When Casek’s boots finally touched the ground below, it was far spongier than he’d expected beneath his boots. There was a moment of hurried fumbling as he moved away from the ladder to allow Raelynn to climb down and pawed at his pockets to retrieve his firelighting materials and torch.
Fortunately, the time it took Casek to light their final makeshift torch was blessedly short. Dim amber light filled the tunnel, and the fist of anxiety that’d been keeping his stomach in a vice-like grip since they’d first entered the mines twisted violently.
Thick silk cobwebs coated the rock floor and wall so thoroughly it was difficult to make out the pale pink salt-rock beneath. Dense enough it felt as though they were walking on a layer of heavy blankets.
Raelynn grimaced and gestured ahead of them. “What do you make of that?”
Casek followed her stare further down the tunnel and frowned as he, too, noticed what had her confused. Without thinking, naked curiosity had him walking forward to examine the floor ahead of them. Protruding from beneath the thick layer of webbing were precisely shaped slabs of what was unmistakably stasis crystal. They had been laid along the floor, following the path of the tunnel, and were positioned into neat, well-fitted rows, in imitation of man-made roads and paths.
“A path—have you ever seen anything like that?”
She eyed him, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “No. We aren’t so numerous and strong that we can afford to senselessly wander into the stolen places the Shadow calls home and see what they do there.”
“Apart from now, of course,” Casek said, unable to control his tongue before the quip escaped it. He expected a rebuke, but got a nervous snort of laughter in return.
“This is different—we’ve never had you before. Worst-case scenario, I throw you at whatever’s at the end and use the distraction to escape.”
“And here I thought that my ability was indispensable to the war effort.”
Raelynn shrugged dramatically. “I’d consider sacrificing humanity's continued survival a worthwhile trade at this point. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Casek, but these are giant bloody spiders.”
Casek had to clap a hand across his mouth to stop an actual laugh from escaping him. It was good to see some of Raelynn’s walls come down and allow some of her personality to shine through, even if it had taken walking with her towards certain death at the hands of enormous spider demons to get there.
“Still though,” he muttered once he’d gotten composed enough. “An actual road. I have seen none of the Shadow do anything that would tell me they’d build actual pathways.”
“It’s pretty stunning how little we know about them, given how long we’ve been at war. The major population centres fell so quickly that there’s never really been a powerful resistance force against them. Penetrating deeply into their territory has always been too risky to try.”
Casek waited a moment, listening for any sound that would tell him Shadowspawn were approaching, before responding. “This feels pretty deep into their territory.”
“Pyria has been out of bounds for Binders for a long time. The last few years have been tricky, though. We’ve lost some of our more powerful binders. Our supply of foci is falling. The Shadow have started targeting food and water supplies around Oreia that have been safe for hundreds of years. Need is pushing Binders to try their luck in more dangerous hunting grounds.”
“Hence why your group was here.”
Raelynn nodded. “High risk, high reward was the idea. We were at least right about the risk.”
“There’s still time for the reward—once we get your group back together, of course. We’ve come all this way. At this point, it would be rude not to introduce ourselves to whatever built this thing.”
“You’re not wrong. Just…” she paused momentarily, as if having second thoughts about what she wanted to say. “Stay sharp, Casek. We might not know much about them, but we know for sure that the more powerful Shadowspawn grow, the more sentient they become. I know I said it was unlikely, but I think you were right about what you sensed. Something stronger than a Bel’gor made this.”
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Casek nodded in understanding, but for him, it changed nothing. He could still feel its presence lurking on the edge of his awareness. Raelynn had said that the next stage of Shadowspawn was called Daemon, and they were both now certain that was what awaited them at the end of this path. Somehow, certainty about what lay ahead of them made it easier to keep moving forward.
“You sure you don’t want to go back? This is probably our last chance.”
Raelynn looked at him, features tense, the torchlight dancing in her eyes. “I can’t leave him here by himself, Casek. Not like them.”
