AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“After you leave the chamber, go left!”
I went left.
“What are you doing?” I yelled, staring at him over my shoulder as we plunged into darkness, and thus getting a perfect view of the wall behind us blowing out.
“Helping you!”
We started down a long set of narrow stairs with almost no light at all, which wasn’t the best place for a conversation. “W-w-w-w-w-why?”
“I fail you. I fail him. I not fail again!”
Well, that’s optimistic, I thought, as the stairs disintegrated beneath us. That probably had something to do with the fact that an ancient demigod was smashing through them like they were tissue paper instead of solid stone. Or maybe it was just trying to fit its bulk down a passage completely unsuited for it.
Either way, it wasn’t fun.
That wasn’t the worse part, though.
A foul, lung shriveling stench flooded the air as my tires struggled to find purchase on the disintegrating floor, while chunks of stone tumbled down the stairs from behind me. It was so bad that I almost couldn’t breathe again, not because there wasn’t air, but because my body didn’t want it. I had to force myself to take in any oxygen at all, which was probably just as well.
Imminent asphyxiation gave me something else to concentrate on other than immanent death.
But that wasn’t the worst part, either.
“Left!” Lantern Boy screamed, and I hung a left, despite not being able to see a damned thing. But I could feel, and there was suddenly solid stone under my wheels again. I tore ahead, straight into a group of—
What was this shit?
I still couldn’t see too well, although the dead blackness of a moment ago was gone, but not for any good reason. We’d just plunged into the middle of what appeared to be a glowing crowd of mummies. They weren’t glowing much, but down here, any illumination seemed bright. And they were mummies, as in the ancient Egyptian, covered in bandages, barely shuffling along variety.
They weren’t attacking us, unless you counted getting in the way, so I guessed they weren’t part of Jonathan’s forces. It looked like whatever spell he was using had had some spillover, and whoever had been buried in the temple’s crypts had gotten caught in it. As to why the hell they were glowing a faint greenish white, I had no idea.
But it was pretty damned startling, and the ancient demigod apparently thought so, too. Or maybe he just got confused. Whatever the reason, one of the creatures was snatched up from beside us, and—
“Fuck!”
“The god, he has poison,” Lantern Boy informed me.
No shit. The mummy was no sooner pierced by those fangs than it began writhing and flailing, almost like it was alive and in pain again. Only no, I realized staring over my shoulder. The reason was the same one that caused a piece of paper caught in a fire to dance for a second, before curling up and dusting away.
Or in this case, to fall to pieces and then into nothing within seconds, like it had been hit with the world’s fastest acting acid.
Okay, I decided sickly.
That was the worst thing.
And then I floored it.
“Left! Left!” Lantern Boy yelled, as we skidded through another doorway, but there was no left anymore. The giant snake head had just taken it out, along with everything on that side. We slid through the collapsing doorway, sparks scraping off the floor, then straightened up and went barreling ahead—
And found out where all the mummies had come from.
For the record, riding through a long, dark tunnel of a room, with a bunch of sarcophagi on either side, the lids of which are either off or rattling, is a fairly pants wetting experience. Especially when paired with mummies disintegrating left and right as spirts of acid hit them. And a goddamned Lantern Boy yelling “LEFT!” loud enough to rupture an eardrum.
I veered left, which was heart attack inducing itself as I couldn’t see squat, and we were going about sixty miles an hour, and there was no actual corridor there. Or a room or even another crypt. Any of which would have been preferable to—
“Stairs!” And worse, they were going up.
We crashed into them, almost flipped, and did stand on end for a second before I could sort us out. Mummy light is not good light, but by this time, I was mostly going on feel anyway. That and sheer terror.
