Page 39 of Returned to the Vissigroth (The Vissigroths of Leander #6)

M ercilessly, we drove the nictas on in a breakneck speed that left them and us exhausted by the time we arrived at the camp where we’d left our seffies.

Major Stafford was organizing dragoons as we arrived.

"Susserayn, Vissigroths, thank God," he greeted us. He pointed at a bloodied dragoon, missing an arm. " Susserayna Oksana and Vissies Daphne and Thalia went to explore and were ambushed. They're down there. This man just barely made it up to get help."

With a curse, I jumped off the nicta. "Where the snyg is Surnak?"

I named the dragoon in charge of the camp during our absence.

"Dead." The male with a missing arm shouted.

Dread filled me, but there was no time to waste.

"Every male down now!" Myccael yelled. Already heading for the elevator shaft.

As much as I wanted to vent my frustration at the dimwitted bastard who allowed the susserayna and our vissies, my Daphne, down into the tunnel, this wasn't the time. Myccael didn't even wait for Darryck and me; he was already pushing the button for it to go down when Darryck and I squeezed in.

"This will take forever," Darryck observed darkly. He was right too. If they squeezed real tightly, four dragoons would fit into the elevator at one time, but getting the legions we needed down there would take the rest of the day, if not more.

I slammed the elevator wall so hard, the entire contraption shook. Myccael frowned but didn't say anything. We were all on edge.

The Zuten apartment we entered was eerily silent. There were no bodies here, nothing that indicated a fight.

"By Grandyr, where are they?" Darryck thundered.

Myccael pointed at some rubble near a hole. "That's new."

We filed through, and it didn't take long to find the rope dangling from another hole in the ceiling.

"Of all the nictaheaded things these seffies have done…" Myccael cursed under his breath.

"I'll kill her. I'm sorry, Mallack, but I'll find and save her, and then I’ll kill her," Darryck roared.

"Let's find them first," I suggested, and grabbed the rope to climb up.

I didn't have a light, but I didn't need one. The hallway I entered was lit up enough by the torches of slain dragoons to take in the carnage. My heart sank. Dragoons and Eulachs were entangled in a macabre dance, lying dead on the ground where they had fallen.

"Gods," Myccael muttered as he followed me up.

He grabbed a fallen torch, and I followed his example.

We didn't give Darryck any time to process the area.

I simply handed him a torch, and together, we hurried down what appeared to be a long hallway.

Save for quick glimpses, we didn't bother looking into the rooms where the doors stood open.

We kept moving forward, through the corridor that was littered with the fallen.

Dragoons and Eulachs. Their blood slicked the floor in long streaks where bodies had either been dragged or the dying had attempted to drag themselves. Myccael knelt by one of the corpses, fingers brushing over the ruined insignia of a Legion blade.

“Surnak,” he said quietly. The name landed like a hammer. He had been the leader of the Dragoons. If he had fallen… our seffies were in dire danger.

Darryck swore under his breath, pacing ahead with fire in his eyes.

I didn’t say a word. Couldn’t. Because the only thing I saw was Daphne’s face behind my eyes.

Pale and determined. Brave, but not invincible.

I turned, squinting further down, where the torchlight didn't quite reach.

I moved forward. A trail of crushed dust and gouged stone, leading away from the carnage.

Narrow, just wide enough for a few people side-by-side.

Small bootprints, lighter than the others.

“I’ve got their path,” I called.

More dragoons were climbing up behind us, their armor clinking quietly in the strained silence. Myccael gave a sharp nod and motioned for Ekkarn to move up and secure the area, while we kept advancing.

The tunnel wound downward, the air growing damper and tighter with every step. Myccael pulled a stronger torch from his belt. Its light hit a smear of blood on the wall—smeared in a handprint.

“Someone was dragged,” he muttered.

“Ney,” I said, crouching to examine the ground. “They were running. See here? Their weight shifts forward. They were being chased.”

“And then they chose this tunnel,” Darryck added, pointing to where the path narrowed even more.

The walls turned organic here, less carved, more natural.

We passed through a narrow choke point, our shoulders brushing the sides, and emerged into a wider cavern.

My torchlight hit the stone just ahead and flared against it, columns, dozens of them, rising like petrified trees into the shadowed ceiling above.

“By Grandyr,” Myccael breathed.

It looked like a sanctuary and reminded me eerily of what Niara had shown me of the Zuten's underwater world.

Benches, fractured and toppled. A dais at the far end.

Etchings in the columns, glowing faintly as if they remembered the light.

Just like before, the ground here was littered with the dead.

