“Not down here.” Rather than taking the easy insult, Ari explained: “The softest things are glovis grubs. But they feed off rocks, so they’re filled with corrosive acids. The people who do eat them… don’t last long.”
But those people didn’t die. The chemicals in the glovis ate away at their bodies and corroded their minds until what was once Fenthri became something between man and monster. The Wretched were worse than forsaken Chimera. At least the forsaken had a timer on their lives. If the Fenthri body managed to adapt to consuming the glovis’ flesh, they could survive indefinitely, haunting the tunnels.
“Up then?” he reasoned.
“I seem to have no other choice.” She adjusted the strapping on her harness. As much as she didn’t mind wearing it, she was ready for a reprieve that would let her take it off.
“When are we going?”
She laughed with a shake of her head. “There is noweon this trip. Alone I can navigate whatever streets or plains wait above us effortlessly. If I’m looking out for everyone, it’ll slow me down.”
“I can look out for myself, and you know I’ll help look after them,” he insisted defensively.
“I know,” she confessed. A similar sensation to the one she’d felt a few days ago washed over her, and Arianna assessed the Dragon in the darkness. Without light, he looked the same as any Fenthri would—save for the black slits of his eyes and his physical size. Perhaps that was why she was beginning to feel easier around the man. But that didn’t quite make sense, as Arianna didn’t find relief, but rather a small disappointment, in not being able to see the colors she knew him to be. “And I will trust you to do it.”
“What?”
“I’m going alone. I’ll only be gone an hour, and I’m certain they’ll sleep the entire time and then some … But I’m trusting you to look after them.” The words still made her uneasy because it meant that she really was daring to put her faith in another Dragon. But they came more smoothly than she expected.
“Be careful, Ari. First you trust me, then you may actually like me.” He leaned against the wall with a smug grin.
Her emotions ran wild. Arianna tried to get them back under control but didn’t know where to begin. Correcting him on his use of Flor’s shortened name? The ease by which he assumed her trust? The implication that she might actually enjoy him and his company?
Or perhaps it was the fact that, yet again, he reminded her of a woman who was long dead.
“Don’t push your luck.” It was a weak return, and she knew it. But she wouldn’t be too hard on the man, she insisted to herself; she told him she’d liked his newfound sass and it would be contradictory to squelch it.
His eyes followed her as she woke Helen softly, helping the girl out of the cart without waking Will or Florence. She could feel his attention prickling at her magic until she disappeared around a winding tunnel, Helen leading the way. And yet, she still felt his presence long after. It was a shadow connected to her heels, waiting on her as her footsteps echoed through the caves, no doubt audible to his Dragon ears.
That sensation faded away as a hazy dawn faded into view. Helen blinked blearily at the light, the small amount nearly blinding after spending five days trekking with nothing more than torches and the faint glow of glovis eyes lining the tunnel walls. Fresh air kicked the dust around, making no effort to pierce the depths of the Underground. Nature heeded the lines between above and below; it was the boldness inspired by steam and guns and magic that inspired Fenthri to blur it.
“You’re going to make it back?” Helen yawned. “Do you need me to wait here?”
Arianna made a show of pocketing her grease pen. “I can follow the line.” She tapped the mark she’d drawn while walking.
“You’re sure? If we get separated, there’s no hope of finding each other down there,” the cartographer cautioned.
“So go back and sleep, and don’t move for a while—if you can manage that.”
“Sleep, yes, understood.” Helen’s dramatic salute quickly deteriorated into another wide-mouthed inhale of air. She passed the hardened eye of a glovis from hand to hand. It still emitted a faint glow even after the creature’s death, and Ari watched the speck of light as Helen traveled back into the depths.
The fog embraced her as Ari emerged, breathing fresh air for the first time in what felt like forever. Standingalonefor the first time in weeks. She wasn’t accustomed to traveling in a pack.
She looked over the dusty plains of Ter.4, a steam engine rolling across the ocean of tall grasses in the distance. Master Oliver had taken her under his wing when she was still so young. They had traveled the world together, just the two of them. And then the Dragons had come to ruin it all. To confine guilds to their territories and initiates to textbooks rather than true learning.
Still, when she watched the sky lighten over the plains, the quiet dawn on a mostly barren land, it looked as it had then—smelled as it had then. Arianna stepped forward, putting Wraiths and Dragons and boons and misplaced Ravens behind her. For a brief hour, she navigated the world as nothing more than a Fenthri woman.
Three hare and a bag full of edible plants later, she returned to the world below. Escapes were wonderful, but impermanent and shallow. She was made of stronger mettle than those that fled into the warm bosom of nostalgia.
The fingers of her left hand trailed through the grease line, following it down and through the winding passages. Silence flooded her, and it wasn’t until Arianna was nearly to their resting place that she realized the source of her unease.
It wastooquiet. She heard no breathing, no discussion, no clanking of the cart over the rails as its occupants shifted in their sleep. Her pace quickened and Arianna sped to meet the last corner, already knowing what would greet her.
Nothing.
Her line ended where it had begun in a spot she knew she could not be confusing for any other. Panic swelled to a crescendo and Ari forced it down with a hand on her dagger, as though she could ward off her emotions with golden blades and lock them away behind spools of wire. She stretched her hearing, but stillness greeted her in all directions.
Wherever they had gone, it was far and fast—enough that even her Dragon ears couldn’t pick up the faintest squeal of wheels on rails. Her breathing quickened as the options unfurled before her, and Arianna picked up a faint scent.
