Wild Hunt (The Island Book 2)

by C. M. Estopare

  Fuck—were they even alive? The Upper City was in the middle of collapsing into itself before Moira—the Core—froze everything to talk to her. To give her a new mission which wasn’t really all that new to Ren at all.

  White heads wiggled their way through the rocks, some rising out of the dirt beneath Ren’s feet. Massive animal skulls gathered at the closed entrance to the cave and created a thin line. Nephilim. Ren’s jaw almost dropped.

  The Core opened a hand toward them. “They will guide you.” She murmured. With one curt nod, she sashayed forward. Pressing past Ren with just an inch to separate them. Even without touching the goddess—her Core, whatever—Ren could still feel the heat humming from her. It was like being within touching distance of the sun, but far enough away that her skin and eyeballs wouldn’t melt into a gelatinous goop.

  The rain resumed. The earthquake commenced, ground rocking, the Upper City above groaning in a chorus of screams before it collapsed right into the Lower City. The force of the collapse sent Ren tumbling toward the ground, the Great River fighting the quake with mountainous waves that crashed over Ren’s head and cocooned her beneath greasy black waters. The Great River was fighting to take more terrain as the quake rumbled and groaned beneath her, tectonic plates rubbing against each other like steel grazing stone again and again and again.

  A peal of booming thunder forced her to open her eyes. Air bubbles floated past her head as the water burned her retinas and forced her to close them again. She fought the urge to scream and clung to the dirt beneath her feet like the dying roots of an old tree. When cold air raked across the back of her ragged tunic, talons dug into her shoulders. Hoisting her up.

  37

  The river let go. The quaking began again and the talons piercing her shoulder were forced to dislodge. Cold water raked her skin and she flinched as a splash exploded behind her. Shadows overcame the river as another churning wave rose high only to fall. Only to loop and thread itself within the rest of the pushing, pulling, fighting river as the ground shook and the rock faces above crumbled.

  The Core was gone. Vanished across the surface of the river like a star falling away from the Earth. Behind Ren, a Nephilim fought to stand in the raging river, only to be battered and tossed to the riverbed. Ren turned, searching for a massive animal skull in the water and almost flipped when a horn pierced the black water. Grabbing it, she tugged the Nephilim toward her and used Nakato’s earth magic to create a path back to the shore.

  She didn’t see the bodies. Not at first. Falling from on high like distended rock shards. As the Upper City continued to crumble into the Lower City, the force of the blow sent people spiraling out and down the thousand foot drop only to land in the water like so much rain. Like so much blood-soaked rain.

  Confused tears threatened to spill down her face. Why is this happening? Tugging the Nephilim along the makeshift path curving over the black river, Ren swore she was slogging through hell. Or, at least, something very close to it. All around her, the world fell apart and the Core continued on as if she—it, whatever—knew that this would happen. Almost as if Moira didn’t give a damn if the world ended. As long as those guys stopped drilling, stopped killing the island, she would survive. But the people?

  Oh, they’ll reproduce.

  Nephilim stood at the face of the caved in Lower City, arms linked in a chain. Bodies continued falling like bloated Junebug carcasses, and the Nephilim didn’t even flinch when the twisted body of a woman smacked down onto the shoreline. Ren turned her face away from the blood. Away from the snapping of bone and the stomach-churning twisting of muscle as it moved the wrong way. The woman uttered a wheeze before dying, before the Nephilim closest to her kicked her away.

  Ren froze, sneering, eyes wide. She pinned her anger on the Nephilim closest, “What the fuck?”

  It had the skull of a tropical bird, the massive beak of a toucan threatened to steal Ren’s eye. The Nephilim didn’t speak, didn’t move. Just looked at her with those cold, unblinking, sunken holes and waited for her to approach.

  Something is way off.

