Page 43 of Ragoru

The Dark Father Efru, scourge of the living and feaster upon flesh, had taken all the living from this place. He had stolen Evie and now he was coming from Vrishna. A strange animal shrieked nearby, disturbed as it should be in that terrible place, and footsteps crunched as someone approached at a leisurely pace nearby. Vrishna groaned, certain that it was Efru. He turned his head, not ready to submit to death until he discovered for certain whether Evie lived or not, his lip curling back from his fangs as he snarled.

Laughter descended upon him, and his gaze fixed on a figure that closed in over him, blocking out the light. The scent of unwashed human male flesh stung his nose. This was no Efru. No deity to which he would ultimately play supplicant.

This was the enemy.

Snarling, he pushed himself up in preparation to lunge when the shadowy form of the huntsman lifted his arm, and something came down on Vrishna’s skull with a crack. He dropped once more into the dirt as the male stepped in closer and leaned down.

“Make no mistake, creature, Iwillkill you. But right now I don’t have time to relieve you of that soft pale gray pelt. As I plan to skin you alive and ensure you feel every minute of it means that you will have to wait until I return from dealing with Ms. Willocks.”

Vrishna snarled feebly, his body unresponsive as the world began to darken and close in around him.

“Oh? Didn’t like that, did you?” He chuckled unpleasantly in a way that made Vrishna’s hackles rise. “It makes me wonder what she allowed you to do to her. Perhaps we will have a chat first before the real fun begins. In the meantime, don’t expect one of your friends to charge to your rescue. My subordinates are dealing with them. Now be a good boy and stay.”

A foot pressed down on his head, grinding Vrishna’s muzzle into the dirt even as the pressure stabbed through his skull. Then it was gone, but the relief was only momentary before the encroaching darkness overwhelmed him and pulled him under, his heart and mind bellowing for his mate.

CHAPTER35

Evie groaned weakly, blinking her eyes as the sound echoed through the chasm. It didn’t do any good. An endless dark surrounded her except for the light shining distantly from above. She slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position, her hand clutching at the back of her head. Her fingers gently probed the tender spot, and she winced at the pain that radiated through her head and behind her eyes. Although she was sore and her stomach still lurched sickly from the fall, nothing else seemed to hurt enough to be broken.

Fingers fumbling with the straps of her back, she unbuckled one and then the other before allowing the bag to slip free from her shoulders so that she could pull it into her lap. She was working blind so she wouldn’t risk losing her hold on it for even a moment. With one hand holding the strap in a tight grip, she slid her fingers up until she encountered the zipper and slowly pulled it. The soft rasp of the zipper sounded inordinately loud, but she didn’t react to it more than to wince as she rummaged into the bag until she found exactly what she needed. With a whispered sound of jubilation, her fingers curled around the hard shaft and pulled her luminary free. Sliding her thumb along the shaft, she located the switch and clicked it. The top half of the luminary lit up, glowing bright enough to cast a circle of light around her.

Tipping her head back, she raised the light, peering up at the shaft through which she’d dropped. The shaft had been relatively shallow so that she hadn’t dropped far, but she didn’t think she would be making it back up that way. The sides of the shaft appeared almost sheer in most spots, and where broken rock stuck out were far enough apart to not give her much hope for climbing. Nor could she see all the way up so there was no way for her to know if there were further obstacles up ahead. The way the shadows were moving in the darkest part of the shaft high above where her light ended made her stomach tighten with unease.

She lowered her arm so that she was once again holding the luminary directly ahead of her and looked for any sign of tunnels that might lead to another way out. There was one that seemed to run through the lowest part of the shaft, but a short distance up there was another. She peered up at that one hopefully. She couldn’t be sure, but the inside of it appeared to be slanting at a slight angle at the entrance. It looked more promising than the ground-level tunnel for her purposes anyway. Decided, she swung her pack back over her shoulders and secured it as she headed toward the side of the shaft and squinted up at the tunnel.

Not too bad. It was a narrower crevice than the lower one but still wide enough for her to fit through. She just needed to climb up the few feet to its lip. Pressing her lips together with determination, she clipped her luminary to a hoop of material at her hip and began her ascent. Thankfully, the lower wall was more rocky than sheer and she was able to get a good handhold as she lifted herself up along the surface, slowly scaling it as she methodically moved one hand and foot at a time.

The moment she was eye level with the edge, Evie swung one arm up to leverage her weight and anchor her in place as she pulled the rest of her body up to spill into the tunnel. She lay there for a moment panting as her hand fumbled down her side to unclip the luminary and hold it up in front of her again. Rolling onto her side, she tucked her knees beneath her and straightened. Her nose wrinkled at a particularly dank smell drifting down to her, but she shuffled forward, encouraged as the slope of the floor seemed to continue.

