Shard, page 25
part #2 of Cruelly Made Series
“I can,” Atrament says.
“Then problem solved.”
We’ve been over the details of my plan many times. Atrament has planned the routes through the dangerous lower tunnels where the Blightlings are stored. We have to time things very carefully. All the prisoners tend to sleep around the same time even though there is no real day nor night, and the Researchers, for safety reasons, also do not work around the clock. They came in as one unit, then vacated the lower levels to return to barracks above ground.
We have about two hours, which sounds like a lot of time, but it’s not. We’ve got a ton of dangerous ground to cover, and I don’t know how fast ScatheFire is going to move, or if he’ll resist.
My magic shifts and burns as I keep it wrestled away. Flinging around a bunch of violent magic against a rotting bull when nobody else is around is one thing. I absolutely cannot afford to make a single mistake now. My magic is officially on ice, and if Blood keeps his promise—I will never use it again.
If only they’d made me a battlemage… maybe none of this would ever have happened. “Ready to go?”
He checks that his hair is secured in a tight braid, touches mine to make sure it’s secure and tight against my head, then draws the cowl of my borrowed cloak over my head. “That is too large for you.”
“It’s yours.”
“I can tell. Remember. You shine brightly. If you use your magic, it’s harder for me to hide it.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t plan on using my magic at all once we’re out of here.”
He grimaces. “Fell thread is what you need.”
“We can argue it later. Now’s not the time.”
“Quietly, then. Little one, I need you.” He tosses his ring into the air and it spins into the little dark hummingbird. The bird flits about him. “Lead me.”
My familiar is on my forearm, head resting on the back of my hand, ready to twist into a sword at a moment’s notice.
Atrament summons a murky fog around us. “This will not completely hide us. Keep your magic close.”
We head out of the cavern into the corridor, to the main stairway, and he leads me down a level to another door, then that opens onto another corridor, and another, and another, until we come to a stairway, and we head up and up. The murk swirls around us like a lazy black smog, and his familiar darts forward and back constantly.
Up, up, up, and then to a doorway. He nods to me: this is the one.
He summons more murk, thickening the blackness around us, as he opens the door.
Now it’s nothing but a stony corridor twisting up.
“You came out into an underground arena,” he whispers as we walk up the tunnel, which has another major tunnel dropping steeply down to our left, and a number of empty cages.
“It looked like a research level,” I whisper.
“It is a little-used one. But the purpose of this is to pit Blightling against Blightling, or herd new prisoners to the more experimental levels.”
“Great.”
The hummingbird zips forward and back, loops around his head. Atrament waves his hand, spinning the blackness into opaqueness. He extends his other hand to me.
We run across the cavern through complete darkness, with just Atrament’s little familiar leading us. My heart pounds and my magic lashes like a cat’s tail: Blight is near. The roaches and such have caught my scent, even through the murk.
Atrament pulls up suddenly. The hummingbird darts into the darkness and rests on his palm, little sides heaving with effort.
“It is not so very strong,” Atrament says, stroking the little creature’s spine. It makes a very faint chirp.
“It did a great job leading us all this way,” I whisper.
The familiar flutters its tiny wings.
Atrament smiles. “You have pleased it.”
He clutches his palm over it, and the dark ring re-appears on his finger. He uses his hands and feels through the shadow. The murk flits away and gives us a brief look at a stairway. The little hummingbird has led us straight to the way up to the first level!
What a good little bird.
“Quickly,” Atrament whispers. “Feel along the wall.”
I already know the dizzying way up, and Atrament’s murk is quickly replaced with the murk I remember that obfuscated the bottom naturally. He releases his magic and breathes out.
“Tired?” I whisper.
“I will be fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s an exertion to hide you.”
“Sorry.”
“When the other Fells are with us, it will dilute your presence. If you had Fell thread, you could call on your Fell nature and—”
“We can argue about Fell thread later.”
