Page 26 of Sun Elves of Ardani

“We didn’t ask you for any of those things.”

He scoffed. “You don’t want those things?”

“Not at the cost of our freedom! And don’t pretend that you’ve somehow been fighting us for our own good. We all know the war was about Ysura wanting control over Ardanian resources like the axis we’re standing in at this very moment. Queen Vasso said no to you, so your people decided to take them by force.”

“You’re making it sound like I’m the villain here.”

“You are a villain, you fucking idiot.”

He stopped and looked down at her, stunned. She kept walking.

A dozen paces away, at the outer edge of the firelight, she stopped and turned to him. “Will you hurry up? The sooner we find a way out of here, the sooner I can stop having to endure your company.”

He followed her without comment.

They reached the end of the hall and stopped, because the ground dropped away in front of them. They stood on a platform over a large open area, with a set of stairs leading down. The space was big enough that his light didn’t reach the edges of it, and the stairs disappeared into darkness. He could tell by the way their footsteps echoed that the room was large.

Kadaki waved her hand, and a glowing ball of light appeared in front of her. She waved again, and the light floated off far ahead of them. She took a breath, then opened her hand. The light exploded in a single bright flash that lit the entire room, just for a moment, before disappearing. As spots dotted Neiryn’s vision and darkness descended on them again, they both murmured sounds of awe in unison.

They were in an enormous, mortal-made cavern, carved into the bedrock and filled with an entire village of smaller buildings. Neiryn guessed it was deep enough to fit the tallest tower in Tal-Vreth inside. Like the chamber above, it was filled with pillars and archways and elevated walkways, with staircases and doors to other rooms all over. It was an architectural wonder.

“It’s a cruel joke by the gods that we’ve been forced down here like this,” Kadaki said, her soft voice carrying across the cavern. To his relief, she was no longer scowling as hard as she had been in the hallway. Their impressive surroundings had distracted her. “Yesterday, I would have killed to be able to explore this place.”

He felt the same way. The Auren-Li were the greatest civilization to have ever lived, judging by their elaborate cities and bits of magic they’d left behind, but modern people knew very little about them. They were distant ancestors of the sun elves—of all elves—and he felt a connection to this place that he couldn’t quite put into words. The things he had just seen in that brief flash of light had sent chills through him.

“Do you feel the magic here?” he asked. To him, the air felt thick with it. It was strangely oppressive and invigorating at the same time. To her, a mage, it must have been an intense sensation.

She nodded. “I haven’t felt anything like it since Kuda Varai. We must be in the center of the axis now.”

He motioned to the stairs. “Shall we?”

Kadaki nodded, and they started down the staircase. She crossed her arms as if to ward off a chill. Her night clothes were thin and bared too much skin for this temperature. Neiryn let his fire flare a bit bigger and warmer as they walked.

He realized he could hear something in the distance. A soft, continuous rushing sound. They reached the main floor of the cavern at the bottom of the stairs, and something glittered a few dozen steps away, reflecting the light of his flame.

“It looks like a canal,” he said.

“It must exit the ruins somewhere. Maybe it goes to the ocean.”

“Yes. We could float to safety.”

She frowned. “Or we could end up trapped behind a filter or inside some holding tank and drown.”

While they contemplated that, he became aware of another sound in the distance. A soft clicking, like footsteps. Kadaki looked up at him in surprise as she heard it, too. Neiryn searched the edges of the firelight, which didn’t penetrate nearly far enough into the darkness. They were blind to most of the cavern.

Maybe Eliyr had survived. Or Rhian and the miners had found a way down. He took a breath to call out.

“No,”Kadaki hissed, grasping his arm. “It’s not a person.”

The clicking came faster. Whatever it was, it did not speak, but it had sped up as if it had heard Kadaki’s voice. And it was coming toward them. Dread snaked through him.

The high levels of atmospheric magic in Auren-Li ruins were known to attract all kinds of creatures that fed on the magic. He hadn’t thought anything would be able to reach this far underground, but something appeared to have found its way in.

Kadaki pulled him to a low wall and ducked behind it. “Put that out,” she whispered. He hesitated, then extinguished his fire. The position he was kneeling in put pressure on his damaged ribs, and he had to work to keep his breathing even and quiet.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark, and then, in the distance, he saw a light: a soft, bluish glow, like a mage light, coming from a corridor across the cavern.

His breath caught in his throat when the thing—and it could only accurately be called athing—emerged from the corridor.

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