The road continued on for close to a Janessi mile, dim and old, the cracked and broken stonework occasionally slick under her feet, before it began to narrow. As the blood dried cold on her skin, she kept an eye on the ceilings, trusting the jangling bob and weave of her woodcraft even less than she had before.

They paused when the stamp and rustle of activity came to them on the path ahead. Silently, she held still for Caracel to re-cast his glamour spell. Then, she drew her blades—wincing as they stuck briefly in their dirty sheaths, and stole out into the castle proper.

Her stomach did a flip when they stepped out. She swallowed hard, casting a quick series of glances around her.

They were in.

The interior of the castle was a mix of worn flagstone and weathered stonework. Whoever had built it had clearly taken advantage of the mountain’s natural caves and tunnels. Unlike the straight-edged walls of most castles, this one swayed and twisted like a snake’s tail. Slabs of heavy stone hemmed the corridor in a fine, smooth masonry that looked as though it had been repaired once or twice. Crystals glowed from small alcoves, casting half-circles of white light every twenty feet.

As she looked to both directions of the corridor, she fought the sudden, clawing urge to panic.

Gods, we don’t even know where we’re going. This place takes up an entire mountain.

Fortunately, Caracel didn’t share her doubts. After a quick glance in both directions, he turned to the right.

They picked up a quick, quiet jog.

Not two minutes later, a large squad of demons ran past.

She flattened herself to the wall close to Doneil, heart leaping into her throat. The entire squad was deadly silent, and when they drew closer, she saw why. Though surprisingly humanoid faces peeked out from under steel and leather helms, the silver-tinged eyes held a vacant, cloudy focus, and the once rich brown skin had darkened into a sick, ashy color, spider-webbed through with black veins.

The undead.

She clamped her mouth shut, not daring to breathe. The closest ones ran by less than a foot away. Close enough to touch.

When they passed, she was shaking.

She caught her breath in slow, shivery gulps, peeking down the corridor where they disappeared.

They were heading right where she and the rest of the group had just come from.

Too close. That was too close.

The halls turned from weathered, tan-colored stone to a cleaner-cut stone carved in a different manner. Sometimes, the mountain’s natural caveform slid in; at other times, an older style surfaced, similar in age and texture to the old road they’d traveled earlier, though better lit. The crystals continued, some cracked and broken, their light decaying, others obviously repaired or replaced.

They wandered for close to an hour, tense and wary, Catrin never laying down her blades. The smell of sulfur clogged her nose, and her woodcraft had turned into a dull, pulsing headache. Tension tore a line through the back of her neck.

Then, when the despair had clawed its way up and lay choking in her throat, they found something new.

An intersection opened up, grander and more severe than the rest. Her attention snagged on a polished balustrade that curved elegantly into the space, and the clean, polished tile that lined the wall going up in a simple pattern. Crystal lights, larger and more exquisitely carved than the ones they’d previously passed, their patterns resembling sea shells, glowed with the soft white of moon-quartz, embedded in diamond-cut frames of obsidian. A lush carpet covered the center of the stairway in a deep burgundy color, reminding her of wine. Or blood.

She stopped at its bottom, staring up. Though the scent of sulfur permeated nearly everything in the castle, it smelled lighter up the stairs. Her gaze slipped up the slope of the stairway. Above, where the second flight switched back to connect with the next floor, a stronger version of the walls’ crystal lighting shivered and danced across the tile of the upper floor, visible through the gaps in the balustrade’s carved support spindles.

This light, though, had a different feel to it. Thick and energetic, like a storm pulse.

“There’s something in there.”

Behind her, Caracel’s voice was soft, awed. At first, she thought he was talking about the light, but his words didn’t make sense, and his voice was more distant than she expected.

She turned, and her body gave a start when she saw what had caught his attention.

Suns, I need to pay more attention to my surroundings.

The door was huge, standing what would have been two stories tall on a normal building if the castle’s ceiling hadn’t been so high, and absolutely covered in rentac script. Writing in paper and metalwork, stone and wood—hells, even carved into the threshold of the door—took up every clean nook and cranny, some looking as old and formal as the script they’d found on the ruins earlier, with other, newer ones seemingly tacked on as an afterthought.

One of them, a piece of thick paper with script that appeared to be written in demonic blood, by its dark, rust-tinted coloring, had been affixed just above the door’s handles, seemed to be significantly newer than the rest. It was bigger than many of the others, and nailed in place.

Several cracks were visible in the wood, as if whatever it was protecting from had already started to break through.

A heavy frown took over Caracel’s face.

“There’s something in there,” he said again, his words hushed and quick. “Can you feel it?”

Looking at Doneil’s face, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. The elf stood more than six paces from Caracel’s back and had the look of a man who had just heard a dire wolf growl on the other side of his bedroom door.

She grimaced, braced herself, and slid her mind into the throbbing, painful world of her woodcraft.

For a second, everything was as she remembered it. The world slid and shivered together as if drunk—like her mind was a boat crashing repeatedly into the rocks with every swell.

