by J B Cantwell
Into the Dark
Light Chaser Book 2
J. B. Cantwell
Copyright © 2021 by J. B. Cantwell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 1
My feet slipped out from under me as I scrambled up the slick stones. I might've stopped trying to flee, but panic was overtaking me again, and I couldn't think straight.
From the left, seemingly from the mountain itself, a whisper came. I couldn't make out what the voice was saying, but the sound of it sent a cascade of pinpricks down my back.
Was it real?
Then another whisper, this one from behind.
I couldn't linger.
Go faster, I thought.
I’d heard these voices before, usually before an attack.
I had to find somewhere to hide.
The dim light from a sun somewhere far above barely filtered through the black clouds that blanketed the Shadow Mountains. At night, the darkness was absolute, but in the day it was almost worse. I longed for sunlight, and though I was getting better at telling day from night, I felt like I was living in perpetual twilight, black and cold.
Why didn't I just go home?
I asked myself questions like these almost constantly. It was a miracle I'd held on as long as I had. When I'd begun my journey through those wretched ranges, I'd felt certain that I could handle a little bit of darkness.
I was brave.
I was fearless.
I'd defeated Wicks and Lifters and Fiends.
But the whispering was never a good sign.
I stopped and took a breath. My fingers were numb, the rock they were gripping icy and slippery.
I was alone with no one to pick me up if I fell. No one to know anything about me at all except that one girl, one hope of a girl, had disappeared one day into the dark mountains that bordered the Wild Lands.
It was hard to keep track of how long I'd been traveling; the darkness made it difficult to gauge time. But though it felt like at least a hundred days, I knew it was less. I was taking a tally which I scratched into the back of Father's map each time the darkness became impenetrable, indicating nightfall.
It was not a hundred days. It had only been twenty.
How long had it taken Malcolm of the Feie to make it through these ranges? Days? Weeks?
I longed for the hard dirt floor in the back of Father's market stall in Eagleview, longed for the warmth of a place I knew, even if that place no longer wanted me.
I would be killed if I returned, there was no question. There was no home for me in Eagleview. Not anymore. Just fear and dread and loneliness.
A sound came from the sharp drop-off to my right. I looked in that direction, and the whisper became a booming voice, yelling at me. To do what? It was almost as if the mountain across the valley was trying to take me down, its nasty message echoing off the shrouded sky.
The voices spoke a strange language unknown to me, so when they shouted their directions, I didn't, couldn't know what they wanted.
But in my heart I knew. They wanted me dead. Gone. Erased. They wanted me out.
Don't give up.
I found a tiny alcove in the mountain and hid within it, sitting down and dropping my pack to the ground. I put my back against the ledge I'd been trying to climb, lighting my hands with white flame. I put my palms together, staring at them, and took a deep breath. I tried to look out over the valley, but my vision was altered from looking at the bright light, and I could no longer see anything in the darkness.
I pulled over my pack and dug through it, producing a vial of Light, the liquid magic we'd been gifted by the last Keeper we'd seen in the Wild Lands, the great horse. Before I'd parted from my father and the children, I'd promised myself I would only use the Light in an emergency. But looking at it now, with its undulating, aquamarine glow, I was tempted to drink some. No, not some; I knew if I were to hold that vial to my lips, I would drain it.
I uncorked it and held it up to my nose. It had a sweet smell to it, almost like a honeysuckle flower, like I knew it tasted.
But it wasn't an emergency.
I stoppered the vial and put it back into the bag.
Heartbreak and resolve competed for prominence in my mind as I got up to resume the climb. I kept my hands lit as I started, and this time I was more assured, less terrified now that I had some firelight to follow. Whoever was behind those voices, they couldn't pin me down. There was no one able to find me here. No tracker to sense my magic and tell their overlord where, exactly, I was.
But the feeling of safety would be short-lived, I knew, because I couldn't tell where I was going. I couldn't tell, even, if I was headed in the right direction. Had I been walking in circles? I'd referred to Father's map several times whenever I stopped to rest, but it hadn't helped much. I couldn't see landmarks in the blackness, but with no sun to guide me, to show me east or west, I was all but lost. For all I knew, even if I did turn around and go back, I might never find my way out of this place.
So I didn't turn around.
Ten steps. Twenty. I began to think I should count my steps all day long, just to give my brain something to do, just to keep the feeling of terror at bay.
A clap of thunder made me jump, and I gripped harder onto the rocks, which were wet already from the mist that billowed over the jagged peaks.
