The Destroyer Book 2 (15 page)

"Get up asshole!" Greykin screamed as the slime-covered creature made another darting strike. This time it went for the man who fell instead of me. The man's scream of terror turned into one of wet, bloody pain when he was yanked off the ground and crunched in the creature's powerful jaws.

"Follow Danor! Run!" the Old Bear shouted, and the group of warriors scattered. Danor sprinted in one direction like a rabbit running for the shelter of a bush. The Old Bear followed him and most of the others did the same.

Two of the men either didn't know which direction Danor and the rest fled, or they felt so much terror that they ran without thinking. They split off from the main party and ran to the west, in between the wurm feasting on the corpse and the group. I hoped that they would be able to realize their mistake and join us before the creature finished its meal.

"The support structures!" I caught up to Danor and Greykin in a few seconds. Our guide pointed toward a massive colonnade a quarter of a mile in the distance. Although it was pitch black in the cavern, the towers appeared to be backlit by purple and blue light. The pillars seemed to grow out of the ground and connect to the ceiling like man-made stalagmites. Each support column was almost as thick in diameter as the towers in the castle above. Haphazard bridges and slack ropeways connected the structures like the ancient vines that grew between the trees of the Vanlourn jungle.

"The first one is no good! Run up the stairs of the second!" Danor called out as he altered his destination to aim toward the larger pillar, which was an extra two hundred yards away.

"Watch out!" I yelled as I saw movement to our right flank. This was a different wurm than the one that had just attacked us. It had a slimmer torso and was a blood rust color instead of the brownish green. A soldier tried to move out of the way, but the serpent proved too fast. Its set of beak-like jaws closed around his shoulders and crushed his skull as easily as I would pop a grape between my thumb and pointer finger. The monster picked the corpse off of the ground and repeated the same gesture as other lizards when they latched onto meat. They shook their heads frantically side to side until their razor sharp teeth and the momentum tore the body into a piece small enough for them to guzzle.

"There are at least two of them!" I croaked out through a stomach full of icy fear. I couldn't recall being more terrified in any of my memories.

Finally, we reached the base of the massive support structure. We ran around it to the left until we came to a narrow set of stairs that hugged the face of the wall. Danor scurried up on all fours and we followed in the same frantic manner. After two hundred stressful steps, the stairs widened into a platform and the crumbled remains of what had once been a bridge to another column. The group collapsed on the solid part of the landing and gasped for breath. I wasn't winded from the sprint up the stairs and posted at the top in case the creatures decided to follow.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" The Old Bear pounded his fist into the stone platform over and over as he cursed. Each one of his blows seemed to shake the ancient structure like an earthquake and I wondered if the wurms would hear. "Roll call. Who is here?" The men called out their names. Six of us remained, including Greykin, Danor, and myself.

"That's nine we have lost. They were good lads too." The big man's voice filled with remorse and pain. "I hope the prince is fucking grateful. If he makes one snide remark about how long we took to rescue him, I'll rip his fucking ears off." I would have smiled, but something on the pillar caught my eye and I got off my knees to look at the wall of the vertical beam.

The stone was odd. Most rock is porous, but the slabs of the support column seemed to be made of smooth metal. I knocked my fist against it, but the material retorted like rock. The seams of the slabs were set amazingly tight and I ran my fingers across the surface to feel their construction. Small, almost seamless indentations by each of the cracks separated the blocks that composed the structure. Whoever built these pillars must have cut each block perfectly.

"What is wrong Kaiyer?" Danor asked me.

"Nothing. Just looking at this support tower. Where next? Up?" Our guide nodded and we moved off of the platform and continued up the narrow stairs that hugged the pillar.

We ascended forty feet to another bridge that ran fifty yards before connecting to the closest pillar. The air here was clear of the mist and fog that clouded below, I could see other bridges extending toward an eerie glow that backlit a massive colonnade.

"What is the light coming from?" I asked everyone, but I meant it for Danor.

