It would be a fight, then. Although exhausted and aching from a full day’s battle, he was stronger than the last time he’d faced these things. That day by the river he’d slain three with barely a sweat broken. He took a breath, letting time slow around him.
Without the river’s masking scent or deafening roar, the death wielder’s heightened senses tracked him easily as he maneuvered around the room, but its body was sluggish, limbs heavy.
The creature lunged for him with snapping jaws, but Araes had already dove across the room. Putrid water splattered as he dodged the oncoming attack, sending his stomach curling. Araes closed off his smell. He couldn’t afford the distraction. Not when the death wielder’s claws raked over his cloak, barely missing his calf.
Araes kicked himself up, moonlight scattering off his blade’s edge, and faced the creature. The death wielder’s skeletal fingers fell to its sides as it contorted into a crouched position. With gnashing teeth, it crawled toward the lieutenant, black sludge oozing from the holes in its chest.
Araes pulled a half-buried shield from the mud pit at his feet and slid the leather straps over his forearm. His pulse roared in his ear, but he steadied himself, digging hisboots into the muck. The death wielder lurched for him again, but this time he didn’t flinch, didn’t dive away from the attack. He simply let the creature pounce.
Its chest squelched against his shield as the two fell to the ground. Araes locked his knee around the death wielder’s sinewy legs, feeling bone snap against the force. It shrieked in pain as Araes spun them and pinned the creature to the ground.
Without hesitation, he plunged his blade into its heart, watching black sludge spurt from the wound. Araes clamped his mouth shut, feeling the aftershocks shudder through the death wielder’s body as its life seeped out and pooled on the floor.
Panting, he heaved himself up, never letting the grip on his impaled sword falter. The death wielder remained limp, its skin sagging around bone. Araes smoothed back his grime-covered hair, refusing to inhale the putrid, sulfuric scent, and inspected the creature once more. His pulse quickened. Illuminated in the moonlight was a slash of scarred flesh trailing from the top of its brow to just below the hollowed eye socket, the raised ridge of skin identical to that of his old commanding officer, Captain Theos.
Soldiers roared and boots thudded just outside the window as all hell broke loose.
Chapter 66
“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Polaris said, her hands tucked into the folds of her dark navy cloak. The three immortals stood before a weathered oak door. The hallway passage narrowed until their shoulders brushed one another before the threshold.
“Now or never,” Altair whispered, his voice a low grumble in the stillness of the sleeping castle. The god turned the tarnished knob and the door clicked open, its hinges creaking from years of resting undisturbed. “Why is it always a ratty old door that marks the entrance to places such as this? For once, perhaps the entrance to our untimely deaths could be glamorous and sparkling.”
Tethys scoffed. Her brother’s humor, although a clear defense against the unyielding wave of terror pumping through his veins, thinned the too-heavy air. The doorway revealed steps that plunged into darkness, thicker than the heaviest quilt.
“I’ll be sure to drape your tomb in diamonds and pearls,” she said, brushing past her siblings. The shadowsswallowed all remnants of light as she descended, Polaris and Altair trailing her step for step. The temperature dropped with each level, passing unlit sconces, coated in dust and cobwebs, every so often.
Tethys could feel her siblings’ eyes brand into her as she continued down the stairwell. Her skin, muscle, even bones, begged the goddess to turn and fly back to the surface. She was an intrusive force amidst the ancient darkness. Polaris placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Wait,” the goddess whispered. “Did you hear that?”
Tethys gripped the stone wall and turned to face her sister. Hair pricked on the back of her neck as she held her breath. Only silence greeted them as they stilled, however.
“I don’t hear anything,” Tethys replied, her gaze darting from shadow to shadow. “Let’s keep going. If we’re caught down here…Well, we all know who Obscuros would punish first.”
Altair nodded and grasped their sister’s hand. Tethys thought it incredulous that she was the one who now summoned the courage to will her legs forward. Not the goddess of night, who harbored darkness, or the all-powerful sun king with his endless daylight, but the youngest, vacant of any magic.
The passageway narrowed as they trudged on, spiraling into the depths until all awareness of time and space declined into nothing. Tethys’s eyes burned, desperate to focus on something, anything tangible in the sea of misty shadow.
“Sister, I swear, either I’m losing my damned mind, or there’s something following us,” Polaris said, her whispered breath frantic against Tethys’s neck.
Tethys stopped, her boot hovering over the step below. She closed her eyes, drawing in a breath, and focused on every faint creak and groan echoing through the stairwell. Again, only her siblings’ shallow breaths disrupted thesilence.
“I think it’s the latter,” she snipped. “Let’s go. We’re getting close.”
Before her leather sole met stone, however, a faint growl sent a wave of ice through her veins.
“Ok, even I heard it that time,” Altair said, his low voice quivering. A heavy thud sent dust particles cascading from the ceiling.
“Run,” Polaris cried.
They stumbled down the stairwell, no longer cautious in the darkness. Tethys’s elbow cracked against granite as she mis-stepped and landed on her ankle. Altair gripped her bicep before her head impacted the dusty, stone floor.
“Are you alright? Did you land on your belly, sister?” Polaris asked, her eyes luminous in the shadows as she knelt beside Tethys.
“No, I’m fine. Just keep going, before whatever’s upstairs reaches us,” she replied, smoothing back the curls fallen out of place. Tethys placed a hand on her abdomen. Maybe it was a mistake coming here, putting her son at risk. There wasn’t time for retrospection, though, as another growl, this time deafening, sent tremors through the passageway.
“Do you still think Mother’s stories of the Minotaur to be merely fables, brother?” Tethys asked, flying down the remaining steps.
