A strange expression passed over Scalyvar’s face. The moment was brief, but I couldn’t help but get an overwhelming sense of bitterness. “I am well aware of their powers.”
“Then you know you cannot destroy my sensor flask!” Vhulkar pleaded as he clasped his hands in front of himself. “Y-you don’t know what you’re doing! If you destroy that necklace, then there will be nothing to control the nethral!”
“I see no downside to this,” the king countered.
Vhulkar dropped to his knees and walked on them up to the king. “I beg you to reconsider!” He stabbed a quivering finger at the spot where the hellhound had deteriorated. “There will be more! Many more! Their pit is not far off! We’ll be killed by the things!”
“Show me where it is.”
Vhulkar’s face contorted with fear and fury. “Why? So you can destroy my life’s work?”
“So I can destroy a great evil.”
He sat up and sneered at him. “I won’t help you.”
Scalyvar tightened his fingers around the glass. The object shattered in his hand, and the bits rained down on the floor. A terrible ooze flowed out of his palm and dripped onto the floor, where it sank into oblivion.
Vhulkar screamed and scuttled forward like a dog clinging to a few scraps left by its cruel owner. He scraped up the bits and pieces, crying as he coddled them against his chest. Sobs racked his body for a few moments before he whipped his head up.
His terrible dark eyes glared at the king, who stood coldly over him. “You monster! Are you so jealous of their power that you would destroy your one chance to save our kingdom from oblivion?”
Scalyvar stared at him with an expression of indifference mixed with a slight hint of something else. Was it pity? The king didn’t say a word, but opened his hand and tilted his palm. The remains of the flask rained down on the floor in front of Vhulkar.
The king strode past him and over to me, where he knelt in front of me with eyes of such bountiful kindness that all the pain in my body faded away. He stretched out his hand to me and spoke in a gentle whisper. “Can you stand?”
I stared at him for a moment before I shook the cobwebs from my mind and set my hand in his palm. “I-I think so-”
“What is the sense in asking her to stand?” The shrieking question came from our companion. He struggled to his feet even as the king helped me to mine. Vhulkar spun around to face us with his hands clasped tightly against his chest. He clutched onto the remains of the glass, and the broken bits had cut deep into his fingers. Blood dripped from them as a wide, open-mouth grin spread across his face. “You won’t get out of here alive. Even now, they smell my scent.” He lifted his bleeding hands above his head, and the droplets dripped onto his face. “They’ll take all of us! None shall be spared their wrath!”
He broke into maniacal laughter that echoed off the hard walls. The king wrapped his arms around me, both holding me up and away from that insane man. His insanity did have its reality, however, as I heard the faint pounding of padded feet from the door.
Hell was coming, and it was hungry.
Chapter 11
I grasped onto the front of the king’s cloak and looked up at him with panicked eyes. “What are we going to do?!”
He examined the room before his gaze lit upon the hole in the ceiling. “There! We get out there!”
My jaw hit the floor. “But that’s twenty feet up!”
He looped an arm around my waist. “A simple jump for me, but you must hold tight.”
“Wait!” I shouted as I whipped my head around to our crazed host. “What about him?”
The man stood as still as a statue with his arms at his sides. Blood still dripped from his fingers as he stared listlessly at the door. His unblinking eyes stared at the door as the footsteps grew louder.
I held out my hand to him. “Vhulkar! Come with us!”
He spoke in a hollowed-out voice. “No. My life’s work is over, and soon so will be my life.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way!” I pleaded with him as I took a step toward the man and stretched out my hand. “Please!”
He mechanically turned his face in my direction, and confusion reigned. “You would…you would forgive me?”
I wiggled my fingers at him. “If it means you won’t die, then yes!”
Vhulkar swallowed hard before he slowly shook his head. “No. I will…remain here. I will…only slow you down. At least in this way, I will distract them.”