  But she still approached anyway. Standing with her face to the caved in cavern, the chain of Nephilim separated as the calamity above rattled on. Bodies no longer fell, but Ren could still hear the screams. She hoped that once she descended into Moira’s Heart and revitalized whatever she had to revive, that everything would stop. That she’d finally be the hero in this story and not the bumbling outsider so many islanders saw her as. She hoped Kato would forgive her for keeping secrets. She hoped she could find Mia and just…talk.

  Two Nephilim assuaged the rock wall, bone-white hands splayed against two large boulders on either side of Ren. Golden light danced over Ren’s vision as the rocks began to shiver and tumble upwards. Almost as if gravity applied to the sky instead of the ground. The fallen rocks attached themselves to the roof of the cave and two more Nephilim ventured on into the darkness, these with the oversized skull of buffotaur.

  Ren stood still. Eyes roving over the dark opening the Nephilim had ventured inside.

  It was now, or never.

  Taking a breath, she charged inside.

  38

  A tunnel formed, obsidian rocks moving and reshaping themselves in an intricate dance that was constant. Unyielding. Ren chuckled in awe. But every time she slowed to get a good look at rocks as they reshaped themselves in the walls of the tunnel, Bull Skull wasn’t far behind. Pressing her on with a snort or a taloned hand to the back.

  Ren shrugged him off. These things always helped at the last minute, right when it became clear that without their help their homeland would die. Ren knew that behind those masks of bone were human faces, but according to Chi Chi, the Nephilim weren’t human at all.

  They were failed Scions and Shapers. Creatures who had come under Moira’s thumb, just like her, and had failed in completing her missions.

  If Nephilim were basically failed versions of her, why were they helping?

  Well, they live on this island too, duh. Ren rolled her eyes, sorely missing Nakato’s snarky voice in her head. Overhead, thunder boomed and the tunnel of dancing rock threatened to crumble as the group was forced to the side by the rolling aftershocks. Ren could only imagine how her friends were faring. If they even were faring.

  “What’s this going to do?” she asked Bull Skull. “The Heart, revitalizing it. Will everything go back to normal?”

  The tunnel slanted into a hard right, curving through the underbelly of the world. Bull Skull kept his sunken eyes straight.

  “Hey!” Ren snapped, moving to block his path. “What am I going to find?”

  “I have…no knowledge of things…beyond the door.” It wheezed, pushing past her in an effort to get them moving again. “No one…does. All except…the goddess.”

  Moira.

  Ren had no reason to doubt the goddess, but every warning bell in her head was going off right now as the path petered out. A familiar blue lit cavern came into view, the statues she had once gazed upon in astonishment were now puddles of blackened pebbles. The skylight from above covered in rocks and debris, though light still shined down the stone staircase. It shimmied from the wall up ahead—the door up ahead. The same door she hadn’t been able to open. Not without all of the Scions.

  The door lay open. Shoved open from the inside as if something had been fighting to get out. A pair of deep indents in the shape of hand prints melted through the side of the massive doors Ren could see. Had the Core done that—at the behest of the goddess?

  Moira said, ‘descend into my Heart.’

  There it was. Forced open by the entity Ren had crossed on the Great River. Ren and Bull Skull exchanged a look. The Nephilim looked about as shocked as she did, despite the bullskull swallowing his features. Ren imagined that behind that mask, he wore a confused sneer, his eyes wide and saucer like.

  Fingers of white light prodded through the opened doors, slithering along the stone floor like curling ivy.

  �
��So…this is it…” Ren swallowed, fingers balled into sweaty fists at her sides, “I’d like to thank my mother.” Somewhere out there, Kato cringed in pain at her awful joke.

  Damn, she missed him.

  If she stepped inside, she could make everything right. She could save the island, save her friends—hell, according to the goddess the island was somehow connected to the entire world. If she saved the island, she was pretty much saving Earth itself.

  Ren smirked at the notion. You’re welcome.

  But something stopped her from stepping into the light. Bull Skull stiffened beside her. The two Nephilim with buffotaur skulls stood guard on either side of her, silent sentinels in bone-white finery.

