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The three other scavengers around him instantly levelled their crude, spiked weapons at me, their hidden faces behind their rusty visors twisting with anticipation.
I pushed myself up on trembling legs, my bare feet cold against the rough stone, my hand throbbing where the skymetal had sliced my palm earlier. As I steadied myself, my eyes swept past the perimeter of weapons and caught a familiar, lanky silhouette trailing at the very back of the group.
Sky.
The Vakra fledgling stared intensely at the dirt, his long, youthful arms wrapped tightly around his own torso. He looked small out here, dwarfed by the warriors massive armour, his lanky, alien limbs trembling slightly. His face was a mask of deep, agonising guilt. He wouldn't meet my gaze, keeping his large, dark eyes glued to the rocks beneath his feet.
One of the larger raiders stepped up behind the boy and delivered a brutal, heavy-handed clap to his back that nearly knocked the fledgling off his feet. The warrior let out a wet, gargled laugh that echoed gratingly off the cavern walls.
"The master will be pleased with this one, eh?" the raider chuckled, his clicking language thick and self-satisfied as he nudged Sky forward with the butt of his spear. "A puny fledgling, yet he brings us the alpha’s prize. You have finally done something worthy, rat. This might just save you from the death sentence. Perhaps the master will let you keep your skin."
Sky didn't look up. He didn't say a word. He just allowed himself to be pushed, a miserable, hollow shell of the creature I had spent weeks trying to protect, weeks trying to keep fed and safe within the Nest. The betrayal tasted like ash in my throat.
Rage, hot and blinding, suddenly flared to life beneath my ribs, burning through the residual terror of the dampening field.
"Where the fuck are you taking me?!" I demanded, my voice cracking but loud, echoing off the ancient cavern walls. I took a defiant step toward them, ignoring the sharp pikes levelled at my chest. "What are you planning? Tell me!"
The warriors didn't budge. They offered no explanation. Instead, the raider closest to me lunged forward with a terrifying speed, his heavy, iron-clad gauntlet shooting out to wrap violently around my throat. He shoved me backwards until my spine collided with a pillar of stone, knocking the remaining wind from my lungs.
He leaned in close, the foul, metallic stench of his breath washing over my face as his grip tightened, cutting off my air.
"You better keep that pretty little mouth shut if you want to keep your tongue, human," he sneered, his voice a disgusting, low rasp. His eyes gleamed with a repulsive, predatory malice behind his visor. "Although... I could find other ways to put that mouth to good use first. It must have some kind of special magic hidden inside it, if the Oru-ka’s alpha likes his little human parasite so much. Maybe I should taste it before we deliver you to the deeper pits. The Huntmaster won't be around to save you from a real male."
A cold, visceral disgust washed over me, drowning out the panic. I didn't think about the pikes, I didn't think about the depth of the canyon, and I didn't think about how easily his iron fingers could crush my windpipe.
I glared straight into his hidden eyes, gathered the moisture in my mouth, and spat directly through the slit of his rusted visor, right into his face.
The raider froze.
A high-pitched, furious click erupted from his throat as the insult registered. His grip on my neck turned lethal. He lifted me completely off my feet, pinning me against the rock as his fingers dug into my flesh, fracturing my airway. My hands clawed desperately at his iron wrist, my bare feet kicking uselessly in the air, my vision beginning to tunnel into black borders as he prepared to snap my neck like a dry twig.
"Die, you—"
SKREEEEEECH.
A horrible, deafening shrill tore through the cavern.
It didn't come from the warriors around me. It came from deep within the endless darkness of the cavern entrance—a loud, echoing, unnatural call that vibrated so violently through the stone it made the loose dust and pebbles fall from the ceiling. It sounded like the scream of something massive, ancient, and utterly starved, a sound that shook the very foundation of the deep crust.
The raider instantly froze. The fury in his posture vanished, replaced by a sudden, rigid terror that rolled off his heavy armour.
He slowly lowered me, his hand slipping from my throat as he looked back toward the dark abyss, his shoulders tense. He turned his head back to me, his voice a trembling, hurried whisper as he tried to mask his own fear.
"You are lucky, human," he hissed, wiping his face with the back of his gauntlet. "The master calls. And he is not known for waiting. Move."
Without another word, he shoved me forward into the centre of the line. The jagged pikes prodded painfully at my back, forcing my feet to move as the entire group began to march, descending straight into the mouth of the never-ending dark.
Chapter 56
Kaelen-Thul
"—We are tracking them into the roots," I commanded, my voice dropping into a low, resonant vibration that cut clean through the panicking murmurs of the gathering crowd.
The white-gold of my markings flared with an authoritative, blinding brilliance, casting sharp shadows across the moss-choked platforms. I stood at the edge of the great cedar terrace, my bare toes gripping the slick bark of the precipice. Around us, the high canopy of the Nest rustled violently in the mountain wind, the massive, ancient trees swaying like silent sentinels above the burning lower rings.
"They used the chaos at the gate to slip past the upper canopy guards," I continued, my amber eyes locking onto the faces of the bloodied warriors who had just climbed up from the defence lines. "But the Vakra do not belong in the trees. They are scavengers of the dirt. They are dragging her down through the deep trunk pathways, toward the forest floor, and into the sunless crusts beneath the mountain. We do not know how far ahead they are, or how much time we have already lost."
A heavy, tense silence fell over the clearing. The warriors shifted, their breathing ragged, exchanging troubled glances. The air was thick with unvoiced doubt.
