Page 77 of Whisper of Nightmares

Not this time.

Not again.

Euphemia barrels down one corridor, then another. The viscous liquid leaking from the ceiling assaults her more than once, her flesh stinging on contact. Euphemia hisses through the boiling pain that reminds her all too much of the nightmare’s flames. But she bites her tongue to prevent her own screams from echoing down these halls. She will not let her presence be known. Not until she can reach her father. Not until she can rescue him.

The screams fade to moans. The moans wither to something muffled and equally as heart-wrenching. Until all Euphemia has to follow is a weak whisper of death.

But she knows she’s getting closer. Can feel it in the air. Like the deathly palace is being satiated, the ceiling drooling less.

She enters the final corridor, where the membranous ground has cracked open, the stonework absent in chunks that leave nothing but pools of that bile-colored, acidic fluid behind.

Her gait slows so she can tread more carefully.

Something hisses overhead.

Euphemia looks up.

The cave-like ceiling has become a woven tapestry of writhing snakes.

Euphemia stops breathing.

One of the snakes strikes out at her. She just barely manages to duck away in time.

But not even if the ceiling was covered in nightmares, the floors spewing fire, would she stop now.

Her father moans, sounding on the brink of a death.

He is so close.

Just beyond these skeletal walls.

Her father burning all over again?

Suffering?

Dead already?

Euphemia braces herself for what she’ll find on the other side of this corridor.

She’s about to find out when a hand clamps over her mouth.

The brawny arm attached to it yanks her back. Another arm wraps around her waist and then she’s being hauled off her feet. Ripped away from the precipice of reunion. Of the absolution that was just within reach.

“Let me go!” Euphemia snarls, words muffled.

Gone is the docile, abiding woman Euphemia has been told to be her entire life.

In its place, a wild and feral creature is unleashed.

Euphemia thrashes. She bucks the full weight of her body against her assailant. He nearly loses his footing judging by the way they rock to one side—but it’s then she remembers the large pools of venom splattered around the room. She can’t risk being melted alive.

Instead, Euphemia digs her nails into the man’s forearms. Still he does not relent. His grasp around her is as solid as iron. He pulls her all the way to the other side of the corridor, where the ceiling is still only bones and the floor is mostly intact.

Finally, he leans over her. A skeletal face and eyes of flame stare down at her. “What did I tell you about coming here, wretched creature?”

“You!” she says into his hand. Euphemia glares. This time when she wriggles, he releases her, arms raised in surrender.

“I thought I warned you about coming in here—” But as Ash steps back to give her space, he puts himself under the direct path of one of the dripping stalactites.