33 | Light in the Tunnel
In a straight tunnel, there is little place to hide and fewer ways to sneak up on those Unknown monsters. Even the undergrowth provides little shelter. Eli doesn’t know if they’ve all learned to avoid the sharp edge of his sickle, but must assume they have until he knows otherwise. Quietly, he works the weapon loose of its makeshift scabbard on the back of his pack, comforted by the familiar hold of it. Klia still has not so much as twitched since Eli pulled her to a stop.
Bending closer, he puts his fingers together in the same gesture she’s been using for Thistle. Her eyes are still pools of pitch black, but she nods. Her fingers are quivering in his, and he puts his hand holding his sickle to her shoulder, feeling her tremble and trying to scrape the next steps into his mind. He wishes very deeply that he could shove Klia into a little crack in the wall, safe and hidden until he can return for her. Even if he told her to stay put, he is not certain she would listen. She is braver than he gave her credit for when she was sitting on his bed back at the monastery, frightened of even him.
Quickly, he runs over his numbers, not expecting to see anything different and unhappy with them anyhow.
Elijah Jyce
the Reaper, the Unknown, the Elder
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63/97 Buds | 2/10 Roots | 3/5 Filaments
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Stems
Bladewielder (15), Minddreamer (3)
Considering using Minddreamer, he calls it to mind.
Minddreamer | 3 Petals
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Put aside each human fear, battle your wars with a mind so clear—
Once a day, you may decide to wield the bravery we so provide—
Once a day. He doesn’t know how long the skill will last, or if it will last longer now its number has increased, nor does he suspect Klia holds answers. He has a choice to use it now, before knowing if there is further danger lurking past whatever Unknowns are closest. He cannot waste it, not until he has assessed the situation.
Pushing Klia’s jaw nearer so he can assure himself she’s seeing him, he puts a finger to his lips until she nods once more.
Straightening, Eli softens his footsteps as he creeps down the tunnel. Klia no longer tugs at his hand, but he keeps her just behind, worried something may snatch her behind if he were to let her wander too far from him in either direction.
They are going to be drawn to her…
Perhaps Eli’s violence and Thistle’s nearness will be enough to dissuade them. After all, the one he saw has fled. He needs a place to hide the girl or at least reassurance she will listen. He has neither.
A hulking shadow passes before the tunnel just ahead. Well, it didn’t flee for long. Light is growing at the end of the hallway, faint, and Eli wonders if it is even real. It silhouettes the hunched form attempting to fit its way into the hallway meant for a human at the most. Eli’s heart thumps, but Klia remains utterly still and silent. Working his fingers around the hilt of the sickle, Eli stands as calmly as he is able and waits for the creature to move—to either leave or give indication it sees them in the dark. Eli releases Klia’s hand, drowning him in darkness. He cannot fight with her in his hold. Somewhere far away, he hears the drip of water and swallows, irritated with the dampness of his clothes.
The shadow of the Unknown—indicated briefly by the same threatening words as before—shifts and gives off a strange, low growl. The scent of soil overpowers cold stone. The others did not smell as such, they did not smell much of any way at all.
Its next scream trembles the pebbles around Eli’s boots, and he maneuvers Klia back as it shoves toward them at top speed, hindered by the lowness of the ceiling and hanging vines. This one is larger, significantly so, and Eli can hardly see it. He cannot let it pass him, not with Klia behind, though the girl has the good sense to scramble back into the darkness.
It sees better in the dark than he; as soon as he bares his sickle, it shies away. Well, at least it’s frightened of the blade. Eli sidesteps the wild swing of its hand. He will not use Minddreamer, not yet, for he has never needed anything to clear his mind before battle, and he will not begin now. If he can save it, all the better.
As frightened of the blade as it is, it still swipes at him, and he is doubly grateful these things do not appear to have magic, for it is an easy enough opportunity to slice at its massive arm. In the dark, he misjudges the distance and ends up injuring its hand instead. With a roar, it yanks back and knocks loose a section of the tunnel, sending rocks scattering alongside Eli’s boots. He hooks the tip of his blade around the back of its leg, severing it enough it collapses. In the back of his mind, he hates killing when Klia is watching, even something such as this. He is not afforded long to consider, as the creature’s remaining hand comes so near to his head he imagines he avoided death by a hair’s breadth.
