“What happened to him?” I asked.
“Mage Magic,” Keegan said, pulling me toward him. “He can use it to slip out of certain situations.”
“Why not at my grandma’s compound?”
“I imagine she has it locked down from outside magic.” He squeezed my hand as another shudder ran through the ground. “But we don’t have time for chatting.”
Skonk and Twobble scrambled in front of us while Nova and Stella were right behind. The ground shook. Cracks formed in the dry dirt where water once stood. And I knew who was here. We ran to the opening we'd come from, and all I could think about was my dad and the others who had traversed the surface. Had they already been attacked?
Had the Priestess and the horde gotten to them? My pulse pounded as I thought about my dad, my daughter, and my mom.
I looked behind me to see an army as I'd never seen before, with goblins, witches, and creatures I'd only seen once back at the Academy in the wings for endangered and extinct magical creatures. Right when one of the goblins spotted me, Keegan pulled me behind the vines with the others as Nova created a blockade.
Nova pressed her hands against the tunnel walls, and she splayed her fingers as she whispered something low and steady.
The stone responded in a way that still caught me off guard, no matter how many times I saw it.
“Go,” she said, not turning back. “Don’t stop.”
We didn’t.
Keegan pulled me forward, and I followed without question, my boots slipping slightly as we hit the damp incline of the tunnel, the air cooler and heavier as we moved back beneath the surface. Twobble and Skonk darted ahead, their small forms weaving through the narrowing path like they had done this a thousand times before, while Stella stayed close behind us.
Another tremor rolled through the ground that was stronger.
Whatever was out there wasn’t just passing through.
“They’re not slowing down,” Stella said, her voice quieter now, but it carried.
“They won’t,” Nova replied, her pace steady even as she lifted her hand again, brushing it along the wall as we moved. The gold-lined stone shimmered faintly before shifting, another section of tunnel narrowing behind us, not sealing completely, but enough to slow anything trying to follow.
Twobble glanced back just long enough to see it. “That’s going to irritate the goblins.”
“I’ll apologize later,” Nova said.
“You always do,” he muttered, though there was no real complaint behind it.
We pushed deeper, the tunnel curving sharply, then splitting again before narrowing into a stretch that forced us into single file. The sound behind us didn’t fade. If anything, it changed, becoming more focused, more deliberate, like whatever had gathered above had found its way in.
My pulse wouldn’t slow with the image of that army burned into my mind.
“They knew,” I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
Keegan didn’t slow. “Maybe.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head even as I kept moving. “That wasn’t a guess. They came straight to us.”
Nova’s shoulders tightened slightly ahead of me. “Which means something gave us away.”
“That wall,” Twobble said. “The bats. They were already watching.”
“That doesn’t explain all of it,” Stella added. “That was too fast. Too precise.”
Nova pressed her hand to the wall again, sealing off a smaller side passage as we passed it, her movements efficient and controlled, as if she were counting each step in her head.
I glanced back as we rounded the next bend.
And that was when I saw it.
