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I ran on. There was nothing else I could do. The knives weren’t reacting, and I wasn’t about to confront the lich with nothing more than two short silver knives. Especially when I had no idea if silver would have any effect on a being that was neither dead nor alive.
Cynwrig shouted something I couldn’t hear over the rain of black acid and the rasp of my own breath, but Lugh immediately stopped and swung around. “Fuck, Beth, watch—”
I didn’t hear the rest of it because skeletal fingers closed around my head, picked me up, and tossed me aside. I landed with a grunt half in, half out of the water, blood running down the side of my face where a claw had dug deeper. I shifted, trying to get up, but the soil had the consistency of glass, and I slipped back down. Heard Cynwrig shout again and snapped my head around. A thick mass of luminous worms surged toward me. I swore, thrust the knife into the island’s bank, and used it as an anchor point to scramble out. The worms lunged for me; two managed to latch onto my calf before I was completely free of the water, and pain erupted. I gritted my teeth against the scream that rose up my throat and sliced the bastards away. Blood oozed from the tiny holes they’d drilled into my pants and skin. They were some kind of goddamn leech.
They were also the least of my problems right now.
I thrust upright and ran for the bridge. The lich was attacking Lugh with one set of claws while he’d extended the other and curled it around him, forming a cage that prevented him from retreating. Lugh countered the lich’s unnaturally fast blows with Jack and Jill, but his coveralls were nevertheless torn, and blood oozed from a cut on his thigh.
I wrenched my other knife out of its sheath and ran toward them, vaguely aware the white worms were tracking my movements barely a meter from the shoreline. If I slipped, they would have me.
I didn’t slip.
Lugh did.
I screamed and leapt at the lich, stabbing a knife through its skeletal head. It made an oddly wretched, disbelieving sound that rebounded off the walls with surreal strength and stabbed wildly at me with knife-like claws. I wrenched the blade from its head and dropped low. As the breeze of his blows skimmed bare inches past my hairline, I slashed the knives across his calves in a cross-scissor motion, completely severing them from the rest of his body.
He made that odd sound again and toppled, almost in slow motion. As grit rained all around us, I swung around and kicked him hard enough to lift him off the ground and throw him into the water. As he went under, I sheathed my knives and darted onto the bridge, dropping onto my knees to reach for my brother. There was blood on his face, blood in the water, and the worms were coming in fast. Panic surged but I somehow forced it down and helped him clamber back onto the bridge. He lay there for several all-too-precious seconds, sucking in air, his body trembling. Then he surged upright, grabbed my hand, and didn’t let go as we ran dangerously fast across the narrow bridge.
A bridge that was now being attacked by not only the acid rain but also the increasing amount of rubble falling from the cavern’s roof.
It wasn’t just the island that was disintegrating. It was the entire fucking cavern.
Cynwrig knelt at the end of the bridge, his hands on the stone and his power singing through the air. Through me. I had no idea how that was possible and no brainpower to ponder it.
As we leapt off the bridge, the lich climbed onto it and strode toward us, seemingly unhampered by the fact he had no goddamn feet. Cynwrig lifted his hands, and his song of power fell away. The bridge went with it, sending the lich plunging back into the swirling pool of acidic water and luminous worms.
They didn’t attack him. Instead, the little fuckers formed a living raft that raised him from the water and sped him toward us.
We turned and ran for the exit. Cynwrig swept up our two packs and tossed them to me.
“Keep going,” he said. “I’ll block the exit.”
I felt the rise of his power again but didn’t look around. I hoped his stone doorway would be enough to stop the lich, but I feared it wouldn’t. The lich appeared to have just as much, if not more, control over its environment than Cynwrig did.
He soon caught up, and we pushed on, slipping and sliding on the slick stone. The tunnel walls trembled, and chunks of earth and rock fell from the roof, an indication the destruction was not confined to the cavern, even if the lich did remain there.
We came out onto the narrow ledge above the waterfall. Rocks bigger than my head plummeted into the river from high above, and the stone under our feet was fissuring. Cynwrig squeezed past us and continued at pace, but his hands were on the wall and his energy pulsed through the stone. The cracks didn’t grow, and the path remained intact, but one man couldn’t keep an entire mountain from caving in... not for very long, anyway.
We reached the bridge. The whole thing swayed alarmingly, but I followed Cynwrig onto it without hesitation. I kept my eyes on his back all the way, though, not daring to look either down or up lest the enormity of danger we were in overwhelmed me.
Lugh had barely made it off the bridge when a massive rock came crashing through the middle of it, wiping out that whole section.
I shivered, but there was no time to contemplate what might have been. Not if we wanted to survive. We raced on, Lugh in the lead again. Dust and debris swirled all around us, making it difficult to see and breathe. The headlamps barely made an impact, their light little more than a dim puddle against the increasing viscosity of the air.
Then from behind us came a sound not unlike that of a fast-approaching train. The cavern—and the mine shafts behind us—was collapsing, and it would take us with it if we didn’t get the fuck out of here.
The dust and the force of air hitting our backs increased. I dragged my sweater over my nose in an effort to filter some of the muck, but it didn’t seem to help much.
“We’re not far from the exit,” Cynwrig shouted, voice barely audible over all the noise, “but we won’t beat the collapse. You keep going while I shore up this section of the tunnel and stop the bastard behind it.”
I wanted to argue that it wasn’t safe for him to even try, but knew it was pointless. In all truth, the only real hope any of us had was him stopping or at least delaying the mine’s collapse long enough for us to get the fuck out.
I ran on, concentrating on the man ahead rather than the one we were leaving behind. The air began to smell fresher, and the dust and debris eased, allowing the lights to wash brightly across walls that no longer shook. Safety wassoclose... Adrenaline surged through my limbs, and I raced on with renewed strength. Then, barely visible past Lugh’s bulk, I spotted the end of the tunnel and remains of the barrier. Safety, if my earlier vision was to be believed.
I all but staggered past the barrier into the middle of the cavern then spun around, waiting with clenched fists for Cynwrig to appear. For too many minutes, nothing but dust spun out of the tunnel, a thick brown cloud that spread unevenly through the cavern.
Then he appeared, and by all the gods, never had I been so glad to see someone who looked so bad.
