Page 100 of Cursed Shadows 2

Rune and Samick used Daxeel as their anchor: the moment before stepping into the portal, they both snatched onto his wrists. And they landed with him.

All thanks to his vicious one.

Now, using their ateralum blades to climb the face of the cliff, all the way to the far reaches of the cave entrances, they move in silence.

Daxeel keeps all thoughts of Nari wiped clean from his mind. He lets the scent of blood fill his senses, the war cries from down on the shore flood his ears, and the familiar hollowness of death in the air embracing him. His instincts narrow in on the essence of battle, and it’s all he needs to fight off the plague of Nari who forever occupies his mind.

It’s only in violence that he forgets her for a moment.

He needs to be focused.

Nari’s time will come.

So he keeps his focus on the mouth of the cave as he reaches the ledge and hoists himself up.

Samick and Rune are mere seconds behind him. As they climb up to the dark opening of the cave, a sudden rumble shudders the cliff, and an angry red ignites the darkness around them.

Before the roar of a dragon can tear through the shore, Daxeel grabs the arms of his friends and hauls them up onto the ledge.

They land in a tangle of limbs just as a fiery blaze chars the cliffside. Fire breath of a dragon, loud enough to almost completely silence the fleeting cries of whatever fae was just burnt to a crisp.

But the three of them are unscathed. Wasn’t their cave. Not their dragon. So one by one, they flip onto their feet and rise against the pure blackness within the cave.

Samick takes point. He slips inside first.

Rune falls into position behind Daxeel.

A shield to protect the asset. His bloodline.

They creep into the dark.

All darkness feels like home.

Where the Licht moonlight lashed and licked down his body like an unwelcome advance, the darkness is a cold whirl around him where he belongs. The darkness of the cave, deeper and thicker than any beyond it, is home.

And the three of them move in it like they are part of it, as though they are one. Their bootsteps are silent, their breaths inaudible, and their leathers hushed in the crushing quiet of the cave.

An advantage they have—and always have had in the Sacraments passed—is their own evolution.

Separate to the light fae, their sight is permanently adjusted to pure blackness, their hearing sharp enough to pick up on the burrowing rodent metres deep in the rocky walls; their sense of smell delicate enough to peel back layers in the air from the salt in the waters far behind them and the moss on the rocks to the blood of fallen contenders and even the essence of Nari’s kiss on Daxeel’s lips. He didn’t wash it away.

But any dark warrior would be a fool to underestimate the litalves in battle. Their brute strength or muted senses can’t match a dokkalf’s—but they have an advantage.

Nature.

Something in it responds to them, a vine handy at the right moment, a weak branch that should snap beneath their weight but doesn’t, or even the willingness of beasts to overlook them. Small, almost unnoticeable favours that nature lends the light ones.

So they keep quiet and sharp as they move through the cave. The passage is long and uninterrupted for a while before Samick stops.

Behind him, Daxeel and Rune pause.

Ahead, the passage continues. But on either side of Samick, two more passageways split apart in other directions.

It was expected—dragon caves are natural labyrinths. Connecting tunnels, all from different entrances. Any turn canbring them face to face with enemy warriors or wayward adolescent dragons who stray too far from their nests.

But Samick doesn’t stop to decide which tunnel he’s to take.

He stops because they are not alone.

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