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Kaspias swings the rusted door open, and the wind is so fierce, it sends the bulky piece of metal flying wide with a bang against the brimstone.
I shield my eyes against the sweltering sun. It’s a bright, cloudless day with a ferocious breeze that is begging to send me falling and breaking my neck. I peer down at the courtyard between the three monstrous towers. It isn’t that far of a climb, but my stomach still dips and gallops around in a panic.
“I’ll go first. Follow my lead,” Kaspias commands.
At first, the climb down is agonizing as we fight against the treacherous winds. My hold on the hooks that dig into the unmoving brimstone mountain is shaky and unstable. But after several minutes of matching Kaspias’s steps exactly, I create a sound rhythm of movements.
As we lower closer to the black gravel ground of the courtyard, I see the mob in the distance. They have the same shape as a night dawper. Tall, spindly, and grim, like elongated corpses. Yet their skin isn’t gray, it’s the color of a newborn baby before it’s been cleaned. A shade of pink, like a new scar or fresh burns from a fire. There’s a white, gooey film that layers the top of that rosy skin. It’s as if their pores are oozing pus-like excretions. And their mouths are much wider, too, a wicked clown’s smile with long yellow tusks, the kind a walrus has. Even with these differences, their beady eyes remain the same.
Helga Bee told us briefly about the terrors of these demented creatures. Their saliva is acidic and meant to soften and eat through flesh so that they may eat their prey down to the bone. They can sniff hot organs from a mile away.
Fortunately, at this moment, they seem very distracted. There must be a hundred of them fighting viciously over a pile of bodies. Human bodies.
Kaspias grips my waist, helping lower me to the ground.
I jerk my head in the direction of the feasting swamp dawpers.
“They were already dead,” he explains coldly.
I huff, clenching my jaw. “They were prisoners, weren’t they?”
He doesn’t answer, swiftly removing the hooks from my boots.
“And you didn’t think they deserved a burial?”
His black eyes snap up to meet mine. “My only concern right now is getting my brother and those he loves out of this hell. Is that okay with you?”
I stare down at him, seeing the raw nerve of fear and uncertainty and guilt in the abyss of those eclipsed eyes. I don’t push him any further. I’ll just be happy if this all works out the way we want it to.
“Be very quiet. We must be ghosts as we pass them.” Kaspias stands, turning to the forking silver shimmering paths of concrete that connect to each of the three towers. I crane my neck to see their peaks, but they get lost in the blue sky, swallowed in the atmosphere.
I’ll come back for you, Dessin. I swear to God, I’ll come back to save you all.
“Now!” Kaspias whisper-yells, tugging me along to jog quickly but soundlessly along the path.
The courtyard is square and surrounded by giant walls that reach the height of the abandoned Demechnef building I once roamed, and the shade of black licorice with a subtle shine in the buttery sunlight. Ahead of the three towers connected by the pathways is a steel prison gate that looks like our cages. Bars crisscross to make up a wide door that can rise or fall upon entry.
We use the tips of our toes to move without noise. And it’s working! It’s fucking working! The mob of swamp dawpers is feasting in a heap of growls and snarls, attacking each other as they eat mindlessly. I crack a smile to Kaspias, and to my surprise, he smiles back. The first real expression of happiness I’ve seen from him. And oh, he looks so much like Kane with his cheeks stretched and those eyes gone round.
The skin on my bicep rips apart, screeching in pain as something scalds through my leather. A whipping sound whistles through the air. Kaspias flinches, clutching my arms against a stream of blood. His expression morphs from concern to shock to a surge of overwhelming dread. He looks up at the bird’s nest near the prison gate, and there it is. An archer pointing their crossbow in my direction.
“They were supposed to be switching shifts!” He squeezes my arm in a rage. “No one was supposed to be up there!”
The sound of bones crunching and blood slurping goes eerily quiet.
No more chomping of tusks through dead flesh.
No more snarls.
No more territorial growls.
The attention of every swamp dawper turns to us slowly, nostrils flaring wide as they take in the potent scent of my blood smearing across Kaspias’s palm.
“Run!” he cries, nearly pulling my arm clean out of its socket.
We race in the direction of the gate, panting, sweating, muscles contracting in our thighs as we aim for that gate, those bars that are…opening.
“Why are they opening the gate?!” I shout, dodging the arrows that whiz past our heads.
