Gachu and Avol hauled open the town entrance gates to let Yann and Anríq reenter.

“We thought you were dead for sure!” Avol whimpered. “We thought they took you off somewhere to torture you!”

Yann frowned at him. Why did Avol mention taking someone off to torture them? Were these townspeople really the ones responsible for Amala’s capture—and the capture of all these other people?

Anríq didn’t mention it. The two men walked inside and Gachu and Avol barricaded the gate behind them.

Avol rubbed his hands together in excitement. “So? Are you ready to restart healing everyone? You’ve been gone for so long.”

“We’re going to break the curse on this town, but not by healing everyone,” Yann replied.

Avol’s face fell. “You aren’t? Why not?”

“First of all, the process is too taxing on Anríq. He’ll die if he tries to cure you all, so we’re going to cut the process short by going to the source.”

Avol frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Never mind. You men can go back to your business. We’ll handle it from here.”

Neither Gachu nor Avol moved.

Yann shooed them away. “Go on. We don’t need you hanging around.”

“Are you sure?” Gachu asked. “We can get you anything or help in any way you need us to.”

“That’s all right. We’ll just go back to the church house. We’re both tired. We need to rest.” Yann eased away. Anríq went with him.

“But you haven’t done anything,” Avol pointed out.

“Like I said, we’re going to the source. We’ve been doing things you don’t know about. Goodbye. See you later. Take care of the town while we’re gone.”

Yann pulled Anríq the rest of the way down the street. They returned to the church house, but not without Gachu and Avol dogging them every step of the way.

The two men bombarded Yann with questions right up to the threshold.

“Where have you been?” Gachu asked. “We were worried sick about you.”

“You saw where we were,” Yann replied. “The Corsair captain asked us to go back to his home to save some of his people. Then he invited us to spend the night.”

“You abandoned an entire town stricken with a plague so you could save some of his people?!” Avol practically shrieked. “Have you lost your minds?”

“Not quite. He told us the secret to breaking this curse at its source—but don’t worry. This doesn’t concern you anymore.” Yann opened the door and Anríq entered first. “Goodbye,” Yann repeated. “We’ll let you know if and when anything happens.”

He shut the door in both men’s faces and turned to find Anríq wrinkling his nose in disgust. “Now I know why the Servants take a vow of silence,” Anríq remarked.

“Let’s get out of here before they break down the door.”

Yann took his place on one side of the table in the center of the main room. He grabbed hold of one edge while Anríq took the other side.

They moved the table out of the way along with the chairs and any other household goods lying around.

Anríq unhooked his club and tapped it on the floor.

“I sure hope you know what you’re doing,” Yann murmured.

“So do I.” Anríq hefted his club and made eye contact with Yann once. “Come over here and be ready to fight as soon as we get down into the tunnels.”

Yann crossed the room. He didn’t like where this was going at all, but he’d come too far to back out.

He took his place next to Anríq and tightened his grip on his glaive. Yann really didn’t want to go back into the Layers, but he didn’t get a chance to change his mind before Anríq raised his club.

He lifted it above his head and brought it down with a crushing smash on the floor between his spread feet.

The club let off a deafening thump of magic through the floor and the whole structure imploded under Yann’s feet.

The floor buckled and both boys pitched through into a Layer of pure Darkness.

It closed over their heads and silent cold cut off every sense. Yann felt himself rushing downward through a bottomless pit of fear and horror.

Then they broke through into another chaos Layer packed from one end of eternity to another with Darklings.

Yann spun around to confront them and slash his glaive at them, but he couldn’t find anything solid to push against.

Anríq turned the other way and smashed his club at a Darkling coming from that direction.

Yann swiped his glaive at countless tentacles spinning out of nowhere. He didn’t even see the Darklings attached to all those tentacles.

One of the monsters dove for him and cracked its mouth to swallow him. He dove for it, changed his trajectory at the last second, and stabbed for the thing’s eyes.

The Darkling bellowed in fury, reared away from him, and its own agonized thrashing blocked the others from getting near him.

He and Anríq fell past them, ricocheted off a dozen other Darklings, and smashed through what felt like a solid stone floor into a long, freezing-cold chute of black stone walls.

The tunnel swept both boys downward and curved sideways to spit them out into a long, horizontal tunnel.

Yann and Anríq tumbled over each other. Anríq’s club bounced off Yann’s shoulder and made him roar out in pain.

Neither of them could stop themselves until they somersaulted to a standstill somewhere in darkness.

“Yann….” Anríq croaked. “Are you okay?”

“Define, ‘okay’,” Yann grumbled.

Anríq chuckled. “Now I know you’re okay.”

“Where are we?” Yann asked even though he already knew.

Anríq’s hand brushed Yann’s arm. Then Anríq slid his hand down to the glaive shaft in Yann’s grasp.

A surge of tingling electricity rushed up the shaft and the glaive blade burst out in a brilliant glow of light. It lit up the tunnel so Yann could see everything that wasn’t there.

Neither Yann nor Anríq could stand upright in this tunnel. Anríq had to bend all the way over just to fit his big shoulders under the low ceiling.

