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She ran.
A teeming mass of things crusted the entrance, smaller than the beasts beneath the dungeon, but almost worse. Cruder, more leathery. Like some sort of primordial bat-lizard hybrid. Black tongues tasted the air between flesh-shredding, clear teeth. Like the kristallos, bred and raised for eons in darkness—
A few of the creatures leapt, swooping into the void below, off on the hunt—
The tunnel, the bridge, rumbled.
Bryce staggered, the drop looming sickeningly closer, and a white wave of panic blinded every sense—
Training and Fae grace caught her, and Bryce could have wept with relief that she hadn’t tumbled into that void. Especially as something massive and slimy lurched from below, the size of two city buses.
An enormous worm, gleaming with water and mud.
A mouth full of rows of teeth opened wide and snapped—
Bryce fell back on her ass as the worm caught three of the flying lizards between those teeth. Swallowed them all in one bite.
Her starlight flared, casting the whole cavern in light and shadow.
The creatures on the walls screeched—either at the worm or the light—flapping off their perches and right into the creature’s opening jaws. Another snapping bite, river water and metallic-reeking mud spraying with the movement, and more vanished down the worm’s throat.
Bryce could only stare.
One twist of its behemoth body and it’d be upon her. One bite and she’d be swallowed. Her starlight could do nothing against it. It had no eyes. It likely operated on smell, and there she was, a trembling treat offered up on that bridge—
A strong, slim hand grabbed Bryce under the shoulder and dragged her back.
Sensations pelted her: rock scraping beneath her as she was dragged, light and shadows and shrieking flying things, her back stinging as debris sliced her skin, the wet slap of the worm’s massive body as it surged from the depths again, snatching at the beasts—
She couldn’t stop shaking as Nesta dropped her a safe distance into the tunnel. The worm took a few more bites at the air, the cavern shuddering with each of its powerful thrusts upward. The iron smell grew stronger—blood. It misted the air alongside the river water.
Every snap of the worm’s jaws boomed through the rock, through Bryce’s bones.
She could only watch in mute horror as more creatures disappeared between those teeth. As the tang of more blood filled the air. Until the worm at last began sinking down, down, down. Back toward the river and wherever its lair lay below.
Nesta’s breathing was as harsh as Bryce’s, and when Bryce finally peered at the warrior, she found Nesta’s gaze already on her. Displeasure and something like disappointment filled Nesta’s pretty face as she said, “You froze out there.”
Hot anger washed away Bryce’s lingering shudders, the stinging from her scraped skin, and she shoved to her feet. “What the fuck was that thing?”
Nesta glanced to the shadows behind Bryce, as if someone stood there. But she said, “A Middengard Wyrm.”
“Middengard?” Bryce started at the word. “Like—Midgard? Did they come from my world originally?”
Horrific as the creature was, to have another being from her world here was … oddly comforting. And maybe finding a scrap of comfort in that fact proved how fucking desperate she was.
“I don’t know,” Nesta said.
“Are they common around here?” If they were, no wonder the Fae had bailed on this world.
“No,” Nesta said, a muscle ticking in her jaw. “As far as I know, they’re rare. But I’ve seen my sister’s paintings of the one she defeated. I thought her renderings exaggerated, but it was as monstrous as she depicted it.” She shook her head, shock honing into something cold and sharp once more. “I didn’t know more than one existed.” Her eyes swept over Bryce in a warrior’s wary assessment. “What manner of power is it that you possess? What sort of light is this?”
Bryce slowly shook her head. “Light. Just … light.” Strange, terrible light from another world, she’d once been told.
From this world.
Nesta’s eyes glimmered. “What court did your ancestors hail from?”
“I don’t know. The Fae ancestor whose powers I bear, Theia—she was Starborn. Like me.”
