I awoke, thrashing and confused, to see Elmidath leaning over me with a concerned expression on her face. The familiar sight calmed me and I sat up, chest heaving as I got my bearings. We were at the base of a cliff that stretched upward into darkness. This must be what was at the bottom of that drop, but how had I gotten here?

“What happened?”

Elmidath frowned, furrowing her brow. “You don’t remember?”

I shook my head. “The last thing I remember is waiting for you to get to the bottom. Why did that take so long, anyway?”

“The Ortisfel attacked us on the way down, but that’s not important right now. You really don’t remember how you got here?”

“Not at all. Is there anything you can tell me about what happened to me?”

“Well, you teleported to me while I was still in the air without any warning. I was getting close to landing at that point, but you still hit the ground pretty hard. That might be why you don’t remember.”

“So, after that I hit the ground and blacked out?”

“Not exactly. I flew down to meet you and you were flailing around so violently I thought you’d hurt yourself. You were raving about something, I couldn’t even understand the words, and then you just dropped to the ground. For a little while there I thought you were dead.”

I managed a semblance of a grin. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Pulling gently free of Elmidath’s hold, I got to my feet.

“Are you sure you should be up? Maybe you should rest a bit longer.”

I waved her off. “I’m fine, really. I’m sure it was just the fall. It’ll all come back to me soon.”

She looked sceptical, but I actually did feel fine, more or less. The only thing bothering me physically was a dull ache in my throat. Swallowing only seemed to make it worse and as I went to massage it, I felt a lump. Confused, I kept my hand there and the lump moved. My confusion turned to a combination of horror and disgust, as bile filled my mouth.

Staggering a few steps away from Elmidath, I emptied the contents of my stomach across the stone. Despite the violence of my gastrointestinal outburst, the lump was still lodged firmly in place. Scratching frantically at my throat, I could feel the bulbous thing writhing around.

Elmidath put her hand on my back, ignoring the putrid mess before me. “What’s wrong?”

I turned, exposing the aberration that was tormenting me and her eyes went wide. My fingernails dug into flesh in my panic while Elmidath stared, frozen in horror. Helpless to remove the parasite that I could even now feel burrowing deeper into my flesh, I pleaded with her for help but she scarcely moved a muscle.

Soatas, seemingly appearing from nowhere, stepped between us and jammed his whip-like appendage down my throat. Choking, I tried to break free on blind impulse, but before I could make much impression the limb withdrew, tearing a chunk of me out as it went.

Soarister’s servant held his new acquisition up before my eyes. It was a small oval of pure black, equipped with long hooked claws and wickedly barbed pincers. Staring at it, I realized the lump was gone and blood was leaking down my throat. The flow stopped before long, leaving me whole once more.

Crushing the pest within his grip, Soatas dropped its broken remains to the ground beside my vomit and looked to Elmidath. “We proceed.”

She ignored him, still focusing on me. “Are you okay?”

Doing a quick check over my body for any other lumps and wiping my mouth, I sighed with relief. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Soatas was already striding off, and we hurried to catch up to him. “How’d you get him to wait, anyway? He doesn’t exactly seem like the patient type.”

“He wanted to leave you, but I told him I wasn’t going anywhere until you’d recovered.”

“Thanks.”

Sensing that the conversation was at an end, it let my mind drift back to what had just happened. How had that thing gotten inside me? It must be related to whatever had happened while I was waiting for Elmidath, but I still couldn’t remember even the smallest fragment of it. Though normally I’d be fine not recalling whatever horrible thing must have occurred, it might very well have left me with more than just the bug in my throat. And if that was the case, I very much needed to know about it.

Still, there were no other problems I could detect right now, so I resolved to keep it in mind for later. I’d have to double check myself later, when I had enough time for a proper examination. My body seemed to be functioning fine and that was all that mattered right now.

Now that we’d gone down that sheer drop, I struggled to imagine how deep beneath the ground we must be now. Several kilometres? More? It didn’t bode well for our chances of getting back, but I suppose that was a concern for the future. There was more than enough to worry about at the moment.

Soatas continued to unerringly lead the way; presumably he could sense our destination somehow. It had to be something like that, or we’d have gotten lost almost immediately down here. Despite my previous, quite well founded, misgivings towards him, he’d certainly come through for us so far. Without his help, we wouldn’t have had the slightest chance of pulling this off.

I disliked being beholden to what was, at best, a power that cared nothing for me, but that seemed to be almost an everyday occurrence in this world. It was by no means an easy place to live, and that necessitated making hard decisions. Many of which I would never have even considered under better circumstances.

