Grim stood next to him, his face tilted toward the sky too. Blood was streaming down the side of his head. He didn’t seem to notice. “If Cleo loses her grip on her abilities...we’re dead,” Grim said. He couldn’t portal them away, and Oro couldn’t fly them out.
“She will hold,” Oro said, hoping he was right.
All they could do now was move forward. Oro breathed deeply, grimacing at the pain in his ribs and forcing his panic down. He needed to remain calm. Rational.
He turned to examine their path. It wasn’t wide, but it was long, the craggy stretch of land marked with misshapen rocks. A small hill blocked the rest of his view. But this world below...it almost resembled the one above, as if someone had sunken an entire island down here. Why? What were they hiding from?
When an ancient bellow broke through the silence, followed by dozens more, Oro realized perhaps what was down here was nothiding—perhaps it had beenhidden.
With one glance at each other, they ran up the hill—and stopped dead. Mile after mile, there were hundreds of people and beasts chained to the seafloor. Half-rotted, their clothing just color-leeched tatters. Oro looked to the side through the curtain of water and saw that there were more.
Shackled by their feet, they writhed in pain, grasping their necks. They twitched and eventually stilled, only to lurch to life a few moments later. Oro and Grim watched in silence as they drowned. Died. Revived. Only for the process to be repeated. Again, and again. For eternity, it seemed. An endless torture.
No, this wasn’t just a land, hidden away.
It was an ancient prison.
ISLA
Hours later, the horse began to slow.
It seemed these scavengers didn’t have much water. Isla’s throat burned with thirst as she watched the captors argue over a pouch before giving it to the horse. Another one of them looked up at the sky, eyes narrowed, shook his head, then stalked over to the cart.
He lifted the tarp, and Isla dry-heaved at the stench. With hurried movements, and yells of indignation from the others, he began tossing bodies onto the sand. All of them mangled. Some missing entire limbs. He threw them far and wide.
Then, they kept going. They only made it a few minutes, down the side of a dusty hill, when the same man suddenly tensed, body jolting. He turned.
An arrow was sticking through his brow. He stepped once more before collapsing.
Isla ducked as all hell broke loose.
Arrows whistled through the ash-heavy air, landing in the sand, until one pierced right through a scavenger’s chest. He went down. The dust turned crimson below him. Only two remained.
One of those two raised her arms, and the sand in the distance shifted like a blanket before dancing in the air like a glittering galaxy. A muffled scream sounded as someone was buried, and the arrows stopped.
Isla turned toward the sound of a battle cry as six people crested a dune, weapons raised. Their swords and daggers were no more than scrap metal.
Her two remaining captors swept their arms in coordinated movements, and the sand smothered them all like a tidal wave.
The desert trembled with their screams and attempts to claw their way out. It didn’t seem like they had powers...or perhaps they could not access them, not like her captors could. The scavengers kept their hold, until the fight stopped. Only then did they retrieve their lifeless bodies. They picked at them, emptying their pockets. There was a shout of triumph when a canteen of water was found, followed by two others.
One of those canteens was roughly pressed to Isla’s lips. This close, she noticed something around the scavenger’s neck. A shard of glittering silver. Not shademade metal, no...almost like a piece of a storm. Was that why some could wield, and some couldn’t?
Her hair was roughly pulled back, forcing her to drink. Not that she needed to be forced. She gulped the water down desperately. Some of it drippled over her chin, and the way her skin stung made her realize she was burning in this heat.
Lark didn’t need water like Isla did, she knew that. Her ancestor had been trapped for centuries underground by Cronan. But the block on her abilities here had clearly taken its toll. Lark accepted the water, surprising Isla with her ability to keep still and quiet. Why wasn’t Lark trying to get away? Was she saving her energy? What did she know that Isla didn’t? When the scavenger left, Isla watched Lark’s chest slowly piece together, a little closer to fully healed.
The bodies were left behind as the cart kept moving.
Isla needed another plan, another way to escape. Who knew where they were being taken, and what awaited them there?
Still...she wouldn’t survive out here on her own. Not with the creatures that lurked in the sands, and the scavengers, and the clear lack of resources.
Though this world had been decimated, there were clearly survivors. They had to have food. Shelter. But where?
Did they all serve Cronan? Did they fear him? Could she try to make allies?
Who would listen to her? She wouldn’t even want to work with her, powerless as she was. She didn’t know anything about this world, beyond this wasteland. Maybe she could speak to her captors. She hadn’t tried yet.
