Darius Chapter 38

Heldrus looked at the crevice, then back at his horse.

Then at the crevice again.

His simplest approach was obvious. Get on your horse, face east, and ride until the sun comes up.

Then keep going.

But if the sheep went in there, it was likely that Peskimir did too. He had to see her one last time and finish the job that he started when he stabbed her at the Healing House. Letting her live as one of those monsters was cruel.

He drew his sword and walked into the gap, taking a few steps before he turned to his side and shimmied to where the sheep had been pulled from. He waited, listening and watching for the creatures that stood just inside the mountain. They stepped away, carrying the kicking, bleating sheep between them. Like Peskimir, they were red, scaly creatures with a set of claws at each limb. These two were fully formed, encapsulated by the infection from head to toe. It wasn’t clear what they were doing with the sheep.

Food? Taking it somewhere to be fully infected?

He couldn’t get the stone slabs to part, but he was thin enough to squeeze through, one emaciated limb at a time. The ‘low-everything’ diet he and Peskimir had endured for weeks was paying off, and he yanked his head through last with a light grunt as his ears scratched at the rough rock, grazing them. In front of him was a winding passage, its walls made up of jagged rocks that poked out over the small path. He could hear the sheep’s monstrous cries echoing off the walls, guiding him further into the heart of the mountain. He had no idea what he would do if he rounded a corner and found himself face to face with one of the creatures, but he put faith in his sword skills and pushed on. He’d already encountered two of the creatures, there couldn’t be that many more snaking around the mountain.

The bleats guided him into a series of caverns with honeycomb like structures on the walls, each containing a display of the complex root system, all colored with the intense red that adorned the diseased plants above. It was cold inside the mountain, like the snow above created a layer of freezing insulation inside. The roots must’ve extended far, far below to where the ground held some semblance of warmth. That, or the creatures just liked decorating.

Heldrus stayed deep in the shadows when he heard the slow thump of someone, or something, approaching. Its steps made a hushed flump, and when it rounded the corner, Heldrus could see why. The beast had the legs of a cow, but covered in thick, sweeping fur that picked up clumps of dust and dirt as it moved. The flump was produced by the sound of its hair dragging along the ground, followed by its ambling foot landing on the tangle of hair it was covered in. It had a short, hairless body, and its back was broad and scaly, wide enough that one of the more humanoid creatures was sitting on top, kneeling. Heldrus flattened himself into the catacomb, holding his breath as they passed. The beast stopped and sniffed the air for a second, but the rider didn’t seem to notice.

Even monster guards fall asleep at their post.

He was alarmed at the intelligence these creatures seemed to exhibit – it far exceeded the rabid mindset Peskimir had been in earlier – they were almost humanlike so far, showing signs of teamwork, communication and animal taming, not to mention a guard regimen. When the coast was clear and he stepped, ready to go deeper, he couldn’t hear the sheep anymore. He was on his own.

He chose a faster pace, figuring that the less time he spent here, the better. He wasn’t exactly sure what his goal was, either – finding Peskimir was beginning to feel hopeless, and so was escaping – he'd drifted through so many hallways that they all started to jumble together.

As he went deeper, the air started to warm up, rising just above the freezing temperature he’d been enduring. A distant thrum became audible, but he couldn’t tell how long it had been there.

It just started.

He pushed on, hiding in the shadows where the braziers couldn’t cast their light. The further he got, the more often he would find himself cowering against a wall, struggling to steady his thumping chest as the creatures passed by mere meters from him. At times, he would lay in wait for minutes, biding his time while a band of the creatures ambled through. They wore bland expressions, nothing like the rage that Peskimir had when she’d attacked him, or the shock in her eyes when she was being consumed. After climbing a small rise to avoid a wandering pack, he found himself lying flat on his belly, looking out over a monstrous cavern.

Stretching out before him was a room so large that it made the mountain feel hollow. He couldn’t see the wall on the other side, veiled in darkness. Thousands upon thousands of the creatures swarmed below, creating a sea of clicks and snarls as they communicated. Most were occupied with the multitudes of egg sacs stuck to the walls, rising as high as fifty feet in some cases. These sacs were being reached with shoddy scaffolding – effectively piles of rocks lumped up against the wall. The others were carrying or processing the sacs and the creatures that came out of them. Heldrus squinted closer and saw the ‘baby’ creatures. They were born bright red, with the scales that Peskimir had grown, and they squealed.

