Page 113 of The Catacomb King
Hades hesitated.
Then my mother stepped out of Elke’s grasp and walked back toward the cavern.
That was the last straw. “NO!”
“It is okay. I always liked that boy,” my mother said over her shoulder, gently. “And it’s not too late for him.”
“It’s not too late for you, either, Mommy! No! Isavedyou! STOP!”
But she was gone.
And Hades was running again. I howled, pounded at his back, but there was nothing I could do.
The Monarch, seeing us disappear into the catacombs, moved faster than any of us.
The last thing I saw in the Lake cavern was the Monarch exploding out of the King’s carapace. His oily, gelatinous, thousand-limbed form crashed into the shore.
Into the soldiers.
Into the Vizeking.
Andabsorbedthem.
The Vizeking screamed as the Monarch’s flesh struck his body. His thin scream was cut off as abruptly as if someone had sliced off his head.
I screamed, too. Calix. My mother. And then —
Calix burst into the throne room a millisecond before the Monarch’s flesh spilled into it.
We all raced through the catacombs. Ducking, weaving. The Monarch surged behind us, His new body filling the space like water. The heads and hands of soldiers, lackeys, and other unfortunate chaosgötten stuck out of his flesh. He was absorbing — eating? — every creature he touched.
And the catacombs’ slow, almost imperceptible movement was gone. Now, the roads thrashed like tentacles. Hades was thrown off balance again and again. Soon he would trip, and the Monarch would eat us —
Hades gasped out, “This way!” and dodged down a narrow side-path.
The path ended dead ahead in matted grass-roots.
We burst out into the sun.
And fell.
The catacomb we were in had pushedupward. It was no longer underground. It arced above the ground like a bridge. We had fallen out of it.
We landed on the soft grass. Hades curled around me to brace my broken bones from the impact. “Persephone? Persephone!”
“You don’t have to yell,” I croaked. I felt hollow. My mother. Gone again. “I’m injured, not unconscious. Where’s Calix? Where’s the Monarch?”
We all looked up.
Overhead, the catacombs seethed. They formed great tubes patterned on the outside with emerald grass and smooth onyx rock and glittering gemstones. The bioluminescent fungi on the walls were withering and dying. My heart broke for them.
And all around us were chaosgötten.
They were tumbling out of the crazy tunnels. They fell as thick as the raindrops. They were crying out in fear of the open air, or rubbing their concussed heads, or clutching each other, or — a few of them, like Elke — gazing in awe at the mountain and the expansive horizon and the sky, stretching out their hands and spider-legs to catch the raindrops. A few of the nearest chaosgötten spotted me and Hades and crawled over, begging for help, demanding answers. Hades could only shake his head helplessly. I sat up.
Together, Hades and I looked toward the east. There was the Mountain, covered more thickly than it had ever been with storm-clouds and tornadoes. Now, you could not even see the runoff. You could not even see the strip of land that led up to the Mountain.
We looked west, toward Limer. That way, the grass and the crazy network of tunnels stretched as far as the eye could see.
