“Do you think she even had the child, or was it a rumor she fed to us, hoping we’d fall for it?” Finlay asked.
“There are definitely remnants of a child here,” I insisted. “We can all smell it. It’s not an illusion.”
“The labor wasn’t a lie,” Arthur said angrily. “But she used it to her advantage to lure us here.”
Arthur was right. Gabby had taken her daughter and fled before we’d even arrived. But… why? Why would she willingly leave her only stronghold?
“What’s our next move?” Finlay was already thinking ahead, urging me to make a call.
“We need to leave the fortress,” I said immediately. “Get those wolvens back through the tunnels, and start an immediate search for Gabby in the woods.”
“I’ll order it right away,” Finlay said. I heard his telepathic call to the wolvens echo across my mind, informing them that Gabby had left the fortress and was most likely hiding somewhere in the area. There were howls and barks as the wolvens went back into the tunnels, to return to the forests in a chase for Gabby.
“She could’ve taken a portal to anywhere,” Finlay raged, hissing as his side continued to bother him.
“Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean we can give up. Follow me.”
I changed into a wolven, and the others followed my lead. We ran through the fortress, leaving behind the remainder of Gabby’s soldiers that were still alive and returning to the tunnel we came through.
The tunnel seemed even darker and more foreboding than it had the first time. Once we were halfway to the exit, the sound of our paws pounding against the dirt was cut off by a rumbling sound.
We skidded to a stop, and my stomach jolted. The entire tunnel shook, and dirt rained from the ceiling. Vibrations skittered upward through my paws, and my ears began ringing.
“What’s that noise?” Finlay shouted, and my nails dug into the dirt. The earth continued to shake, like there was some sort of massive earthquake.
Then, all of a sudden, it stopped.
I sniffed the air, but couldn’t smell anything. There was a chill in my bones that had nothing to do with the cold. “Come on.”
I ran along the twisting tunnel until my eyes saw something in the darkness. A small wooden box had fallen out of the wall, as if it had been concealed there by an illusion, and the spell had broken. I smelled it, and caught a variety of magical ingredients. There was a timer on the top of the box. It had stopped counting just before the last second.
“A magical explosive,” Arthur said bitterly. “One that malfunctioned and didn’t go off, to our great luck.”
“Gabby gained an idea from our gunpowder plot last spring,” Finlay said in horror. “That’s why this tunnel is new.”
“What if all of them are?” Arthur’s voice was petrified. “What if—”
I felt it in my gut that something was deeply, achingly wrong. I spun toward Finlay. “We need to get in contact with a wolven on the surface,” I snarled. “Someone find out what’s going on!”
There weren’t many wolvens who hadn’t gone into the tunnels. A small group had stayed behind to help the alicorns, but no more. Finlay paused to listen, cocking his head as he attempted to telepathically communicate with someone on the other side.
He whimpered, and my stomach rolled with what I knew to be true.
“Gabby exploded the rest of the tunnels,” Finlay said breathlessly. “We’re the only ones that made it out alive.”
My very heart felt sick. “Back to the fortress,” I ordered. “There’s something we missed.”
We turned around and went back the way we came. I felt the need to take action, in some sort of way.
Once we reached the fortress again, I began climbing steps upward, leaving the courtyard behind. There were soldiers on the wall opposite us, but they were very far away, and the three of us couldn’t handle them alone. Instead, I headed toward one of the towers, desiring to get a better vantage point.
We met soldiers along the way. I dispatched them quickly with my sword, and Finlay hacked to pieces the ones that got by me. Arthur took care of the reinforcements that came along the back, collapsing them to their knees with his magic.
Even so, it wasn’t the kind of push-back I was expecting. My heartbeat began picking up, getting quicker and quicker and drowning out the sounds of battle as blood rushed in my ears. For the first time, I’d noticed what I’d failed to recognize before. The excitement of the battle had masked it, but now that I was using my head, I realized… where were all the soldiers?
“There aren’t enough troops here to defend the fort,” Finlay said. “Not nearly as many as we predicted. Where did they all go?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I climbed the tower we’d just cleared, praying there would be some sort of progress.
