Page 95 of Red Demon

Ash bit on his pain, inhaling. “Fuck, a tracker?”

“Tracker.” She laid it on the stone, scraping her knife over it to destroy it. “Bria heard them talking about it. But it’s too late. They know we’re here.”

Asher rubbed his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Faruhar. I didn’t know.”

Mahakal’s voice drifted on the wind. We shared the silence, exchanging panicked glances.

Asher stepped forward, shaking his head to clear it. Then he gestured to Istaran at my hip. Blinking, I handed the hilt to Ash with a click, who grasped my arm in thanks as he took it.

The glowing blue light welcomed him, the reflection bright in his eyes. He smiled and gestured to the dark, then handed it back to me. The mazed engraving glowed in my hands as expected.

Then I understood what he was doing. The glow signified Istaran’s trust. As long as it was glowing, Oria should trust us too.

Faruhar’s gaze snapped to Istaran as I passed her the grip. My breath hitched with expectation. She’d saved our lives, risking it again and again. She’s saved the life of everyone those demons would hunt.

Our fingers brushed as she took it with a tight grip, her knuckles white as she stared at the intricate green and gold scabbard, a prayer on her face. Silence stretched between us as she drew the blade out. Nothing: cold steel.

A soldier’s voice growled from above the stairs. “We lost signal in the barn.”

“I can smell the traitors,” came Mahakal’s reply, far too close.

Faruhar’s shoulders slumped, and she let out a shaky breath as she handed back Istaran’s hilt. She pointed to Asher and me, then gestured her head at the darkness. My heart plummeted. I shook my head, clenching my fists. I would not run like a coward. If she couldn’t go on, I would stand with her, taking down as many as I could.

There was so much that flew past her eyes as she read my defiance.

“Hey!” A shout at the top of the stairs. Were we seen?

Yep. I stared up the stairs to the soldier, panicking.

Faruhar lunged for us, her grip on our arms inviolable, pulling us through the arch into the dark. I had no chance to run back. With a rumble, the mouth of the tunnel closed from the top, a stone door rolling down to trap us into the darkness of the tunnel.

“No,” I whispered in the dark, drawing Istaran so I could see the fear in Faruhar’s face. Then she was on the move. When Ash delayed, I pulled his arm as the walls sprouted mycelial light around us, following her with bold strides.

The world around me gradually took on depth and detail in grayscale and pulsing cyan mazes. It wasn’t just one tunnel here. Carved with precision, the passageways formed a labyrinth of tunnels within rock and earth. Faruhar pulled us down a set of stairs, breathing fast as the glowing mycelium reached its lacy fingers into the walls toward us, questioning.

This wasn’t the wispy Orian tendrils I knew from the forest. The etchings in the stone gave a path for the mycelium to shine, interacting with complex bionetwork circuitry, with grips and divots in that stone in circuits I couldn’t begin to understand. Oria snaked around the tech with sentience, vibrance flowing like a river along the walls and floor. The air shifted.

Even I could feel the malice in the air, the silence just before a death blow. I wasn’t sure I believed that any of us were safe.

“How long until it tries to kill us?” I asked Faruhar.

“It’s already trying.” She nodded her head toward a door. “Hurry up.”

I jogged on behind her. Here and there, I saw signs of recent habitation: a discarded cloak, a half-eaten meal abandoned on a ledge. I looked to Ash. “A rebel left that, right?”

“I can’t see as much as you,” Asher said, squinting. “But assume yes. They’re the only ones down here.”

The entire population of the Nara lived down here twice, before the Chaeten, when nearby stars went nova and thinned the atmosphere on the small planet. And with a fungal power source that could collect energy from both the sun and the heat of the planet core, there were no power failures in the Underground.

“Just move,” Faruhar rasped, pulling us along.

The blue veins of mycelium reached into stone grooves around a heavy door. A high-pitched sound rang in my ears, like the whine of the server room I saw on a childhood field trip to the mine. A panel of hypnotic blue light pulsed at the center of a wide door. Faruhar shoved me toward it, her breath ragged.

“Put your hand on that door, Jesse,” she said. “Or try touching it with your sword.”

I reached out, hesitant, feeling a shiver of sensation across my skin as I touched the shining blue network. Nothing; same for holding my blade against the circuitry. Just the static of a faint electric current.

“You next.” Faruhar’s hand trembled as she gestured to Ash.