Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

that, because Branwen was not an aggressor in the extermination of his family, he felt more comfortable with her. I can’t say I blame him, but it was certainly good to hear him laugh for once. He continued, “Ah, I love them! What merry little fellows. Not very well-organized, and a bit skittish—always on the defense—but in spite of this, really rather charming. Once they get to trusting you, they’re exceedingly loyal.”

“Like dogs,” muttered Odile, drawing a sharp look from Adonisius and a displeased little sniff as he turned his head away again. “What? It’s true…there’s something of a dog about them, you can’t deny.”

“I suppose, if you must. Perhaps you find them that way because of their voices…they don’t have the vocal range to speak the common tongue, nor any other known to mankinds, so there will always be a language barrier to overcome. But there are other means than speech to communicate in this world…decency is universal.”

This, I am sure, is the only reason why Adonisius did not lead us to our deaths. Over those two days we gradually climbed to the surface by way of inclining tunnels, claustrophobic crevices, and sometimes frightful cliff-faces that Valeria in particular struggled to scale. We were tired, aggravated, and uncomfortable. Thanks to the food taken from the bandit den, we were not famished. We only once ran into difficulties with monsters, the magic lantern keeping at bay all things but a slime creature that Indra wanted to show us. She recognized it with great excitement spread out on a wall and dashed off to poke it with one of our pilfered scimitars. While explaining a bit about it—like, for instance, its nature as a dormant mold until it was touched, at which point it sought out and consumed all organic materials it could absorb—Indra scurried away like a girl for the security of the lantern’s halo. As she giggled, the brainless beast formed itself into a great cube and slowly oozed after her. I admit, I was quite astonished to see its like!

It was then that we learned another valuable lesson—that the light of the lantern had no more sway over brainless entities than over highly intelligent evils. The sweating cube wriggled into the light and kept coming for us, its digestive body dirty with the filth of the Nightlands and visibly full of matted fur along with dissolving bones. Strife, much to my dismay, merely severed the cube in twain and produced two writhing, shivering jelly creatures. Indra suggested lighting a fire.

“Maybe that will scare it off,” she cried, her crossbow raised out of habit rather than effect while Valeria began conjuring her wisp flame.

“It’s the only way to kill one of these things,” agreed Adonisius while backing along the tunnel down which the cube lurched. “Fire, lightning, some kind of elemental spell.”

“Good idea,” called Branwen, pushing past me with one fine hand braced upon my shoulder. The other outstretched toward the beast. The air around the druid seemed to glow; it certainly gathered a thick charge of static. She had braided her hair into comely twin plaits that draped over her shoulders, but this summoning of nature’s lightning revealed that in the time of our journey many little hairs had come undone. They floated, even her very braids levitating as light leapt from her fingertips and jolted down the tunnel to burn the malicious slime.

The durrow all cried out and covered their sensitive eyes. A terrible wet spurting noise, like the tearing of organ meat, flopped fluidly through the tunnel. The cubes, reduced in size and no longer capable of maintaining definite shape, reformed into one quivering mass and retreated back down the tunnel to let us go along our way.

Aside from that, we encountered nothing else. No giant spiders, no gibbering sacks of flesh, no curious gimlets—just a long, exhausting hike during which I had time to think of two things incessantly. That dream, and what we were going to do once we were on the surface.

That one flash of lightning from the tips of Branwen’s fingers made me consider an important point. Durrow eyes were extraordinarily sensitive. Once aboveground we would have to travel mostly at night. In fact, even if we managed to lay hands on some dwarfish welding goggles or colored scholar glasses effective enough to protect their eyes, night would still be the most prudent time to travel for social reasons.

I had seen men and women of all colors and creeds in my time growing up of the surface of Urde. There were countless travelers from all countries who came through Skythorn on business or pleasure. Humans aside, dwarves and gnomes and elves and even sometimes half-orcs had come to the Temple to be baptized or to simply observe a ceremony. I had met all manner of people on the surface of Urde.

But I had never seen a durrow until I ventured into the belly of the Nightlands.

Now, of course, I understood some reasons for their secrecy. I also understood that this scarcity of their race aboveground would draw attention to us…and not always desirable attention by any means. Yet, to Valeria, the risk seemed worth it—and, at any rate, she trusted I would find a solution for her in one way or another.

To the former Materna of Roserpine, I must have seemed a fairy tale savior. If she was to be believed—and to look at her, I could not help but see honesty in her features—she had dreamed of me since she was a girl. Dreamed that I would free her from El’ryh. Dreamed that I would show her to the surface.

And here we were.

I am not sure how I knew we were near the surface. Perhaps I picked up on some change in the dirt or some alteration of echo that my conscious mind did not catch. There is part of me, though, that suspects I knew we reached the end of our subterranean hike not because of the echo or the