"What light?"

"The shades of purple and blue." I pointed at the pillars in the distance. Now that we stood higher on the elevated steps, the origin of the glow seemed closer.

"I don't see anything, Skinny. It's as black as my shit after I eat four pounds of plums."

"There is light over there. None of you can see the violet color?" The other soldiers shook their heads.

"We need to go up more and hope that there is an entrance to the dungeon sewers below the castle. Let's keep moving." Danor started the climb upward and the rest of the men followed.

"Coming?" Greykin asked me. Something about the light was familiar. I felt myself drift toward it. A soft voice seemed to call my name.

"Kaiyer?" Greykin's rough voice shook me from my effort to remember. I nodded at the big, bearded man and walked to the stairs.

A recognizable scraping noise echoed behind me and Greykin's mouth opened to shout a warning. Without thinking, I harnessed the Earth and pushed myself off of the stone bridge, backward through the air, and away from jaws intending to eat me.

The wurm screamed and hissed as I evaded the surprise attack and landed next to it. Part of its body coiled around the overpass, and I noticed that this particular creature's arms were not as misshapen as the others we had encountered. They were still small, but set in even rows of centipede-like trails down its belly. The arms ended in long, sharp claws that the creature used to climb up the pillars. My short sword lashed out and cut a wide gash into the monster's side, spraying pus-filled blood across the bridge and enticing another scream of outrage from the beast's maw.

It was probably not one of my best decisions.

The bridge had little room for me to maneuver, so when the wurm thrashed around, I couldn't avoid the swing of its tail. Greykin screamed my name as the slimy tail smacked into me and threw me into the air like one flicks away a small bug. My stomach lurched when my boots left the platform and I tried to spin so that I faced the direction of my plummet.

I fell about thirty feet and slammed my body into the pillar next to the bridge. I managed to thrust my short blade into the stone plates of the tower, which helped me hold on, but the movement cost me the torch I held in my other hand. The lighted brand spun lazily down into the darkness and my vision swam from the impact to my face. I tried to hang on to the sword buried in the rock and adjust my eyes to the reduced light.

The monster hissed from above me and slid across the bridge away from my companions toward the pillar where I clung. It would not be so easily robbed of a meal.

My eyes finished adjusting to the lack of torchlight and I noticed that the coil of stairs was only five feet beneath me. I thanked my luck again and let go of my stuck sword, dropping the short distance to the skinny stairs. There was no safe way to retrieve my blade. I would have to pull so hard to free it from the stone wall that the effort would accidently fling me off of the column. My magic could kill the beast, but it would have made me feel better to have a weapon in my hand.

I darted up the stairs as fast as my legs and limited vision allowed. I reasoned that if I could make it to the top before the creature I could escape, or at least not have to worry about it attacking me from above. It would be a small advantage that might give me a few more minutes of precious life.

I did not see the serpent or my companions when I reached the far side of the bridge. The men had probably moved farther up the stairs. I did not want to run across the platform and possibly draw attention to their location.

The sound of the wurm skittering on the other side of the column reached my ears a fraction of a second before its decaying smell punched my nose. I threw myself across the bridge and slid on my belly atop the thin layer of disgusting mucus the beast had left in its trail.

The monster screamed in disappointment as I evaded it again. It hung inverted from the pillar, where I stood only moments ago. The tiny arms on its belly must be amazingly strong to be able to hold up the creature's massive bulk. It moved like a cross between a snake and a centipede as it slithered and climbed down the pillar toward the bridge with the efficiency of a victorious predator.

I channeled the Earth through my body quickly, feeling the beat of my heart throb strong and pound against my skull. I closed my fist around the thin, elusive breeze from the river below. Power built in my hand and I released it at the slime-covered mutation as the monster reached the bridge and coiled itself back to strike me.

