Thud.
Thud.
Boom.
The rocks started to jump and bounce.
Boom.
Boom...
...Boom...
A hush fell over The Hidden City as thousands of eyes turned to the southern end of the cave.
BOOM!
The ground shook with enough force to send more than a few people to their knees. Nessa reached out, grabbing the wall for support, feeling a level of fear and dread that was nearly as powerful as the shaking.
BOOM!
“What is that?” Nessa cried. “An earthquake?”
Hunter, eyes alarmingly wide, shook his head.
BOOM!
The southern end of the cave exploded.
Boulders the size of small houses were flung into the air as if they weighed nothing, and the cavern was instantly filled with dust and debris that smothered the glow of the ethereal mushrooms, plunging the cave into murky darkness.
From the gloom and the falling rubble, a monster emerged.
Then the screaming started.
The dragon released a torrent of green tinged flame and let loose a deafening roar. Even in the semidarkness, it sparkled like the finest jade. Its claws, teeth and the spikes that ran down its spine were as white as snow and shimmered like pearls. In the dragon’s eyes, which were the colour of emeralds, there gleamed a terrible glee as it beheld the sight of people fleeing in terror. Fixed on its back, nestled between two spikes, was a saddle. In the saddle sat Margan. Even from afar, Nessa knew that it was him.
Nessa stood frozen, and before she knew what he was doing, Chaos ripped the messenger bag from her shoulder, handing it to Hunter, who looked incredibly shaken.
“What are you doing?” she snapped, reaching out to grab it back.
Chaos caught her wrist in an iron grip. “It will be bad enough if they capture one of you,” he growled, glacial blue eyes sparking dangerously. “It will be the end of us if they get both you and the dragon. It is wise to take the precaution of separating you until we lose them. The boy is of no interest to them. They will not suspect that he has the dragon, not at first. It is better this way.”
Nessa reluctantly saw the sense in his reasoning, although she didn’t particularly like it much. Her feelings weren’t improved when she felt a small amount of displeasure from Aoife when Hunter shouldered the bag. The dragon disliked being carried by someone other than Nessa.
The debris began to settle with a gentle patter that was painfully similar to raindrops, and Margan and his monster of a dragon stormed into the cave. People screamed and cried, running for their lives. A stampede was created.
Nessa and her companions were pushed up against the cave’s wall, nearly crushed, saved only by Chaos spreading his mighty wings, channelling people around them.
“Quick!” Chaos barked. “Into the tunnel.”
Orm dashed in first, swiftly followed by Hunter and Nessa. Chaos brought up the rear. The fissure, after the first couple of steps, was plunged into darkness. The light from the main cave didn’t reach far, and there were no glowing mushrooms to show the way.
They were running blind until Orm clapped his hands and a flame appeared in them. It was small and Orm cupped it in his palms, sheltering it as best as he could from the wind that was funnelled down the tunnel. The light was weak, and caught on the craggy sides and the low ceiling, casting long, haunting shadows that seemed to come alive as the group ran past.
Through the haze of panic and urgency that had settled over Nessa like a cape, she noticed that the tunnel was part of a much larger network, with caverns and other passageways branching from it. Nessa understood Hunter’s concerns over getting lost. It was a labyrinth down there. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how Orm knew where he was going.
For miles they sprinted through the mountain, and all was silent save for their hurried breaths and the sound of their steps. Then, when they thought that they could relax and slow down a little, a dreadful resonating rumble shook the rock around them. A few stones clattered to the ground and the group ran with all their might, barrelling around corners and through chambers.
“Are they trying to bring down the mountain?” Hunter cried as the tunnel quaked with an ominous grumble.
“It seems like they’re giving it a bloody good go,” Nessa yelped, smashing onto the wall before righting herself and continuing on.
“There’s a turning just ahead,” Orm shouted. “Once we clear that we’ll be able to see the exit. We’ll be safe from whatever Margan and his beast are doing.”
The turning in question appeared in the near distance, two passageways that forked away from one another. Orm took the one to the right, he and Hunter disappearing down it as Nessa slowed, a thought creeping into her mind.
“Margan and his beast...” Nessa murmured. “But where is Shadow and his?”
She turned to Chaos, intending to ask where Shadow was, and realised that he was nowhere in sight.
“Chaos?” Nessa called, voice echoing down the tunnel. There was nothing but still, impenetrable darkness staring back at her. “Chaos, are you there?”
No answer.
Hunter heard her and pulled Orm to a stop, beginning to turn back for her. The tunnel shook again, stronger and for longer. Stones on the ground bounced and danced, and dust rained down from above. Nessa’s eyes flicked up as a mightily crunch filled the air. Fracture lines appeared in the ceiling, spreading out in a deceptively delicate pattern. Hunter’s eyes widened in alarm and he made to run to her, but it was too late.
“The other path!” Orm bellowed. “Two rights then a left!”
With a thunderous roar, the ceiling came crashing down.
∞∞∞
The dust was slow to settle, and the silence that followed was complete, the darkness absolute. Nessa waited, hoping that her eyes would adjust, but without Orm’s light, she was left blind.
