“That…didn’t sound good,” Araes said, tipping his chin to inspect the ceiling.
“Let’s make haste. If we ride through the night, we can make it back to Piscium before tomorrow’s sunset,” she said. The walls trembled once more, igniting a fire in Tethys’s chest. Araes grasped her hand and led the way past glow-worms and sharp broken rock. With each step the space shook, dislodging pebbles and debris from the darkness overhead.
Just as they reached the cavern’s exit, the adjacent wall collapsed into a thick cloud of dust, knocking massive boulders from their holds.
“Goddess, look out!” Araes cried. Tethys glanced overheard to see a rock fixture plummeting toward the ground. The lieutenant leapt for her, his shoulder slamming into her chest as they fell to the floor and rolled mere inches away from the rock’s impact.
Tethys’s vision blurred for a moment as she grasped the near seconds between her and death.
“I think that’s our cue,” Araes growled, pulling them both to their feet. They plunged into the shadowy tunnels once more, racing up the path, no longer cautious of what loomed in the darkness.
Tethys’s heart pounded in her chest, threatening to split her sternum open and flee to the exit without her. The key was ice in her pocket as she trailed Araes’s heels.
More rubble fell with every new quake, coating the air in a dense cloud. She stifled a cough, her throat burning, and stepped aside as another piece of rocky ceiling fellbeside her boot. The earth trembled as they raced against time, ascending the tunnel with frantic eyes and gasping breaths.
Just as the quartz light of dusk appeared in the distance like a glint off a mirror, the tunnel roared. Cracks cobwebbed in the rock bed above.
Tethys and Araes shared a panicked glance before lunging into a sprint. They were mere moments from losing to death at the finish line.
“There isn’t enough time!” Tethys shouted, the groan of the earth drowning her voice out. Araes gritted his teeth, and, with near inhuman speed, flung her over his shoulder. He plowed through falling sheet rock and mineral deposits, closing in on the entrance. The tunnel, mere feet behind them, collapsed into the seaside shadows.
“We aren’t going to make it!” she cried, her nails digging into Araes’s tunic now tacky with sweat. The fractured floor nipped at his heels, but Araes kept moving, his muscles rippling against every stride.
“Yes we will, Goddess. We’re almost there. Just hold on tight,” Araes panted. Tethys glanced over her shoulder, making out the fluid motion of waves on the shoreline. The tunnel’s entrance was brighter now; maybe they would make it. She squeezed her eyes shut, succumbing to the sheer terror of being only a second’s hesitation from death.
More rubble fell around them.
Unsettled dust seared their throats.
The earth gave out before Araes’s footstep connected with the ground.
A deafening sound of rock crumbling roared in her ears as the last trickle of dawn-lit hope fell away.
The whiplash of falling silenced the scream building in Tethys’s chest.
They tumbled into darkness. Araes’s grip on her biceps tethered them together, and although plummeting to theirdeaths, his touch was a small comfort that she wouldn’t be alone when she faced this end.
Just before their bodies met stone, Araes pulled Tethys to his chest and rolled, cushioning her from the blow of impact. His body skidded across stone as they collided with the cavern floor. Tethys’s grip on Araes’s shoulders loosened and the force of their fall ripped her from him, her trousers shredding on the rubble as she slid away. When finally she came to a stop, her knees were bloodied and skinned. Breathing was too hard, too heavy.
Tethys clawed at the surrounding darkness with desperate pleas. Agony seared through her body with every slight movement. The lieutenant took most of the force, but her breath was shallow. She took inventory of her pain. Her leg was definitely broken. With each inhale, splintered bone pinched her lungs and her lower spine screamed in response. Maybe a few ribs, then, too. She sputtered and coughed up the remnants of debris stuck in her throat and crawled across the floor.
Tethys’s head pounded and blood trickled from her nose. The cavern was darker than the northern sky. Tethys squinted her eyes, willing them to adjust to the void of utter blackness.
“Araes? Are you alright?” she managed to ask through waves of desperate anguish. The responding silence echoed through the cavern, sending frantic waves up her throat.
His body was a misshapen shadow.
“Araes?!” Her fingers brushed the hair along his brow, now sticky and warm with blood. She rummaged through her satchel with shaking hands and retrieved one of the hand candles Araes packed, but the strike of a match shattered her heart into thousands of pieces.
Araes’s crumpled body, folded and contorted in ways no mortal body should be, flickered in the candle’s amberlight.
“No, Araes. Please. Wake up, wake up, wake up,” she sobbed, the trails of her heartbreak streaming from her eyes.
She pressed her ear to his chest. A blip of a heartbeat battling against all odds. Tethys’s breath caught. If he could summon one last drop of strength to stay alive, then she could get them out of here. The cavern crumbled into an inescapable pit, with only a faint of light marking their escape above. Tethys wrapped Araes’s limp arms around her and clawed at the dirt. Eos above, he was so damned heavy. Even without a broken body, there was no way she’d be able to scale the wall.
“Stay with me, please, Araes,” she said, scanning the shadows for any sign of an alternate exit. There was nothing. Nothing but gnarled stone and shattered salt deposits. A tear streamed from her eye, following the curve of her cheek. She swiped it away before it could fall.
There on her finger, Altair’s golden ring flashed. The ring. She sucked in a breath, praying to Eos he’d answer her call. Pulling the ring from her finger, she traced the interior engraving and spoke. A soft whisper of words echoed through the cavern.