“Well, I guess Mihaili got what he wanted,” Yann complained. “He got us into the tunnels.”

“Now it’s up to us to get out of them.” Anríq pointed behind him. “This way. You can go first since you have the light.”

“You did that on purpose, you coward!”

Anríq only grinned at him and waved his hand to invite Yann to go first.

Yann snorted, held his glaive in front of him as much to defend himself as to light the way, and started down the tunnel.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Why aren’t there any Darklings here?” he asked over his shoulder.

As soon as he said the words, a deep roar echoed up the tunnel from somewhere out of sight. Yann stopped walking.

He tried to see where the roar came from, but this tunnel didn’t seem to have any side branches or intersections. It was just one long smooth tube of nothing.

“Keep going!” Anríq murmured from behind.

“You keep going!” Yann snapped back. “This was your idea, not mine.”

“You want me to go first so you can hide behind me?” Anríq teased.

“NO!” Yann hissed. Another roar cut him off.

This one sounded louder. It could only be coming from directly ahead.

Yann inched forward. He didn’t want to meet any Darklings, but what else did he and Anríq come down here to do?

These Darklings stood between him and the captives he and Anríq had to free. Yann had to either fight Darklings or run home in defeat.

Running home in defeat was no longer an option.

That roaring sound called to him. Part of him wanted to meet it as some kind of test of his true destiny. He wanted to fight these Darklings even if he had to do it alone.

This had nothing to do with Anríq’s mission anymore. This was between Yann and all the things he’d been avoiding all this time.

He inched down the tunnel heading closer to the sound. It escalated to a steady din. He eventually realized it wasn’t just a single voice roaring in the Darkness. It was many.

The tunnel ended in a flared opening. The light from the glaive vanished into nothing.

“Be careful,” Anríq whispered. “The tunnel is ending.”

Yann could see that perfectly well, but he didn’t say that or turn around to make a snide remark.

His attention fixed on that sound in front of him. Where were they? Why didn’t they show themselves?

He stopped where the light disappeared and extended his glaive through the opening.

The light spread out beyond where the tunnel walls had confined it before. The light glowed a little brighter and illuminated a vast cavern swarming with Darklings.

They floated in the air, soared around each other, clung to the walls, and seethed on what looked like a floor below.

Anríq tiptoed forward, stopped at Yann’s side, and they both looked out at the pandemonium of hundreds of Darklings all jammed into this one cavern.

“The walls must be enchanted to stop them from escaping into the surrounding Layers.” Anríq pointed across the cavern. “The captives are over there.”

Another pitch-black opening vanished into the cavern’s opposite wall. That was the only spot in the whole cavern that didn’t reflect the glaive’s light back to Yann’s eye.

“How do we get across?” he asked.

He didn’t really want to know—because he already knew. The only way across was to fight their way across.

“How do you want to do this?” Yann cast one glance downward toward the floor.

He would die in seconds if he went down there, but he didn’t say that out loud, either. He didn’t think that because he was a coward. He thought it because it was true. It was a pure strategic assessment of fact.

He and his glaive might be able to slice off two or three tentacles before all the Darklings took him.

Anríq read his mind again. “You can’t go down there. I’ll go down there and fight them while you go for the captives.”

“How will I do that?”

“I’ll distract them down there. They’ll all pile down there to attack me. You’ll run around there.”

Anríq traced his finger around the cavern’s upper rim. Ledges and indentations covered the walls.

Darklings covered the walls, too. They used those ledges and indentations to cling to the surface.

“The fight will draw them away and leave the path clear,” Anríq finished.

“Something tells me they won’t all go down there. Some of them will stay up here.”

“Then you’ll have to fight them and get to that tunnel over there. Don’t wait for me. Free the captives and….” Anríq trailed off.

“And what? How will I get them out? I don’t have the magic to take them back through the Layers to the church house—even if I could find it again.”

“Just get the captives back into these tunnels—away from the Darklings. The Darklings are too big to fit in here. As soon as you get the captives away, Mihaili will let you go.”

“So you want me to leave you behind? Forget it!”

Anríq didn’t look up or smile. His eyes remained riveted on the Darklings down in the cavern. “Saving the captives is more important. One of them might have magic. Just get them out of there and back over here. I’ll take care of myself.”

“You haven’t been doing a very stellar job of it so far,” Yann countered.

Anríq pretended not to hear, unslung his axe, and took hold of it in one hand and his club in the other. “Get ready, Yann.”

Yann gave up trying to convince him. It sure looked like he and Anríq were doing this.

Yann locked his eyes on the opposite tunnel. Nothing mattered but getting over there alive.

He put Anríq as far as possible out of his mind. Yann would just have to trust Anríq to hold up his end of the bargain.

Anríq backed up a dozen feet further from the tunnel opening. He rocked on his heels a few times and then charged.

He yelled out, “GO!!” as he passed Yann and then Anríq launched himself high into open space in the middle of the cavern.

All the Darklings turned on him—and ran straight into his weapons. He arced to the apex of his flight, swung his axe and his club, and both weapons struck the Darklings who came at him first.

A catastrophic explosion went off from the first blow of his axe on a huge, fanged Darkling’s head.

