This tunnel, unlike the first one, was not straight. Instead, the passage curved and rose and fell until Math had lost all sense of direction. Brand and Khel were silent and grim. This was an arrow-shot in the dark and they all knew it. But what choice did they have?
The heat was stifling and oppressive. The smell was foul. Math found himself breathing through his mouth, but still he felt light-headed at times as it overpowered his senses. All three were soaked with sweat, and after a time that Math couldn’t measure, he tilted up his water skin and found that only a few drops remained. He took them eagerly, then let the limp skin fall to his side. Unless they found more, he didn’t know how long he could keep moving. His body already felt dehydrated, throat parched and raw from the caustic air.
Math felt it in his bones first. A low rumble, almost below hearing. Then louder, coming from deep in the stone around them. The ground vibrated under his boots, then suddenly shifted. Math’s knees buckled, trying to keep his balance. The entire cave shook, and a deafening grinding of rock blocked out all other noise. From behind the sound of the groaning earth, Math thought he heard another roar, more primal, more bestial.
The grating rumble faded. Light whisps of dust fell from the ceiling as the earth around them settled. They regained their footing and stood, listening, not sure if the ground was going to buck under them again.
“What was that?” Math asked.
“The mountain is waking up,” Brand replied. “Or something in the mountain is.”
“That’s doesn’t sound good.”
“Let’s go,” Khel said. “We need to hurry.”
They began their walk into the mountain again. The cave straightened out and began to travel consistently downward. At first the grade was slight, but as they went it became steeper, until there was no doubt that they were once again descending deeper underground. Math wondered if there were miles of stone above them. It certainly felt it. The weight of the mountain was always there, pressing in on him, smothering him. He began to feel a sense of despair and hopelessness, a certainty that he wasn’t ever going to see the light of day. He did his best to push through the feeling. His steps were heavy. Fatigue and thirst penetrated to his bones. His feet began to shuffle on the ground.
Then, as he thought he had to stop, that he couldn’t continue, he began to see an orange glow ahead. It started as faint as the shine of the lichen on the walls but slowly became more visible. Then the passage took a slight curve to the left and the walls all around became lit. Up ahead, the passage opened up into another chamber. The light danced and flowed from there. His eyes were so adjusted to the darkness and barely visible phosphorescence he almost squinted as they stepped out into a massive cavern.
It was a scene from a painting of Hell. The cavern was massive. He couldn’t see the walls, and the ceiling was lost in the haze of heat that blasted him like a forge. Rivers of fire flowed through, pooling in lakes and ponds of thick, slow-moving liquid. The air shimmered. The ground was more fire than rock, to make their way across would require leaping from island to island. A single misstep would be fatal. The intensity was almost unbearable.
But more than the heat, above and beyond and somehow deeper in his bones, was the dread. A wave of it, beating on him, almost driving him to his knees. His head pounded; his stomach clenched. He wanted to drop to the ground and freeze. He wanted to flee in abject terror. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to be anywhere but there.
In the distance, a pillar of fire stood, red-orange light shifting and swirling independent of the gusts of heat. At its heart, the glow was even more intense, but Math could see a long, slender shape. Lines emanated from it, shaped almost like chains, reaching up into the depths and heights of the cavern. And behind that...
Something moved. Something huge. Something that was the source of the overwhelming dread. The three of them watched the chains of heat and light shift as a shadow moved and flowed closer. The thing was huge, black, and terrifying. It came forward through the shimmering air and showed itself. It was covered with reddish black scales, each the size of his head. Leathery wings stretched from one side of the cavern to the other. The body was massive, Math could feel the vibration of its steps through the ground. A long sinuous neck ended in a scaled head, fangs as long as his arm, and glowing red eyes filled with hate. It turned its gaze on them, opened its mouth, and let out a roar deeper than thunder, bigger than the mountain. Math couldn’t think through the noise, his mind feeling blown away by the force of the sound.
The Beast.
Math’s vision faded, and he found himself alone, on a mountain peak. A dread-inspiring force of evil was below him in the mist, fast rising toward him. A pillar of light was in his hand. A sword of fire, ancient, tongues of flame licking along steel that glowed like it was still in the forge. He finally got it. This was the Key. It was calling him.
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The vision cleared as he shook his head, bringing him back to the fiery cave. He saw the Key – the sword – clearly through the pillar of fire. Beside him, Brand and Khel stood, their hands over their own ears, still grimacing in pain and fear until, after an eternity, the thing stopped its roar. Khel straightened. The flowing, hellish rivers snaked their way back and forth between him and the sword. He knew what he had to do. Without waiting for the others, he leapt.
He made the jump from island to island, over rivers of molten rock a few inches to a few feet wide, or more. The fear was visceral, a fist clenched around his heart and mind trying to drive him into the ground. He forced himself through it, head lowered, focusing on one step, one leap at a time, grinding his way through the physical wall of terror. He tried to empty his mind, to not think, to see only the next step, the next patch of ground to cover.