But, as she struggled to detangle the sensations her woodcraft was reading, her attention caught on something in the near distance. A lump of energy, similar to how a fire would appear in a forest. A big fire, honed like a dwarven forge.

Then, it sensed her.

A head shot up, turned in her direction. Blazing eyes crashed into her mind.

Shards of pain drove through her head. She let out a throaty hiss as a line of fire sank in and traced the ink of Kodanh’s runes, its energy scratching like a thousand tiny claws. A huge presence reared in her mind—she caught a glimpse of feathers, and talons like an eagle’s. A large, sharp, carnivorous bill. Eyes a solid gold, flecked with blood.

She cut the connection with a throaty swear, switching back into her specific mother dialect for it.

Doneil’s eyebrows shot into his forehead. “Damn, Cat, I’m impressed. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

She ground her teeth, wincing at the echo of pain that flashed through her skull. “What in the ten hells was that?”

Concern lined his face. His eyes slid up across the door, once again taking in its scripts and writing. “I do not know. It didn’t call to me. What did you see?”

“Something big and angry with sharp claws.” She winced, rubbing her head. “I suggest we avoid it.”

With a small shake to rid her head of the leftover ache, she glanced back to check on Matteo. His expression had turned to concern. He gave her a once-over, clearly worried.

She shook her head again, this time following it up with a dismissive gesture from her hand. She stopped it mid-air when she noticed the amount of blood and dirt that still covered it.

Gods, she was disgusting. She felt it on her, like a layer of vomit. She must look like an absolute nightmare—like one of the bog-ghasts in old Death Veil stories.

Given the situation, her appearance was probably an advantage. The next time she got into a fight with a demon, she’d be coming at them covered in blood and death, wielding spelled blades that were just as bloody.

Her lips twitched at the thought, the dry humor finally getting to her.

If there weren’t so much at stake, she might have enjoyed this castle raid.

“I vote we go up,” she said. “We’ve found nothing so far. That—” She gestured to the carpeted stairs, gleaming tile, and the light that danced on the wall above, “—looks more promising.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Caracel considered it.

“I don’t know,” Doneil said slowly. “Castles usually keep their torture chambers in the lower parts, in my experience.”

“Toured a few of them, have you?” Her voice dipped, sarcasm laced in her dry tone. “This isn’t a normal castle.”

“Only the ones in people’s bedrooms, Catrin.” Doneil’s lips twitched up at the corners with some thought before his voice took on a more somber tone. “It depends on what they’re into, I suppose.”

At first, she didn’t get it. She frowned, parsing the words and reading the ghost of a smile on his face.

Then, it clicked.

“Was that a sex reference? Temdin’s holy ass, why?”

To her surprise, Caracel let out a chuckle. She looked his way, and her grimace froze in disbelief. For the first time, a smile graced his lips, elegant and thin, and his eyes held a wry, tired humor.

She felt a little something in her break.

They were on an important mission, deep in enemy territory, a joint rnari-Fey-Cizek mission of unprecedented account, rescuing royalty—

And Caracel was going to remember them for sex jokes.

She allowed her eyes to flutter closed.

Elrya save me. Do men ever think about anything other than their own dicks?

A door thumped closed up the stairs. Voices came from above. She froze, attention focused on them.

After a moment, they passed.

It wasn’t much, but it sounded more promising than the squads of undead soldiers they’d seen thus far.

Though Caracel’s expression was far from confident, frozen in a grimace, he seemed to agree.

“All right, let’s try it. Normally, torture dungeons are in the lower reaches of the castle, but I think we are better to look upstairs for our people—they are valuable, after all. Additionally, it’ll give us a better idea of castle layout.”

She doubted that last part—thus far, the castle had been anything but logical in its layout, clearly a result of several ages of construction and the mountain’s own, twisting layout, and she didn’t expect that to change when they went upstairs—but it was different up there, and more richly decorated, and that was enough for her.

Nales, you better be alive after all this.

As they crept up the stairs, pace wary, footsteps muffled against the thick carpet, that storm-like energy pulsed in the air again. About mid-way up, Caracel must have noticed it, too. He stiffened and twisted, his entire manner shifting to locate the source.

Then, the largest crystal Catrin had ever seen came into view.

It was the size of a pony cart and floated gently in the air over a small, rippling pool, rough cut with three chunks of crystal reaching out like thick, twinned tree trunks. Its top ended in a series of craggy points that reminded her of the spiky ends of Grobitzsnak’s antlers.

An unearthly glow shivered within it, light dancing and darting like a silent storm. Each shift and movement hit her skin like a physical sensation, its power buzzing like electricity.

Everyone stopped when they saw it. For several long seconds, they didn’t move, wide-eyed and focused on the crystal.

Then, when the seconds passed and nothing happened, they began to move again.

She let go of the breath she’d been holding and shifted into analytical mode.

Okay, what in the bright hells is this?

It wasn’t demonic. There was no scent of sulfur—only a slight touch of ozone, as if someone had bottled the business end of a thunderstorm.

The stairs opened up into a massive passageway. The crystal took up the first in what was either a series of tall, interconnected rooms or a massive, segmented hallway. A second crystal was visible at the far end, just as large and floating over a similar pool of…

Catrin did a double take.

