Rasp was working through his second helping of yeasty mush when the heavy door creaked open and shut. A single pair of footsteps shuffled inside — reluctantly, judging by their slow, dragging steps. The individual hairs on Rasp’s arm lifted, the same way they did right before a thunder and lightning storm. Considering there weren’t many storms underground, the only other logical explanation was that the new arrival was Whisper and, more importantly, that their magic was stronger than it had been in months. Under normal circumstances, Rasp would have considered Whisper’s revived strength a leg-up. Currently, however, he couldn’t help but wonder if said power was about to come crashing down on his head.
Rasp took a breath to steady his nerves and focused on the surrounding details of the room to keep grounded. He heard June dozing on one of the bunks near the back. Her soft breaths were slow and steady. Hop and Faris were at the table. The former stood and started to clear away the breakfast dishes, either out of the incessant need to look busy or to make room for something.
“Are you finished with that, Rasp?” Hop asked.
Rasp hugged the bowl to his chest, ignoring the impulse to hiss at the blurry hand that reached expectantly in his direction. “Mine.”
“Welcome back,” Faris greeted Whisper. “Did our captors give you reading material?”
Whisper’s quills rattled in annoyance. “I insisted upon it. They cannot expect me to vanquish a nameless abomination I know nothing about. At the very least, I’d like to know what species of monster I’ll be pitted against before it kills me.”
“Before it kills us.” Hop’s assurance was meant to be a joke, but he flubbed the landing. The result was something far more ominous sounding. Probably didn’t help that everyone in the room was already thinking it anyway.
“Is this all they had?” Faris was unable to mask the sting of disappointment from his voice. His chair squeaked in protest as he stood and pushed it out of the way, helping spread the research materials across the freshly cleared table. “A couple of scrolls and a few journal entries?”
“These were the only things salvageable,” Whisper explained. “Moisture got to the rest of it.”
“Great.”
“Forgive me for asking the obvious.” Hop’s burly shape returned to the table and filled the empty seat next to Rasp. “But is there something preventing the inhabitants from simply leaving? Abandoning the haunted underground city seems like a far more sensible option than this.”
“You mean waiting around for a prophesied hero to randomly show up and save you from your problems isn’t sensible?” Faris countered.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“That’s your problem, Hop,” Rasp said, scraping the bottom of his bowl with his spoon for last morsels of sustenance. It wasn’t very enjoyable, but it was filling the empty void of his stomach decently well. Seeing as he wasn’t sure whether or not this would be his last meal, he supposed he’d at least make it count. “We’re dealing with a fanatical cult. Can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.”
Hop drummed his fingers against the table in thought. “That’s uncharacteristically deep of you, Rasp.”
“Don’t credit me. I don’t have the brains to string together that kind of philosophical horseshit. It was written on a slip of paper stuffed inside a cookie, remember? You read it to me. ”
“Oh, right. After I had to fight you to keep you from eating the paper.”
“I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who has to pry things out of your mouth,” Faris said in a tone dripping with envy.
“Now, now, Dingle, no need to be jealous. There’s plenty of my mouth to go around.” Rasp tried to lick his spoon in a seductive manner but succeeded only in smearing a little bit of the foul mush across his nose.
“As loath as I am to agree with him,” Whisper’s melodic voice cut in with the sharpness of honed steel as they redirected the conversation back to the topic at hand, “the little bird is correct. I tried to reason with the priestess, but she and her people have been isolated from the outside world for too long. The unknown terrifies them more than the monster. They have put their faith in the appearance of this Kriegaar and will not be swayed otherwise.”
At least Whisper was talking to him again. Or at least in his general direction. That was something, Rasp supposed.
“Just our luck,” Faris grumbled as he leafed through whatever ancient tomes Whisper had placed on the table. The parchment was stiff from years of unuse and protested each turn of the page with a sound that would’ve haunted any respectable librarian for years to come. “So what’s the next step? Sift through the records in hopes we find something to identify what monster we’re dealing with?”
“That is my hope, yes,” Whisper replied.
“And you can read this, right? Because I can’t make heads nor tails of it.”
“Regretfully, no.”
“No?” Hop and Faris shouted in unison.
