Movement. So fast I almost missed it.
The leftmost guard made a soft, surprised sound, barely more than a gasp. Then his body crumpled to the ground. Cindrissian materialised behind him for just a heartbeat before vanishing again, the guard’s body already dragged into darkness.
The other two hadn’t even noticed.
Lincatheron moved next, and he was almost beautiful in his violence. He covered the distance to the centre guard in three silent strides, one hand clamping over the soldier’s mouth as the other drove a blade between his ribs. The guard thrashed once, twice, then went limp.
The last guard, the one who’d been complaining about waiting, finally looked up from his dice.
His eyes went wide. His mouth opened to scream.
Fenric’s hand closed around his throat before any sound could escape, and the two of them went down in a tangle of limbs that ended with a sickening crack of bone.
Silence.
Three bodies. Maybe fifteen seconds from start to finish.
I stepped into the chamber, no longer bothering to hide my presence.
Lincatheron’s head snapped toward me, fury burning in those dark eyes. He opened his mouth, probably to demand what the fuck I thought I was doing, but I cut him off with a look that had made grown men reconsider their life choices.
“Where’s Varyth?”
For a long moment, I thought Lincatheron might actually kill me himself. The rage radiating off him was palpable.
Then Fenric’s voice cut through the tension. “Deeper in. That one—” he gestured to the guard with the broken neck. “Was thinking about the ‘special prisoner’ in the back chamber.”
I didn’t ask how Fenric knew what a dead man had been thinking. Didn’t particularly care.
“Then let’s go,” I said, already moving toward the passage that led deeper into the cave system.
Behind me, I heard Lincatheron’s low growl of frustration.
But he didn’t stop me.
And when I glanced back, all three of them were following.
We moved deeper, the passage twisting like a serpent’s spine. Each step took us further into the mountain’s throat, the air growing thicker, more oppressive.
Then, voices again.
But these were different. Louder. More distinct. And underneath them, the sound of movement. Multiple bodies shifting, boots scraping against stone, the rustle of armour and weapons.
We were close.
Lincatheron raised his fist, and we froze as one.
The voices carried through the passage ahead, echoing off stone in a way that made them seem both near and far at once.But one rose above the rest, female, sharp with authority and irritation.
“Tell me what you have. What caused the magicshefelt.”
She.
The word caught in my mind like a splinter. Who wasshe? But I didn’t have time to linger on the question, because another voice answered.
“Kill me. I’m not telling you anything.”
Varyth. Rough. Raw. But unmistakably defiant.
