Page 53 of Monster Lover

He slashed again, breaking apart three skeletons at once and raced up the steps on Ivy’s very heels, but they were only halfway up when the stairs suddenly slipped and became a slide, jetting them back down into the hands and swords of the shrieking skeletons at the bottom. But before they could be pierced by their foes, a hole opened up and they went tumbling down a chute into darkness.

They slid down the chute and while they fell, it seemed that a thousand skeletal hands grabbed and poked at them, stealing away all of their weapons and tools in the chaotic descent. Then they unceremoniously crashed together at the bottom, one atop another. It was dirty, dark, and pungent. There was straw on the ground at their feet, and then someone cried out, “Come any closer and you’ll get worse than the last!”

“Sykaryn?” asked Ghul Lykos. “You’re alive? Praise the Goddess!”

“Ghul Lykos?”

“It’s me,” he said.

“Well? What took you?” asked Sykaryn. “I’ve been rotting in this dungeon for weeks.”

“I got here as quick as I could.”

Sykaryn tossed her hands in the air. “And you’re captured now too. How lucky for me.”

“At least I’m here.”

“Ahem,” grunted Ivy. “And who is this?”

Ghul Lykos brushed himself off, then said, “Ivy, this is the Princess Sykaryn.”

“Oh, really?” she scoffed, not more than a little bit jealous.

“I hope you’ve got a plan,” said Sykaryn.

“We’re working on it,” said Ghul Lykos.

Just then a shouting and tumble sounded, thudding toward them, and Miniver fell out of another shaft that opened on the opposite side of the cell.

He wasn’t quite so quick to get up as the others. “Oh, me aching head,” he murmured. When he got up on his hands and knees and saw figures standing over him, he shrieked, “Don’t eat me! I’m old and stringy!”

“It’s us, Miniver,” said Ivy.

“Oh, sorry. This is an unsettling place, ye know. Poking hands stole me weapons while I was falling.”

“It happened to us too,” Ivy said.

“There are weapons everywhere in the manor,” Sykaryn said, “We just have to get them.”

Another tumbling sound of thudding above their heads made them all look, and from a different chute, Daemona came crashing to the ground. A little thump came bumping from above, and Esmerelda followed after. Ghul Lykos caught the little girl before she could hit the floor.

“Well, now that we’re all here,” muttered Daemona. “Let’s get out.”

Chapter 16:

“It’s no use. I’ve tried everything to break through these bars, to bribe a guard that brings me food, and pick the lock. They even keep the key where I can see it to torment me, and no amount of trying to fish for it has worked and trust me—I have been trying ever since the day they put me in here,” said Sykaryn, in a huff.

“For being such a famous warrior princess, you’re just a lot of talk,” Daemona jibed.

“I suppose you can do better?” Sykaryn asked.

Daemona looked at her and smirked, then ported out, grabbed the key, and strode to the door to unlock it.

“Now, why didn’t I think of that,” grumbled Sykaryn. “Oh yes, I’m not a treacherous Succubus.”

“Well, we’re all here now and we’ll get you safely back to Greymalkin,” said Ghul Lykos.

“Not quite all of us,” Daemona said sadly.

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