Slowly, she pushed herself up, realising that she had been thrown to the ground by the cave-in. Rocks had fallen everywhere, littering the floor with shards as sharp as broken glass. They bit into Nessa’s hands, cutting them as she scrambled backwards, trying to find the tunnel’s wall. At least then she would be able to place herself. It hit her back sooner than she expected, surprising her. Nessa leaned against it, trying to calm herself down so that she could formulate a plan to get out of there.
The darkness was disconcerting, so solid that Nessa couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. There wasn’t the slightest hint of light in any direction. She knew that it was unlikely anyone would stumble across her any time soon. She was alone. Orm and Hunter were separated from her by several tons of rock. There was no chance that either of them would be able to dig through it. And Chaos? She had no idea where he was, didn’t know when he had fallen behind… or had left… or had got lost. But whichever one it was, he wasn’t there now, and if by some miracle he did turn up, she wasn’t sure she could trust him completely. There was something about her waking dream, something that niggled at the back of her mind about him and Melissa.
“Right,” Nessa said, reasoning with herself, “you can’t see, so you’re going to have to feel your way out.” Probably easier said than done.
Nessa pulled herself up, standing with one hand on the wall. “Slow and steady wins the race,” she murmured, taking her first hesitant step. Stones rolled and crunched underfoot, threatening to unbalance and trip her over. “Two rights then a left, that’s what Orm said.”
She took a minute to place herself, not wanting to go the wrong way and get lost, or worse, end up back at the main cavern where Margan surely waited. Once she was confident that she was facing the right way, she set off at a snail’s pace, keeping a hand on the wall.
Progress was painfully slow, and Nessa lost her footing on more than one occasion, tumbling to the ground, receiving scraped hands and knees for the trouble.
Two rights then a left... Nessa kept repeating. Two rights then a left...
/> It was almost a prayer.
The route that Orm originally intended for them must have been a shortcut, for the way Nessa was now forced to take seemed never ending. It was nearly an hour before she stumbled across the first turning.
One right down, one to go…
The darkness was unrelenting and the silence ironically deafening. It played tricks on her mind. Nessa lost all perception of time and distance. Her steps, though, became surer and she tripped over less often, which was a welcome thing. Her hands and knees were raw and she could feel the blood seeping into her leggings and down her calves. The stinging was nearly unbearable and Nessa didn’t think she could cope with another fall without bursting into tears. The pain, oddly enough, also served as another motivation for finding freedom. The sooner she got out of the tunnels, the sooner she could meet up with Hunter and Orm and dress her wounds. It was a nice thought, and one that kept her going even when she wanted nothing more than to stop for a rest.
Hunter and Orm, Aoife too, were often in her thoughts during her lonely and dark trek through the passageways. She hoped they were alright, that they were safe. Over and over she kept seeing the horror in Hunter’s eyes as he tried to get to her as the ceiling collapsed. Worry became her new best friend. She worried that Hunter and Orm had been injured in the cave-in. She worried that they were trapped too. These were terrible thoughts to have, and no matter how hard she tried to ignore them, they were persistent and loud.
It was a small comfort to know that Aoife was unharmed, for she could sense the little dragon through whatever bond there was between them. Nessa told herself that surely meant Hunter was alive as he had possession of Aoife at the time of the cave-in.
Something else she worried about was another cave-in. Although there had been nothing but stillness, not even the faintest of tremors beneath her feet, Nessa still feared that the rock above her would come crashing down again.
It was then, whilst her mind was occupied, that Nessa didn’t notice what was beneath her feet. The ground disappeared between one step and the next, and Nessa pitched forward, hitting the floor hard. Stones tore at her already raw skin, and the scabs that had only just formed were ripped off. She lay stunned for a heartbeat or two, body singing with pain, then she groaned and tried to pick herself up. She suddenly discovered that the strength which had carried her so far had fled.
Tears came to her eyes and Nessa, unable to stand, curled into a ball, sobbing. She was bone-numbingly tired and every inch of her body hurt, being either bruised or cut. She’d simply had enough, and didn’t have it in her to do anything other than lie on the ground with her bleeding knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them.
Nessa cried and cursed. She wasn’t proud of that, but it did make her feel marginally better after a while. When she was finished, she was drained, but the determination to find her way out of the darkness had returned. Nessa told herself that Hunter and Aoife were waiting for her, that they were worried. She blindly swiped away the tears that clung to her cheeks, smearing blood from her palms as she did so, and stood.
And blinked.
And stared.
There, in the distance, a small light flickered and danced, barely bigger than a candle flame.
Hope flared, and Nessa thought that she had been found, before she realised that the light was stationary and no one else was in sight.
Nessa frowned, wondering what had caused the strange little flame to appear in the middle of the desolate tunnel, chasing away a small section of darkness. It was such a beautiful and simple thing, the ball of light, and Nessa wanted to yell with joy and run towards it. Something stopped her though, a sense of warning perhaps, or the knowledge that nothing good could possibly come from a magically appearing flame.
