Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

connecting at off angles. A single narrow lane passed between two sections. Walkways and platforms festooned the tops of the walls a dozen feet above.

“This is the sentry post,” Imrah breathed, throwing up more licks of flame. “Now, where are the sentries?”

There wasn’t a sound except the scuff of their feet on stone and the occasional crackle of Imrah’s burning breath. The silence was so complete and Milo strained so hard to hear anything that soon he felt he had gone deaf to all but the scrape of his feet.

“That slime creature,” Milo whispered, desperate to hear something. “Could it have killed them?”

The sacrilege of the whispered words hung in the still air, but when nothing struck them down, Imrah shook her head and looked around.

“I don’t know,” she murmured, her human face looking frightened despite her draconic countenance. “I’m not sure I know anything anymore.”

Without warning, she headed down the lane, and Milo scrambled after her. Within five steps, they were among a labyrinthine series of twists, turns, and intersecting lanes between the looming stone walls.

“It certainly smells like the thing was here,” Milo spat as the stink closed around them with the nearness of the walls. “Like someone started to clean a latrine and decided to burn it instead.”

“It is peculiar, isn’t it,” Imrah said distractedly, pausing at a nexus where several lanes crossed. Without explanation, she took the leftmost lane, which led to another circuitous route between the fetid walls.

“Please tell me this convoluted design is intentional,” Milo requested after losing track of how many turns they’d taken for the second time. “Is this a defensive measure to trap intruders?”

“Trap? No,” Imrah said, pausing to sniff the air and wrinkle her nose. “It is a defensive measure, though. All these corridors lead into side tunnels to the surface. All except one.”

Milo, having made the foolish mistake of trying to smell what the ghul had smelled on the air, bit back a retching cough after a noseful of the putrid air.

“Oh,” he wheezed, finally mastering his gag reflex. “Not a trap, but a diversion.”

“Yes, of course,” Imrah said distractedly.

They emerged from between the walls in a small chamber that narrowed into another tunnel. The chamber felt different to Milo, and with a start, he realized that his enhanced eyes noticed dust on the floor. He could also taste a difference in the air. It was a refreshing relief after the oppressive stink of the creature, even though it only smelled of sunbaked earth.

Sunbaked earth? Milo thought. Dear God, we must be close to the surface.

Milo, having been raised in cities, had never been the type to thrill at the thought of the open sky and the wide, wild world, but he felt a sudden desperate yearning for sun and sky. If Imrah hadn’t been there with him, he was certain he would have pelted down the tunnel until he felt Sol’s kiss on his cheeks.

“Where are they?” Imrah snarled, turning this way and that in obvious confusion. “It couldn’t have taken all of them. There should have been half a dozen sentries stationed here!”

“If some escaped, wouldn’t we have met them in the tunnels?” Milo asked, forcing himself to hide the giddy and anxious urge to race outside.

“There might be side passages, secret burrows, and tunnels,” Imrah said, though her tone conveyed that she wasn’t convinced. “Perhaps one is hiding somewhere. Maybe they’re all hiding. Besides their absence, we have no reason to think they’re dead.”

The last words came out as a statement, but Imrah still turned to Milo with a pleading question stamped on her face. This was not the ghul princess he knew, and her obvious discomfort at the death of the sentries struck him. It might only have been because she was wearing the veneer of humanity, but despite himself, he felt pity for her.

“When the thing attacked us,” Milo began searching for the proper, delicate words, “I think I might have seen...remains inside it.”

Milo remembered the dark, tortured shapes twisting within the layers of slime and shivered. He hoped the movements were only the spasms of sinews and tendons coming undone bit by bit. Such extenuating torture was a fate no creature deserved, not even a ghul.

“Oh,” Imrah said, seeming ready to crumple into the fetal position. “Well, I suppose that seals it then.”

She turned toward the outward-leading tunnel, head hanging on listless shoulders.

“Did you know any of the sentries here?” Milo asked, still shocked by Imrah’s downcast features.

“No,” she said tightly, not looking up. “But I’d hoped the thing hadn’t murdered more of my people.”

Milo nodded and stepped up beside her. He felt as though he should put an arm around her, though with the Imrah he knew, he feared doing that would ensure he never got the arm back. Instead, he stood quietly as something scraped and gnawed at the back of his mind until he finally fished it out.

More of my people?

“Come on,” Imrah said softly, the flame on her lips having diminished to thin wisps of smoke. “Let’s go confirm the way up is clear, and then we’ll go get the others.”

Milo nodded but said nothing.

The afternoon sun, just beginning its reddening descent, was a welcoming sight, even with the somber silence they’d adopted as they left the sentry post for the final push.

For several long, pulsing heartbeats, he stood basking in the light. The oppression of the long dark was over, and though the heat soon prickled on his pale cheeks, he savored the burning kiss. He felt the sight-salve peel and crumble away from his lids, but he’d made enough to last him for some time before he’d left Ifreedahm. Nothing seemed able to intrude on that singular moment of communion with the world above.

Then Imrah gurgled with disgust in the back of her throat and spat across the sun-warmed stones. Where the spittle landed, a flash of orange flame went up.

“Ugh,” she grumbled, squinting under the hands cupping her brow. “The world above is such