“Better hope there’s pictures,” Rasp said.
Whisper ignored Rasp’s contribution and moved the conversation along as though the Stoneclaw had ceased to exist entirely. “The interpreter has offered his services with the research. Unfortunately, he seems reluctant to even speak of the creature out loud. Aside from translating the text, I do not expect him to be overtly helpful in identifying it.”
The memory of the soft, lulling voice resurfaced. Rasp shrank down in his chair, feeling suddenly cold despite the oppressive mugginess that clouded the room. “Did they mention that it’s telepathic?”
“It was mentioned,” Whisper’s reply was automatic, as if they’d simply answered without realizing the magnitude of Rasp’s words. The fae’s quills rattled disquietly as they stopped and considered what Rasp was actually saying. “How did you know that?”
“Because its voice gets in my head the same way yours does.” Except of course that the monster was nicer to him. Probably because it wished to eat him which, unfortunately, only reinforced Rasp’s general distrust of anyone who showed him a lick of kindness. He sank ever-lower as he recalled the other key information from his encounter. “I think it’s some kind of earth elemental, too.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“Because?” Whisper prompted.
“It opened up a rift in the ground and tried to lure me inside. Might’ve been the second time, actually, come to think of it.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Faris seized the information and ran with it. “When we leapt from the balcony and the ground heaved up to meet us, you said that wasn’t you.”
“It wasn’t me. I was trying to summon wind in a place that doesn’t have active air currents, remember?”
“Vividly,” Hop assured him.
Faris continued undeterred. “Could it have been the monster?”
“Are you proposing that the monster saved me?” Rasp scoffed.
“Why not?” Faris said. “It’s obviously hungry and you’re the biggest source of magic it’s come across in a while. Seems only logical that it’d intervene to keep you from splattering across the ground. Magic eaters can only feed on live prey, after all.”
What a horrific mental image. Unfortunately, no amount of shoving could get it to retreat back into the far recesses of his mind. Rasp shuddered at the thought of being consumed alive. “I don’t like this theory.”
“Regardless, it is the best theory we have so far,” Hop said.
“Thank you,” Faris said with the sort of smugness you could feel from across the table. “It’s nice to be appreciated for my brilliant ideas for a change.”
Rasp demonstrated his appreciation with a single finger, lifting it high enough in the air for not just Faris, but for everyone else assembled around the table to see as well.
“So we have a monster that can manipulate the ground, is telepathic, and feeds on magic.” The furious scribbling of charcoal against parchment indicated that Hop had appointed himself the official notetaker. “That does help narrow it down some.”
“Does that mean you know what it is?” Rasp asked hopefully.
“I’m the wrong person to ask. If it’s information on ancient magical beasts you want, you should probably start with the person who was alive around the same time the old ones went out of existence.”
Ah, yes. Rasp had been avoiding addressing that person for obvious reasons. Physically, he couldn’t sink any lower in his chair, but that didn’t stop him from trying. “Normally I would, but said person is currently furious at me and probably wouldn’t answer even if I tried.”
“While I am still upset at your recklessness, little bird, I am not furious.”
Rasp was afraid to ask why.
Whisper was more than happy to provide the reason without the need for him to ask. “Seeing as you volunteered me as the monster slayer, I will be doing the same for you.”
Rasp shrugged. “I already assumed I would be helping you slay it.”
“You misunderstand. I am not volunteering you as the slayer.”
Rasp was about to ask what other position he could possibly take up when the answer struck him speechless. Nearly speechless, anyway, as he opened his mouth out of reflex and a surprisingly coherent string of words came tumbling out. “You’re making me the bait?”
“A fitting consequence, in my opinion,” Whisper said. “The creature already has a connection to you. Once we’ve determined how to defeat it, you can have the honor of drawing it in.”
Rasp had absolutely no leg to stand on and his mentor knew it, too. Instead of verbally accepting Whisper’s thorn-riddled olive branch, he made a vague ‘yes, yes, it is to be expected’ gesture with his hand.
“To answer the original question, yes, I suspect I may know what the nameless one is. It will require more research to conform, but as of right I believe it to be the predecessor of the burrowing drake.”
