Page 69 of Returned to the Vissigroth
"You're right. This here, though, looks like a blaster," Thalia picked something from a broken table that somehow still managed to stand, even on three legs. Of course, the entire contraption fell down as soon as she picked up the weapon. It wasn't a loud crash, but inside the confines of thiscave, it sounded like thunder.
Abashed Thalis looked at us, "Oops."
My heart picked up speed, "Don't do that again." I admonished.
At that, she grinned and winked, "Zyn, Mother."
Oksana giggled, and I fell in. All three of us giggled like schoolgirls for a moment before we sobered. Oksana glanced up worriedly at the ceiling. “We can’t stay long. This place doesn't look stable. The ceiling could go at any moment.”
“Then let’s grab what we can,” Thalia said, already bundling a second weapon into her belt. “And find a place to use it.”
We each took two of the blaster-looking things, praying they worked like blasters too, but we were out of options.
The dust thickened behind us as we crawled back out of the collapsed space. It was almost like I could feel the walls growing restless again.
Darryck’s roar echoed off the ancient pillars, the sound of a warrior being caged. He paced like a beast barely contained, his hand clutched the hilt of his sword so hard that the leather-wrapped grip creaked under the pressure.
“I swear, if one more male tells me to wait while my mate is hunted like prey, I will rip down this entire snygging mountain!”
“We all want to run after them,” Myccael ground out, his voice was rough, almost guttural as he tried to keep his emotions in check. “But think, damn it. They want us to charge in. They want to separate us. Bleed us out like they did the dragoons.”
“They’ll expect force, not strategy,” I muttered, staring into the tunnel ahead. It felt like the mountain was holding its breath, waiting to see which of us would break first.
Darryck slammed his fist into a pillar. The entire structure groaned. “So what do we do? Wait for them to die? Wait until they’re not bait anymore but corpses?”
“Ney,” I said firmly. “We change the rules.”
The others stilled.
“We send a decoy force through the main passage. Loud, armed, predictable. Let them think we’re biting. Meanwhile, we scout every crevice in this mountain. Silently.
Myccael was already nodding. “Ekkarn can lead the decoy force. Take the loudest, bulkiest males and make it look like we’ve lost all reason. While the rest of us go quiet.”
"We don’t know what lies ahead, but those bastards do. So we don’t play the game they’ve laid out. We scatter the board.” I pressed out.
Darryck growled low in his throat. “Fine. But if one of them dies while we skulk in the dark?—”
He broke off, and silence followed his dying words, heavy, ragged, and broken only by the drip of some unseen leak deeper in the cavern. Darryck had given voice to what Myccael and I were feeling. The urge to go do something, to charge forward, was nearly overwhelming.
“They’re not alone,” Myccael said softly. “They have each other. They're brave and resourceful.”
Darryck thought about it for a moment, then shook his head, "Those creatures will know we're not among the dragoons."
"That's a chance we'll have to take," I admitted the flaw in my plan. "Let's put on some shirts to hide our scales. Take off our baldrics, anything that calls us out as vissigroth. Make the tallest and biggest dragoons wear them."
It wasn't a great plan as far as strategic moves went, but it was all we had. Even the biggest dragoon wasn't close to the size of a vissigroth, let alone a susserayn, but it would have to do. It was our only option as far as I could see.
"They could be watching us right now," Myccael warned.
"I’m sure they are," I agreed. "Dragoons!" I called the troops over and made them huddle around us. Darryck gave a grunt of reluctant agreement, but I saw the twitch of his jaw. He was still barely holding it together. We all were.
The dragoons I’d chosen to impersonate us—Vexan, Holm, and Rojan—shifted uncomfortably in our heavier baldrics. Vexan grunted as he fastened Myccael’s across his chest.
“This thing weighs more than a half-grown nicta.”
“You wear it like it’s your own skin, male,” Myccael said darkly, adjusting the ill-fitting shirt he had received in return. Some of the seams were already ripping. “We need them to believe we’re charging. If they can’t tell the difference from a distance, they’ll think we’re exactly where they want us to be.”
“We might be running through these snygging tunnels for the rest of our lives,” Darryck muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “And never find them. Just rock and shadows and dead ends.”
