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With Amaya’s fire lighting the way, we crept forward. The tunnel continued to narrow, until the bits of rock and debris in the soil were tearing into my shoulders and the scent of blood stung the air.
If there were hellhounds ahead, it would call to them.
I swallowed heavily and tightened my grip on Amaya. Her hissing ramped up, and I didn’t know whether she was reacting to something I’d yet to see, or merely echoing my tension. I hoped it was the latter, but I had a horrible suspicion it was the former.
At least I was better off than Jak—even as awkwardly bent over as he was, he kept hitting his head against the roof.
“Fuck,” he said eventually, “I really think we need to turn back.”
“No. There’s something down the other end of this tunnel—” I yelped as a particularly sharp rock sliced into my arm.
“At this rate,” he muttered, “we’ll bleed to death before we ever reach an exit.”
“I think I’d rather bleed than chance whatever is at the other end.”
“It can’t be any worse—”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when I burst out of the tunnel like a cork being popped from a champagne bottle. I stumbled to gain my balance and took a quick look around, once again using Amaya for illumination. No hellhounds, nothing that appeared immediately dangerous—just two innocuous-looking stones that stood like petrified soldiers in the middle of a cavern. Which didn’t mean we were out of trouble, but wherever the hell we were, it had to be better than the tunnel. Jak all but exploded out of it three seconds later and came to a halt beside me.
“Fuck me!” he said vehemently. He swept the sweaty strands of hair from his forehead with hands as bloody as mine and looked around. “Where are we?”
“I have no idea. And not in a million years.”
“I’ll remind you of those words the next time we make out—” Jak stopped, and his eyes widened. “What the hell are those?”
“I don’t know.”
It was somewhat absently said as I studied the two pillars. They were about six feet tall and stood the width of a body apart from each other, so that they formed an odd sort of doorway that seemed to go nowhere. Though they were mostly gray in color, their surface was littered with quartz that Amaya’s flames sparked to life, sending rainbow-colored flurries skating across the earthen walls. There were markings and weird symbols etched into each pillar, but it was no language I’d ever seen, and it felt ancient. No, not just ancient—powerful.
I stepped forward cautiously. Energy caressed my skin, similar to the magic I’d felt briefly when I touched the door handle. I swept Amaya’s light across the floor. While it was mainly dirt, there was a series of wide, flat stones that formed a circle around the pillars. While there was no quartz within these stones for Amaya’s flames to catch, there was writing. This time I recognized the language, even if I didn’t entirely understand the spell. They were runes, meaning the stones were some sort of protection circle.
“You think it’s a gateway of some kind?” Jak said.
“Of some kind.” I walked around the pillars, making sure to keep close to the walls and well away from the runes. “Be careful where you step, Jak.”
“I may be a skeptic when it comes to many things magic, but even I can sense the wrongness in whatever is written on those stones.”
And that’s precisely what it was. A wrongness. The magic in this place wasn’t dark, it wasn’t evil—it was just wrong.
Like the man without a face, I thought absently, though it was doubtful they were in any way connected.
Each rune in the circle was a little bit different from its neighbor, except at the north and south points, where a set of six identical ones appeared. Exit and entry points, perhaps?
I stopped when I reached the tunnel entrance again and studied the walls themselves. There appeared to be another exit to the left, but on closer inspection, it proved to be little more than a niche. Whoever had built this place obviously used it for storage, because it was filled with an odd assortment of things—including a shovel, a crowbar, a hammer, and various-sized jars of nails. The sort of stuff you’d need if you wanted to repair a floor or bury a body.
I shivered, and hoped like hell we got out of this damn hole long before we had to worry about either of those things.
“Now what?” Jak crossed his arms and stared at the pillars thoughtfully. “Do we attempt to breach the magic?”
“Nope, we use our ‘ring a friend’ option.” I dug the phone out of my pocket, hit the vid-button, then called Ilianna.
“You found something?” she said by way of hello.
“Yeah. I need you to tell me what it is. Hang on and I’ll show you.” I turned the phone around and did a slow sweep of the cavern.
“Fuck,” she said. “That’s some heavy-duty magic they have happening there.”
