“And you are useless blood. Each and every one of you. You should be serving the City out there, not in here. So why have you come?” The voice bounced off the insides of Dagan’s skull but also rattled his inner ear. Where was it coming from?
“Who are you?” Kajja wondered, her sweet, too-calm voice carrying, bouncing, echoing all over the cavern.
Shadows appeared at the edges of the light as they moved forward, and bit by bit an unwalled room appeared in the center of the cavern: high-backed chairs, a grand table, a curtain, a bed, all of it glittering with gold and cobwebs. A rug, plush and bright red-and-gold, obviously newer than most of the other furnishings, but perfectly matched to them.
Dagan had to look back once more to assure himself he was remembering the past hours correctly. This golden furniture, this palatial room, could not possibly exist so far underground, in the center of a huge cave. It didn’t make sense.
“Set me down,” Innan whispered, giving Dagan a squeeze.
Dagan obeyed and hovered over them as they sank to the ground, palms pressed into it, hair falling about their shoulders and over their forehead.
“I am what keeps the wastes at bay, child,” the voice said, its sing-song tone piercing as any dagger in the ear. “I am why you are alive while the rest of the world shrivels and dies. And who are you?”
“Kajja,” she said.
Hen shifted Jak, who waved him off and sank to the ground, holding his bandage. Hen stepped up beside Kajja, Piret trailing after him, Bartolo and Gareth nearby, their torches flickering.
“Well, little Kajja, very few venture here without a gift of blood for me.” the voice asked, an indulgent edge creeping into it. “What do you want so badly, that you’d be so bold?”
“Blood. You mean the Children of the Blood?” she asked.
“My children, yes. I sacrifice them so that you might live.”
“I don’t understand.” She took another step forward.
Hendrik grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
She shook him off violently. “Don’t, Hen.”
“You had better listen, Hen,” said the voice, and the playfulness in the metallic scratch of it made them all shiver in unison. “You can see why I would prefer to survive on the land. Alas, that has proven a finite resource, whereas my own blood never ends.”
“But something’s wrong.” Kajja took another step forward. “You used to take one or two a moon. Now you need more. Now you need the land, too. What happened?”
“Clever child. A shame your blood is worthless to me; you would be delicious.”
Hen lurched forward, diving toward the voice, but before he finished the first step, a large, dark limb brushed him aside. He might’ve been made of straw and leaves, the way he crumpled mid-air and skidded to the ground ten feet away.
Dagan took off toward him, unthinking, heart in his throat. He heard Kajja scream in protest, heard her begging the voice to stop, not to hurt her brother. Dagan hit his knees and pressed an ear to Hen’s chest. It heaved with breath, heartbeat strong, violent inside it. Tears stung Dagan’s eyes. “Idiot,” he croaked. “Hendrik, you fucking idiot.”
Hen grabbed his shirt and pulled him down, lips moving soundlessly.
Dagan pressed his ear to them. The dark voice echoed in his mind and through the cavern, saying, “I suppose the priests ceased their educational efforts centuries ago. Wise of them, in the end. I must consume the energy generated by my own descendents, of course; that’s why so many of us turned to consuming the land instead. I am far beyond any such qualms. And if I were not, none of you would exist. You should bow down.”
When it finally finished reverberating, Hen whispered, “Get the oil. Burn it.”
Dagan nodded, then said, “Stay down. Don’t fucking move.”
Hen’s smile was pained, toothy.
Dagan looked up in time to see Kajja get to her knees and bow her head. “Piret,” she said.
“Fuck off.” Piret hissed like a cat, widening her stance and holding her sword before her as if in invitation. “Show yourself, monster.”
“Oh, yes. That’s right. You’re all quite blind.” Movement in the shadows, and a dark, only vaguely human figure, elongated to extreme and deeply disturbing lengths, began to take form as it skirted the torchlight. Light barely dusted its strange, not-quite-human limbs, its ragged, ruffled apparel, its stringy hair, like the cobwebs on the curtains, so it appeared stranger and stranger. And yet familiar. Like them but so very, very not.
Dagan stood, glancing at Innan briefly, then Jak to make sure they were—well, none of them were safe, just then, but whole for the moment. Innan still sat communing with the stone, silent and impassive, face composed. Jak stood on his own two feet, just behind Bartolo and Gareth, whose illuminated expressions betrayed an appropriate mixture of terror and revulsion.
“Now, you will bow,” said the dark creature. It raised one thin, elongated arm, and then lowered it as if in demonstration. “You, my guard. On your knees.”
Kajja tugged at Piret’s leg. Piret began to slide downward, but Dagan grabbed Jak and made his way to the exit-hole as quickly as he could. He fully expected to be swept aside before he made it, perhaps thrown against a wall by one of the creature’s spindly but preternaturally strong appendages, spider-like and deadly. To his surprise, nothing happened.
“What are you doing?” Jak swiped his sleeve over the blood still running down his cheek from his damaged eye socket.
“Come, please.” Dagan grabbed Silja and the other guard, each by their collars, and shoved them through the hole before him. They both stumbled; Silja, unable to catch herself with her hands tied, fell hard on her side. Dagan clambered through the hole and pulled her to her feet, then cut her hands free.
“We can’t just leave them—” Jak climbed through the hole, then halted when he saw Dagan freeing the other guard. He still held Dagan’s sleeve over his left eye, but the right was bright and lucid.
“We’re not,” Dagan said, brushing his fingers against his own thigh. Thinking about the marks there, letting the idea ground him. Even if it felt like they were about to die, he couldn’t give up. He couldn’t. “We need to get the fire-oil. As much as we can carry. Fast.”
Understanding dawned. Jak started out of the hall without another word.
“What?” Silja staggered, shaking out her wrists.
“Follow Jak,” he said.
“Why?” asked the other guard.
Dagan grabbed his chin and looked him in the eye. “What’s your name, guard?”