“I am just saying—”
“Do you have a needle and some Fell thread in your pocket?”
“No.”
“Then nyah.” I stick my tongue out at him.
He chuckles, and one hand snakes out and he draws his thumb over my tongue.
I shiver with sudden pleasure. That’s unexpected…
We twist up and up through the murky darkness until light appears on the other side: the first level.
And the smell is pretty distinctive.
“Home sweet home,” I murmur as we creep around the final bend. I draw my cloak closer as Atrament reweaves the shadows over us. He hangs back over my shoulder. From here I can just make out the first gate in the distance. Some crows roost on the edges of the ceiling. There’s snoring and farting.
“The smell is impressive,” Atrament whispers.
“Haven’t been here before?”
“It has been a long time, and only once before.”
“You get used to it.”
“I would rather not.”
I jump the small chasm from the stairs to the ledge that the second gate is secured to. I brush my hand over the lock and flick it with a whisper of Aether. The metal creaks.
I crouch down. I can’t see all the first gate, just the bottom of it, because the rest of the way is obscured by the low ceiling, but I can make out there aren’t any boots. I wait a moment to see if anyone comes to investigate the creaking of metal. Not likely. It looks like some of the prisoner cells are open. So nobody’s locked in. Good.
“Why won’t the guards come when they hear this open?” Atrament whispers.
“Because they’ll think it’s one of the cell doors,” I whisper back, “And lots of prisoners keep their doors closed when they sleep so they get a warning if someone comes in. The cell doors and first gate require physical keys.”
I extend my arm. My familiar slithers off it and raises its head at me, sapphire eyes twinkling with wicked, eager mischief. “Go get my Fells, snake.”
It hisses and slithers off through the bars.
I push the second gate open. It creaks and whines and groans, but only two of the closest crows cock their heads, observing, but they don’t otherwise react. The first gate is the one that makes the distinctive grinding noise as it slides across the stone.
And it’s not like anyone in the prison will care if a prisoner wants to go below before their time. Sure, go ahead. The Researchers will love to have you.
My snake slithers back.
Blood follows it.
My heart surges. I get up and push back my hood.
He breaks into a run the rest of the way. He steps across the second gate, grabs my face in his hands, and kisses me.
“That’s not the greeting I was expecting,” I say, blinking.
“I—” He seems just as confused. “Pebbles, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Breaking out of the Pit. Get your uniforms. I’ve found ScatheFire. We’re going to get him and then we are leaving.”
His eyes move to the shadows shifting behind me. “Who is with you?”
Atrament reveals himself.
Blood growls.
I push Blood’s cheek so he’s looking at me. “He’s a prisoner here too. The situation has gotten unbelievably fucked, and we have got to get out of here. All of us. ScatheFire too.”
“He’s alive? You were right?”
“Alive is… yeah, technically he’s alive. Will you hurry the fuck up? We don’t have time for chit-chat.”
“None of us want to be fugitives,” he whispers.
I grab his shirt. “You want to be a hero?”
“Is that what’s on offer?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what’s on offer.”
He pries my fingers off him. “Two minutes.”
Damn, I had missed him.
Within two minutes, he, Rot, and Smoke—all wearing their uniforms complete with boots—come to the gate. The crows don’t so much as turn a muscle over it.
I’m starting to see some flaws in the Pit’s security.
“What is this guy doing here?” Rot demands in a whisper.
“He’s on our side, he’s escaping with us, just go along with it,” I command as I pull the door closed and re-lock it. “He’s going to sneak us past the Blight.”
“Stay close,” Atrament commands, spinning his own shadows around us, and summoning his familiar once more. “Smoke, lend your obfuscation please. It will entangle with my darkness if you focus.”
Smoke hesitates. “How does that work?”
“I believe you and I will be able to work together naturally.”
“Why should we trust you?” Rot demands.
“We don’t have time to argue,” Atrament says, annoyed for the first time I’ve known him. He glances at me, shifting with frustration.
