Page 38 of The Delver
Whatever she felt must’ve been inconsequential compared to what Urkot was enduring. He’d been the one the rocks had fallen upon. He’d been her shield, her shelter from the storm, protecting her while his body was battered. And he’d lost his companions.
Her chest tightened, squeezing her heart, and she wiped her eyes as she fought back tears.
Fuck, I’ve never cried this much.
Everything was going to be okay. They had a goal, they had each other, and they would get through this. Callie had to stay strong, had to believe they’d make it out of here safely. She refused to wallow in despair.
Her brow ceased as she studied Urkot. In the lantern’s harsh light, the pale dust covering his body made his old scars stand out in relief. Would any of the little wounds he’d suffered today add to those scars? Would his body, already marked by a lifetime of conflict and struggle, bear new marks after this?
It was comforting that his gait was normal, though he moved with purposeful caution. Not so comforting was the tension in his posture. It was in the set of his arms, the tightness in his shoulders and their slight hunch, in the way his head swiveled while he scanned the tunnel ahead. And the light was strong enough to highlight the fine hairs on his legs; they’d been standing all this time.
Callie and Urkot had been through danger, had been through crises. Urkot had often been the one to cut the tension with a bit of humor, to lift everyone’s spirits by being a solid, dependable, positive presence. This silence wasn’t like him.
He was on alert. For more cave-ins, or something else?
Tilting her head, she frowned. “What’s wrong, Urkot? I mean”—she waved a hand—“besides the obvious.”
Urkot halted, shoulders rising with a deep breath. Callie stopped beside him.
Mandibles twitching, he huffed and gazed down at her. “In Takarahl, there are stories told to all delvers. Old stories. They tell of vrix deep understone, with pale hides and unending hunger.”
“Okay, that sounds…sinister. What do you mean by unending hunger?”
“The stories tell that they will eat anything they can find. Anyone they find.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Are you talking about cannibalism? That there are vrix thateateach other?”
“Yes. They are called spiritstriders.”
Callie gaped at him. “Oh, that’s so fucked up.”
“A big time ago, spiritstriders made war on shadowstalkers. They took many shadowstalkers alive, to sacrifice to gods buried in the deep…and to devour them. But shadowstalker strength was too much for them. They fled into the darkest tunnels, and my kind closed those tunnels to keep the spiritstriders from returning.
“But when I was a broodling, we were told to take care because spiritstriders would await in the tunnels, taking lone delvers and dragging them into the darkness below.”
“That’s horrifying to tell a child,” Callie said, aghast. Being scared of monsters under the bed was one thing, but human parents usually went out of their way to diminish such fears. To have a parent say that there were ravenous creatures lurking in the darkness, waiting to steal you away and eat you…
How had Urkot lived with such fear?
“Delving is danger,” he replied, his words thick and raw with sorrow. “Better to be aware and afraid than to not know. I have never seen a spiritstrider…yet vrix would sometimes vanish in the tunnels. Perhaps they were just lost… I do not know. But most were never seen again.”
Rubbing her bare arms as though it could rid her of the deep, sudden chill in her bones, she glanced down the tunnel into the darkness the light didn’t reach. “But that’s just a creepy ass story, right? There aren’t really spiritstriders down here.”
When he didn’t answer right away, she looked back at him. “Urkot? They’re not really down here, right?”
But he’d turned to stare in the direction from which they’d come, mandibles again twitching. “Where the rocks fell… There were marks on the walls. Claw marks in stone.” Urkot again met her gaze. “I do not think we are alone here.”
Callie’s eyes widened, and words burst from her before she could stop them. “The fuck you say?”
Her voice reverberated along the tunnel, echoing back at her.
Urkot banded an arm around her middle and covered her mouth with his hand as he looked, wide-eyed, toward the darkness.
Silence returned.
Barely above a whisper, he said, “We must keep our words soft, Callie.”
She stared up at him as that deep-seated cold spread through her body.
