23 | Old Gods & Magic

That’s not possible, Eli thinks, barely able to argue with himself. Is the Order calling anything it does not understand Unknown? How does it not understand both the humans who created and manipulated it, as well as ancient and buried gods?

Another question for Abner.

Somehow, Eli doubts his son will be of much use in this particular area. Either way, he needs to focus on running without crashing into sharp crystals. His injured arm is only now beginning not to hurt—he has no desire to cut himself again.

Klia is a speedy little thing for having such short legs. In fact, she’s probably faster than Eli. He’s mostly keeping a grip on her so she doesn’t fall, and so he does not lose her in the maze of crystals.

Behind them, he hears the crack of the ancient monster breaking free of its tomb and chances a glance back over his shoulder. A strange, smooth tentacle drifts into the air, not acting as any heavy monstrous body should. It almost floats as if the air itself is water. Still, Eli has no idea how such a large being came through these small tunnels and into this place. It matters little but unsettles him nonetheless.

“Which way?” he calls to Klia over the commotion of the cascading crystals. At least the one waking beast is not rousing the others. Eli knows not even what to do with one.

She tugs him toward the stairs along the opposite wall. Remains of what was perhaps a set of thrones sit in dissolving piles of rocks at the top, overgrown with crystals of their own. If the walls themselves come alive, Eli drearily considers giving up on this whole ordeal. As the many other caverns, a set of doorways sits behind, and Klia heads for the middle one. Crystals line into those tunnels as well, and Eli is relieved to find the footsteps leading into the tunnel Klia indicates.

Something shatters.

The crystals coating the walls rain down with the thunder of a massive arm crashing into the cavern wall. Quite too late, Eli realizes it’s trapping them in. There is little to shelter them in this place, and so Eli drags Klia into one of the adjacent hallways while the girl screeches and waves at the door now blocked entirely by an unmovable pile of crystals and rubble.

“We’ll be crushed, we’ll find another way around!”

Klia keeps on screaming at him, knocking him in the shoulder with a tiny fist. Eli ignores it. However much she wants to go through that tunnel, it is completely blocked. Unless her secret magic can move boulders and stop eldritch creatures in their tracks, Eli must get them out of here. He has no defense against old gods and broken magic.

He flees straight into the tunnel with no curves to get lost around—he won’t have any trouble recognizing that particular throne room should they need to double back. Too small for the massive creature to fit into, when Eli glances back, he finds a long, pale wisp of a tentacle following and nothing more. It does not reach them, not nearly long enough. More filter in, feeling around the edges of the carved stone passageway as Eli continues to back away, slowing but not able to stop. Klia has gone silent, watching the massive creature with wide, pitch-black eyes. The change is uncanny, perhaps brought out by her rage, but whatever magic she holds is not directed at Eli.

The entrance to the tunnel cracks, fingers of fissures in the stone reaching all the way back to them. Eli flees and hears the collapse of the entrance, blocking them off from the monsters and sealing them away from the throne room.

It was just as well. They were not going to be able to return, and there was no way to unearth the massive stones and crystals to uncover the correct passageway.

Still, Eli’s stomach twists at the sudden dark. Where Thistle seemed to cast light off his skin, Eli wonders if his eyes are playing tricks on him when the shape of Klia over his shoulder appears less visible than the rest of the dark. From his pocket, he takes out a few of the stone bees, giving off just enough light so he can see the outline of her better, and the wall across from them.

She is looking at him with something akin to the anger he recognized in Thistle's expressions.

“There was no way to get in,” he tells her, taken aback by the sudden hostility. “These tunnels will link up to other places eventually. People lived here. We will find him.”

Her expression does not soften, and Eli scowls in return, setting her on the ground as his back is beginning to ache. If she wishes to be bitter with him over this, he will allow her. She has been through a great deal as it is, and she is a young child, her anger better suited than Thistle's. Eli did the only thing he could think in the split moment to both save them from those monsters and keep from being trapped in that throne room with them. He wishes very much he had better time to think through a solution but is not ashamed of his actions.

Despite that, the darkness of this particular tunnel unnerves him more than the last. They are going deep. Much too deep. Deeper, perhaps, than humans are meant to go.

Then again, everything about their world goes against what humans should have become. He cannot let any of that stop him.

“Let us continue. We will pick their trail back up. Can you still hear his heart?”

Klia squints, but nods, pointing back through the wall, toward where the other tunnel should run. Eli keeps himself from wincing.

“Good. Then we shall pick back up their trial,” he says once more, and gestures for her to come along beside him.

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She does not touch him this time, does not take his hand or hold onto his belt as she has been doing, but she is still angry, and Eli allows her to step just along beside him and a little bit behind where he can keep an eye on her. She still has her own little petrified bee in her hand, and cradles it in her palm. Her eyes, though no longer black as the deepest night, glare daggers at Eli every time he turns to check on her. Were he not so exhausted, perhaps it would bother him.

Over his shoulder, he continues to check, wondering if perhaps those old buried gods are managing to make their way through all the stone. He only finds the collapsed end of the tunnel as dark as ever. Hopefully, all this did not weaken the structure of the mountain itself.

As he thinks this, the ground trembles softly. Eli inspects the carved stones beneath his feet, uncertain if it is the strange tentacled creatures, or just the normal tremors the lands have always and will always have.

Hopefully, this tunnel runs nearly parallel to the other. More hopefully, they will directly meet up, and very soon.

Again, the stone trembles again, as if something runs directly below, and Eli grabs Klia’s hand, ignoring her little temper tantrum, and runs.