“A dragon?” Rasp said. Why couldn’t it have ever been something less terrifying? Why couldn’t the nameless have been a giant gopher? Or mole? As the appointed bait, he’d have much rather faced down something cute and fuzzy.
“The predecessor of the burrowing drake,” Whisper repeated, putting specific emphasis on the fact that, similar to themself, the dragon was old as shit. “Like mortal-kind, the dragons and drakes that exist today are a byproduct of survival. They had to adapt in order to endure a world of dwindling magic, and are now but a shadow of their ancestors’ former might. The nameless one will be more clever than any dragon you have ever faced. It will be reluctant to leave the protection of its lair, which is why we must give it no other choice. If we can drive it mad with hunger, it will emerge eventually. Once it is lured into position, the drake’s vulnerability to light is how we may be able to thwart its telepathic abilities, making it susceptible to attack.”
Whisper paused, allowing the idea to set in, before issuing a sigh through tightly clenched teeth. “In light of recent discoveries, however, I believe we have one small complication.”
“One?” Faris repeated. “This whole scenario is one massive complication after another.”
“We do not yet know the extent of the beast’s telepathic connection.” Whisper continued, “My own telepathy only allows me to glimpse thoughts, nothing deeper. There are those with power that exceeds far beyond mine, capable of accessing not only thoughts, but memories as well. The nameless could have access to everything the little bird knows the moment he steps out from under the priestess’s protection. It is for this reason the little bird cannot know the full plan prior to its execution.”
Rasp shot taller in the chair. “Wait, what?”
“The fact that the nameless one can communicate with you in a modern language is indicative of an extremely powerful magic, little bird. It’s a risk we cannot take.”
“How’s that work if I’m supposed to be the bait?”
In true Whisper fashion, the fae answered in the most horrific way possible. “Is it necessary for the fisherman to tell the worm its fate when stringing it upon the hook?”
Rasp hadn’t thought of that. In fact, he was now wishing Whisper hadn’t mentioned it at all. Already, he could feel the warm mush begin to shift in his gut, threatening to lurch upwards at any moment.
Whisper helpfully answered their own question. “The bait need not know the how. All it has to do is lure the monster into the trap.”
Rasp’s tongue failed him as a slew of frantic ideas stampeded across his thoughts. Following that logic, wouldn’t the monster also know that he was the bait? And, by extension, that there were others waiting to defeat it? Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe if the nameless one sensed a trap it simply wouldn’t show up at all. And then it wouldn’t matter whether or not Rasp was the bait because the beast would know to stay in the safety of its lair. But then how would they get back to the surface? They wouldn’t leave until the beast was dead and it couldn’t be dead if they never found it!
“Excellent,” Whisper congratulated. The small fae was suddenly at Rasp’s side, pulling him from his chair and herding him towards the door. “Continue running those thoughts just like that. Keep anything listening in a constant state of confusion. I knew you would be exemplary at this.”
Rasp dug his heels against the worn floorboards with limited success. “What are you doing?”
“This chamber is charmed, meaning the creature’s magic cannot reach those within. For this to work, you have to be outside of the priestess’s protection spell.”
“You can’t just throw me out in the cold!”
“Never fear, little bird. We’ll have a special place arranged just for you.”
“I’m getting the distinct feeling it’s going to involve being strapped between two posts with nothing but a skimpy dress on.”
“Come now, boy. You’re being preposterous. Between the planning and information gathering, where would I possibly find the time to locate a dress in your size?”
Rasp didn’t know which was more terrifying. The fact that Whisper was intending to use him as a maiden sacrifice without knowing how or when, or that his mentor was suddenly cracking jokes. At least he hoped they were jokes. Good gods, maybe Whisper was serious.
“Whisper, in case it wasn’t abundantly clear before, I’m sorry I made a deal on your behalf without thinking it through. I will learn from this and do better next time.”
Rasp stumbled out into the adjoining hallway, shielding his eyes against the unrelenting glow of the bioluminescent algae. Whisper’s voice echoed throughout his head as the door slammed shut behind him. I would normally say something encouraging, but it would be best if your thoughts were panicked right now. So, with that said, let us hope there will be a next time.