“Spit it out, Fell,” Blood growls. “I can sense it on you.”
“There is no time to explain the mechanics.”
He’s being evasive.
Blood grabs my wrist and whispers, “Can we trust him? Or is he going to lead us right to the Warden?”
Anxiety shoots through me like an iron spear. “Atrament can be trusted.”
The Fells pull back like horses at a patience poll, then reluctantly step forward, creating slack in their ropes, although they’re not happy about it. Smoke spins his acrid magic, mimicking Atrament’s finger movements, weaving the smoke and darkness together.
“How are they doing that?” I hear Rot whisper to Blood, but I’m too fascinated by the shifting, weaving magic. Is Atrament their Shard?
That’d be amazing.
I almost laugh. Shards aren’t supposed to join teams together so they can fuse magics—that’s the purview of Hearts—but Atrament is Atrament. So we’d have a real Shard faking it to pass the fake Shard off as the real Shard.
I love life sometimes.
They weave a murk of smoke and shadow around us, and Atrament’s little familiar leads us at a sprint through the darkness, guiding us unerringly across open stone caverns, down hallways, stairways, through doors until it ducks back into the shadows and collapses on his palm, little sides heaving with exhaustion.
Smoke and Atrament dismiss the magical murk around us.
“The hell is this?” Rot whispers in horror as the once-human prisoners shuffle towards us, moaning and grabbing for me.
“A nightmare.” I stride down the corridor towards ScatheFire’s cell.
“What the hell are they doing to them? What is that stuff glowing in them?” Rot peers at some of the more modified prisoners.
“My conjured crystal,” I say. “The Warden is having Belann cut it into various shapes and they’re putting it into second-level prisoners.”
Atrament unlocks ScatheFire’s cell. He’s on his cot, same as before, and doesn’t react when I enter.
“We’re leaving,” I tell him gently, caressing one hand with its Fell thread.
No reaction. Nothing.
The Fells approach with caution, fearful of seeing what one of theirs had become.
“You have to be firmer.” Atrament comes into the cell. “He has only the most basic of mechanisms left. He also does not respond to the name ScatheFire. Do any of you know the name under his thread? He may respond to that.”
“No,” Blood says, staring at ScatheFire.
Atrament pushes me back. He seizes ScatheFire’s hand. “Stand.”
ScatheFire obediently stands.
“One command at a time,” Atrament says. “I do not know if he will run.”
“What did they do to him?” Smoke asks.
“They put him in the presence of the Old One,” Atrament says flatly.
“What the hell.” Blood looks at Atrament.
Atrament quirks a brow. “Exactly. He will lead if we lead him, but he will feel no urgency or defend himself. He is not… here. His soul is somewhere else.”
“Sling him like a bag of grain, Rot,” I command.
“How wide are the tunnels we’re going through?” Rot asks.
“Wide enough for big-ass Blight-bulls and Worms.”
“Got a better idea.” Rot whips off his second belt and tosses it. Before it hits the ground, his huge horse familiar appears. It stamps once and snorts. Rot bustles into the cell, tosses ScatheFire over his shoulder, then tosses him like a sack across the horse’s saddle. He even has some ties on the saddle to strap a body (presumably his) down.
ScatheFire offers no protest to this and dangles like a ragdoll.
“Now we are going deep into the prison,” Atrament says, voice low. “I will cloak all of us, but stay close. Blood, Smoke, take Lady Crystal’s hands. The presence of your Fell thread will help obfuscate how bright she burns, and where we are going, they salivate for the faintest whiff of Aether. My hummingbird will lead the way.”
“How are we getting out of here?” Blood asks as we head off and Atrament weaves thick murk around us.
“The same way ScatheFire got in here,” I say. “Out past the Blightling pens and up through the arena. I can unlock the gates. This prison wasn’t meant to hold an Aether Mage.”
