Casek’s legs burned with the effort of driving himself up each coarse, rusted ladder rung. He didn’t slow his pace for a second, even when splinters of old, decaying iron cut into his palms as he dragged himself upwards. The dry, salt-tang of the air stung at his eyes, sending tears tracking down his face, cutting stark streaks through the accumulated grime on his skin.

  Naturally, the streaks had nothing to do with the hot, twisting twin-dagger wounds of guilt and shame twisting in his belly, nor was it anything to do with his brain experiencing the moment Raelynn’s energy had faded to nothing over and over again.

  Logic told him there was nothing more he could have done. Leaving was the smart move—his abilities meant a flicker of hope for humanity they had presumed was long-since extinguished. Raelynn herself would have said it was a good trade. And even if he had stayed, he would have fallen just the same. It would have made no difference.

  Gods, it wasn’t even as though she were dead. He could get stronger. Come back and save her and her friend. He would. He’d promised as much.

  Then he saw her face being swallowed by crystal, her eyes wide with horror as Shadowspawn swarmed round, thousands of burbling voices chittering and feeding, and the stabbing began anew.

  “Fuck!” he half-hissed, half-yelled as he grabbed the next ladder-rung up and another splinter of metal slid into his hand.

  Casek yanked his hand away, pulling it as close to his dark-adjusted eyes as he could. Through the dingy black he could just about make out the welling crimson liquid seeping down his hand, staining his sleeve and dripping into the black void below.

  The void answered back. A rolling, hissing mass far below sounded in response to him. Hundreds of Shadowspawn seethed down the tunnels below, following him. Mostly shades, but a significant number of Drau and Bel’gor surged after him too, each eager to claim the prize of his energy.

  Casek ground his teeth and forced himself to press on up the ladder, despite his aching muscles and the needle of rusted iron nestled beneath the skin of his hand. The only small mercy was that the Daemon’s magic still lurked at the deepest corner of the mine, the powerful creature leaving him to her weaker kin.

  He couldn’t help but wonder if that was no coincidence, even as he finally dragged himself back into the crystal tunnel where the bulk of the Shadow’s prisoners were entombed. Had the Daemon actually ordered the others after him, or were they just chasing a free morsel of sustenance, sensing his vulnerability?

  Something about that made little sense. The Shades and Drau he’d encountered before these mines had been utterly animalistic. They behaved almost entirely how he’d expect wild animals to, with Drau stronger than him hesitant to fight a battle they had even a slight chance of losing. He’d only ever been pursued and attacked when he was perceived to be vulnerable. Weak.

  Sure, there was only one of him here, but he’d shown himself perfectly capable of slaughtering Drau in good numbers, and even fighting Bel’gor evenly—as the bound spirit keening away within him could attest. He had not begun to cycle the creature yet, but he could feel its whispering, even now.

  He could understand several of the Bel’gor thinking they could bring him down, but this was as good as suicide for the weaker Shadowspawn. Why would they come in such numbers when they must be aware they would likely perish?

  The simple answer: something scarier than him was forcing them.

  Casek hurried through the crystal maze, fighting to ignore the roving eyes of the men and women imprisoned here. Why would they stay when it meant they could be ordered to their death by the Daemon that rules this place?

  His desperate run slowed to a walk as he began to notice dark shapes skittering across the roof, and clambering over crystal structures. Shades darted from shadow to shadow around him, doing everything they could to stay out of his way, whilst not leaving the crystal structures.

  He frowned, peering around him, even as he sensed the mass of Shadowspawn climbing the ladder-passage after him, drawing closer and closer. He knew he should run, but the puzzle pieces sliding into place in his mind were too momentous, the possibilities they presented too alluring to ignore.

  The Shadow were not mindless monsters.

  It sounded obvious when you isolated that thought, but it was a lot more difficult to justify when you were surrounded by grotesquely twisted, giant magical spiders that wanted to eat you. No, on second thought, it was not enough to simply say they were not mindless—that much was clear even to the most close-minded.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The realisation that had frozen him into place was far more than this. The Shadow were so much more than not mindless. They were sentient. Complex. Most important, was that they operated in a social structure not dissimilar to humans. It was well disguised, of course, by the veil of horror that how they lived created but, when you got down to it, their system was unmistakably human.

  Simply put: the powerful entities horded resources—food—and in exchange for access, the weaker Shadowspawn obeyed the stronger.

  The Daemon that ruled this place controlled all of the food the rest of the Shadowspawn needed, and so controlled the Shadowspawn themselves, using them to increase its own status and power. That was why the common folk were in a separate chamber, whilst the magically and physically powerful made up the Daemon’s nest. That was why humans lined the path that led to her like ornaments in a palace.

  This was a palace. A monument to the Daemon’s power and influence.