Immediately I stopped the climb and dug through my pocket for the map I'd received from Father. Lightning was the only thing bright enough to show me where I was and give me some sort of clue about where I was going. I hesitated to unfold the old parchment as the rain began, but I didn't have much of a choice if I wanted to get my bearings.
The sky's angry thunder shook the mountains beneath me, and I leaned back until I was certain I wouldn't fall off the side of the precipice.
I hadn't meant to climb up so high. I'd simply wanted to be high enough to see where I was going, to not find myself trapped along the valley floor.
But it had been a mistake. The path I'd carved out for myself had taken me up high onto the side of a mountain until I wasn't sure I could make it any further. Every step I was taking could easily be leading me to a dead-end, and then what?
I unfolded the map just as a thick bolt of lightning met one of the peaks on the other side of the valley below.
And there it was. Up high and far away, my first landmark. The great bull, a Keeper at least fifty feet high, stood atop a peak, its eyes focused on something in the distance I couldn't see.
I quickly ran my hands across the map, and soon I found it, the bull, about a quarter of the way through the passes indicated on the old paper.
> My heart lightened, and I smiled for the first time in what felt like months.
A beacon. He was out there waiting in the world just for me.
Then I saw them.
Wicks.
My stomach dropped.
The whispers grew loud again, and they sent me scrambling for a better place to hide.
I could see the Keeper from up high, but the lightning exposed me as well.
I quickly extinguished my hands and scrunched up the map, stuffing it into my pocket. I inched my way forward, careful not to take a single step for granted.
The rain had become a deluge of water while I'd been studying the map. I desperately wanted to put up a magical barrier between myself and the clouds, knowing that instantly the ground and my clothes would dry. But with the Wicks so close by, I didn't dare.
The lightning cracked again, and the Wicks' position advanced.
They were getting closer.
I scrambled up the mountainside, desperate to find a cave to hide in.
If only I could fly.
It didn't take me long to find somewhere to take shelter. The one good thing about this mountain range was that it was littered with caves, and I was certain this fact alone had kept me alive the entire time I'd been within its borders. I quickly found one and dove inside, hiding behind a boulder, staring out at the black sky.
But despite my fear, I had reason to hope. The vision of the bull lighting up again and again was like a salve on my nerves. Not only did it give me a direction to walk in, but it showed me that I hadn't been headed in the wrong direction for all of these days. I’d been going somewhere. I was beginning to see the great Keepers of Light magic as landmarks, places to rest and receive guidance. And places to point me in the right direction. Fiends would deceive me, though, and I would need to be careful not to be tricked by one of the evil beasts who looked so much like friends.
The rain was falling heavily outside, and a moment later, a volley of lightning strikes hit the side of the mountain, shaking it beneath my feet.
It was then, between strikes, that he appeared.
Not unexpected, but a problem nonetheless. A Wick stood at the opening to the cave, drenched to the bone, tattered gray cloak blowing in the wind. He reached out with his skeletal hands and took his first steps toward me.
Not again.
But I could do this. I knew I could take him on or a hundred like him. This wasn't different from any other time I'd fought them.
I would win again. I had no other choice.
I reached down into my pocket and drew out the small vial of Light. If this didn't count as an emergency, I didn't know what did. I unstoppered it and drained it in one go. Instantly, I felt the Light moving through my body, unclenching my stomach, bringing me warmth where before there had been nothing but cold.
The Light brought with it confidence.
I stepped closer to face the enemy.
I lit my hands and raised them up, bringing down several large boulders until the Wick was trapped beneath them. He didn't cry out, but he struggled, trying desperately to break free from the weight of the mountain stones.
Wicks were monsters, slaves of Torin’s, the overlord of all things evil in our world. This Wick was no different than the others. As he fought to free himself from the boulder, I got a good look at his face, if you could call it that. It was featureless, no mouth, no eyes, almost as if he were wearing a mask.
Then, two more appeared at the entrance to the cave. The entrance and the exit, I noted. Trouble was, the last time I'd fought off a group of Wicks, there had been a dozen. There was no reason for me to think that now would be any different. Another head appeared, and then another. They were climbing over the rocks I'd brought down onto their brother. Quickly, I took down more of the ceiling, blocking their path to me.
But Wicks weren't without their own powers, flight and extraordinary strength, and soon I saw that they were breaking through the stone walls.
My heart dropped as I realized I had trapped myself. I stared around at the cave, desperate to find a way out that didn't involve taking on a swarm of Wicks.
But it was too late; my mistake had been made.
