that uncanny pressure again or imagined that I did. So yeah, I took up the rear pretty damn quickly.
The bisected tower loomed high overhead as we approached, reaching all the way to the roof of this high valley cavern. It really was shaped like a lighthouse. And for a moment I had the weird sensation of being at the seaside. I didn’t know why until I heard a shhhhh of white noise, then spotted a trickle of water spilling down the side of the lighthouse, the source of the village’s stream. Good news. That meant water was draining onto this level from the one above: this really was an exit that led closer to the surface.
Still, I wasn’t entirely sure how we’d reach the exit in the ceiling. Inside the surviving half of the tower, the open half facing us, I saw three segments of disconnected stone steps, the remnants of the stairway that had once spiraled up the interior wall. There were undoubtedly more segments higher up, out of sight, and also on the fringes of the interior where I couldn’t see. We’d need to attach ropes to the higher sections or ... well, I could waft upward. Wren could jump, in her gemmed-steroid state, and maybe carry Usim, too.
As we gathered outside the lighthouse, I wondered if she could carry Tansy, too. Probably, though I didn’t know how Tansy would feel about that. Well, we’d figure something out. Wren put her hand on Usim’s shoulder before we stepped inside. He turned to look at her but neither of them said anything. They just stood there. The closer we came to leaving the Old City, the closer they came to saying goodbye.
“Shake a hoof,” Tansy muttered.
So I took point as we entered the steeple, with Wren and Usim close behind me and Tansy in the rear ... and webtouch twanged with urgent contacts.
“Back!” I snapped.
Too late.
A blast of shimmering sparks slammed us from above.