  He could hear the pursuing Shadowspawn behind him, now, flooding down the tunnels, closer and closer. Only a minute, and they would be upon him.

  Casek rubbed a grimy, bloodied hand across his face, wiping away a layer of slime and sweat. His heart thundered in his chest, an idea clouding his mind like a storm. It was risky, but the moment the thought had arrived, it had driven its claws into his grey matter, stubbornly refusing to be shifted no matter the angle Casek tried.

  It didn’t help that he didn’t want to shift it.

  He grinned, decision made, and darted into a lilac side tunnel, pressing himself against the crystal and closing his eyes. They were close now. He had only moments.

  Casek reached out with his magic, melding Tauph’s silent pool of power with his own. Muttering a small prayer, he pressed his hands against the cool stone of the stasis crystal lining every inch of the tunnel on this level. He pushed his own power towards the crystal, and it shattered as his power flowed through it, raining crystal shards around him.

  He expanded the reach of his power, reaching for every inch of stasis crystal he could, destroying it. Casek kept on, walking through the tunnels, crystal turning to dust and filling the air. People fell out of the fading structures, collapsing to the floor like sacks of vegetables, boneless and weak.

  He didn’t stop. Shades began to scream and howl around him, horrified burbles ringing out around the cavern. Further back, even the Drau and Bel’gor had stopped, and watched aghast as their prisoners fell to the floor, free.

  Casek reached further and further, freeing more people. They sunk to the floor around him, some slumped against rocks, others lying prone on the floor. Their eyes remained open wide, slow-blinking and unseeing.

  Then Casek caught sight of the straw-haired man he’d first seen when he arrived. He stood, swaying slightly on his atrophied legs. Casek darted toward him, taking him by the shoulder and turning the man to face him. The man’s eyes looked straight through him, a single line of drool seeping from the left corner of his mouth.

  “Listen to me,” Casek hissed, shaking the man by the shoulder. “Run! Can you hear me? You have to—”

  The man sunk to his knees, bone-thin arms wrapping around his head, and a ghoulish moan seeping from his throat, pain and confusion and terror given sound.

  The noise rippled through the cavern, like some kind of awful signal to the others. One woman on the floor screamed, a rasping, soul-wrenching howl that had fresh tears prickling at the corners of Casek’s eyes. He had known some of these people would not be okay—would not be able to function—but he had not expected this. How could he have been?

  Sobs joined the broken symphony as the freed broke down. Casek stumbled through them, begging desperately for some of them—any of them—to get up. To move. Run. Anything other than this.

  “Ailidh!” A man’s voice cut through the wails of the broken, panicked and wild.

  He staggered through the mess of shattered men and women on the floor, head darting back and forth wildly, scanning the stone floor. Then he froze, and made a spluttered choking noise as he stumbled forward, bending over to pick a child up from the floor.

  The little girl howled, red-faced, and clung to her father for the first time in a thousand years. The man held on as though the feeling gave him life, tears streaming from tightly shut eyes.

  “You need to run! Now!” Casek yelled.

  The man’s eyes shot open and met Casek’s. He mouthed a broken thanks across the cavern at him. Then, without ever loosening his grip on his daughter, scurried toward the exit.

  The Shadowspawn howled in response, a hundred furious shrieks that shook the cavern walls, full of hate and hunger for their fleeing prey. The effect of the sound was immediate. People stirred, horror-filled moans shifting to panicked screams. Folk dragged themselves to their feet, and stagger after the man and his daughter. Some moved for loved ones first, leaving at a clumsy jog, clutching at each other’s hands desperately.

  Others, alone, simply ran.

  A final, much louder sound shattered the rest, a viscerally loud, high-pitched shriek, tight with an incandescent rage. Casek breathed a sigh of relief. His suspicions had been right—she knew her prey was disappearing, and with it, her power and status.

  Casek shrank back against the wall, a mere shadow in the black, as the townsfolk hurried towards the exit as fast as their weak bodies could take them. The Shadowspawn hurried after them, a great flood of spider-like beings scurrying across the stone. Watching it brought back the twisting stab of shame and guilt.

  This, too, he’d suspected would happen. The slowest at the rear of the pack were already being run down, crystal blooming around them, the hope of freedom stripped away brutally quickly.

  Then she came. The Daemon herself clattered through the tunnel, failing to notice him. Such was its fury and desperation to reclaim its prey. It disappeared into the darkness of the tunnels ahead, howling and baying. Casek gave it a moment before licking the dried salt away from his cracked lips, and activated his own blade in the dark. The straggling Drau hissed, and he cut through them without mercy.

  He darted back the way he’d come, towards the ladder and the cavern where he’d left Raelynn to fight the Shadow alone.