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The Cavern

YVESWICH, STATE OF KER

The Nameless creatures spent most of their unholy existence in solitude. Talking was something they rarely had the pleasure of doing, so when given the opportunity, they talked a fucking lot.

All the better for Darien, though. He needed time, needed to make it to higher ground. Needed to give the Basilisk a reason to expose its throat.

With swift feet, he ascended the crumbling staircase that wrapped around the cavern, leaping to close the gaps between the broken structures. Putting as much power into each jump was vital; with a sword in his good hand, the other too broken to hold his weight should he need to grab onto something, he had no other choice. He needed to land on his feet. Every. Single. Time.

The massive serpent observed with humor. Curiosity. Darien felt it peering down at him from that storm of darkness way up top, its thick body hissing with constant movement.

Darien reached another ledge and jumped, feet moving in open air as if he were running. He landed on the next platform with enough force to jar his bones and teeth. Vaulted over a curve of the serpent’s body, those hideous scales glinting like liquid night. Kept moving. Running as fast as he could.

“You amuse me, slayer,” said the Basilisk. “You really think you have a chance, don’t you?”

“So long as I’m alive, I have a chance.” He sprinted and leapt again, flying through the icy air, feet striking ground on the next decaying piece of staircase. Higher—he had to get higher still.

“They all believed the same,” the serpent said solemnly, referring to its many guests down below, eternally trapped in stone. Rumor claimed their souls lived in the statues, cursed to observe in immovable silence as countless others wandered in here to be met with the same terrible fate. Stuck here for eternity, never to move on to the afterlife. Never to find rest. “So filled with hope,” the serpent went on. “With want for life.”

“You almost sound sincere,” Darien shot back, his breaths puffing out before him like ghosts.

The next ledge was so far, Darien had to push himself faster, taking it at a sprinting jump. He soared through the air, gravity poised to suck him into its swift grip.

He barely made it, and when he landed, part of the staircase broke off under his boot. Bandit swore, and Darien barked out a curse word of his own, his alarm ringing through the cavern as the chunk of stone fell to the floor way below and burst into dust.

The Basilisk chuckled. “Close one.”

He pushed up and kept moving, heart pounding, tripping, skipping. He sensed his time was coming to a close. The Basilisk was preparing to strike, its foul presence shifting faster in the preternatural darkness above his head. Darien had fought enough monsters in his lifetime that he could feel hunger.

And this monster was starving.

Another jump, another ledge later, feet jarring with another forceful landing, and Darien picked up on stealth movement somewhere behind him—a different kind than the continuous shifting of that endless body draped all around the room.

Watch out, Bandit warned quietly.

He brought up the blade so he could see into the flat side. The material shifted from black to reflective glass right before his eyes, as if adapting to what he wanted—needed—it to be.

A mirror.

And in that mirror, he saw part of the serpent’s body loop down from up high. Saw the head materialize out of the gloom that writhed just like the snake, every bit as alive as the monster.

Fuck, it was terrifying—the darkness and the Basilisk. The serpent’s thick snout was bursting with razor-sharp teeth, the jagged shards speckled brown with rot. The vicious, scarred head was crowned with spikes all different lengths, as if some had been broken by past opponents, evidence of its many victories. Its eyes glowed red like rubies struck by sunlight, the slashes of black in the centers embedded with pinholes of color—

The serpent struck like lightning.

Darien ducked, using the reflection to his advantage, missing those powerful jaws by a hair’s breadth.

It struck again, even quicker this time, coiling its body around to block his path.

Darien bounded to the left, launching himself straight into open air, the wind of his fall whipping at his eyes and hair—

He landed on his feet on a fallen obelisk that stretched from one side of the cavern to the other like a bridge. The surface was so smooth and dusty, the soles of his boots failed to find purchase. No footfalls, nothing to grab onto. He leaned forward to keep his balance, and ducked again with a shout of alarm, barely missing another attack. The snake was so quick, he hardly saw it moving, its body so long, it was hard to sense which part of it would act next, where the attack would come from.

Darien ran up the length of the obelisk, pouring all his strength into his legs to make the ascent, calf and thigh muscles burning with exertion.

Movement again from behind.