thirty-four
Bastien
Hell had a hundred different ways to kill us, and this cracked wasteland might be the most insulting yet. The ground split open like a madman’s smile, jagged fissures cutting through the baked earth as far as I could see. One misstep meant plummeting into darkness. Or worse, into the jaws of whatever horrors lurked below.
Laurent stood beside me, finally healed enough to move on his own after a week of Marcel and me practically carrying him. Buthis newfound strength might not matter if we couldn’t cross this fractured nightmare of a landscape that stretched between us and the faint pulse of Isabeau’s life force.
I felt her now, weaker than ever but still there. A flickering candle flame caught in a storm that somehow refused to die. My brothers sensed it too. The connection to our mate that kept us fighting when every instinct screamed for surrender.
She’s weaker today,I thought, the words flowing directly to my brothers’ minds through our shared connection. The mental link had been our salvation in this place.
Marcel’s massive form tensed beside me. I know. Something’s changed. She’s further away.
We’d all felt it a week ago. A sudden stretching of our bond with Isabeau, as if someone had physically moved her from the castle. The realization had driven us to push harder, to take more risks in our search for escape from this hellish realm.
Laurent limped forward, testing his weight on his previously injured leg. His fur had grown back in patches over the burn scars, giving him a mangy appearance that belied the fierce intelligence in his amber eyes. The electrical burns he’d suffered crossing the lightning plains had nearly killed him, but my middle brother was nothing if not stubborn.
We can’t afford to stop,he projected, his mental voice stronger than his physical presence.Every day we waste, she suffers more.
I knew he was right. We all did. But the landscape before us offered no clear path. Just endless broken ground that looked ready to collapse under the slightest pressure, with gaps too wide to simply step across. And we weren’t alone.
A lost soul—one of the many damned spirits that wandered Hell’s landscape—stood at the edge of the wasteland about fifty yards to our left. Its translucent form flickered like a candle flame, once human features blurred by whatever torments it hadendured since arriving here, losing himself. It paced nervously, clearly wanting to cross but hesitant to take the first step.
“Follow the cracked earth to the obsidian mountains,”it had told us when we’d encountered it hours earlier.“Cross quickly and you’ll find the boundary thins there and into the belly of the mountains. A way up, perhaps. A way out.”
What the spirit hadn’t mentioned was the fucking giant snake.
We watched in horrified silence as the lost soul finally gathered its courage and stepped onto the first stable-looking section of ground. It moved carefully at first, testing each foothold before committing its weight. Then it grew bolder, moving faster, its ethereal voice rising in excitement as it neared the halfway point.
“I can see it! The mountain! It’s right the—”
The ground exploded.
One moment, the soul was picking its way across the fractured earth. The next, a massive serpentine form burst from one of the wider chasms, jaws stretched impossibly wide. It moved so fast I barely registered its size. Fifty feet at least, scales black as pitch with veins of molten red pulsing beneath. The snake’s head alone was the size of a carriage, and its fangs... Christ, those fangs could pierce straight through our beast forms without slowing.
The lost soul didn’t even have time to scream properly. One moment it existed, the next it was gone, swallowed whole by the monstrous serpent that retreated just as quickly into the depths below.
Well, shit,Marcel’s thought came through, dripping with the dark humor that had kept us sane through months in this place.That complicates things.
I stared at the spot where the soul had vanished, calculating our odds. They weren’t good. We were real flesh and blood here,not ethereal spirits. If that thing caught one of us, there’d be no coming back.
So we stay quiet,Laurent suggested, his mental voice calm despite the horror we’d just witnessed.The creature attacked when the soul grew excited, made too much noise.
I nodded, my eyes still scanning the fractured terrain. He was right. The soul had been fine until it started practically shouting. The snake seemed to hunt by sound, which gave us one advantage at least. In our beast forms, we knew how to move silently. We were predators too, after all.
We need a plan,I thought, crouching low to study the broken ground more carefully. Three princes, one snake. Better odds than most get in this place.
Marcel moved to my left, his larger bulk casting a shadow over me. Even after months in Hell, he remained the strongest of us physically.Those are some massive cracks to jump. One slip and we’re snake food.
I made a decision.Beast form. Four legs give better balance than two. If we slip, our claws might catch the edge before we fall.
We’d discovered early in our imprisonment that we could shift between our full beast form and a more bipedal hybrid state. The latter was useful for manipulating objects and climbing and when Laurent was hurt, but for pure speed and stability across uncertain terrain, nothing beat having four paws on the ground. It would distribute our weight more equally too.
Laurent nodded, already dropping to all fours, his injured leg barely showing weakness now.We move together,he thought.Not too close to bunch up, not too far to lose contact.
If one falls,I added, the others keep going. No heroics. We can’t all die for one mistake.
Marcel growled, the sound vibrating through our mental link.Never. We’re all getting across. We’re all getting back to her.
