Page 127 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
He pressed his power into the first, and flicked his wrists like he’d done with the rodents. Its slack body hit the ground.
He moved to the second. Touch, he found, was infinitely easier. The life forces of his companions flared up around him, beacons in the gloom—Aislinn, Beau,Dillon.
He knew that was odd, and Dillon’s pulse even felt different to him, like another shade of a colour he couldn’t name, but there was no time to focus on that. No time for anything.
Something rumbled along the corridor, shaking stalactites from the ceiling. A few of the cave cats paused in their assault as something thundered into view—a great, grey, lumpy shape, like a giant and boulder squished together.
“Ogre,” someone whispered, in case he wasn’t sure.
The ogre grinned at the party before him and swung his massive club, dividing stone from the ceiling. Minerva swung under his arm, searching for a gap in his rough armour, hissing out instructions. Caer was still focused on the cave cats.
“Look out!” someone hissed.
A stalactite smashed to the ground in front of him, blasting one of the cats. Aislinn let out another cry. “Beau!”
Beau was moving along the edge of the river, the cats prowling towards him. With each one he took out with a blast of fire, another one lunged closer. He was disappearing into the dark, into the tunnel, the entire ceiling shaking above him. Aislinn raced towards him, Dillon too—
Caer saw the stone swing seconds before it dislodged. Dillon didn’t. He was standing right in its path—
Caer reacted instinctively, holding out his hand, tugging on the thread he’d felt before with the rodents, like Dillon was tied to him. He yanked hard, pulling him back.
Dillon splashed into the stream, gasping up at Caer as he hauled him back onto his feet, eyes wide with shock.
They didn’t speak. They turned their backs together, preparing for another onslaught of cats.
Beau had disappeared. The tunnel shook again. Aislinn flung her hands towards the ceiling, grunting beneath the weight of the stone. Vines unfurled around the walls, reeds bent upwards, locking together, weaving upwards in an effort to assist. Caer searched blindly for something to do, anything—
It wasn’t enough.
The tunnel fell.
It took Beau’s eyes a few desperate seconds to adjust to the gloom. A few desperate seconds of fighting off cats in the unfathomable dark, hearing them hiss, feeling them clawing at his skin.
He was breathing too hard to scream. He was bleeding too hard tothink.
The second he could see, he started firing off fireballs, scorching the ones clinging to his skin until their bodies fell to the floor, writhing and shrieking. Vines, there were so many—a tide of them, a black sea of fur and fangs.
Something else snarled in the distance.
The cats stilled, hair stiffening on the back of their necks. Beau froze, breath in his throat. Waiting.
Something crept forward out of the tunnel, long and large. It had the body of a water dragon, elongated and narrow, but covered in thick, dark fur, and crowned with horns. A thin, matted mane hung around its head and neck, and its eyes glowed like amethysts in the tangible dark.
It lunged at the cats, swiping them away, biting their bodies in two if it caught them in its mouth and spitting them away. Its talons were like knives. Again and again it slashed and bit, until the walls were coated in blood.
A droplet drifted down Beau’s cheek. He shuddered beneath it, but he could not move.
Only once all the cave cats were dead did the monster turn its sights on Beau. It prowled forward on its great legs, a shimmer of scales in the pads of its furred feet.
It sniffed at him, its hot breath dusting his cheek.
But it did not attack.
The tunnel entrance shuddered and shook, fallen boulders moving away, vines crawling back to the rock as light pooled into the cave. Aislinn scrambled inside, screaming his name and drawing her sword.
“Beau—”
“Don’t!” He held up his hand to shield the creature from his sister. She—for he felt instinctively shewasa she—took one final look at him, and bolted off into the dark.
