Page 40 of Returned to the Vissigroth (The Vissigroths of Leander #6)

T he tunnels felt endless. They twisted and forked, sometimes rising in sharp inclines that made my thighs burn, sometimes plunging downward into airless depths that left my ears ringing with pressure.

Shadows clung to every corner. There were moments I thought I heard something just beyond the range of sound, soft footfalls, or breathing that didn’t belong to us.

But every time I turned, there was nothing.

Oksana had taken over the lead; her eyes scanned each new turn with the sharp alertness of a soldier. Of the three of us, she was the only one who seemed to know where we were going. Thalia followed closely, her mouth drawn in a tight line.

“Left here,” Oksana called, not breaking stride.

I followed without questioning, but everything in me screamed that we were hopelessly lost. I’d lost all sense of direction, the turns were too sharp, the dips too steep.

Every corridor looked the same. Smooth walls broken by veins of mineral and the occasional claw-marked stone.

Death felt close. Like a second skin. Like something waiting to exhale in the dark just behind us.

“I don’t know how you can tell,” I gasped as we rounded another sharp bend. “Every tunnel looks the same to me.”

Oksana didn’t glance back. “The air. The tilt of the floor. I don't know, it's just a feeling.”

I exchanged a look with Thalia. Were we really betting our lives on just a feeling ?

Thalia looked back at me , her eyebrows raised in silent query.

Any better ideas ? I didn't have an answer to that, so we kept following Oksana.

It didn't take long until my lungs were on fire. Every step felt heavier. My boots dragged through dust and scattered rubble. Something ahead screeched, and I nearly turned back, but Oksana didn’t slow. Neither did Thalia.

They were braver than I. Or maybe we were just too far in to turn around. We pressed on.

Up another jagged slope, across what felt like the collapsed floor of a chamber. We leapt a narrow fissure, and I nearly fell. Oksana caught me by the elbow, tugging me forward with surprising strength. “Not here. Not now.”

Another corridor. Another set of steps. My legs gave out on the third one. I stumbled forward into a pile of fallen stones, hands scraping against the rough surface as I collapsed to my knees.

“I can’t—” I choked on the words. “I can’t breathe.”

Thalia spun around immediately, her chest heaving. “Let's stop here. Just for a minute.”

Oksana nodded, her face pale. “It’s as good a place as any.”

I slumped against the wall, dragging in breath after ragged breath.

Sweat slicked my skin. My heart thundered, not just from exhaustion, but from the lingering terror curling in my belly.

I could still feel the echo of what we ran from, the monstrous shapes, the screams, the final cry Zohran made when he told us to run.

And we did.

I’d never felt more like prey. For a long minute, none of us spoke. We just breathed. Tried to calm our hearts, our nerves.

“We need a plan,” Thalia said eventually in a hoarse voice.

I nodded, but my head was spinning too much to form words. Oksana leaned against the opposite wall, eyes still on the darkness behind us. Whatever was out there, it was still hunting us. Or was it? How often could those monsters have killed us?

"They don't want us dead," I managed to press out. "Not yet anyway."

Thalia lifted her head. “What do you mean?”

I stared into the dark ahead, my voice slow but certain.

“They had many chances. In the hallway. In the temple. That giant one—the one with the… whatever that was, the Zuten weapon—it didn’t care who it hit.

It mowed through their own kind. Took out Eulachs and dragoons like it didn’t matter to them. ”

“I saw it too,” Oksana said, her voice low. “That one wasn’t just killing. It was controlling.”

“It didn’t fire until we were out of the way,” Thalia added, her eyes narrowing. “I thought maybe it was a coincidence, but now...”

“It waited,” I whispered. “It waited until we were clear.”

A heavy silence followed. The kind that thickens when too many truths press into it.

“So what are you saying?” Thalia asked. “That those things aren’t just Eulachs?”

Oksana shook her head. “They look like them. But they're bigger and smarter. This wasn't just a random attack. It was coordinated. That’s not Eulach behavior.”

“Ney,” I agreed, staring down at my trembling hands. “That’s… something worse. Something made.”

“Made?” Thalia echoed.

I met her gaze and shrugged, “Like a weapon.”

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Oksana’s eyes darkened. “Because we’re bait.”

Thalia turned sharply. “What?”

“That’s what this is,” Oksana continued grimly. “We’re not being hunted. We’re being pushed. Herded. They’re watching, waiting. And they’re not going to kill us… because they’re using us.”

My stomach turned. “Using us… to get to Mallack. To Myccael. To Darryck.”

Oksana nodded slowly. “We’re not the endgame. They are.”

A chill rippled down my spine. The idea that those monstrous, dead-eyed beasts had a goal. A strategy. That it involved us only as pawns in something bigger… darker.

“We have to find a way to warn them,” Thalia said. “They’re coming into this blind.”

“If they’re not already down here,” I muttered.

Oksana pressed a hand to the wall. “If I’m right about our direction, we’re heading toward the other drill hole, where the males went this morning.”

I shook my head, "They'll never let us out of here."

I didn't need to say who they were. We all knew I was talking about the massive Eulachs.

Thalia’s jaw clenched. “Then we don’t ask permission.”

“We don’t need to win,” Oksana added, her voice cool and sharp. “We just need to get ahead of the monsters. Or at least out of their control.”

I lifted my head. “They’re guiding us. So maybe… maybe we let them.”

“What?” Thalia blinked.

I looked between them, the pieces clicking together in my mind like an old machine grinding to life.

“They want us to go deeper. So let’s go deeper.

But not blindly. We look for any kind of equipment.

