12
The stairs turn into an earthen slope, much like a wide mineshaft, as the camels carry us deeper and deeper underground. The temperature drops a few degrees, becoming noticeably chilly, as if the walls are sucking the heat out of our bodies. Our shadows dance along them in the flickering torchlight, and smog-like vapor in a strange, orange-hue pool on the ground. For a moment, I worry it might be a noxious gas, but I can’t smell anything abnormal.
As I mull it over, trying to sort through all the chemistry knowledge in my head to remember what vapor is odorless and orange, it becomes even more dense. If I had a jar, I could probably reach down to collect it. Curiosity gets the best of me, and I decide to lean over and give it a good, long sniff.
Not my best idea, admittedly. It’s a miracle I passed my labs with this kind of unsound judgment, especially considering how I’m genuinely expecting something chemically unsound. But, oddly enough, nothing smells out of place. It’s all just dirt, wet rock, and burning torches. Which, I suppose, is more manageable than fire and sulfur, but the ambiguity is probably even more disconcerting.
I stare at Dusk’s winged back ahead of me. “You’re sure this isn’t the road to Hell?”
“For the millionth time,” he starts with a sigh in his voice, even though he refuses to turn to look at me. “No, Kae. I am not the devil, and I am not bringing you to Hell.”
“I’ve only asked like… one other time,” I mumble.
“You’ve brought it up four times now, to be exact.”
I huff a noncommittal noise in lieu of a response. He says that, but I’m still not convinced this place didn’t inspire some ofDante’s Inferno. However, my skin isn’t burning, and it’s nothing like that one nightmareI had?—
My lungs rasp for air through the ashen and sulfurous debris, each breath becoming less useful by the minute, every meaningless inhalation more bitter and agonizing than the last. I claw at my throat and chest, desperate for relief. I would tear my own soul from my body if it could remove this unspeakable, unfathomable pain of drowning on land.
From dirt we were born, and to dirt we will return.
It is hungry for its last corpse, and there is no escaping the reaper of Earth.
I shake my head, letting the tension roll into my shoulders, shiver through my body, and wring out through my hands.
It’s too easy for me to get sucked into those memories. If I’m not careful, I’ll give myself a damn panic attack. The air here is fine. I am not at risk of suffocating to death.
For now, at least.
If anything, I should be focusing on the strange vibrations in the earth. I’ve seen enough science fiction movies to be worried about giant underground worms, and because I really hope they only exist in said sci-fi movies, I thought I must have been imagining it at first. Unfortunately, the intensity grows with each passing moment. Now, it’s an unmistakable hum.
“Time to get off the camels,” Dusk calls, hopping down from his mount with a gentle ease. “We don’t want to run the risk of them getting spooked.”
I shoot him a look, skeptical. “I thought you had them charmed?”
“Yes, but the stronger their emotions, the more difficult they are to control. I’d rather not take my chances. You humans are fragile.”
I scoff, but make a mental note to ask him more about his enviable little skill later. If it’sat all possiblefor me to be able to talk to animals one day, I want to learn how. Even more than I’d want my own wings to fly.
But until then, I’ll just stay green with envy.
Before Dusk has the chance to help me again, I dismount. My feet hit the ground with a bit more impact than I’d like, admittedly, but stilldecently graceful.
I turn to where he’s standing, a breath away from having pulled me down himself, and flip my braid over my shoulder. My expression is smug. “I told you I can get down without your help.”
“Yes ma’am. Do you want to lead the camels, too? I can give you Jack’s reins.”
With a shrug, I feign indifference. “If you really can’t handle spooked livestock without magic, then yes, I suppose I can help.”
His eyebrows furrow as he immediately retorts, “It’s notmagic.Magic is a made-up word that stage performers popularized.”
“Oh, really? Then what would you call it? Witchcraft? Jedi mind tricks?”
He doesn’t reply. Instead, he shakes his grumpy little head and mutters what I think is some long-winded complaint to himself, but it’s hard to tell. It’s in another language. Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s…Latin?
“You realize you’re in the twenty-first century now, right? Nobody speaks Latin anymore. It’s a dead language.”
“Is that so?” His head tilts to the side.