The dragoons had slain at least a hundred Eulachs, if not more, but the twenty males had been outmatched and killed.

"Oksana!" Myccael exclaimed, and I rose from where I kneeled by the body of a fallen dragoon, whose name tag read Zhoran . I didn't remember meeting him, but I had seen him around, just like the others.

Darryck and I moved quickly to Myccael's side and found him clutching a piece of fabric in his hands. "This is Oksana's."

"She must have left it to show us that they went this way," Darryck concluded, and I agreed. My daughter-in-law was one clever lady.

“They were here. They ran this way.” Myccael’s expression hardened.

A dragoon scout jogged in from behind. “Susserayn, more troops have arrived above. Reinforcements from Bantahar. Should we pull back and regroup?”

“Ney,” I said before Myccael could speak. “Not until we find them. And not while they’re still down here.”

"This ends now, today. Have the troops keep coming down, but do not send less than forty in a group at any time," Myccael ordered.

Then he waved us on, down the narrow path our seffies had gone.

He was enraged. By Grandyr, we all were, but this was not the way we had planned on fighting the Eulachs.

They were forcing our hand, causing us to send scattered groups of dragoons down.

The end was already written on the walls; we would slay every single Eulach, but in the process, we would lose many loyal dragoons. Too many.

I had no doubt that the dragoons had given their lives to protect our seffies so they could get away, but now they were alone. There were no more protectors with them. They were all alone against a foe that had slain countless dragoons in full body armor.

"Susserayn, wait," Ekkarn called out. He was kneeling by the fallen, his face furrowed.

"There is no time," Myccael declared impatiently.

"Susserayn, look, neither these males nor the Eulachs died from sword wounds or claws," Ekkarn stood his ground.

Every fiber in my being itched to get to Daphne, to find and protect her before reprimanding her for coming down here alone, but Ekkarn's urgency got to me, and I walked over.

He was right. These males didn't die from blades.

"Snyg, that's the same wounds the victims at Bantahar bore," Myccael said.

"And whoever wielded this weapon didn't care who they killed, Leanders or Eulachs," Darryck added darkly.

He was right, too. Whoever was behind this, the Eulachs were just collateral damage to them.

"The Zuten created the Sirens on Oceanus," I thought out loud.

Urgency wanted to drive me down that passageway, but another voice told me that we were up against a smart foe, and we better get all the facts together before we ran blindly into the trap that had so obviously been laid.

For the same reason, I believed the seffies were still alive.

They still needed them. As bait. That thought made my stomach curl in an anger so hot it surged through me, demanding immediate action.

But deep down, I sensed that this was what they wanted.

"Zyn," Myccael looked at me questioningly.

"Those pods we saw. They were sealed, until our drilling inadvertently set something in motion that opened them," I continued to speculate out loud, hoping Myccael and Darryck would follow my train of thought.

"We already tossed the theory around that the Zuten created the Eulachs, here on Leander.

" I held up a hand to stop the others from interrupting me.

"Hear me out. What if they created whatever was in those pods first?

And when they turned out to be too vicious, too bloodthirsty, too…

everything, they sealed them up and created a tamer version of Eulachs. "

"And now… that the others are free, they are using the Eulachs to get to us." Myccael nodded, warming up to my theory.

Darryck shook his head, "I don't know. Those super Eulachs, or whatever you want to call them, were only awakened a few cycles ago. Is that long enough to figure out that they needed to take us Leanders out to become masters of this world?"

I shrugged, "Does it matter? Does it matter if they had a meeting with the Eulachs and learned who the masters of this world are? Or if they found writings, or if they simply observed us? Snyg, for all we know, they could have taken workers prisoner and found out that way."

Myccael's hands gripped the hilt of his sword until I feared he would bend it.

Darryck tilted his head like he did when he was deep in thought.

Myccael finally shook his head, "Ney, I don't think that matters.

The fact is that they somehow got the Eulachs to do their dirty work.

They don't even seem to care that they're giving dangerous weapons to the Renegades.

"They must figure that they can deal with the Eulachs and the Renegades later, once they get rid of us," Myccael added gloomily.

I didn't like that idea. Not at all. But I was certain that this was where we stood.

"We can't blindly charge after the seffies, that's what they want." Darryck kicked a rock so hard, it landed against a column, where it took off some shards.

"We can't not charge after them," Myccael stated, and I nodded, looking at the dark passage where our seffies had vanished. The thought that charging after them would only seal their fate knotted my stomach as much as the idea of not charging after them did.

"Snyg, what are we supposed to do then?" Darryck roared.