Page 229 of A Dagger of Ice and Intrigue
Chapter
Fifty-One
ALLIE
The darkness swallowed us, pressing and weighted.
In this eerie stillness, every breath felt like trespassing. The darkness devoured us, heavy as stone.
Only the sound of the crackling torch flames accompanied us, even the thuds of our steps swallowed by the ground, which was covered in an ashy layer, soft as flour, dark as the night. Each step sent up faint, bitter clouds.
The fanged rocks cascading from the ceiling glimmered in the torch light, as if they had been made out of dead ice.
This whole place felt like death.
Not in the brutal, bloody way of war.
Not in the leaky, painful diseases that took so many lives.
But in the stillness that settled with time. A place where life hadn’t and couldn’t thrive, hidden deep in the ground.
The passage felt…it felt numb.
And numbing.
Like it wanted to gulp up every feeling, every sensation. Everything that made us human, to have its fill in this depressing quiet.
Ominous and greedy, that’s what it felt like.
The air was thick, my lungs fighting for each rarified gulp.
Yet we delved in further, not breaking our stride.
I couldn’t stop the shivers cascading down my spine. But I didn’t stop. I kept going out of sheer stubbornness alone, even as everything inside of me roared to turn back.
I tried to focus on anything that could calm those shameful instincts–and my mind was the perfect tool for it.
The passage was barely large enough for two carriages to pass through–and the fit would have been tight, if not dangerous–so squeezing in a full army would have been impossible.
It was also strategic gold. If the enemies trickled in through this narrow passage which wouldsurelyfrighten them in all its otherworldly glory, they could be taken out one by one by the warriors waiting at the other end.
Sliding war machines through seemed equally unlikely. The ground was uneven and the ash would have coated the wheels and made pushing them a fool’s errand.
In that, at least, we were safe.
But the passage still held secrets.
In the flickering light of the torches, I noticed small openings in the walls, as if some ungodly beings had eaten through the rock. I could wriggle through the openings–if I had a death wish–but not easily.
But they didn’t seem like mere gaps, though. They sucked in the light too quickly, too easily. They must have been deeper than they appeared–like one big maze.
If I dared make a sound, I knew these cracks would swallow that, too.
My whole body was so tense, I almost flinched when Ryker’s whisper broke the stillness. “Do you see anything?”
It took a moment for my pulse to crawl down from my throat for me to push the words out.
“Nothing strange. You?”