He cuts it down much as he had the others, soil scattering around his feet, flower petals tumbling even in the dark. Light catches his eye, and he glances down the tunnel. As soon as he looks away, Klia bolts past him, heading down for the light, and Eli runs after her with a string of oaths, tripping over the vines enclosing the walkway.
By the time he reaches the entrance, the light has faded to something reasonable for sunlight, and he catches a broad crack in the stone far above, as there was in the library.
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This one, he thinks offhandedly, seems more deliberate.
He has little time to consider this properly before something is twisting about his wrist, yanking him forward. A vine as thick as his thumb snaps around his bones with a shockingly tight grip, and he severs it quickly with his blade, hissing at the pain and using his teeth to tear away the remaining tendril. He was able to avoid using his sore arm when fighting that Unknown, but the vine dug in hard.
When he stumbles upright, he jumps back, confronted by a thick wall of trees and the same vines.
“Klia!” he calls as he catches sight of the girl disappearing into the plants.
Just like her brother…
Eli can’t help but notice how none of the vines touch the girl. Something akin to a path opens up for her, welcoming her in.
Eli tells himself to pause and think, to make calculated measures as he once did when approaching a battle. But this is not a battle. This is his grandchildren in a monster of an overgrown room with the Order mutating everything. Neither of them listens to him. What will this place do? Injure or swallow them in an instant?
With a quick glance about the overgrown room—there is nowhere to run along the walls either to his right or left, even if he wished to—Eli starts for the edge of the thick greenery, only to pause.
Above him are remnants of old walkways, a few wooden beams stretching across the space, pillars holding them up like exhausted limbs leaning against one another. Much like the abandoned monastery, ropes made fragile by time and dust hang between them. Cobwebs hang in dry, brittle filaments. As carefully as he can manage, he shoves through the undergrowth to his left, pushing against the nearest wooden beam and finding it so overgrown and encrusted with vines and leaves and partially consumed by the trunks of trees that it has become solid. Rungs are carved within the stone of the walls.
“Klia! Get back here!” he shouts, aware it won’t work and irritated nonetheless.
Another vine of rope snakes out, but they are slow and less accustomed to moving prey. Eli snaps the sharp tip off with a flick of his sickle. Scrambling up the stone ladder built into the walls of the chamber, he steps onto the wooden beam above, leaning on what was once a handrail. Most of the left side of the walkway has fallen, the rest buffeted up by the overgrown greenhouse. It is a better outlook on the layout of this place, though vines still snap at his boots and attempt to weave around his ankles. He steps over them, heading out over the tops of the miniature forest.
Inhuman screams echo among the trunks. Eli cannot see them, and suspects if they were moving through the undergrowth, their massive bodies would cause a great enough disturbance. What are they doing here? What is so special about this place? Eli would think it is the safety of being underground, but they are frightened of the sun, constantly running from it, the Order trying to block out the light. The forest here has benefitted from the opening in the cavern ceiling, but Eli would have expected these monsters to flee to the underground lake and the strange tree where the two of them fell a few days before. Or deeper, if they could find a way.
Underground…
Scrambling down the creaking wooden beams, Eli follows the slight path Klia cut through the ferns and vines, where the greenery seems to recoil from her, and calls down.
“Girl, wait!”
Finally, she pauses, just the barest glimpse of her hair visible through all the leaves and fronds as she turns to glance up at him. He can better tell where she is by the way the sunlight struggles to shine about her, a slight distortion in the light and presence of the air.
Shimmying down the overgrown vines wrapping around the nearest supporting pillar, he catches her scrambling toward him as the vines attempt to drag her back to the path she was on. Even as they touch her, they recoil, and Eli cannot imagine what attracts them to children so deeply only to frighten them away.
