Page 96 of Hunted in the Shadows
“Save your energy,” I said. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
As we stepped through, the door behind us sealed once again. Another waited for us at the end of the new chamber, another constellation on display.
“Fuck!” Cliff took the knife from me immediately, eyes beginning to grow wide with alarm. “Three. That has to be it, right? Three’s, like, the most significant number in every piece of lore.” He turned to Sylvia like she might have an answer to this cryptic cycle of sacrifice.
“I—” She shook her head, lips pressed hard together as she regarded the new door like she might learn something new if she stared hard enough. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anything so cruel—to claim the moon and stars want blood…” She darted closer to him when he raised the blade to his arm. “Wait! Maybe weshould take a more careful look around. There could be something we missed.”
“Where?” Cliff gestured around him with the knife. “There’s nothing else, Sylv. All we can do is get through these damn doors. You feel that? There’s no air flow in the place.”
Rather than watch him grit his teeth from another brush with the blade, I searched along the walls leading up to the door. He was right—it was no use looking for anything else.
When Sylvia healed him, there was a hitch in her words.
The door sealed behind us after we passed through.
And the next one awaited us.
Dread pounded through me as I took the knife again. Even the relief of Sylvia’s healing couldn’t make me forget the amount of blood I was freely spilling out.
This time, I experimented by hanging back while Cliff and Sylvia passed the new threshold. When it started to close, I hurried to catch up. This place wasn’t fooling around—didn’t give a shit if we stayed together or not.
“Did we get a good look at how big this place was from the outside?” I asked when we paused at the next door.
No one had an answer.
Cliff sliced his arm with barely a sound, and we kept moving forward.
Two chambers later, we found the first human corpse. The scent hit us before the sight. It was curled against the wall beside the next door. Bits of flesh clung to it and spread onto the stone, stained with bright purples, yellows, and greens that were not natural to rot. Equally vibrant mushrooms sprouted through openings in its skull and ribs—the only living thing in this sealed-up hellscape that could decompose the dead.
In the next chamber, there were three dead. Two in the next, huddled against each other, rainbow decay intertwining.
Sylvia’s voice and flight wavered more with each healing incantation. The glow that normally penetrated the light fabric of her clothing was blocked by red stains. Between the magic exhaustion and thinning air, she couldn’t hope to replenish our blood fast enough, even if she was closing up the wounds to stop further loss.
“This could be… it,” she croaked when my blood opened the twelfth door. “The constellations have been different every time.” She paused to chant, to close the self-inflicted wound. “They’ve only used the major constellations—and there are twelve of those.”
She made a distressed noise when she saw the scar she left behind on my skin. Her arms were smeared up to the elbow in crimson. I shushed her soothingly. No point in pristine healing when I would likely just have to open it back up again.
Unless she was right, and we were finally at the end of this sadistic game.
As the door sealed behind us in the next chamber, the utter lack of corpses was the first thing I noticed. A tentative rush of hope filled me—maybe this really was the exit.
But sure enough, my searching light swept over yet another door at the end of the cavern.
In my lightheaded delirium, I prayed that this one would simply swing open.
“Wait.” The crack in Sylvia’s voice made Cliff and I pause in our stumble to reach the door. She had both hands clamped over her mouth, little sobs escaping through her fingers.
She pointed a shaking hand at the door. “That’s the Eternal Chalice.” As her hover drew closer to the ground, I spotted droplets of blood near the base of the door.
Fresh.
We were back at the start.
“Fuck this shit!” Cliff might have punched the wall if he had the energy. He leaned against the stone instead, running his hands over the scars on his forearms. “The fuck does it want!”
I couldn’t begin to decipher the purpose in any of it. Even the most vicious monsters had a purpose for what they did. But this—this was nothing more than torture. Corpses left to rotfor what?
Sylvia had slunk all the way to the ground, sitting on her knees and staring up at the door while her glow flickered.
