Page 6

It was all for her, really.

I swung again, yelling this time, and kept swinging until mineral dust stung my nostrils, until icy sweat dripped off my nose, until my lungs heaved from exertion, until the pillar of limestone at last crumbled open at my feet, exposing something that had absolutely no earthly business being inside a stalagmite in a cave that no human had ever set foot in before today.

I knelt and peered at it, taking heavy gulps of air.

Gaping out at me from a jagged wall of crystal, where it had been entombed for millennia, were the empty eye sockets of a hominid skull.

Human.

But not.

Anthropologists would have a hissy fit at what I was about to do. Oh, but they’d thank me later.

I stood and raised pickaxe, then let it fly one more time. The spike punctured the forehead, and the skull shattered like porcelain. A deep thump reverberated through the cave. The air around me seemed to vibrate.

One down, four to go.

I staggered to the second stalagmite, the second cornerstone. Then proceeded to beat the crap out of it, too.

Buried in the rock, another hominid skull crumbled to pieces around the spike of my pickaxe. The cave rumbled, and I staggered sideways as dust sprinkled down from the ceiling. Behind me, ripples spread out across the pool’s glassy surface.

Two down.

Panting now, I slogged to the third one, raised my axe, and buried the steel up to the hilt. The spire broke open around it, cracking like glass.

Another skull.

I bashed it in, pulverizing the embedded fragments into the cave floor.

Another seismic tremor rocked the cave. A sliver of limestone cleaved off an overhanging stalactite, hurtling down like a spear. It exploded on the floor inches from where I stood.

Going to have to do better than that.

Three down.

I bashed in the fourth stalagmite, busted the skull inside. Like nothing.

Its base destroyed, the pillar of limestone fissured and tipped sideways, crashing through more mineral spires before it shattered against the ground.

Around me, an unearthly moan rose through the cavern, the wind screaming through the tiny exit hole as it evacuated the cave. My ears popped as the pressure dropped, before the wind all came howling back with a chest-crushing thump.

Four down.

I paused at the fifth, the final pillar, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, wheezing in the limestone dust. Last one.

I drove the spike down with everything I had. The steel sparked on the rock, chipped off whole chunks, crushed them. The fifth hominid skull cracked down the middle and exploded into dust.

The anomaly ruptured.

In front of me, the space inside the pillars seemed to cave in to nothing, creating a whirlpool in midair. The space contorted, spinning and tightening until it cinched shut.

And then it exploded.

A shockwave slammed me in the chest. I was lifted off my feet and jettisoned across the cave and into the pool. Limestone dust swept over me, and across the cave, dozens and dozens of stalactites broke off from the ceiling, shattering against the ground. The sound of it all was deafening. I covered my head.

Yeah, destroying their portals always caused a kickback.

But it was done.