I am never running again after this is all over and finished, he thinks bitterly.

From near the end of the tunnel, light shoots up in bolts of eye-burning brightness. Momentarily, Eli thinks, Thistle, and knows immediately these are two different beings. The softly glowing tentacles of the creature reach up through the cracks, feeling around with the same strange, unnatural movements, drifting in the air. Thinking of the warning the Order gave them, Eli wonders if somehow, someway, it will drown them in the very air they breathe.

He does not wish to wait to find out, but the creature is blocking his direct path, and behind them is still the collapsed entrance. Frozen in place, Eli glances down, wondering if something about Klia’s magic will have a solution, but the girl looks just as terrified and even more confused, hand now back to firmly gripping Eli’s.

“Well, there’s no way back,” he tells himself, and grabs Klia back up against his shoulder—he cannot risk pulling her along and tipping on her—gripping the handle of the sickle with the other.

It is rather easier than he anticipated, slicing past the first writhing tentacle shimmering in the dark. At least he can see the path beneath their feet with this creature’s attacks. A hiss of breath like frozen wind wafts across his skin as the translucent membrane withdraws. The others twitch out of the way, and Eli ducks under the nearest. In his hand, the blade has an easy feel, a knowing weight between his fingers even as the cloth around his palm aggravates the shimmer of the flower running beneath. Another tentacle blocks his way, disposed of with ease, even with the weight of the girl in his other arm and her grip tight around his neck. It is not so graceful a set of movements as he would have once maintained, but Eli admits to himself he has missed the talent of fighting.

Something behind his chest hums, as the Order once used to, not quite the same, but enough. He steps over the nearest monster’s arm, catching the crystal-coated edge of the monster’s body through the cracks beneath their feet, blinding and bright.

Another limb, too large and quick, wraps around Eli’s leg. His sickle does not break all the way through, and they are dragged into brightness.

* * *

This shall influence my Order’s magic, is the first thought that passes through Eli’s mind, quick as a bird, before Klia is yanked from his arm, shoulder coming into direct contact with something of no substance at all.

When he opens his eyes and gazes down, his vision clears enough to see something looking directly in return. It has no eyes of any sort, but thrums with magic, a distinct vibration nearing music deep behind his ribs. For all his lost high rankings of a queen’s warrior, for all the monsters that have been caught against the edge of his broadsword, he has never come into contact with something large, so ancient.

What are you? He nearly wishes to ask, for the Order is of so little help, but does not believe this is a creature that will speak in return.

With a start, he remembers how they fell.

“Klia?” he calls before the air-light limb wrapping around his leg weaves up to his chest. His hand finds the hilt of his sickle partially beneath him and rolls over, slicing through with practiced ease, digging a hand into the soft cap of the monster’s top before he can slide off its massive form. Its hide is tough and impossible to cut through, and Eli wracks his old mind for something Abner told him about these monsters, even the tiny ones in the sea with harmless lives. Anything at all. In the panic of the moment, he comes up with little.

You were once a warrior, act as one, he tells himself and forces a deep breath into his lungs.

First, he searches for sighs of Klia. Below him, through the translucent body, he catches sight of her dangling from one of the smaller ropes of a tentacle. If she is struggling, he cannot determine through the strange light and the creature’s writing body as it rolls against the side of whatever cavern is beneath their hallway.

Next, he dispatches with the closest limb which is feeling its way toward his leg once more. There is little traction upon this creature’s top, dry but strangely slick nonetheless. Every time he gets a boot under him, he nearly topples off the edge. He keeps to his knees for the moment. He cannot glimpse the ground from this position and knows not how far up they are. Injuring this creature may throw them to their deaths

Beneath him, the tentacle wrapping around Klia drags her further up into the underside of the creature. Eli recalls something rather clearly about Abner’s little scribbles of these things—they eat within their bodies.

Eli knows not why these creatures hunt his grandchildren, but now is not the time to find out.

Rolling over, he gets as close to the feathered edge as possible. Gemstones still stick in its skin, its flesh as strangely dappled as a moonstone. Below them, he sees something akin to more stone and—

A tree?

No matter, they are still too far up for Eli to safely figure a way to dispose of this bizarrely flying Unknown. Over across the cavern floor below, he catches the shimmer of water, massive and still in its underground resting place.

Eli slides to the monster’s edge and hooks the tip of his blade underneath the lip of the creature’s top in a way no broadsword would have been able to accomplish, yanking up. A sharp trill reaches even his damaged ear, the thumping song behind his chest turning to one of rage. Momentarily, he grieves for wounding this being, too ancient for him to comprehend, but it will take his little granddaughter from him should he not, and shall never allow it.

More tentacles reach for him, and he digs the blade in, weighing down this section of the creature’s head. His weight is small but not insignificant upon its cap. Every movement he makes bows it a little in the air. Resisting his weight is not easy for it, less so when he damages its protective top, and dips downward toward the water. Something strong and burning wraps about his arm, liquid fire even through his coat. With a gasp, he yanks at it, dragging away with all his strength, freeing the blade to slice away at the thinner limb of pale white burning through his clothing and flesh.

Absently, he thinks, Injuries down here will kill us, before he is dragged off its top.

With a final effort, he slices the blade through the edge of the monster as it drags him down, further bringing them toward the water. His blade tip finds a weak section—an old wound—in the monster’s top and digs in deep. Klia unravels from the tentacle, dropping into the water below. With relief, he sees her flail and swim, still conscious, before the creature’s humming stops, and they crash into the black of the underground sea.