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But there was one thing in the room that interested Heldrus more than anything else. A giant, floating orb was suspended in the center of the cavern, pulsating and thrumming even louder now. It was a deep purple, almost black in the center, and fluorescent pink vapors flowed around it, fading into the air. The creatures hoisted the ‘babies’ up onto a stone altar sitting below the orb, placing their curled forms onto the cold surface. The orb sent down a black beam, almost instantaneous in its descent, and the creature would grow, until they were the size of the monsters that lifted it out of the egg sac. From there, huge, ruby-red brutes flung them off the altar and snarled an order at them. Minutes later, the newborn monster was easing a baby out of an egg sac and repeating the process.

The brutes are like captains, or lieutenants. I’m not sure I want to meet the general.

There was also a second altar, placed next to the first. This one was dirty and covered with vestiges of the outside world, like sheep wool and torn human clothes. The line extending from it was for those that had touched the plants and been brought here by the infection, their minds taken over. Heldrus could see the two guards from before holding the bucking, bleating sheep. It hadn’t relented since they’d first captured it.

If she hasn’t gone through the altar yet, she’ll be in that line.

He had no way of finding the correct tunnel to get to wherever that line originated, unless he was lucky enough to find another set of guards clutching a kicking and screaming animal. He wriggled around, watching the tunnel he’d climbed out of, but luck wasn’t on his side.

His next option was to climb down the honeycomb of holes in the cavern, likely the homes of past egg sacs. From this height, the creatures at the bottom looked only a smidge bigger than ants – at least a two-hundred-foot drop. He’d climbed down the castle walls only months ago after his hasty and foolish decision to meet Peskimir in the woods, and it hadn’t gone well, slipping and falling onto the roof of the Royal Forge. He lost his train thought of thought for a moment as he pondered what would have happened if he hadn’t gone out to the kalforest that day, or if he’d given up hacking through the vines and left Peskimir high and dry. She might’ve still been human.

Focus.

Seeing no other option, he grasped the edge of his lookout point, stretching out one leg to touch the edge of the nearest honeycomb cell. The brittle, pointy edges crumbled when he gave them a kick, but the thicker slab underneath it seemed sturdy enough. He came back to his ledge and crouched, gathering the courage to commit to leaping.

He imagined Peskimir up on the altar, the black beam advancing the growth of the scales until she was mindless like the other monsters. She was already the height and size of them, so perhaps the beam would turn her to something more grotesque, like the beasts giving orders. He was fired up now, and he got one step of a run-up before launching himself off the ledge and over the two-hundred-foot drop, landing in the wall with his hands gripping the granite edge. Some small pieces of rubble fell, but he was steady. Safe.

He looked down at the line of half-transformed animals that he was headed for. He wanted to drop down at a place where he could keep an eye on the movement of the line – a place where he could strike down Peskimir and any other in his way before they turned her fully into one of them. To get there, he had to climb sideways through the small hollows. He counted how many cells it was before he would be able to downclimb.

Eight, nine, ten...eleven.

He was lucky he’d managed to find himself at this ledge in particular. If he’d come out on the opposite side of the orb, he would’ve been climbing across far more cells. A quick glance suggested seventy at least. He came as close to the edge of his cell as he could, then stepped out over the chasm with one leg, moving it around the thin wall and into the safety of the next cell. He foot slipped on some kind of dried-up membrane, and he kicked it out, letting It float down to the ground. Moments after, he regretted the action, praying that none of the creatures looked up to see where the membrane covering their head had fallen from. A quote that was favored by the revolutionaries of Mouse’s Melee came to mind.

‘The downtrodden are not given the time to look up.’

He hoped it held true with downtrodden demons worshipping a purple orb.

The creatures continued as usual. He breathed a sigh of relief and committed to moving to the next cell. It was reasonably easy given the good grip of the walls. They were pockmarked with little holes and raised bumps that made gripping them feel quite secure. He tried not to get complacent – it had caused his undoing the last time, and the stakes were far higher now. The rest of the sideways climb was similar, repeating the same process from hollow to hollow. The last cell was quite close to the roof of the cavern, and when he stepped into it, the base of the cell wasn’t flat, it was a downward slope, meaning he was tipped slightly over the cavern below like a spiderweb in the corner of a roof.

Eager to find smoother footing, he started the downclimb. Working out the ideal technique was dangerous, and nerve-wracking. He tried gripping the top of the cell below him with both hands but lowering himself down felt awkward and prone to too much risk, so he eventually settled on straddling the tenth and eleventh cell, one foot in each. From there, he gripped the wall between them with both hands, and stepped down, one limb after another, until his feet lay flat on the cell below him.

He took a moment to check below him and make sure that there weren’t a thousand red faces waiting for him to climb in range of their claws and fangs. They still worked studiously, not noticing the human-shaped dot scaling the egg sacs that might once have belonged to them.

One down, a gazillion to go.