Page 15 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Stowe stood nearly as tall as Kase, but had at least fifty pounds on him—not an ideal boxing foe if any disagreement came to blows. Hallie clearly got her height from him, as she had at least an inch or three above most women in Kyvena’s high society.
Shocks, Kase missed her. It’d only been three days.
“We should make good ground today if nothing’s caved in,” Stowe said, his soft voice as dead and dull as the stone around them.
“Then what?” They’d passed a few offshoots that had been blocked up by stone and broken beams as they’d traveled, but nothing promising. “Will we need to turn around?”
Kase didn’t fancy facing whatever awaited them in the Pass. He didn’t know just how many people had survived Fort Achilles’ collapse. He barely understood what had destroyed it in the first place, because flash bombs certainly couldn’t have done it. According to Niels, those had taken sizable chunks out of the gates and caused a small ruckus, but that was it.
Kase had a feeling it had something to do with Hallie and General Correa, but he wasn’t sure what; and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t truly want to know. Power on that scale was something out of storybooks. Seeing Hallie’s face moments before the entire fort imploded…those were memories he’d rather not dwell on. Ever. Magic was only supposed to exist in storybooks, yet Kase had felt it when Correa had placed a finger on his cheek. He’d seen it with the Yalvs. The Gate had been brimming with it. And he didn’t like it one bit.
Kase ran a hand through his hair as Stowe answered, “We’ll decide that when we get there, son.”
Not helpful.
Stowe started off. Kase stood, swung his pack on his back, and followed behind in silence. The walls closed in like a coffin—hopefully not a harbinger of the fate awaiting him in the capital. He didn’t understand how the miners could stand going into tunnels such as these every single day, hacking away at the stone in near-absolute dark just to find bits and pieces of a metal that they wouldn’t even use.
Instead, the Zuprium would be sent off to Kyvena for refining and use in the construction of whatever the Jaydian Councils thought important—whether that be a next-generation hover like theEudora Jaydeor reinforced electric gate doors to the upper city.
But society relied heavily on the mystical metal. Without it, Jayde would collapse—so someone had to mine it.
Kase would have hated it. He hatedthis, traveling through a maze of gloom without any indication of what was happening above, ahead, or behind them. They traveled deeper and deeper into abject darkness with only a gas lantern to light the way.
Twist after twist, step after step, beam after beam, they wound their way into oblivion. He didn’t care what awaited them once they got out; he just needed to be out of this hole only meant for the dead. He just needed sunlight.
His boots slid in a streak of slime, and he caught himself on the wall, clinging to it as they rounded the next corner—and finally, light appeared.
It was faint, like a waning candle on a moonless night, peeking shyly around the tunnel’s next curve—but once he realized it wasn’t a cluster of the pale, spider-like cave crickets he’d have nightmares about for the rest of his life, hope poured energy back into his body. Light meant escape; light meant the end of their journey through moist, leering darkness.
Kase had wished for sunshine, and it waited around the bend.
But it wasn’t alone. Cold, heavy dread swept away his excitement. If they neared the end of the caverns, that only meanthisend crept ever closer. The caves might be kinder than whatever awaited him in Kyvena.
“Is that sunlight?” Kase asked, the words brittle, breathy.
“No,” Stowe whispered.
He couldn’t decide if he was relieved or not. “Then what is it?”
Stowe’s voice was thinner than the edge of a knife as he turned his lantern down to its lowest setting, the light now barely brighter than the one that awaited them. “You got that pistol of yours?”
Kase pulled the weapon from his pack. Hair stood straight up on the back of his neck as his fingers found the grip of the cool metal. The memories of the blood he’d cleaned from it made him want to chuck it clear down one of the offshoot mining tunnels they’d passed.
If I hadn’t attacked that soldier, I’d be dead. Hallie would be imprisoned.
Zeke’s coping mechanism for Battle Fright was something Kase relied on too much as of late. He tightened his grip on the pistol, the old grief resurfacing.
Zeke made his own choice.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out. In and out. In. Out.
Stowe shifted from one foot to the other.
“Could it be Hallie’s mother?” Kase whispered, leaning toward the older man.
Stowe held up his freckled hand lined with valleys and crept forward. The light hadn’t grown; its flickering stayed weak, withdrawn. If someone was in the caves, they must have decided to use a candle instead of a lantern, though that was a ridiculous idea. Clearly whoever stood around the bend wasn’t used to being deep in the heart of the Nardens…though Kase wasn’t either, and even he would’ve told them that wouldn’t work for long.
Maybe it was someone trapped without any way out because they didn’t know the tunnels like Stowe. Maybe they’d gotten lost and had run out of everything but a solitary candle. They might’ve been stuck for days, afraid to move on and lose what little strength they had left.