An elliptical sphere of maroon-colored energy erupted from my palm and flew toward the serpent like a hawk diving for the kill. The wurm screamed in panic as the air in front of it burned as hot and bright as a thousand green suns and melted the putrid flesh from its maw and eyes. The creature had probably never seen light brighter than the torches we carried with us today. It reared up and twitched in death throes similar to the first beast I had killed. I backed away to prevent one of the creature's seizures from knocking me off of the pillar again.

The stench of the roasted wurm's putrid corpse brought me to my knees and my body wrestled with my willpower in a war over the bile in my stomach. My gut was empty but I lay there thrashing around and dry heaving for longer than it took for the monster to finish smoking. Finally, my stomach realized I wasn't sick and it stopped the forced process of cleansing.

I rose to my feet and looked over toward the column I suspected my companions had climbed. The bridge was still intact. I crept over the platform that joined the metal gangway.

Then I stopped and glanced back over my shoulder.

I stood close to the source of the strange, glowing lights. Greykin probably thought I was dead, again, and I figured he would be happy to find I was alive, even if I followed a few minutes behind the group.

I changed direction and crossed two other bridges and went up one long row of stairs. Any noise might bring another attack from a wurm or any other creature that lived down in this dark, damp place.

The farthest pillar from where Greykin and my friends ascended cast the purple and blue glow. As I grew closer, I heard a faint hum, almost like the sound of the river. But while the river moaned with the chaos of life, the drone from the column sounded a constant pitch. It reminded me of wheels being turned at a mill.

The only way to reach the glowing pillar was via a thick braided metal rope suspended over a dizzying drop, the rusted remnant of a bridge that once connected the pillars. I took a deep breath and traversed it, hand-over-hand, while my legs dangled over the dark void.

This column appeared similar in design to the others, but as I grew closer I noticed its surface was embroidered with careful, intricate etchings of trees, birds, mountains, and celestial bodies. It was smoother than the surrounding pillars, it looked less like something man-made and more like a crab or snail shell. I circled around to the opposite side and found the source of the glow.

The column had glass windows, and the illumination came from the other side of the oval panes. From inside. The glow was too bright after hours of darkness. I had to shield my eyes for a few seconds until I could look without pain bringing forth searing tears that blurred my vision.

My view through the thick glass was obscured by dust and dirt. I wiped my palm across the smooth surface, but the grime was on the inside. I stepped back to look for a way into the structure. I felt disappointed that I had decided not to risk grabbing my sword. I could have smashed through the glass easily with my hand or foot, but I didn't want the scent of my blood on the air for the creatures to track.

Above the platform were five pairs of windows, twenty feet between each set. I leaned back over the side of the railing and glanced down to see a dozen more sets of lit glass. Directly underneath me was a balcony with a metal ladder. I grabbed onto the ledge of the bridge and flipped myself over so I hung from my hands. Then I swung my legs a few times to gain momentum and made the jump to the smaller platform. A thick dark metal slab served as the door. Instead of a handle it had an indentation shaped like a left hand. I placed my palm against it firmly and wondered what to do next.

"Open," my voice said in the language of my memories. Gears snapped and whirred on the other side and the door became slack. I pushed it inward and cringed when the creaky hinges screamed, the sound almost as loud as one of the toxic serpent beasts.

The inside of the structure was perfectly circular in shape, with a stairwell in the center carved of smooth white stone. There was no light in the room save the blue and purple glow that drizzled from the stairwell above and below me. Other than the stairs, the room was empty. I closed the door behind me and heard the hinges fasten again. Then I walked to the steps and moved up toward the glow.

I broke into a chilled sweat once I reached the next level. Twenty stone platforms circled the room in neat rows.

They were identical to the bed I lay on when Paug woke me. I touched the one closest to the door. It was cold and still, but no dust covered its surface. Light emanated from small holes where the walls met the ceiling. I took a deep breath and moved up the stairs again. I was starting to remember voices. My mind struggled to fight the emotions they brought with them, like when I was a child and tried to keep myself from vomiting.