“What… what are they?”

Nora’s anger seemed to wash away the moment she noticed the ghostly hounds cowering in the center of the island. The wolves circled each other, refusing to go anywhere near the ring of sludge keeping them trapped. I turned to her then, watching with a half smile as the red blotches coloring her cheeks faded.

“Meet the beasties hunting Gabby,” I said with a swinging flourish of my arm.

“Beasties?”

“Would you rather I called them Reginald, Warren, and Bert?”

Nora looked at me for a long moment with her brows dropped and her forehead furrowed. “Are you high?”

“I can not express how much I wish I was in words.”

That seemed to placate her for the time being. Either that or she just had no time to deal with what was happening. “Come on, we have to get to the Hollow.”

I ignored her, eyeing the ghosts as I trotted to Stella and knelt down beside her. “You okay, girl?”

“What did you do to her?” Nora barked, joining me on the floor having just noticed the sprawled dog panting desperately there.

“Can you stop asking questions for five minutes?” I grumbled.

Nora’s hard glare burned a hole in me but she did as I asked and remained quiet. Her fingers dipped into one of her pockets and she drew out a small green-hued potion. I stiffened at the sight of it. Green equaled poison in my mind.

“Relax,” Nora said. “It’s not much, but it should give her a small bit of stamina back.”

Relaxing wasn’t something I could do until my girl was up off the floor, sitting on her haunches and scratching at her ears with a hind leg. The itch satiated she looked at me, panting softly with her tongue hanging out. My lips lifted as I gave her an extra scratch. Stella closed her eyes, leaning into it.

“Good girl, no one can herd like you can.”

Her tail went wild at the compliment even though I’m fairly sure she had no idea what I actually said. I smiled and bounded to my feet, sticking out a hand to help Nora to hers. Together we bolted from the main hall back the way we came with the shrill howls of the ghostly wolves to add extra speed to our steps.

The moment before we turned around a bend I looked back at the glowing gemstone still bouncing and spinning amidst the specters. There was something special about that thing. Something that whispered pure temptation in my ear even from this distance. If members of my clan weren’t in imminent danger, I would be standing at the edge of the acidic sludge, figuring out a way to get my hands on it. Maybe I could come back when we were whole again.

“Joe, hurry up. I’m not coming back for you again.”

I sighed and sped up, catching the others as we weaved through the maze of tunnels.

Nora was sure of her path, taking bends I wouldn’t have thought were the right ones. The pile of rubble littering the tunnel floor and the still wide open door of the room I’d found the ghost wolves in soothed my worry that we’d been turned around. Past those points, I was at a complete loss. You’d think after I’d spent so long mapping these tunnels I’d have a better idea of where I was but that wasn’t true at all. I know I’d been all puffed up and sure of myself before but the longer we stayed here the more I realised I’d forgotten. Or perhaps this section of tunnels was just something I hadn’t spent much time in. Theo and his movements had been my biggest concern during my past scouting endeavors.

There was a reason I had drawn map after map in my little notebook. I couldn’t trust my memory to hold the map in my mind's eye forever. No one could, surely. I was glad Nora was sure of the path we were taking since it didn’t seem like she’d be willing to pause our forward rush to let me flick through my endless drawings.

The howling of the wolves had long since silenced by the time Nora came to a halt at a solid concrete wall. She pressed her fingers to it, a familiar frown crinkling her brow.

“Did we make a wrong turn?” I asked, trying to quiet my hectic breathing.

Don’t judge me too hard, I’m built for sprints not long-distance runs with hundreds of bloody tight corners. I’d have to pump a few extra points into my endurance skill if I wanted to keep the air in my lungs for longer periods.

“No,” Nora answered in a faraway voice. “I can’t remember the trick to open the door.”

I focused on my Blindsense for the briefest of moments, confirming that Nora’s suspicions had been right, there were two very bright green auras pulsing on the other side of the wall. I spun in a circle, looking for even a hint of red. For as far as my skill would allow me to see, we weren’t in danger.

So why were the hairs on my neck sticking out like the quills on an aggravated echidna?

Boopzy stuck his head out from beneath the tangles of Nora’s bun, his tentacles following after. I don’t know how the very round creature had managed to hide there so easily and I didn’t have the time to figure it out. With a screeching cry the Tentarat through itself at the wall, his suckers sticking him in place. With squelching pops, he scuttled up and down, following the movements of Nora’s hand like he was trying to play a game.

I shook my head and switched from my Blindsense to my Enhanced Shadow Eye. The blast of gleaming sparkles almost blinded me, the golden shade much more intense than Boopzy’s dull blue glow or the dim light cast by the sparse patches of moss.

I blinked past the glow, doing that weird thing where I unfocused my eyes and looked for patterns inside the golden sparkles. I knew there had to be something hidden here. Why else would my standard silver sparkles be golden?

I expected to find an arrow in the glimmering lights but instead, it highlighted a single large chunk of rock that was stuck in the concrete. The stone was almost pure white and stuck in the topmost righthand corner. As the sparkles shifted to form the image of a key I gently shifted Nora out of my path and reached up, pressing firmly at the stone.

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At first, I thought the sparkles had lied to me. My finger bent against the pressure, the tip of it turning almost as white as the stone before the thing finally gave way and sunk deep into the wall it was lodged in. The entire wall shifted with a loud groan, letting loose a blast of dust and concrete chips.

I coughed and spluttered, having sucked so much of it in when I gasped. That’ll learn me. I spat out most of it, waving Nora away when she moved to smack my back with her heavily gloved hand. I didn’t need broken bones on top of diminished lung capacity.

“Can you please die quietly?” Nora asked when she turned away and crept into the darkness on the other side of the door. “If your spluttering brings a monster down on our heads I will be… unhappy.”