That was not water. It was too thick and opaque. Metallic. Mercury, perhaps? No, it felt different—just as the crystal felt different from the lights embedded in the walls.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t meant as a light source. The touch of its energy was enough to tell that much.

She exchanged a long glance with Caracel. By the expression on his face, he was having similar thoughts.

He tilted his head up the hallway, indicating a direction to the left, and she nodded.

They moved on.

Up here, the halls were quieter. Less echo-y. As if the stone absorbed all the noise. Her tension ramped up, the grip on her hilts hard enough to make her muscles ache. They found one room that looked like a guardroom. It stood empty, but the smell of sweat and sulfur was more prominent, and there were racks of weapons on the walls along with a few provisions hung in sacks over a small counter. A half-dozen simple wooden chairs formed a casual circle, with others near sharpening and cleaning stations. A lavatory followed, the stench obvious. The castle had interior plumbing, though, and a washbasin cut into the stone wall.

Several more doors were locked, but one opened into another weapons cache.

At the far end, past a room of barracks, they found a torture chamber.

They ducked in as the noise of tramping feet came from ahead of them. Caracel closed the door before any of the demons or undead made it around the corner.

When they passed, Catrin sank into the room and blew out a noisy breath, pushing a hand into her braids. “Fuck.”

“Well, we found a torture chamber, at least,” Doneil said speculatively.

She heard more than saw his gaze wander around the room, a few soft footsteps sounding behind her. Ahead of her, Matteo was taking in the room with a shuttered expression, his body as tense as a bridge wire. His jaw muscles clenched hard, rippling in his cheeks.

Gosh, we take foreigners to the nicest places.

She wondered if he was regretting coming along with them.

Probably. She was regretting it.

But, if she hadn’t come, she would have been chewing herself up with guilt.

She forced herself to breathe.

They were still alive. They hadn’t been captured yet. So far, except for the time with the gate flare, Caracel’s glamour was holding.

They could do this. In and out. That’s all they needed. They could figure out the rest after.

She breathed out another long breath, straightened up, and looked around.

It was a larger room, and definitely in an older style. The smooth, straight stonework of the hall ended past the threshold, replaced with a weathered brickwork that matched some older chambers they’d found downstairs. Cages of varying sizes decorated the room, including three hanging from ropes and chains that she recognized from the Raidt’s own facilities—older torture cages, meant to dangle above fire, or above a crowd, from back when the regime had employed cruder methods.

Last she’d heard one used was when one rnari trainee had locked another trainee into one as a dare. How she’d managed to get him to go inside in the first place, she often wondered—but then, men did become occasionally stupid around women, and she knew of at least one other upper-Circle who liked to talk men into doing things against their better judgment.

But, as she looked around this room, one thing kept nagging at the back of her mind.

“Is it just me,” she asked. “Or does everything seem... outdated?”

“It’s not just you.” A frown covered Doneil’s face. “It is outdated. Even humans are using better torture methods nowadays. Electricity and whatnot. And there’s no… smell.”

He was right. In a torture chamber, one expected to encounter certain smells—the activity wasn’t precisely clean. Even if it hadn’t been used in a while, something should have lingered.

Here, all she could smell was cold and dampness, and a bit of must and mold.

Rust flaked off onto her hand when she touched one of the bars. A loose cobweb had broken free and entwined around the lock. She picked at it, squishing it between her thumb and forefinger.

No, this place hadn’t been used in a very long time.

Reality hit her again, all at once. Her mind crumpled inward, emotion bubbling deep in her chest. Slowly, she closed her fist, staring hard as the knuckles turned white under the blood and dirt.

A normal castle would take time to search. If she’d been on her own, or with a few other rnari, they could scour a castle like Pemberlin in an hour, if they were careful.

But this castle wasn’t like Pemberlin. This castle was a literal mountain. And they’d already been here an hour.

It would be next to impossible to find Nales on their own—not unless they got lucky.

The rnari didn’t believe in luck.

“We should capture a demon,” she said. “We need to get information.”

Caracel shifted. As usual, his face was a mask, but it seemed harder than normal. Like her, he was worried about his charge. She could see the tension eating away at his edges, the same way it ate away at her own.

He shifted again, this time rolling his shoulders. She could see the thoughts weighing in his mind.

“I agree,” he said, finally. He hesitated, a heavy frown on his face. “One of the human-like ones.”

She chewed on her tongue, thinking. “Can you speak rentac?”

The skin on his nose curled in disdain. “No.”

Great. Even if they did successfully capture a demon and they were willing to talk, they wouldn’t be able to communicate with them.

For a moment, the impossibility spiraled around her. She closed her eyes for a moment, tamped it down, and turned the spin of her mind into a grimace.

She drew her blades and headed for the door. “Hope they’re bilingual.”

She led this time. The others fell into step behind her. She heard the soft thud of the door closing. The light from the next hallway flickered, the crystal light quiet and bright, casting white off the stones.

She stepped into the next hall, turned, and stopped dead.

Grobitzsnak stood not ten feet from her, and Prince Nales lay crumpled at his feet.