Walking quickly now, deeper into the cave, he stumbled over rocks and searched the shadows on shaking legs.
“Luc?” he whispered. “Luc, are you here?”
He swung the relic around, its pale blue light rippling over the cave’s rough walls. He reached the list of names carved into the rock, all the Arcanists of Crisanth’s past.
Swallowing hard, Rolan pressed his fingertips to Luc’s name.
Then he turned around—and gasped.
The Arcanist lay several steps away, his face pallid, his chest bloody. He looked dead.
“Luc!”
Rolan dropped to Luc’s side and shook the man, letting out a cry of relief when his eyelids fluttered. Slowly, Luc turned his head, his gaze foggy. But when he focused on Rolan, his eyes grew wide.
“Boy…”
“It’s me! Luc, I’m here!”
“Why,”Luc rasped, his voice dragging itself over his tongue like a dying thing over a sandy desert. “Whyare youhere?”
“I—”
“GET DOWN!”
With a mighty shove Luc pushed Rolan aside, just as a massive club of a tail smashed into the ground where Rolan had been standing.
Stunned, Rolan lay on his back, gasping as a Cryptic’s roar thundered through the cave.
- CHAPTER 32 -THE CAVE
Luc groaned and hauled himself to his feet, swaying weakly as blood ran from the wounds in his chest.
“It… followed you…,” he rasped, picking up his sword. The metal screeched over the stone, its steel dull, its whispers silent. Empty of Arcana. “Stay… back!”
“You’re in no shape to fight!” Rolan shouted, holding up his relic. He could hear the thing, but he couldn’t see it well. The cave was too dark and the relic’s light too dim.
“We need light!” Luc gasped out, swinging his sword. He deflected a dark claw just as it snaked out of the darkness at him. But the blow made him stumble backward, his back colliding hard with the cave’s wall. As far as fighting conditions went, these wereterrible. They were trapped in here, on uneven ground, nearly completely blind, with a huge, angry Cryptic. The thinghadto be a Rank Four. It was even bigger than the monster Rolan had bumped into on his first ill-considered foray into the woods.
Remembering the torches stored in Luc’s cache, Rolan fumbled his way deeper into the cave. He couldn’t very well help Luc if he couldn’t even see what he was fighting. He had to hope the Arcanist would hold out long enough for Rolan to help.
He found the cache, dumping out crates until he saw the length of a torch. Then he took the flint and striker from his belt and struggled to make a spark.
“C’mon,c’mon, you stupid—ugh!”
Twice, thrice, four times he struck and nothing happened. Behind him he heard the Cryptic screech, the sound echoing back on itself at a bloodcurdling pitch.
“LIGHT!” Luc shouted jaggedly.
“I’m trying!” Rolan cried. “I’m—”
A spark!
It fell onto the torch’s oiled head, and the cloth bundle roared with flame.
Rolan snatched up the torch and spun around, waving it high.
What he saw made his tongue shrivel backward and try to slide down his throat like a salted slug.