He wraps his hand around mine, and behind me, Smoke presses soft and warm, his own hand sliding hesitantly into my other. The thudding of their Fell thread echos through me like the pounding of hooves.
Impulsively, I lean over and kiss Blood on the cheek, then Smoke.
“What was that for?” Blood asks.
“Missed you, I guess,” I say.
“Things did get a lot less amusing without you around.”
“Is this how you confess to maybe being worried that cushy peerage wasn’t going to happen for you?”
“Me? Worry? Pst. That was always ScatheFire’s job and now look what’s happened to the poor bastard. Doesn’t do any good to worry.”
Smoke sighs, long suffering.
“You really want to escape with them?” Atrament asks me.
“Yes, I really want to escape with them. They’re innocent. So are you. Does nobody remember I’m the actual murderer?”
“I dunno, Pebbles, you’ve got such a high bodycount we keep forgetting,” Rot says.
“What, you can’t count past ten?”
“Not when he’s too busy thinking about your pretty tits being in his face again,” Blood mutters under his breath.
Atrament snarls at Blood. “Do not be vulgar, degenerate.”
“If I’m a degenerate, are you really expecting better?” Blood asks.
Atrament has to pause in his weaving to consider that.
“Got you there, noble-bred,” Blood says.
“Quickly now, my familiar is getting exhausted,” Atrament commands. He’s breathing hard himself. “Hiding Lady Crystal from the Blight is very taxing.”
“Follow along, precious,” Rot coos at his familiar.
Once again we’re running through the conjured murk, only this time there’s the clip-clop of Rot’s familiar jogging along behind us. The Blight’s not going to pay attention to a Fell familiar carting a husk.
The slope stops. The stone floor becomes rough, deeply grooved and punctured. Things shift, and the shifting disrupts the conjured murk, revealing a tangled network of caverns in the wall with heavy iron gates wrapped with throbbing Aether thread and bars of…
Holy shit, is that crystal? My crystal?
My magic shakes and things start to moo and kick and bang. The unfelt breeze rips the last of the murk off us, exposing us to the absolute worst stable in the world.
“Oh gods…” Blood breathes as we spin around and take in the nightmare.
Very large things start to make very bad, very loud noises.
I slide my arm under Atrament’s shoulders. “I’m fine,” he assures me, taking deep, exhausted breaths. His Fell thread burns. “I can’t hold it against these eyes. Too many eyes. Too many.”
The thousands and thousands of eyes are staring right at me. It’s like a thousand jaws are opening, and a million fangs drip with hungry spittle.
“These are the Pens,” he says, still breathing deep and raw. “These—”
“I get it,” I say. “Which way. Which way is out?”
Something crashes.
“That does not sound good,” Smoke comments.
SMASH.
“Very bad,” Blood agrees. “Well, we’re fucked. Which way do we run?”
Atrament points.
We run down a corridor lined with angry, hungry Blightlings trying to smash out of their stalls and boxes and cells. A dozen gooey goats bleat furiously at us.
“Oh shit!” Rot shouts as something huge smashes behind us. “BlightWorm!”
The biggest BlightWorm I’ve ever seen inchworms its way around the bending corridor of the Pens, smashing pens and bars and bellowing and slinging spit and goo everywhere.
Smoke summons an acrid cloud that engulfs the worm. It flails.
“Won’t hold it long,” Smoke says. “Blood?”
“It doesn’t have any blood in it,” he says, pulling on invisible strands with his fingers. “I can just get some ichor from it, but I’m just going to piss it off. Rot, dissolve that thing.”
“It’s going to summon guards,” Atrament says. “We don’t have time to fight it. Just run!”
Rot flings balls of brown-green murk that dissolve patches of the BlightWorm when they hit. It bellows in rage and flails.
We bolt up the tunnel after Atrament.
“Shit,” Blood pants as we sprint damn near uphill. “What is this?”
“It leads to the arena.” I pant too.
The BlightWorm writhes after us up the tunnel. And now it’s got a herd of angry goo-goats with it.
