City of Towers_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [126]
“I … don’t know.” Lei wiped at her face, brushing aside the mingled blood, tears, and bile. “I tried. I tried to destroy him. I had to. But something … something happened.”
Her words were lost in a new round of tears. Daine didn’t know what she was dealing with, but he didn’t have the time to find out.
“Lei,” he said. “We need to keep moving. That thing, Chyrassk, it must have fled while we were fighting Teral. We need to find it. We have to finish this. If Teral was telling the truth, there are dozens of those warped warriors up above. We need to destroy Chyrassk before it can reach them. Otherwise, all of this—Pierce, Jode—it’s been for nothing.”
Lei had a gift for turning grief into anger, and it came to her aid now. In her mind she saw the monster leaning over her, its piercing tongue descending to devour her brain. She imagined Jode suffering the same treatment, and fire burned in her blood. She blinked away her tears and nodded.
Daine led the way. He was weak from loss of blood, but he ran as fast as he could. Before long they emerged from the long room. Identical hallways stretched left and right.
“Which way?” Lei said.
Pierce had always been the tracker for the unit, but Daine had had to hone his senses in his first career. “There,” he said, pointing. A few patches of green-black blood could be seen along the floor to the left. “It looks like Pierce managed to get in a few good blows before Chyrassk overwhelmed him.”
They ran down the dark corridor. The cold fire torches were few and far between, and the air was damp and cold. The hall twisted and turned. It was ideally suited to an ambush, so Daine was hardly surprised when one finally came.
Daine turned a corner and found two Cyran refugees—a half-elf woman and a scarred, elderly man—waiting for them. The moment Daine came into view, the woman began to sing. Her voice was the sweetest sound Daine had ever heard, a music beyond mere words. For a moment he forgot the devourer of minds, Teral, the old man. The world vanished in the purity of the sound. But a moment later the sound came to an abrupt end—just as the old man was leaping at Daine, a mouth full of needle teeth descending towards Daine’s throat. Instinct was all that saved him. He sidestepped the attack and planted his dagger between his enemy’s ribs. The warped man hissed, clawing at Daine, but he did not possess the vitality of Teral, and a moment later he collapsed to the floor.
Pulling his dagger free, Daine found Lei in battle with the woman. Even as he turned to face them, Lei delivered a powerful blow to the throat, and the half-elf fell.
“Harpy’s voice,” Lei said, looking at the unconscious woman. “Lead on.”
They passed a few open portals, but the trail of inhuman blood continued on down the hall. Through the open arches, Daine caught a glimpse of a room filled with stone slabs. A barracks? Crypt?
At last, the hall came to an end. Stepping into the final chamber, Daine had to catch his breath.
A labyrinth of steel catwalks was suspended above pools of glowing fluids, a kaleidoscope of colors and scents. A hot wave of air washed over Daine as he stepped onto the catwalk, and the sweet, cloying scent filled him with dizziness. He almost lost his balance, but he managed to pull himself together just in time. The catwalks were barely three feet across, and there was no railing. Any loss of composure would result in a fall into the churning reservoir that lay below.
Daine took the lead, and the two of them slowly walked down the first catwalk. There were no torches in the chamber, and the only light came from the bubbling pools thirty feet below. Daine couldn’t see any sign of Chyrassk, but there was a patch of oily green blood on the catwalk ahead. As far as he could tell, there were no other exits from the room.
“Lei, what do you make of this?” he whispered.
As his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see that there were a series of chains and pulleys fixed to the ceiling. Some of these were supporting the catwalks. But others descended into the pools below.