The blast detonated three Darklings and cleared a path for the others to hurtle inward to attack him.

The blast also cleared a path for him to start falling through the cavern toward the floor teeming with teeth, tentacles, and spiked bodies.

Yann didn’t wait around to see anything else. As soon as Anríq flung himself out of the tunnel, Yann took off running for the perimeter ledge.

Anríq’s plan didn’t work as quickly as he hoped it would. Too many Darklings crowded the cavern already.

Dozens of them converged on Anríq even as he fell lower through the cavern. The Darklings clinging to the walls couldn’t get near enough to attack him. They had to wait their turn—and what better place to wait than on the walls where they belonged?

Yann ran into the first one blocking his path. It stared down into the darkness where continuous explosions kept flashing and blazing from Anríq’s club.

Yann took the Darkling by surprise and decided to go for his old strategy. He planted his foot on a higher indentation, launched himself at the creature, stabbed his glaive into one of its eyes, and landed on its head.

The thing reared and thrashed bellowing to the ends of the earth. He had to steady himself before he balanced well enough to stab into the other eye and blind the thing.

It erupted in rage and pain, thrashed even harder, and wound up striking the other Darklings near it.

None of them left the ledge. Yann had to come up with another route across the cavern.

He sprang off that Darkling and vaulted from one to the next getting closer to his destination.

Stepping on them attracted their attention to him, but at that moment, another deafening boom went off far down on the cavern floor.

A brilliant flash of light pounded all the way to the walls and sent dozens of Darklings hurtling away from Anríq standing at the center.

He swung his club in all directions. Magical explosions detonated from his club every time he hit something.

He leveled enough Darklings to make way for more to come in from all sides. The battle lured the Darklings off the walls and they plummeted down to land on top of him.

Yann barely sprang off in time, hit the wall, and scrambled for a foothold before he wheeled off into the void.

He clawed his way back to the ledge and hesitated when he saw the mayhem unfolding below him.

He could barely see Anríq at all under all those Darklings. Only the continuous thumps, booms, and explosions coming from Anríq’s club showed that he was still down there and that he was still alive. How could Yann leave Anríq down there alone?

Yann took a deep breath, dragged his eyes away from the battle, and focused on the path in front of him. The opposite tunnel hovered right in front of him. He could make it.

He sidestepped down the ledge, but his own uncertainty seemed to magnetize the Darklings back to him with an irresistible pull.

Four of them rocketed out of the confusion below. One of them hit the wall in front of Yann and stuck there.

The monster turned in his direction hissing and roaring. Its tentacles whipped and slashed the air, cracked toward Yann, and would have knocked him off the ledge.

He swiped with his glaive, but right then, another two Darklings landed on either side of him, one above him and one below him.

They all advanced to close the noose…and then the fourth charged him from out in the middle of the cavern.

Its huge mouth studded with fangs rushed straight for him. It would swallow him entirely. He had to take the only avenue of escape left to him.

He dove off the ledge flying right for the Darkling, hauled back his glaive…..and dropped.

The Darkling sailed toward the wall where Yann had just been standing. It zoomed past his head with all its tentacles snaking through the air.

He fell toward the creature’s stomach and drove his glaive into its abdomen with all his strength.

The blade sank past the skin and a foot up the shaft. Yann’s body kept going and slammed into the Darkling’s underside.

The creature kept going, too, smashed its head into the rock wall, and bellowed as the glaive struck home. All the other Darklings pivoted around on the wall trying to see where he went. He couldn’t stay here.

He wrenched his glaive free and dropped onto a different ledge farther below the one leading to the opposite tunnel. He couldn’t get there from here.

He didn’t care about that. He got away from them, but only for now.

They all leapt off the wall to hunt him down, but he still had one advantage. Too many Darklings crowded this cavern. They couldn’t move freely without crashing into each other.

The remaining three dove into the swarm, but they had to fight their way through every other Darkling just to find him.

He took off running around the cavern’s perimeter walls. He was probably already dead, so he threw all caution to the wind and sprinted at his top speed.

He sprang from ledge to ledge and foothold to foothold barely keeping ahead of the Darklings pursuing him.

They bounced off the walls, collided with their neighbors, and fought each other to get near him.

By the time they figured out where he was, he was already running off somewhere else.

He made it all the way back around to this original starting place but fifteen feet below the tunnel he and Anríq used to get here.

Yann didn’t have time to go back up there and then retrace the route the Darklings already knew he wanted to take.

The deafening booms of Anríq’s club kept shuddering the cavern from below. How much longer could Anríq keep this up?

Yann didn’t have any more time to screw around, so he took off in the only direction that made sense.

He hurdled out into the cavern’s central shaft again, landed on another Darkling, and vaulted from one to another getting closer to the opposite side.

The Darklings he stepped on roared and spun away from Anríq to come after Yann instead, but he leapt so fast from one to the next that they only wound up attacking each other.

His foot slammed down on one last Darkling and he propelled himself up into the opposite tunnel.

Another Darkling dove for him, snapped its teeth together in a devastating chomp, and bit down on empty air as he somersaulted into the tunnel.

End of Chapter 43.