“Then problem solved.”
We’ve been over the details of my plan many times. Atrament has planned the routes through the dangerous lower tunnels where the Blightlings are stored. We have to time things very carefully. All the prisoners tend to sleep around the same time even though there is no real day nor night, and the Researchers, for safety reasons, also do not work around the clock. They came in as one unit, then vacated the lower levels to return to barracks above ground.
We have about two hours, which sounds like a lot of time, but it’s not. We’ve got a ton of dangerous ground to cover, and I don’t know how fast ScatheFire is going to move, or if he’ll resist.
My magic shifts and burns as I keep it wrestled away. Flinging around a bunch of violent magic against a rotting bull when nobody else is around is one thing. I absolutely cannot afford to make a single mistake now. My magic is officially on ice, and if Blood keeps his promise—I will never use it again.
If only they’d made me a battlemage… maybe none of this would ever have happened. “Ready to go?”
He checks that his hair is secured in a tight braid, touches mine to make sure it’s secure and tight against my head, then draws the cowl of my borrowed cloak over my head. “That is too large for you.”
“It’s yours.”
“I can tell. Remember. You shine brightly. If you use your magic, it’s harder for me to hide it.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t plan on using my magic at all once we’re out of here.”
He grimaces. “Fell thread is what you need.”
“We can argue it later. Now’s not the time.”
“Quietly, then. Little one, I need you.” He tosses his ring into the air and it spins into the little dark hummingbird. The bird flits about him. “Lead me.”
My familiar is on my forearm, head resting on the back of my hand, ready to twist into a sword at a moment’s notice.
Atrament summons a murky fog around us. “This will not completely hide us. Keep your magic close.”
We head out of the cavern into the corridor, to the main stairway, and he leads me down a level to another door, then that opens onto another corridor, and another, and another, until we come to a stairway, and we head up and up. The murk swirls around us like a lazy black smog, and his familiar darts forward and back constantly.
Up, up, up, and then to a doorway. He nods to me: this is the one.
He summons more murk, thickening the blackness around us, as he opens the door.
Now it’s nothing but a stony corridor twisting up.
“You came out into an underground arena,” he whispers as we walk up the tunnel, which has another major tunnel dropping steeply down to our left, and a number of empty cages.
“It looked like a research level,” I whisper.
“It is a little-used one. But the purpose of this is to pit Blightling against Blightling, or herd new prisoners to the more experimental levels.”
“Great.”
The hummingbird zips forward and back, loops around his head. Atrament waves his hand, spinning the blackness into opaqueness. He extends his other hand to me.
We run across the cavern through complete darkness, with just Atrament’s little familiar leading us. My heart pounds and my magic lashes like a cat’s tail: Blight is near. The roaches and such have caught my scent, even through the murk.
Atrament pulls up suddenly. The hummingbird darts into the darkness and rests on his palm, little sides heaving with effort.
“It is not so very strong,” Atrament says, stroking the little creature’s spine. It makes a very faint chirp.
“It did a great job leading us all this way,” I whisper.
The familiar flutters its tiny wings.
Atrament smiles. “You have pleased it.”
He clutches his palm over it, and the dark ring re-appears on his finger. He uses his hands and feels through the shadow. The murk flits away and gives us a brief look at a stairway. The little hummingbird has led us straight to the way up to the first level!
What a good little bird.
“Quickly,” Atrament whispers. “Feel along the wall.”
I already know the dizzying way up, and Atrament’s murk is quickly replaced with the murk I remember that obfuscated the bottom naturally. He releases his magic and breathes out.
“Tired?” I whisper.
“I will be fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s an exertion to hide you.”
“Sorry.”
“When the other Fells are with us, it will dilute your presence. If you had Fell thread, you could call on your Fell nature and—”
“We can argue about Fell thread later.”
“I am just saying—”
“Do you have a needle and some Fell thread in your pocket?”
