I hit mud, tumbled, slipped off a ledge, and fell until I plunged into icy water. It was so cold that I choked, my muscles cramping as I tried desperately to swim. I broke the surface, flailed, and realized my feet could touch the thick mud below. I trudged forward, utterly blind, my arms outstretched in the dark. The water grew shallower, and I crawled out onto wet, pebbly ground.
My glasses were gone, lost in my fall. Above me, the entrance I’d been pushed through was a pale gray square in otherwise total darkness, dripping rain into the pool I’d just climbed from. As I watched, even that pale light began to disappear with the sound of hammers.
They were boarding up the shaft. They were sealing me in the dark.
Shivering, watching my only source of light disappear, I let myself cry.
I sobbed, despair gripping me so hard that for a moment, I only wanted to curl up there and wait. Wait to die, to waste away in the dark or be taken by whatever monster lived down here. I wept until the hammering stopped, and then the silence was so much worse.
I was alone. Completely and utterly alone.
Leon must have died in those woods where the Reaper left him. My protector was gone, his life given up to protect mine — and for nothing. The Libiri had made their final sacrifice. The God was going to be set free. Perhaps it was better this way, that I would die before I could see what became of this world under the rule of an evil God.
But as my tears stopped, and the minutes passed, I realized I couldn’t just lay down and wait to die. Not when Leon had fought so hard for me. Not while I still had some strength in me. Not while I still had a weapon.
I fumbled at my boot, reassuring myself that the dagger was still there. It was just one small knife with unknown magical properties, but it meant I wasn’t entirely helpless. My vision was shit without my glasses, but I tugged my lighter out of my back pocket and after a few tries, managed to get it to light. The cavern around me was a blur of dark shapes with few defining features, but at least now I’d be able to see enough in front of me to know if I was about to walk into a pit.
In the flickering light, I realized there was something lying in the mud beside me, half-submerged in the murky water. I held the lighter a little closer, frowning —
And realized I was looking at Victoria’s muddy, naked corpse.
I scrambled away, and gagged but there was nothing in my stomach to come up. There was a tunnel at the back of the cavern and I stumbled toward it; anything to put distance between myself and the body. Leon had been right: Jeremiah had killed his own sister, and thrown her down here to rot in the dark. I was shuddering violently, and had to lean against the mouth of the tunnel to swallow down my panic. Even knowing that Victoria had intended to kill me, seeing her dead was horrifying.
I’d eaten with her, drank with her, laughed with her. Villain or not, I’d once thought she was my friend.
I had to pull it together. I had to keep moving. Somewhere, surely there would be another way out. I wasn’t going to end up like that. I wasn’t going to be a forgotten corpse abandoned underground.
No. Fuck no.
The caverns were eerily silent. The shuffle of my boots echoed as I trudged down the narrow tunnel, with only my lighter illuminating the way. I paused at two branching tunnels, trying to steady my rapid breathing. There was a trick to this, wasn’t there? Something like, if there was a breeze coming from one tunnel, then that was where the exit was? But I held up my lighter to both paths, and neither seemed to make a difference.
I went to the right.
The tunnel was so cold, my clothes were soaked, and I was shivering uncontrollably. The smell down here was odd: damp and musty, fungal, and faintly oceanic. The tang of brine was in the air, and so was the pungent smell of rotten fish. The deeper I went, the more I felt as if I was wandering through one of my nightmares again. These black tunnels seemed endless. With every step, I feared my flickering flame would illuminate something in the dark. With every breath, I feared I wouldn’t be able to get enough oxygen as I went deeper, and deeper.
The tunnel narrowed, and sloped steeply downward. I edged myself down the slope, slipping to a halt as my boot touched water. The way ahead was flooded, the water too murky to see how deep it was. If I wanted to go on, I’d have to swim, and completely submerge my head.
I had no idea how long this tunnel was, or when I’d be able to surface again. If it kept leading deeper, then there was a chance the rest of the way was entirely underwater. It wasn’t worth the risk, it would be too dark to see. I’d have to double back, take the other branching tunnel and hope it led me further up instead of down.
I turned to go back, and abruptly stopped. I could hear something moving in the tunnel behind me. Sniffing the air, walking slowly — stalking.
I held my breath, too frightened to make a sound, and held out my light. It barely penetrated the dark, the blackness beyond its glow utterly complete. But slowly, a long, thin, boney limb stepped into the light. A skeletal canine head. A rotten, fur-covered body.
The monster opened its mouth and howled, and I had no choice. I shoved my lighter into my pocket, and plunged into the water.