The stones crashed to the floor of the cave, trapping several more of the Wicks. Soon the barrier of rock piled from floor to ceiling. They may have had their own powers, but I'd bested them, at least for now.
I picked up my pack and slung it over my back, tucking the empty little vial into my pocket.
My hands lit up the pitch-black cave, and I turned back to stare at the Wicks who were stuck beneath the enormous rocks.
I was curious. And stupid. I approached one of them, his head sticking out from beneath a boulder the size of Father's market stall. He was still alive, though, if I could call it that, and he was struggling to free himself.
I reached him, frowning, heart pounding. I thrust his hood from his head, and beneath it I saw yet another of the featureless faces that had haunted my dreams for months. The area where his mouth should’ve been moved and stretched. I was sure there was a scream somewhere inside his throat that he couldn't release.
Slaves I had called them in my mind—slaves of Torin's. I wondered if he had once been human, but that seemed a foolish question to ask. Of course he'd been human, at least before Torin had captured him.
How many lives had this one evil man ruined? How many had fallen prey to his curses and dark desires?
The head of the Wick moved back and forth like a snake's might, but this predator had nothing to fight me with. No mouth, even, to try for a bite. I pitied him, but though his struggle would continue on for an unknown amount of time, I did not kill him. He was a man before now, I reasoned. Perhaps there would be a way back for him yet.
High up toward the ceiling, I saw a boulder move. The Wicks who hadn't been crushed were trying to make it through to the inside. I backed up deeper into the cave and brought down another volley of stones, doubling the protection I'd created with my first efforts.
I turned away from them, then, and for a moment, I worried.
How to escape?
If I could blast the ceiling of the mountain and use the resulting avalanche for my protection, surely I must be able to do the same thing throughout the interior of the mountain. I knew where the bull Keeper was now, and while I hadn't been heading in the wrong direction, the route I'd been taking was quickly becoming impassible.
I raised my hands and hit the back wall of the cave with white fire from my bare palms until I began to form a trail between the resulting piles of rock. I didn't look back. I didn't know how long this plan would work, but I knew I needed to get off this mountain, and there was no way to do that other than to go through it.
Relief came when, about half an hour into my escape, the rock opened up into a deep, cavernous room. I took a breath and let it go as I raised my hands up to look at the surrounding chamber. Strange outcroppings of stone hung from the ceiling, dripping with a substance I couldn't identify. I knew instinctively that it wasn't water; the smell was pungent like acid and hurt the inside of my nose. I put up a barrier between myself and the chamber and began to walk through.
The sound of dripping and a small stream moving close by was unusual. I'd never been within the mountains before now. Was this normal? I supposed that nothing about this place was normal, inside or out.
I continued on and found that the way through the cavern was steep, though not slick. My boots gained purchase on the path with ease. There were no tiny rocks or rain to trip me up.
Soon, though, I began to realize I was wasting time. Those Wicks could be after me at any moment, and I was aware that maybe I hadn't given them as much credit as they deserved. They were deadly creatures, whether they had once been mere mortal men or not.
I picked up the pace. The Light coursing through me heightened my sense of balance, and I soon found I was able to move much faster.
Here in the center of the mountain, I wondered if different enemies mi
ght emerge from the cracks to chase me down.
But my flight away from the Wicks was starting to become joyous, as if I were drunk on the Light. I'd rarely had the chance to have any Light at all unless I was gravely injured, and rarely a whole vial. I was nearly skipping my way down the rocks, eager to finally be making some headway on a journey that had begun to seem endless. So, when I found a small opening off to my left, I paused, curious.
I had no map of the inside of the mountain; I barely had a map to see me through the entire range. Where would the tunnel lead? To my escape?
I dropped my protective barrier and directed the light in my hands into the little space. There, just barely breathable, was the scent of clean air.
I had found my way out.
Chapter 2
I extinguished my hands, and I was invisible once more. Those who hunted me would only have a vague sense of my presence now.
I listened intently, but the whispering was gone. The Wicks were gone now, too, and the worry that had made my chest clench began to ease.
I held onto the edge of the outside of the mountain and made my way down.
The rain poured down, but I didn't mind it anymore. I was full of Light magic, and it made inconveniences like rain and thunder less frightening.
The path grew narrow, with great shards of rock bordering either side, and I was glad I was so slight. I ran my hands over the slippery stones, the water forming a stream, covering my feet as I followed the trail down the mountain.
I could dry off later. For now, I wanted to take everything in, rain and all, to try to find answers in these dark mountains on my own until help could arrive.