Eli drops to the lush carpet of moss below the canopy of the short, woven trees. Pollen sprays up from under his boot, dusty in smell. Branches crack.
And everything is silent.
For a moment, he half believes he’s lost his hearing altogether. But when he puts his hand to the nearest trunk of a tree, he can hear the brush of his fingers against the petrified surface. No animals sound down, no birdsong or rodents scurry things amongst the underbrush. Eli’s breath is too loud in his ears.
Klia darts out from the nearest fern, swatting at it, grabbing at Eli’s shirt, and tugging at him to go deeper into the heart of the greenhouse. If he wasn’t so relieved she is unhurt, he might give her a solid swat for running past him the way she did. He does not entirely know if she is in control of her actions, but she returned to get him, so she knows enough.
Squeezing her arm enough she pays attention, he hisses, “Do not run without me, do you understand?”
She nods vigorously, then points back the way she came. Eli doesn’t have time to push the topic. Letting her lead him through, he searches for signs of living monsters in the trembling forest until he nearly knocks the girl over when she stops dead in front of him. They are beside a large cluster of rocks, jagged in their edges and strangely smooth on either side. Eli glances up at the crack in the ceiling directly above them but cannot see it through the overgrown trees.
Letting out a frustrated whine, Klia turns in a circle, evidently lost, before cowering closer to Eli when something moves out in the ferns.
“I think they are underground,” he whispers to her.
These creatures would not dwell in the direct sunlight afforded to this place. They have hidden here for whatever reason, but Eli does not believe they will find Thistle out where the sun can reach.
Her magic led her to this spot for a reason.
Hauling the girl after him so she doesn’t get ideas about running off without him, Eli searches under the collapsed ceiling as he did around the base of the massive tree. If they have learned anything this past week or so, it is that there is always further down to go.
Pressing through the cracks of the stones, he finds precisely what he is looking for—a massive entrance large enough to fit even those overgrown Unknowns.
Eli smiles grimly.
the Unknown
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Warn your human blood away—
Your foolish head a price will pay—
Morbid. And not helpful. A shiver runs down his skin. If it’s terrible enough that the Order believes it worthy to break its silence and give him a warning, then it must be a rather grave situation.
“Then give me back my grandson,” he mumbles.
When Thistle does not appear out of thin air, he crawls over the stones and helps Klia onto the nearest one. She glances down the dark pit, her eyes widening, and tries to scramble down it. Eli catches her around the wait.
If Eli knew all the monsters were below instead of above, he would tell her to stay up here. Tie her down, if he had to. But he killed one already at the entrance and heard something else out in this strange little underground forest. Who knows what else these living monstrosities of plants will do if something Eli does angers them?
What he wouldn’t give to have another Warrior on this mission, to have his back and ensure he doesn’t have to watch the girl, protect himself, and find Thistle all at once.
Taking her face in his hands, he tells her, “You know I will not be giving up on finding your brother, you know this by now.”
Her eyes catch his, fully focusing, looking a bit more like herself.
“Which means I don’t care what your Order is telling you to do, you must obey me at every turn, and stay out of the way. Stay behind me and do not run ahead. I cannot fight these creatures and protect you at the same time. Do you understand?”
She nods.
“I don’t know what your magic wants,” he repeats. “But right now it doesn’t matter. You are in charge of it, and you will not leave my sight and my protection.”
Her jaw clenches, her expression hardening, and she nods.
“Good,” Eli says and gives her a kiss on the forehead for good measure. “Now stay behind me, and out of the way of my blade.”
With that, he turns and climbs down the ruins of fallen rock. Leaving his pack in one of the crevices, hidden from view, he takes another of his knives—too small for much use but better than nothing—and tucks it into his belt. If he is lucky, all he will need is his sickle.
So far, he has not been so incredibly lucky.
For the moment, he must be able to see more than he needs to keep Klia far from him. So he grabs her hand as they descend. Without asking, his eyes sharpen enough to see the outlines of the broken earth down in the strange little tunnel they are descending.
Sunlight from the above chamber is cut off, and Eli smells monsters.