As he got closer, he could see more detail. The Beast was held back, imprisoned, bound by the chains of light and fire that connected him to the key driven into the rock. Whatever ancient ritual had put it there, its power had faded. He could see some of the chains leading from the sword snaking along the ground and ending. He could see some of them hanging from the Beast, swinging freely, no longer connected to the imprisoning sword.
The Beast waited, watching with hate in its eyes, as he approached the limit of its bonds. Then he saw movement to his side, high up the wall, and a clamoring din. He looked up and spotted three figures, standing almost shoulder to shoulder on a ledge high above the lava, trying to beat back a wave of smaller shapes that poured out of an opening the wall.
Thea.
He watched as too many of those creatures, the Kobali, poured out of the fissure, overwhelming them. Helpless, he saw one leap from the crack in the wall and lunge at one of the smaller of the three figures. The larger one – it had to be Arik - was turned, focused on keeping more from breaking through. The third turned and drove a sword through its side. He couldn’t tell which of the women it was, but she wrenched at the sword, taking a moment to get it unstuck from the twitching corpse. As she did, another one plowed into her side, rocking her back. It sunk its teeth into her side, and her body spasmed in pain. A third threw its body at her face. The impact staggered her backwards. As Math watched in horror, she stumbled to the edge. One foot slipped, and for an eternal moment she teetered, poised, frozen in time. Then she went down. Her foot left the edge, and the weight of the attackers was too much for her. The mass of bodies tumbled as it fell, struggling, until it disappeared into the fire below. A short flash of flame flickered upwards, and she was gone.
Math looked at the sword driven into the black rock. The Key to restoring the dragon’s chains. He looked up to the ledge, where Arik kept fighting, focused on blocking the swarm as best he could. The other woman looked over the edge, her body contorted with grief. Closer now, he could see the familiar long dark hair, now falling past her face as she looked down. Thea. Then Arik barked something over his shoulder, quickly snapping her back to the problem at hand.
The choice was easy, after the moment of indecision. He veered left. Still recklessly hurdling ribbons of fire, he headed towards the fight. The black rock was coarse and bone-dry from the intense heat, allowing Math to keep his footing as he ran and jumped. Just one smooth or wet patch would send him off balance and pitching into a fiery death. The fighting above intensified. He sped up.
Arik and Thea had been unable to hold back the horde at the crack. Both were backed up to the edge of the ledge, thirty feet above. As they were pushed back, the light seemed to grow and expand from the tunnel they faced. Not the fiery orange of the cavern; a deeper, redder light grew from behind the attacking mob. Thea moved with desperation and exhaustion, flailing her sword back and forth in a frantic attempt to keep the little beasts at bay. Arik’s sword moved quickly and expertly in spite of his obvious fatigue, sending the bodies of their enemies over the edge. A wide pool of lava waited below the ledge; the creatures, whether alive or dead as they fell, were consumed in seconds. Math could tell which was which by the presence or absence of bestial screaming.
As Math approached, he saw Arik’s glance pause on him as he kicked a kobald over the edge, taking in the pool beneath him and Khel and Brand making their way up behind. He turned back to his next attackers and Math heard him yell, “Jump!”
“What?” Thea hesitated. Math saw her glance over her shoulder and lock eyes with him.
“Jump!” Arik repeated. “You can clear the lava, and you’ll survive the fall. We can’t hold here!”
The moment those words crossed his lips, the kobalds made them true. Three of the creatures hit him at once. One went high, leaping towards his face. He skewered that one easily, but its weight rocked him back just as another latched claws onto his leg. The third hit him straight in the chest, and the combined momentum of the three stumbled him backwards. At the lip of the ledge he managed to kick hard against the edge, propelling himself away.
As he went over, Thea reacted quickly and turned to follow. The bloody red glow and the swarm of bodies followed as she leaped from the edge. Extended claws and bared, drooling fangs pursued her over the edge as she pushed off to clear the lava pool below.
Arik, off balance from the initial jump, landed hard. He managed to twist enough to get one kobald beneath him when he hit, crushing it. The one latched to his leg hit the molten pool, along with that bloody leg. The impact stunned him, and he groaned for a moment before shouting in pain as the heat overcame his daze. Kobald bodies landed around him, hitting the lava and shrieking as they too burst into flame.
Thea never hit the ground. As Math moved to drag Arik away from the lava, the red glow intensified. A half dozen bloody red tentacles shot out of the tunnel, following her descent. They caught her before she had fallen half the distance, wrapping around her chest and legs like ropes shining with dripping blood. One circled her neck, and one covered her mouth as she tried to scream. Her eyes widened in fear, and she dangled for a moment, silently crying out for Math to help her. Then they jerked her up, arms, legs, and hair flailing forward as her body was violently heaved back up and over the cliff, where she disappeared into the shadows.