“No.”
“Then nyah.” I stick my tongue out at him.
He chuckles, and one hand snakes out and he draws his thumb over my tongue.
I shiver with sudden pleasure. That’s unexpected…
We twist up and up through the murky darkness until light appears on the other side: the first level.
And the smell is pretty distinctive.
“Home sweet home,” I murmur as we creep around the final bend. I draw my cloak closer as Atrament reweaves the shadows over us. He hangs back over my shoulder. From here I can just make out the first gate in the distance. Some crows roost on the edges of the ceiling. There’s snoring and farting.
“The smell is impressive,” Atrament whispers.
“Haven’t been here before?”
“It has been a long time, and only once before.”
“You get used to it.”
“I would rather not.”
I jump the small chasm from the stairs to the ledge that the second gate is secured to. I brush my hand over the lock and flick it with a whisper of Aether. The metal creaks.
I crouch down. I can’t see all the first gate, just the bottom of it, because the rest of the way is obscured by the low ceiling, but I can make out there aren’t any boots. I wait a moment to see if anyone comes to investigate the creaking of metal. Not likely. It looks like some of the prisoner cells are open. So nobody’s locked in. Good.
“Why won’t the guards come when they hear this open?” Atrament whispers.
“Because they’ll think it’s one of the cell doors,” I whisper back, “And lots of prisoners keep their doors closed when they sleep so they get a warning if someone comes in. The cell doors and first gate require physical keys.”
I extend my arm. My familiar slithers off it and raises its head at me, sapphire eyes twinkling with wicked, eager mischief. “Go get my Fells, snake.”
It hisses and slithers off through the bars.
I push the second gate open. It creaks and whines and groans, but only two of the closest crows cock their heads, observing, but they don’t otherwise react. The first gate is the one that makes the distinctive grinding noise as it slides across the stone.
And it’s not like anyone in the prison will care if a prisoner wants to go below before their time. Sure, go ahead. The Researchers will love to have you.
My snake slithers back.
Blood follows it.
My heart surges. I get up and push back my hood.
He breaks into a run the rest of the way. He steps across the second gate, grabs my face in his hands, and kisses me.
“That’s not the greeting I was expecting,” I say, blinking.
“I—” He seems just as confused. “Pebbles, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Breaking out of the Pit. Get your uniforms. I’ve found ScatheFire. We’re going to get him and then we are leaving.”
His eyes move to the shadows shifting behind me. “Who is with you?”
Atrament reveals himself.
Blood growls.
I push Blood’s cheek so he’s looking at me. “He’s a prisoner here too. The situation has gotten unbelievably fucked, and we have got to get out of here. All of us. ScatheFire too.”
“He’s alive? You were right?”
“Alive is… yeah, technically he’s alive. Will you hurry the fuck up? We don’t have time for chit-chat.”
“None of us want to be fugitives,” he whispers.
I grab his shirt. “You want to be a hero?”
“Is that what’s on offer?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what’s on offer.”
He pries my fingers off him. “Two minutes.”
Damn, I had missed him.
Within two minutes, he, Rot, and Smoke—all wearing their uniforms complete with boots—come to the gate. The crows don’t so much as turn a muscle over it.
I’m starting to see some flaws in the Pit’s security.
“What is this guy doing here?” Rot demands in a whisper.
“He’s on our side, he’s escaping with us, just go along with it,” I command as I pull the door closed and re-lock it. “He’s going to sneak us past the Blight.”
“Stay close,” Atrament commands, spinning his own shadows around us, and summoning his familiar once more. “Smoke, lend your obfuscation please. It will entangle with my darkness if you focus.”
Smoke hesitates. “How does that work?”
“I believe you and I will be able to work together naturally.”
“Why should we trust you?” Rot demands.
“We don’t have time to argue,” Atrament says, annoyed for the first time I’ve known him. He glances at me, shifting with frustration.