We marched and marched, while my impatience grew. However, I refrained from asking if we were nearly there, not wanting to sound like a child. We’d arrive as soon as possible; I doubted even Soatas wanted to be down here any longer than necessary. Powerful as he was, even his resources were limited. Though hopefully we would not encounter those limits during this assault on what I could only assume was the enemy’s most heavily guarded location.

Even this far down, we still encountered an enormous number of alternate paths. Was this simply a trick of the Ortisfel to confuse invaders? It was hard to believe their complex could possibly be this massive, especially when most of it appeared to be empty. Then again, who knew where the other paths lead? Perhaps Soatas wasn’t leading us down the most direct route after all, but instead the safest one.

That would explain why we’d encountered so little resistance, though I was still far from satisfied with that explanation. There had to be something else going on. Did the Ortisfel want us to get closer for some reason? I couldn’t fathom a reason why, given the danger the Hand of Imistala posed to them. Stumped, and somewhat bored from the long journey at this point, I reached out to Elmidath.

“Don’t you think it’s strange we haven’t been attacked more?”

“Of course. But maybe they’d already depleted most of their forces attacking us, and doing whatever else they do.”

“Does that really seem likely? I mean look how huge this place is. Does this strike you as a place inhabited by only a handful of creatures?”

“No, but I don’t think the Ortisfel built this place. I think it must’ve already been here when they arrived. And it’s not unthinkable that their forces might still be limited at this stage, they only became active on the surface recently from what I’m aware of.”

The last part of what she said worried me. Just how far had the Ortisfel’s reach stretched already? These tunnels had to stretch a long way, where else had they invaded already? We’d only managed to push them back at great cost to our allies, likely other locations wouldn’t have been so lucky. Still, we wouldn’t have to worry about any of that if we could defeat them here. If anything, I hoped they had been spreading themselves thin, it would only make it easier to accomplish what we’d come here to do.

“You’re magic, right? Can you sense if we’re getting close to the rift?”

“Not really. It all just feels generally awful down here. I also don’t think I’m familiar enough with the Ortisfel’s magic to understand much, I’m not sure if you can even really call it magic.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to explain, but it’s quite unlike anything I’ve experienced with my own or the humans. Even what Soarister’s servants do is more familiar to me.”

I suppose it wasn’t too surprising that the Ortisfel’s power would be so alien, they were from another plane of existence after all. Though it did raise another question.

“How did Erstanos know so much about the Ortisfel then? He even knew what this rift looks like. Do you think he might’ve been one of them?”

“I doubt it, I don’t know why he would’ve bothered with any of this if he were.”

“Then, why did he bother helping us then?”

“Honestly I have no idea. He must also want the Ortisfel gone, which is understandable. I imagine almost everyone who lives in this world would want them gone if they knew what they were capable of.”

That made sense, though I was sure there had to be more to it than that. Particularly given how he’d appeared out of nowhere with considerable knowledge of Elmidath and myself. In fact, his timing had been awfully convenient now that I thought about it. Had he known the walls were going to close on us? Or even caused it himself? There a lot of questions that needed answering once we were free of this horrid place.

Soatas stopped and I craned my head to see past his bulk. We were at the entrance to a large chamber, illuminated only in part by the flickering green light. Flickering? Had it been doing that before? Looking closer I realized it remained as steady as ever; the chamber was full of creatures formed of living shadow and they were already swarming toward us.

Soatas’s light intensified and he broke into a run. “Stay close to me.”

In his haste we were nearly left behind, only catching up by virtue of me nearly dragging Elimdath along as she struggled to get up to speed. A veritable wall of living shadow blocked Soatas’s path, but it barely managed to slow him down. Each sweep of his arms tore through the shadow, dispersing a part of it while Elmidath and I just struggled to keep pace with him. A shadow came in from the side at Elmidath, grasping claws outstretched. Before I could react, Soatas’s whip caught it midleap and tossed it back into the swarm.

The onslaught grew fiercer and soon even Soatas was forced to slow. For all the speed with which he was dispatching them, the shadows were replaced even more quickly. We were advancing at little more than a crawl as our foes grew more and more numerous around us, until one of them finally made it past Soatas’s guard.

Its claws failed to make any impression on his glowing form, but it distracted him long enough to let another half dozen of its fellows through and then the swarm poured forth unimpeded.

I summoned Yueryuern’s stolen aura, using it to form a barrier around Elmidath and I. Beyond the glimmering blue field was a solid sea of black. They tore into my shield and quickly began to fail. Elmidath was forming a second barrier of blood within, but I knew that wouldn’t hold them for much longer. Another surge of darkness struck my aura and it buckled, then everything went white.