She thought about her options, which she was reluctant to admit were pretty limited. It was either forwards, towards the mystical light, or backwards, which only had the promise of either getting lost or facing Margan.
“Towards the magic flame it is,” Nessa murmured.
Hesitantly, she approached it, and when it did nothing out of the ordinary, she took a second to examine it.
Hovering a couple of inches above the ground, there was no candle or wick, nothing to explain its existence. The little flame simply sat in the air, burning happily away. The light it produced was weak, barely reaching a few feet around it. Even so, Nessa wished that she could take it with her, not wanting to return to the darkness that surrounded her. She bent down, reaching out a hand, wondering if she could hold the flame in her palm just as Orm had with his.
The flame winked out.
Instantly the darkness came flooding back, a tsunami of despair. It didn’t last for long, though. Twenty or so feet away, another little flame sparked to life, breathing a minuscule amount of light back into the tunnel. Swallowing her growing misgivings, Nessa approached it. Just like its predecessor, once she neared it, it blinked out, only for another to replace it further down the tunnel.
So, for awhile, Nessa continued in this fashion, chasing after a magical flame.
The second turn came, and Nessa ticked it off the directions she was following. Nearly there… Nearly there… Then, a great distance later, she came upon the left and final turning. She paused at its entrance, the sense of unease growing to an almost paralysing degree.
Danger lurked at the end of the tunnel, Nessa was sure of that.
I will be coming to fetch you when the time is right, Shadow had promised. It seemed that he was a man of his word.
With trepidation, Nessa entered the tunnel, feeling like she was about to run the gauntlet. As she did so, the air changed, becoming heavy and charged. Puh...puh...puh…puh… sounded out, and one after the other, little flames sprang up on either side of the tunnel, lining it.
Nessa paused, deciding that she really didn’t want to go any further. Maybe I’ll just wait here until Hunter and Orm come, she thought. They know the route I’ve taken. They’ll come looking soon enough. Happy with that idea, she turned, intending to sit opposite the tunnel, wanting to be a safe distance away, yet close enough to see if anything was to come down it.
Nessa slammed into something and rebounded, taken by surprise. She stared, seeing nothing but empty air, and reached out a searching hand. It came across an invisible force that was as cold and as smooth as glass, and as hard as metal. She pushed against it, but it didn’t move an inch. There was a barrier preventing her retreat.
“Well,” Nessa said wryly. “This can’t be good.”
It got distinctly worse when the invisible barrier began moving, forcing Nessa down the tunnel. She tried to resist, to fight, pressing her back against it, digging in her heels, hoping that it would move no further. But for all her efforts, there was no give, and it continued to inch forward, ushering her unwillingly onward.
“Oh, fine,” Nessa snapped, taking a few quick steps away from it, refusing to be corralled any further. “I’m going. I’m going. Not that I have a choice.”
With the low sconces showing her path, Nessa walked slowly down the passageway, the barrier just a few short feet behind her, there as a reminder that she couldn’t turn back, no matter how much she wished she could. She rounded a bend, and there, looming before her, was the exit.
Shadow stood just beyond it, framed by the tunnel’s mouth, standing tall and imposing, a figure in black waiting for her. Sunlight danced in his dark hair, and his sapphire blue eyes gleamed when he caught sight of her. I will be coming to fetch you when the time is right, he had said to her. It appeared that time had come.
With her back straight and her head held high, Nessa marched forward as if she was going into battle.
Maybe she was…
Darkness.
At first, disorientated and confused, Nessa thought that she was back in the tunnel. Had she been knocked out in the cave-in? Were the magic lights that Shadow had sent been nothing more than a dream? She shivered, cold and more than a little afraid, and went to
sit up, only to find that she couldn’t. It was then that she felt the harsh bite of metal against the skin of her wrists and ankles. Horrified, she realised that she was chained, hand and foot, to a slab of stone that acted as a table.
Nessa’s heart began to race, and panic gripped her with its claws.
No no no no… This can’t be real. This can’t be happening…
But it was.
Terrible thoughts crept into her mind, and she imagined, with frightful creativity and vividness, all the things that Margan could have planned for her.
Oh, Hunter, where are you?
Far away, she hoped, safe from Margan’s clutches. Him and Aoife both.
The air was icy and dank, and seeped into her bones, making her tremble uncontrollably. She listened, praying to hear the sound of rescue, but heard nothing save for the roar of blood in her ears.
How had it come to this? Nessa wondered.
Will I ever be free…?
Enjoyed HOUSE OF FEAR AND FREEDOM?
Then find out what happens next in
HOUSE OF BLOOD AND BONE
COMING LATE 2019
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Kimberley J. Ward, aka The Creator of Curiosities, was born and grew up in rural Dorset. She loves a good ale and a decent night’s sleep. When she isn’t berating her pet ducks (who are a***holes BTW) she is either writing or making something arty or jewellery related, which may end up on her online shops at some point.
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This book has been in the making for longer than I care to admit, and during that time there has been a handful of people who’ve been vital in helping me get it out into the big wide world. So here’s a big shout out you helpful souls.
House of Fear and Freedom (The Wyrd Sequence Book 1) Page 32