“Spit it out, Fell,” Blood growls. “I can sense it on you.”
“There is no time to explain the mechanics.”
He’s being evasive.
Blood grabs my wrist and whispers, “Can we trust him? Or is he going to lead us right to the Warden?”
Anxiety shoots through me like an iron spear. “Atrament can be trusted.”
The Fells pull back like horses at a patience poll, then reluctantly step forward, creating slack in their ropes, although they’re not happy about it. Smoke spins his acrid magic, mimicking Atrament’s finger movements, weaving the smoke and darkness together.
“How are they doing that?” I hear Rot whisper to Blood, but I’m too fascinated by the shifting, weaving magic. Is Atrament their Shard?
That’d be amazing.
I almost laugh. Shards aren’t supposed to join teams together so they can fuse magics—that’s the purview of Hearts—but Atrament is Atrament. So we’d have a real Shard faking it to pass the fake Shard off as the real Shard.
I love life sometimes.
They weave a murk of smoke and shadow around us, and Atrament’s little familiar leads us at a sprint through the darkness, guiding us unerringly across open stone caverns, down hallways, stairways, through doors until it ducks back into the shadows and collapses on his palm, little sides heaving with exhaustion.
Smoke and Atrament dismiss the magical murk around us.
“The hell is this?” Rot whispers in horror as the once-human prisoners shuffle towards us, moaning and grabbing for me.
“A nightmare.” I stride down the corridor towards ScatheFire’s cell.
“What the hell are they doing to them? What is that stuff glowing in them?” Rot peers at some of the more modified prisoners.
“My conjured crystal,” I say. “The Warden is having Belann cut it into various shapes and they’re putting it into second-level prisoners.”
Atrament unlocks ScatheFire’s cell. He’s on his cot, same as before, and doesn’t react when I enter.
“We’re leaving,” I tell him gently, caressing one hand with its Fell thread.
No reaction. Nothing.
The Fells approach with caution, fearful of seeing what one of theirs had become.
“You have to be firmer.” Atrament comes into the cell. “He has only the most basic of mechanisms left. He also does not respond to the name ScatheFire. Do any of you know the name under his thread? He may respond to that.”
“No,” Blood says, staring at ScatheFire.
Atrament pushes me back. He seizes ScatheFire’s hand. “Stand.”
ScatheFire obediently stands.
“One command at a time,” Atrament says. “I do not know if he will run.”
“What did they do to him?” Smoke asks.
“They put him in the presence of the Old One,” Atrament says flatly.
“What the hell.” Blood looks at Atrament.
Atrament quirks a brow. “Exactly. He will lead if we lead him, but he will feel no urgency or defend himself. He is not… here. His soul is somewhere else.”
“Sling him like a bag of grain, Rot,” I command.
“How wide are the tunnels we’re going through?” Rot asks.
“Wide enough for big-ass Blight-bulls and Worms.”
“Got a better idea.” Rot whips off his second belt and tosses it. Before it hits the ground, his huge horse familiar appears. It stamps once and snorts. Rot bustles into the cell, tosses ScatheFire over his shoulder, then tosses him like a sack across the horse’s saddle. He even has some ties on the saddle to strap a body (presumably his) down.
ScatheFire offers no protest to this and dangles like a ragdoll.
“Now we are going deep into the prison,” Atrament says, voice low. “I will cloak all of us, but stay close. Blood, Smoke, take Lady Crystal’s hands. The presence of your Fell thread will help obfuscate how bright she burns, and where we are going, they salivate for the faintest whiff of Aether. My hummingbird will lead the way.”
“How are we getting out of here?” Blood asks as we head off and Atrament weaves thick murk around us.
“The same way ScatheFire got in here,” I say. “Out past the Blightling pens and up through the arena. I can unlock the gates. This prison wasn’t meant to hold an Aether Mage.”
He wraps his hand around mine, and behind me, Smoke presses soft and warm, his own hand sliding hesitantly into my other. The thudding of their Fell thread echos through me like the pounding of hooves.
