Page 34 of The Delver
The ground crumbled beneath him. His hearts halted, caught in the cold, crushing grip of terror.
Callie.
Cupping a hand behind her head and squeezing his eyes shut, he curled his body protectively around her. They clung to one another as the ground swallowed them.
All was chaos and pain and deafening noise. Rocks battered and scraped Urkot’s tumbling body from all sides. Dust choked him and burned his throat and lungs. The rockfall swept them down, down, down, on a river of roiling, unforgiving stone.
Through that eternity, which spanned impossibly few heartbeats, he remained most aware of Callie. He felt her body, her grip, her nails biting into his hide, felt her reacting to every jolt. He felt her screaming against his chest, even if he could not hear her.
Only his racing hearts overcame the din.
He came to a hard stop atop a bed of jagged rocks with Callie beneath him. More stone rained onto Urkot, and he strained with one arm to keep as much of his weight off her small, soft body as he could even as more stones piled atop his back, increasing his burden. His upper right arm trembled, his muscles ached, and he growled in fury, in despair, in determination.
And then there was stillness, accompanied by a silence so deep that a high, piercing tone filled his hearing.
His eyes snapped open. Dust hung thick in the air, made more difficult to see through due to the faint glow of the crystals spread throughout the surrounding rubble. As that dust settled atop him, it seemed as heavy as the stones crushing him.
Tremors wracked his body, and his ragged breaths tore through his throat. Ghostly pleas for aid and cries of agony rose within his mind, accompanied by a tang of blood that cut through the dust; he did not know if the scent was real or remembered, but it did not matter. Those calls…
His hearts quickened, and the tremors intensified. He squeezed his eyes shut once more.
But there was no safety in the dark, no silence, no solace. Just that crushing weight, that smell, those desperate cries, and helplessness.
“Urkot?”
His softly spoken name came from far away as the cries and the piercing sound, growing louder and louder, rang in his head.
“Urkot?” someone repeated, louder this time, breaking through the cacophony in his mind as frantic hands moved over his chest, shoulders, neck, and face, until finally they cradled his jaw and angled his head down. “Urkot! Say something! Please!”
He forced his eyes open. Callie was beneath him, her skin and hair covered in white dust. Her eyes, those large, beautifulbrown eyes, were pools of concern and fear as they gazed up at him.
She was alive.
They were alive.
“Callie,” Urkot rasped. He clutched her tighter, unwilling, unable, to let her go. Afraid to let her go. Afraid that what he was seeing wasn’t real, that he had failed and she was lying lifeless in his arms.
“Oh, thank God,” she breathed in a rush. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I…” Urkot’s chest was tight, making each breath a struggle, and countless new pains throbbed all over his body. The voices had retreated, but that weight continued bearing down on him, both within him and atop him. “I am okay. Are you?—”
Callie coughed, her body jerking. When she drew in rasping breaths, he felt the strain in her chest, felt the tension in her muscles. She was trapped, caught between him and the harder, uneven stone beneath.
He was crushing her.
“I think I’m okay,” she said once the coughing subsided, voice strained. She wiggled her feet, but they didn’t budge from where they were pinned. “My…my legs hurt, but I don’t think anything is broken. Are you okay?”
“We must move, Callie. Not safe.” Bracing a hand on the rubble, he pushed his torso up. But when he attempted to move his legs, they met considerable resistance—the rock piled atop them was trapping them in place, and he would not easily free himself.
A few smaller rocks came free, tumbling down the pile with a series ofclacksthat echoed in the darkness.
Urkot’s hearts thundered as those voices threatened to swell again. He clenched his jaw and fought them back. He was here, now, with Callie. Keeping her safe was all that mattered.
He released her with his other upper arm, planting it on the rock below like the first, and tightened his hold on Callie with his lower arm. “Hold me. Tight.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck without hesitation.
“Do not let go.”