  After Ren had become Shamaness of the Mesh, the goddess had taken her aside and spoke to her. Shown her the entire island from on high. Moira couldn’t answer too much—there is only so much I can say—she said over and over like a broken record. Like a mechanical phone operator that never understands the preprogrammed phrase you repeat over and over—I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Ren found her own way into the Heart through the Paragon’s Cathedral thanks to some scanning machine. The Paragon and her people obviously thought that the machine itself was some god or magical totem, but in reality, it was just like a locking (and unlocking) mechanism. Kind of like a phone lock that only opens to your voice or your thumbprint. These people didn’t understand technology from the world outside of theirs, yet technology had found them. Plunked down and was worshiped by them.

  Ren’s fingers loosened, her fist going soft. There’s no fucking way.

  She slid a glance over at Bull Skull. Nothing. He stared straight ahead, wheezing and huffing like Nephilim do. To her right and left, the buffotaur Nephilim stood stock still. Like gargoyles absent a balustrade to perch on.

  Ren’s lips curved into a smile. There’s no fucking way.

  Moira had said over and over, when Ren said the wrong phrase, when Ren asked the wrong questions—there is only so much I can say. How could she have been so fucking stupid? Maybe the Islanders didn’t understand, but she should have picked up on it immediately. But she had been shell-shocked by everything. From murdering a woman to gaining firepower and becoming the spiritual leader of a people she hadn’t known existed until, well, now. Moira had shown her the island from on high, but a maps app could do that too. Moira had told her that the island was dying and that it was connected to the rest of the world. If the island died, the Earth would follow soon after.

  Ren rolled her shoulders. Had that been a threat?

  Moira was powerful. No matter what the goddess turned out to be, she was powerful. Ren would give her that. Maybe the goddess meant well. Maybe the goddess meant to fix everything Ren’s grandfather had fucked up. But how? How would a virtual intelligence fix a damned thing?

  Ren stepped forward, peering into the light.

  It was time she found out.

  39

  White light blinded her. Stole her vision. Her balance.

  One moment she was standing outside of those colossal stone doors, steady on two feet. Heels digging into stone and cobbles. The next moment, she was blind, feet touching something sleek and slender. She crouched down, hands pressing up against whatever was holding her up. Gushing air sent her hair flying, the air rising up all around her, circumventing whatever pathway she stood on but winding its way around her nonetheless.

  The light dissipated. Crawled back into the place it had sprouted wings from. What Ren saw made her stomach drop and her body flatten against the long golden platform she originally stood on. Her heart hammered in her chest as she stared at the ground, pulse thundering in her ears as a cold sweat broke between her eyebrows.

  A multitude of golden archways slithered through a vast expanse of nothing—air, clouds, sky. They tangled like spider webs spun from gold, all stretching from the same place; a massive pillar of gold gilded with complex patterns. Swirls and dips and dives. The platform beneath Ren’s body hummed like the blue lights lighting up the Lower City. White light sparkled in her line of sight as her fear pulled back.

  The Nephilim were gone. They hadn’t followed. Why?

  “They cannot be this close.”

  Smacking her hands to her ears, she shut her eyes at the hollering pain that tore through her head. The voice above hummed through every archway, though it sounded far away. Like someone screaming at her through the speaker of a cell phone.

  “The ones who have failed.”

  “Stop screaming!” Ren gutted out, hand massaging her forehead. One eye cracked open. That voice was familiar, breathy and light. Moira’s voice. The goddess’s voice. Carefully, Ren peeled her face away from the platform. “Are you…?” she looked squarely at the massive pillar jutting through the center of the white expanse.

  “Yes,” it replied reluctantly. “But, only for so long.”

  Only for so long? What in the hell did that mean?

  With her initial fear weaving into shock and awe, Ren pulled herself up and made sure to stand within the middle of the platform as she looked down over its edge. Thousands of archways wove beneath her, each one farther down than the next. It seemed like the web of archways went on forever.

