Page 114 of The Last One
I recover the torch and frantically scan the floor of the cavern that wavers and writhes in the flickering torchlight, relieved to find no pieces of Jadon scattered among the bones. Where could he be? Maybe he made it out of the cavern and is safe and sound, waiting for me to join him. I swallow. He wouldn’t leave me here alone. I’m certain of it. Maybe he’s lost in the cave. Maybe he’s trapped somewhere in the dark. Maybe the battabies…No.
My chest feels as though an Otaan is standing on it. We knew the danger. We needed more than swords and fire—neither work against these beasts. We should’ve brought…what? My weapons haven’t been successful so far.
I shift the torch to my other hand and blink hard, a vise tightening my heart. What if I never see him again? What if I never see the light ever again?
More battabies drop from the ceiling to join the blue cloud swirling above me. None have lunged at my head…yet. They’re dropping slowly as a collective, no doubt preparing to overwhelm me with their sea of bodies.
My poor pounding heart. How much abuse will it take before giving out? My eyes sting from sweat. My shoulder muscles ache from swinging steel and flame. My handsburn. My fingertips glow, matching the colors of the useless torch I’m clutching.
I stare at my hands in wonder. I have another weapon—something these creatures have never seen before. I drop the torch and thrust my hands at the circling swarm. I’ll be able to hurl wind as I work my way through the cavern, pushing past the relentless onslaught of battabies and saloroaches, searching for Jadon and protecting the both of us as we finish our task together. The wind from my hands is the perfect weapon for this battle: anger and fear surge through in equal parts as determination and frustration.
The wind blasts from my core, and blue crackling air punches the battabies like the fists of thirty men. The intensity of their shrieks almost drops me to my knees. Their glow, though, blinks from blue to amber to black. The immediate space around me is now clear…until it’s not. Another cloud of creatures swarms, and I cry out with raw emotion as I send more wind from my hands. Blue glow. Gold glow. No glow. In the breath before the next wave of creatures, I reach to grab my torch still burning on the ground.
But as I reach, I spot that glowing blue sea of saloroaches rolling toward me. Though they’re not as big as battabies, these creatures win by overwhelming their prey in numbers, bringing that doomed target to the ground through sheer weight, then munching and chewing and invading every opening that poor animal has, eating away at it until there’s nothing left except bones like the bright ones scattered at the entrance of the cave, bones like the ones I stumbled over moments ago. A horrible thought pops my heart. What if Jadon was overtaken by these creatures? He doesn’t have wind or the ability to see in the dark. He wouldn’t see the blue glow of countless roaches. What if I’ll never find him because there is nothing left to find?
The vise around my heart squeezes even tighter. I must find him.
The swarm never breaks even as I kick out my feet, stomp and shriek, until I thrust my wind here and there and over there.
Maybe it’s not the battabies we should’ve feared.
One courageous saloroach has reached my knee.
I slap it off, dropping my torch in the process.
Me being here in this cave… Is this punishment for what Elyn claims I’ve done? Will she keep sending otherworldly beasts after me until I surrender? She’d know that we’d have no choice but to come to this cave to kill the colony or risk being attacked again. Veril had never seen these creatures in his woods, which means these creatures didn’t care enough before to haunt the forests around his cottage. How did they know to come there?
More saloroaches skitter past my boots, and I swipe and shudder, kick and swipe.
I can’t let them reach my knees. I’ve lost if they reach my knees. And I don’t lose.
But they’re so many, too many, and they all glow blue, nowhere close to death, and they’re moving higher, and my breathing is…is…
My scream grows from deep inside, near my heart, and I push my hands out, sending the battabies slamming against the ceiling and the saloroaches backward, most taking flight for the first time in their lives, while the others explode from my wind. But my wind also sweeps away my torch, and now it flickers a few paces away from me, atop a hill of battaby dung as tall as Veril’s cottage. And that dung hill is alive with more black-bodied, blue-glowing saloroaches.
The battabies don’t appreciate my wind, and they temporarily abandon this sliver of the cave. The chittering from the saloroaches, though, has started up again. They’ve forgotten the power and intensity and threat of my hands.
The torch sputters, and I’m gradually being swallowed by darkness—that is, until I look down and see the undulating sea of glowing blue light spreading across the ground as far as I can see. There’s no flicker of amber among this new wave of saloroaches. And that blue glow sweeps over the toes of my boots again and fights to reach my knees. I swipe and kick and grip Fury tighter, holding my breath as the flame from my torch dims.
The cave falls into silence. Even the chittering has ceased. The fire from my torch continues to wane. A breeze teases my forehead. My heart’s rhythm is all over the place, beating on ones and threes when it bothers to beat at all. Slowly, I peek over my shoulder, seeing nothing lurking in the looming darkness.
But that’s not accurate.
I slowly sheathe my sword and reach for my dagger.
That teasing breeze becomes a burst of wind, and over on the dung hill, the flame of my torch flickers, then goes out.
I’m dunked into complete darkness.
Not one glowing light, not blue, not amber. Did every living thing, except me, just die?
My vision tries to adjust, but there is nothing my eyes can grab onto.
There is nothing here.
Andthat’sthe problem.
34