“No… monster… you like… killing…” I managed between desperate heaves and wet hacking.

Nora lowered her axe just a little. Boopzy’s glow from her shoulder illuminated the disappointment on her face. She really had been hoping for a fight.

She sighed and shrugged her shoulders like she was trying to convince herself a moment of peace was a good thing. “Are they in there?”

I switched back to my Blindsense. “Yep, they’re there. Really close together too.”

A look of horror crossed over Nora’s face. “You don’t think they’re…?”

I frowned at her incomplete sentence. “They’re not dead. I don’t think I could see their auras if they were.”

“No, that’s not what… never mind,” Nora said, turning her back on me and marching deeper into the hidden room.

Stella followed her with me on her tail. When we cleared the threshold the heavy concrete wall creaked and swung again on its invisible hinges, fitting itself back into place so smoothly that the door section of it became invisible once more.

There was no moss growing on these walls so we relied on Boopzy to light our path. Nora held him up high in her hand like he was a lantern. The tiny cringes I caught her making when his tentacles began to wrap around her wrist had my chest tightening in an attempt to keep back the laughter.

You like your head where it is, yes? Don’t laugh. Oh, but it would be so sweet. Almost worth the physical damage she would inflict upon me. I would have thought she’d developed a love for the adorable little beast by now. That didn’t seem to be the case, however. There was a solid foundation of tolerance for the Tentarat’s presence there but no love just yet. None that she was willing to show at least.

Boopzy would have to up his cuteness game. He was running out of time to win the warrior woman over.

“Nora glanced back at me one more time and whispered, “You’re sure there are no monsters?”

“Positive.”

“Gabby! Jacob!”

“Ah,” I bellowed, slapping my hands over my ears. It was too late though. Nora’s shout had been so loud it rang in my ears like a bell that just wouldn’t stop moving. “What the hell, woman?”

She ignored me, shouting the names over again just as shrilly as before.

“Nora?” A faint voice echoed back once Nora had stopped her screeching. “Is that you?”

“Oh, thank heavens,” Nora sighed as she floundered forward at a rapid pace.

I stumbled along behind her, inspecting the palms of my hands to make sure my ears hadn’t started to bleed. I was starting to see the benefits of lying. For one, I wouldn’t have been violently made deaf for the briefest of moments.

“So this is the Hollow is it?” I barked at Nora’s retreating back. “I was kind of expecting something a little nicer.”

Nora laughed and turned, running backward in the darkness. I swallowed, my whole body stiffened in reaction to her brazen action. One misplaced rock and she would be sprawled on the floor.

“This is not the Hollow you goose. It’s a bit further in. Hurry up.”

“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying,” I grumbled, spitting out the last chunk of wet dust clogging my airways.

“Nora, where are you?” Gabby’s voice screamed from a distance.

“We’re right here,” Nora called back.

Gabby appeared from the gloom beyond Boopzy’s dull glow on a pair of beating white wings, her feet skimming just above the floor as the ghostly wolves paws had done.

The burst of joy at seeing her was extinguished when Boopzy illuminated her broken face and the shredded strands of her once-fine armor. Her face was twice the size it should have been on one side. Her lip was puffy, her nose crooked and bleeding and one eye squeezed shut and oozing. The other side of her face was littered with paper-thin scratches, all of them still producing tiny beads of blood that grew and eventually rolled down her face, leaving a track of red behind. Even her wings were dirtied and missing feathers.

Nora roared at the sight of her, gathering the girl in her arms and crushing her in the hardest of hugs. “Who did this to you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Gabby cried in a desperate voice. “Jacob is dying!”

She pulled herself out of Nora’s rough hug and disappeared back into the darkness. We all charged after her. In the distance a spot of light appeared, growing taller and brighter as we neared it until it became blinding. The thunder of rushing water met my ears, growing louder with each step we took. The hard concrete beneath my feet became pitted. Puddles of what I hoped was water gathered in the grooves until we were all running through a thin layer of it.

“Hurry,” Gabby cried, disappearing from view.

Nora followed her, jumping through the pounding sheet of falling water that covered the exit. Stella’s ears folded back and her tail dropped but she followed Nora anyway. Her yelp was a dull sound over the thundering roar. I followed suit, trying not to gasp the liquid into my lungs when the icy chill of it struck me.

My knees buckled as I hit the ground hard on the other side. I tucked and rolled, avoiding landing on my face by the barest of margins. When I stood my mouth dropped open in wonder. The room we were in was not a room at all but an underground oasis.

The concrete of the tunnels had been overtaken by rich soil and towering plant life. Behind us the waterfall flowed in a powerful stream, sending clouds of mist over the underground forest. A river carried the water away on a meandering path that disappeared into the greenery. Overhead, a warm bright glow illuminated the sky. I couldn’t make out what the source of it was but I was fairly sure it wasn’t the sun. Birdsong filtered through the trees. The wind carried the musical notes to us ruffling the leaves all around.

It was a perfect, untouched paradise in a place it didn’t belong.

“What is this?” I asked.

“There’s no time,” Gabby wailed. “Please, please help him.”

The pain in her voice had me charging toward the broken form of the boy I’d once known. Like Gabby, his face was nothing but a beaten, swollen mass. His arms and legs were bent at odd angles and a pool of blood was gathering beneath him. Whatever had done this to him had given him the small mercy of rendering him unconscious.

I looked up at his health bar and tensed. The thing might as well have not existed at all. If the slither of lifeforce wasn’t blinking urgently I wouldn’t have been able to see it at all.

Nora cried as she crouched down beside me, “Do you have any health potions?”

I shook my head, unable to form the words.