The water was freezing, seizing up my already cold body. I had to fight the painful cramping as I swam, my flailing arms and kicking feet bumping against the narrow tunnel walls. When I opened my eyes, only darkness greeted me. My lungs were aching, and I released a little air. I had to swim faster.
Something brushed against my foot and was gone when I frantically kicked out at it. Shit, shit, shit! My heart beat harder and my lungs began to scream for air. I couldn’t turn back now. The tunnel had narrowed so much that I was crawling more than swimming, unable to spread my arms because the walls and ceiling were so close. Claustrophobia set in as I frantically wiggled my way forward, terrified that at any moment the tunnel would grow to narrow to move at all. My lungs were begging for air, burning to release the carbon dioxide sitting stagnant in them.
Come to me.
Panic made me release the last of my oxygen. It felt like a weight had been set on my lungs, slowly crushing them under the pressure. I was frantic now. I had to dig my nails into the dirt to pull myself along, because the tunnel was too narrow to kick my feet to propel myself.
Come…come…
The voice was a whisper in my ear, a vibration in the water, an invasive, pervading thought that echoed in my head. I pushed it away, trying to wall my thoughts with a determined internal mantra: Just keep going. Go. Go. Go.
The tunnel opened. I swam up through open water toward a faint silvery glow. I burst to the surface gasping, coughing, my lungs frantically taking in every bit of oxygen they could. It was dim, but there was light here: everything was gray and pale. I could see a dark shore and swam for it, hauling myself up onto the damp stone where I lay on my back, staring at the stalactites high above as they dripped icy water onto my face.
Only when my lungs stopped aching did I sit up. The chamber I found myself in was large, the source of the pale gray light impossible to determine. There were old wooden boxes stacked against the far wall, and in the center of the room was another pool. It was perfectly black, like spilled ink. Beyond that, a pile of rubble had collapsed out of another tunnel entrance.
There was no way out. Only back, through the water, toward the monster that waited on the other side.
There was no way out.
I sat there in silence, staring at the dark pool until my eyes ached. My stomach growled, and my mouth was so dry that I sipped some of the murky water from the tunnel I’d just swam through, but it tasted bitter and muddy, and did nothing to quench my thirst.
This couldn’t be it. It couldn’t. No one would ever find me down here. My parents…Inaya…they would never know what happened to me. Cheesecake would never understand why I didn’t come home. I’d rot away in the dark, never buried, lost like those miners over a century ago.
I dug into my back pocket, reaching around the light, and my fingers shook as I pulled out the torn, dampened page from the grimoire.
I couldn’t read the Latin on the page. I couldn’t remember the circle I’d drawn to summon Leon, no matter how much I tried to recall the details of it, nor did I have any chalk to draw it with. The chances of him still being alive were slim. I could only guess that days had passed since I’d been taken, and if he hadn’t found me yet…
Then he wasn’t going to.
My soul was meant for him, not a God. I was certain of that. My soul was meant for the one who’d protected me, who’d given up his immortal life for a mortal one. I should have offered it to him sooner. I doubted it would have made things any different, but at least I would have the hope that, maybe, when I left this life, I’d find him again.
“My name…in your flesh…and…blood…”
I knew it was too late now. It was too late for regrets, too late for useless symbolic gestures. But even so, I carefully laid out the grimoire page in front of me. I pulled off my boots and peeled off my soaked pants and laid them aside, my bare legs covered in goosebumps. Jeremiah had marked me for the God — but I didn’t belong to his God. If I had any choice in where my soul was to go, there was only one being I wanted to have it.
I was so cold that I didn’t even feel it when I sliced the knife along my thigh. I followed the curves and lines of Leon’s mark, recreating it in my skin. It tingled, but it didn’t hurt like Jeremiah’s blade had. It was just smooth pressure. When it began to bleed, I wasn’t scared.
I didn’t really care if I bled anymore, so long as I bled for this: for love. It was the only thank-you I could offer — my final devotion he’d likely never even know I gave. But at least my choice was clear now. My soul was Leon’s, even if the God stole it. It was his, always, as was I.
I lay down the knife, feeling calm and small as I stared at the mark on my thigh. It was a comfort, a defiance to the ugly cuts across my chest. I scooted myself back against the cavern wall, pulling my legs up to my chest with a heavy sigh.
“My soul is yours to take, Leon,” I whispered. “If you’re still alive…if you can hear me…it’s yours.”
I closed my eyes, as tiredness settled over me like a heavy blanket. I wanted to sleep now; sleep until this was all over. But as my blurry eyes grew heavier, right before they closed, I saw that perfectly-still black pool move.
Something was emerging.