Impulsively, I lean over and kiss Blood on the cheek, then Smoke.
“What was that for?” Blood asks.
“Missed you, I guess,” I say.
“Things did get a lot less amusing without you around.”
“Is this how you confess to maybe being worried that cushy peerage wasn’t going to happen for you?”
“Me? Worry? Pst. That was always ScatheFire’s job and now look what’s happened to the poor bastard. Doesn’t do any good to worry.”
Smoke sighs, long suffering.
“You really want to escape with them?” Atrament asks me.
“Yes, I really want to escape with them. They’re innocent. So are you. Does nobody remember I’m the actual murderer?”
“I dunno, Pebbles, you’ve got such a high bodycount we keep forgetting,” Rot says.
“What, you can’t count past ten?”
“Not when he’s too busy thinking about your pretty tits being in his face again,” Blood mutters under his breath.
Atrament snarls at Blood. “Do not be vulgar, degenerate.”
“If I’m a degenerate, are you really expecting better?” Blood asks.
Atrament has to pause in his weaving to consider that.
“Got you there, noble-bred,” Blood says.
“Quickly now, my familiar is getting exhausted,” Atrament commands. He’s breathing hard himself. “Hiding Lady Crystal from the Blight is very taxing.”
“Follow along, precious,” Rot coos at his familiar.
Once again we’re running through the conjured murk, only this time there’s the clip-clop of Rot’s familiar jogging along behind us. The Blight’s not going to pay attention to a Fell familiar carting a husk.
The slope stops. The stone floor becomes rough, deeply grooved and punctured. Things shift, and the shifting disrupts the conjured murk, revealing a tangled network of caverns in the wall with heavy iron gates wrapped with throbbing Aether thread and bars of…
Holy shit, is that crystal? My crystal?
My magic shakes and things start to moo and kick and bang. The unfelt breeze rips the last of the murk off us, exposing us to the absolute worst stable in the world.
“Oh gods…” Blood breathes as we spin around and take in the nightmare.
Very large things start to make very bad, very loud noises.
I slide my arm under Atrament’s shoulders. “I’m fine,” he assures me, taking deep, exhausted breaths. His Fell thread burns. “I can’t hold it against these eyes. Too many eyes. Too many.”
The thousands and thousands of eyes are staring right at me. It’s like a thousand jaws are opening, and a million fangs drip with hungry spittle.
“These are the Pens,” he says, still breathing deep and raw. “These—”
“I get it,” I say. “Which way. Which way is out?”
Something crashes.
“That does not sound good,” Smoke comments.
SMASH.
“Very bad,” Blood agrees. “Well, we’re fucked. Which way do we run?”
Atrament points.
We run down a corridor lined with angry, hungry Blightlings trying to smash out of their stalls and boxes and cells. A dozen gooey goats bleat furiously at us.
“Oh shit!” Rot shouts as something huge smashes behind us. “BlightWorm!”
The biggest BlightWorm I’ve ever seen inchworms its way around the bending corridor of the Pens, smashing pens and bars and bellowing and slinging spit and goo everywhere.
Smoke summons an acrid cloud that engulfs the worm. It flails.
“Won’t hold it long,” Smoke says. “Blood?”
“It doesn’t have any blood in it,” he says, pulling on invisible strands with his fingers. “I can just get some ichor from it, but I’m just going to piss it off. Rot, dissolve that thing.”
“It’s going to summon guards,” Atrament says. “We don’t have time to fight it. Just run!”
Rot flings balls of brown-green murk that dissolve patches of the BlightWorm when they hit. It bellows in rage and flails.
We bolt up the tunnel after Atrament.
“Shit,” Blood pants as we sprint damn near uphill. “What is this?”
“It leads to the arena.” I pant too.
The BlightWorm writhes after us up the tunnel. And now it’s got a herd of angry goo-goats with it.