The tunnel stretching out ahead of her was unremarkable. Almost uniformly the same dull gray stone, it darkened only in patches where water seemed to wet it. Somewhere in the darkness she could hear the drip of water hitting stone, creating the only atmosphere outside of the sound of her own breathing. She shivered and clutched her coat closer. Not only were her surroundings unnerving at best, but the air was also far cooler than it was on the surface, and because of the dampness it seemed to seep down into her bones with every step she took.

Evie rubbed her palm against her nose and groaned softly. Hopefully she would find a way back out onto the surface soon. When she formulated the idea of going into the tunnels, she hadn’t realized just how miserably cold they would be. But she’d never been far into a cave system in her life. It had never been a part of her fieldwork in any of the places where she was stationed.

It was the sound of scratching against stone that broke her out of her reverie. She peered out into the darkness that stretched beyond the light cast by her luminary, her ears straining to pick up any further sound.

There! Another scratch and another. The soft sound of tiny stones tumbling after each other as if kicked. Evie’s heartrate picked up and began to pound as the sound of high, sibilant voices reached her ears, practically hissing to each other. Two, perhaps three voices, but the sounds that they made had a definite speech pattern to it that sounded like the common language of Solum but broken and jumbled.

Swallowing nervously, Evie took a step closer, and then another. “Hello? Is someone there?” She craned her neck as the whispering suddenly cut off and all other sounds. She drew to an immediate stop, her heart pounding in a fierce thump within her chest. “Yeah, okay, maybe that’s not a good idea,” she mumbled to herself as she retreated one step, and then another.

That’s when she heard the scratching again and the shift of displaced stones, but this time they were amid the slap of feet—coming toward her. The shadows surged forward as she hastily backed away only to stop at the edge of her light. But they only hesitated a moment as two grayish people slid out into the circle of light. The claws of one hand scraped against the wall as they prowled closer, their milky eyes rapidly flicking in the dark. They clicked softly and whispered to each other as they drew closer. They were horrendous-looking with elongated, misshapen skulls. Their mouths stretched wide over prominent sharp teeth with dark hair plastered against their skulls. Black boils seemed to coat their skin in isolated areas which were all visible since they appeared naked except for small amounts of ragged hides tied over their genitals.

Male and female was her guess from the few visual cues she took away. Perhaps a mated pair? But where had they possibly come from?

Keeping her lips shut in case they mistook flashing teeth as a sign of aggression, Evie smiled in a way she hoped would be interpreted as friendly before speaking in a low voice. “Hello. I’m sorry. I’m lost and need to find a way out from the caves. Can you help me?”

The one she dubbed as the female glanced uncertainly at the male beside her. Whatever hope she had that perhaps she would get lucky again with another alien creature evaporated when his lips pulled back from his terrible teeth in a cruel smile. A snarl rattled into his chest and then the female followed suit, taking her cue from the male.

“Fuck,” Evie whispered. “Bad, bad idea.”

She spun away as he plunged forward with a shrill shriek, the sound bouncing off the cavern walls. She raced through the tunnel, her lungs burning from the effort, barely keeping ahead of the creatures chasing after her. Although they looked like they might have once been human and their whispered words had supported that, whatever they were was no longer anything close to human beings. She wanted to vomit at the terrible stench that wafted down the tunnel after her. They carried the scent of rotting flesh around them, and she had little wonder as to what their diet was. Or what they anticipated to be their next meal with how fervently they gave chase.

Evie didn’t even stop as she came to the end of the tunnel. She merely slowed enough to give herself some control and allowed herself to drop to the bottom of the shaft. Her feet hit hard enough to send her to her knees when her legs gave out. They slammed on the rocky ground hard, and she gasped in pain and moaned when she forced herself upright again. She couldn’t stop or slow. She could hear them scrabbling toward the edge of the tunnel above her.

Picking the ground level tunnel closest to her, she forced herself forward, her gait at first shaky and then becoming a more stable run as she shot down it. The sound of claws on rock as the creatures scurried down the wall made her blood chill, but she kept her legs pumping as her light bounced around her. To her relief the tunnel didn’t branch off or become difficult to pass through. It continued to remain shockingly wide and direct, though it often had a twist that forced her around one gentle bend or another.

A suspicion began to form in her head. This was not anything like a naturally formed tunnel. The walls were too smooth, unlike the jagged, rough walls of the tunnel above it, and not only did its size never deviate but the ground beneath her feet was relatively smooth rather than broken by jutting rock formations or places where the rock had worn down evenly from passing ground water during the cave’s development. It was as if the tunnel were… artificially created.

She drew in a sharp breath. “It can’t be,” she whispered.

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