The vibration under my boots intensifies, rattling my teeth. The golden light spilling from the tear flares.
“Something is coming,” I say, stepping closer to the edge despite every instinct screaming at me to run to thenearest pub and drown myself in gin. “I thought you said everyone had already fled?”
“Everyone with sense,” Voren corrects, his eyes fixed on the widening gap. “This feels desperate.”
A hand slaps onto the stone lip of the fissure. It’s pale, trembling, and definitely not monstrous. Fingers scrabble for purchase against the moss-slicked rock.
“Help me!” a voice screeches from the depths.
I jolt forward, instinct overriding prudence, but Dreven’s arm bars my path like an iron gate.
“Wait,” he commands, eyes narrowed and fixed on the hand. He steps forward and stomps on it so hard, I wince.
The glamour or whatever it was wears off, and it turns black, inky and way more ominous than the first hand.
“Ouch,” I mutter as a grumbling comes from the pit.
Dreven reaches out, his shadow magic flaring and plunging into the fissure to haul out a shrieking blot. The thing lands on the wet grass with a sound like a cowpat hitting the pavement. It’s a writhing, formless mess of void-black slime that immediately tries to scramble back toward the hole, only to be yanked back by Dreven’s shadow tether.
“What is that thing?” I ask, as it manifests a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth and hisses at us.
“It’s a shadow-leech,” Dreven says, his face twisted in disgust. He tightens the magical noose, making the creature squeal like a damp firework. “Bottom feeder. They cling to the edges of the realms and eat the scraps left by greater powers.”
“And apparently, they try to trick slayers into saving them,” I mutter, tightening my grip on my blade. “Crafty little bastard.”
Dastian crouches down, dangerously close to the snapping jaws. “Who reopened the fissure?” he asks.
The creature shrieks incoherently, but Dreven nods along like he understands it. Then, he raises his hand and wipes the creature from existence without any kind of magic or visible power at all.
“Well?” I ask, when silence rains down.
“‘The veil tears for the slayer,’” Dreven says, looking up at me before he straightens up, looming over me once again.
I turn back to the fissure, which seems to have settled since the creature was yanked out of it. Perhaps it was disrupting it. “Okay,” I say, gripping my blade tighter as the runes burn into my palm. “I guess we’re doing this.”
Voren’s hands snake out and clamp down on my wrist before I can move forward. “Doing what, exactly?”
“Going down to find this crown thing,” I say, pointing to the rip in the ground with my knife.
“Uhm, no,” Dastian says. “Not without heavy planning.”
“Heavy planning? From the Chaos god? Forgive me if I find that incredulous. Don’t you run in recklessly and fuck the consequences?”
“I contain multitudes, slayer,” Dastian retorts, looking genuinely offended. “Just because I enjoy a bit of entropy doesn’t mean I want to dive headfirst into a meat grinder without checking if it’s plugged in first.”
“He’s right,” Dreven says, his voice dropping to that tone that usually precedes him doing something bossy. He steps between me and the glowing tear in the earth, effectively blocking my path to doom. “Taking you into the Pantheon realm will require preparation.”
Voren releases my wrist but stays close enough that Ican feel his chill. “Time is distorted. Space folds in on itself. There are things prowling the ruins that make that shadow-leech look like a cuddly toy. We don’t just walk you in. We prepare you.”
I look from the fissure at the three of them. “Prepare me how?”
“You possess the blood of the Firsts, but your mind is human. We need to bridge that gap before you step through,” Dreven states.
“And does this bridging involve something invasive, painful, or embarrassing?”
Dastian throws an arm around my shoulders, ignoring my stiffening posture. “Likely all three, sweetheart. But on the bright side, you get to hang out with us some more.”
“Joy,” I mutter, shaking him off as Dreven slams the crypt door shut and seals it with a blast of shadows that should keep curious humans out. “Just tell me it doesn’t involve another ghost drooling on my face.”