  “Where am I?”

  “My Heart.” The voice replied. Moira’s voice. “Approach the pillar and I will explain as much as I can.”

  Stalking down the pathway, Ren was careful not to slip. A plastic lining coated the path, or something similar to plastic, that made it shine but also made it hard to gain a foothold. If she had to run, she’d be shit out of luck. Hopefully, Moira was as altruistic as she originally believed. Because if Moira wasn’t…

  Her friends lives were on the line here. If Moira could save them, Ren would do anything.

  Standing so close, the pillar seemed as thick as the Empire State Building. She brought her gaze up, admiring the complex gilded curves of art that adorned the pillar’s face.

  Moira’s voice softened when she spoke, “Without my Core, I will die.” She said matter-of-factly, the pillar humming. White light curving and expanding around its gold face with every word. “This,” she paused dramatically. If Moira had arms, Ren was sure she would be spreading them, “Is my terraformation network.”

  Ren cocked her head, eyes wide. “What?” So…not a virtual intelligence? Not a preprogrammed voice somehow embedded in the island—or just thrown here like trash?

  It made sense. Kind of. Okay, not really.

  “What the fuck are you even talking about? Okay—I get it. You’re…whatever this place is. But terraformation? Like…earth building? You…?”

  A mechanical chuckle rose from the pillar, spiraling out into the white nothingness. “Moira. In your language, it means fate. Destiny. Doom.”

  What? Ren was still trying to wrap her head around this…terraformation network.

  “The Old Ones titled me as such. After my creation, I was given the mission to do as they had done; create. The island you’ve traversed was my first project. Flora and fauna here aren’t found anywhere else in your world, but there are soft echoes of it. Like a kaleidoscope bends and recreates its original picture, eventually meshing together and creating a new picture that is in no way reminiscent of its original; I have populated Earth with what I began here. On this island. And, so far, I have kept it alive. Growing.” She sighed, the white nothingness shivering with her slow, mechanical, exhale. “But with the introduction of this anomaly, this drilling tower, I realize that I have no defenses. No way of protecting Earth’s Heart. And so, I have sent out my Core to do my bidding. To call the Old Ones back as I should have done over a millennia ago—”

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ren shook her head and held her hand up to halt the…machine? This was too much info for Ren to track. What in the hell were Old Ones? Moira is a terraformation network made by them? Ren found herself laughing. Magic—okay, magic she could grasp. But…this? Someone was fucking with her…right?

  She had to be drunk or high or some awf
ul combination of both. Maybe she had died in that arena in Sitras and now she was in someone’s fucked up version of purgatory. Maybe the Nephilim had killed her. Maybe she was currently undergoing the process of becoming a Nephilim—wait a minute. She believed so much now. She opened her mind up to the craziest shit, but this? A terraformation network just sitting at the bottom of the island?

  “Where are we?” Ren gutted out, ignoring Moira’s speech. It was too much for her. Too much for her to swallow and understand as fact.

  “The earth’s core. Agartha, as some humans call it.”

  “What?” Ren squeaked. Entirely unbelieving. Ren was pretty sure she was done. Just completely, wholeheartedly, done.

  “What you will do for me will save the entire island. Though none will know of your bravery and sacrifice, the entire planet will have you to thank for its continuation and eventual ascension when the Old Ones return.”

  Right. Her friends. Any sense of mirth died on Ren’s tongue. Moira could be confessing to being the flying spaghetti monster for all Ren cared. As long as Moira could save her friends…she’d turn a blind eye to all this craziness. And the extra bit of crazy she was sure would come after.

  A sliding door wheezed open, white light illuminating the passageway now cut into the center of the pillar. Ren held her breath.

  “Enter.” Moira thrummed. “Become what I’ve groomed you to be.”

  “And this will save my friends?”

  Moira was silent for a while. Diamonds of light glittered over Ren’s skin as she stared into the doorway.

  “That and more.”