Casek saw the horrified eyes encased in crystal in his own mind and tried to imagine what it would be like to be them. Hearing the scuttling of hundreds of black terrors, feeling them feed on you, climb across and over you…He shuddered. The sensible thing would be to go back, of course. There were slim odds of them walking away from this place still alive. Then he imagined being trapped here again, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to walk away.
However slim the chance, he felt the same as Raelynn. He had to try.
“Good,” he said. “Lets get to it, then.”
He strode forward purposefully, taking determined steps across the crystal path as the light from his torch shimmered amber against the white silk webs lining the walls. The tunnel wound its way deeper and deeper into the ground gradually, curving gently left and right in no clearly discernible pattern.
The lack of variation was dull at first. Every inch of their path was a carbon copy of the last: an everlasting repeated arrangement of pale, glittering crystal; well-preserved wooden support struts and thick layers of cobweb. But, before long, the monotony eased, and the lack of variance began to indicate a lack of eventfulness.
Strangely, it became a comfort more than a hindrance. It was as though as long as the tunnels never broke from their pattern, he and Raelynn could wander there forever, safe and uninterrupted by the Shadow.
Of course, Casek knew no comfort would last in the deep for too long. Further crystal structures eventually faded into view ahead of them, replacing the wooden support struts on either side of the tunnel. Both his and Raelynn’s weapons flickered to life without so much of a word between them. They approached, expecting the mouth of hell itself to open around them at any moment, spilling out hordes of Shadowspawn to overwhelm them.
Instead, they drew close to the first set of structures completely unnoticed and unhindered. On either side of the tunnel, a hexagonal pillar of crystal rose out from the ground, seemingly carved to be perfectly even and symmetrical. Within each was a person, just as there was above, frozen expressions still displaying the grisly reality of their last moments of freedom.
The pair stared across at the other, each man a gruesome mirror reflecting the suffering of the other, and Casek forced himself to look ahead, so that he would not have to see the suffering he could not stop. He was not sure there ever would be an end to these people’s pain. Not, at least, until death. Even if Casek could give them their freedom back, what sort of life would it be?
Even ignoring the seemingly futile struggle for survival, the amount of damage done to these people’s minds must be devastating. Alive they may be, but they would never recover from what had been done to them.
There was no escaping them. Beyond the first matched pair of pillars, another came yards after, followed by one more after the other. Clearly ornamental structures decorated with the bodies of the townsfolk, lining the crystal path like lamps. On and on they went, passing by more and more people trapped in various poses—everything from in the middle of striking a blow in combat with some weapon or other, all the way to kneeling and begging for mercy, evidently not given.
“Did you notice?” Raelynn asked suddenly.
“Notice what?” He replied, glad for something to think about besides the swelling of nausea.
“These people. They’re all soldiers. Fighters. Upstairs, it was all the regular folk.”
Casek blinked. She was right. Every man or woman they’d passed down here had been a warrior. Some were decked out in the local guard uniform: sturdy mail beneath a royal blue jerkin, and carried shields that bore the town’s coat of arms, with the single-tusked walrus, upon its surface. Others, however, were clad in more simple warrior garb. Leather armours, and battle-worn but well-oiled swords. A small number wore the plainclothes of farmers, wielding straightforward weapons that bore the ageing that things often did when they were kept locked away beneath beds and at the back of cupboards for a decade or two.
No matter the outfit, every one of them was a fighter. And, now that he came to think of it, he hadn’t seen even one upstairs, either. These people had been organised—placed specifically into a hierarchy.
After a small while longer of walking whilst steadfastly avoiding eye contact with the trapped, the exit loomed in front of them. The crystal pillar had been directed and formed into an ornate, pale pink archway that led into a room beyond.
It was through this arch that Casek could feel the domineering presence he’d been feeling above, alongside several dozen far less powerful. He glanced back at Raelynn, who met his stare with a resolute nod, her two weapons flaring into life. He nodded back, allowing his sword to do the same, and stepped through the arch and into the darkness beyond.
Almost immediately, his eyes met those of the creature he’d been sensing. As he took in its predatory gaze, and the suffocating weight of its mere presence, Casek knew without a doubt that both he and Raelynn were going to die.