Abandoned Zuten tech. So far, they've just been letting us go wherever we want, but we need to get back to where the most Zuten artifacts are.”

“If we can’t warn the males,” Oksana said grimly, “then we arm ourselves instead. We stop being bait and start being a threat.”

A pulse of strength moved through me. I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t even whole. But I was a mother. And I was done being used.

“Alright,” I said, rising with them. “We follow the tunnels. But not like prey. We look for doors, panels, and cracks. Anything useful the Zutens have left behind.”

“And if we find nothing?” Thalia asked.

“Then we find higher ground,” Oksana answered. “Someplace defensible. If we can’t escape, then we make sure they don’t get past us.”

I met her gaze, then Thalia’s. “Together?”

“Always,” they said in unison.

So we stood, shaking off the ache and exhaustion. We weren’t armed like warriors. But we had our wits. We had our bond. And we had each other.

"Let's see if they let us go back," Oksana dusted her pants as she rose.

I was still scared, but it felt damn good having a plan instead of running like headless prey around through the tunnels waiting to be slaughtered for whatever plan the Eulachs had in mind for us.

If we were right, they were most likely lying in wait somewhere already for our males, who I knew were coming for us.

We just needed a little bit of luck to fall onto their backs and to hope and pray we weren't too late and could cause a big enough diversion to give our males the edge they needed against these creatures.

We moved more slowly than before, but with purpose. The tunnels still felt too quiet. Like whatever had chased us was now simply watching and waiting. That thought sent a shiver down my spine, but it also renewed my resolve to do something.

“Anyone else feel like we’re not alone?” Thalia murmured, her dagger already back in her grip.

Oksana didn’t answer. She just raised her hand and stilled us all.

Her head cocked slightly as if listening.

I tried to hear what she did, but there was nothing.

No footsteps. No whispers. Just the quiet scrape of our own breaths and the drip-drip-drip of some distant water source echoing through the dark.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling. Every few paces, I looked behind us. Nothing. No shadows moving. No glowing eyes. And yet… the hair on my arms stood up, as if the stone walls themselves were leaning in, eavesdropping.

We doubled back but took new paths, moving both through tunnels we had traversed before and new ones.

I had no idea how Oksana knew where to go, but she did.

It was in one of the tunnels we hadn't chosen before that we found signs of the Zuten again.

Broken cords and cables, and posts, some half-buried in the walls, others sticking out.

The passage narrowed, and we had to go sideways.

Thalia threw me a worried glance, and I nodded at her in encouragement.

She still didn't look like she was convinced this was the right way to go, but she shrugged her misgivings off.

Even when we had to suck in our tummies and squeeze our breasts to go through.

The torches illuminated the constricting space.

The only thing making me forge forward was the fact that the further we went, the more things poked through the wall that pointed at an advanced civilization that once lived here.

Pieces of fabric made from an unknown material that had somehow survived thousands of rotations of being half-buried.

Parts of a sphere poked out, still glowing in an ominous, metallic yellow that reminded me of the eyes of a predator.

The further we went, the more broken pieces littered the ground, mingled with rock and brick and the gods knew what else.

It looked like a kid had mashed up a collection of toys with clay and rolled it around and around until almost nothing recognizable was left.

"That way,” Oksana encouraged us, still wiggling through the narrow walls ahead. “We take the next right, descend, then left again. I’ve got a map in my head already.”

We wove deeper again, each turn sharper than the last. Finally, the passage opened up into a new chamber. It was wrecked.

The ceiling had partially collapsed, leaving a thin curtain of dust drifting through the air like mist. Half the floor had caved in.

But it was unmistakable, this had once been another Zuten residence.

Maybe part of a larger complex. Scorched couches lay broken beneath the rubble.

A cracked panel still clung to the far wall, flickering with a pale blue glow.

Thalia moved toward it, cautiously, while Oksana scanned the broken space.

Oksana ducked beneath a slab of rock at the rear of the room, vanishing for a breathless moment. Then we heard her gasp.

“By the gods,” she whispered.

Thalia and I scrambled after her, crawling under the jagged beam. My fingers scraped against rock. Dust fell in a sheet over us. But when we emerged on the other side, my breath caught.

Weapons.

Dozens of them.

Sleek, angular. Nothing like the forged iron or alloy blades we were used to.

These were strange; some looked like they hadn’t dulled in thousands of rotations.

Some glowed faintly, blue or gold or red at the seams. Others had handles carved from what looked like glass, but they felt warm to the touch.

One in particular caught my eye. A slender rod, no longer than my forearm, but bristling with dormant energy. It was humming softly. Singing, almost.

“Are these… are they functional?” Thalia breathed, running her fingers over a thick black blade with purple veins in the metal.

“I don't think these were left here by accident,” Oksana said, her eyes darting from one thing to another.

“This doesn't look like a military installation or lab. I think whoever left this here left it as a cache. A fallback point. Like the Zuten knew something would come. And they left weapons for it.”

My heart thundered. I reached for the rod, wrapping my hand around it. "I don't know about this." I had a bad feeling.

“Looks like we have a way to fight back,” Thalia said, moving something that looked like a black ball around.

I swallowed, "We don't know how any of these weapons work. We could pick the wrong one and blow up the entire mountain."

The other seffies stilled and stared at me. Realization kicked in.

"You're right. This here, though, looks like a blaster," Thalia picked something from a broken table that somehow still managed to stand, even on three legs.

Of course, the entire contraption fell down as soon as she picked up the weapon.

It wasn't a loud crash, but inside the confines of this cave , it sounded like thunder.

Abashed Thalis looked at us, "Oops."

My heart picked up speed, "Don't do that again." I admonished.

At that, she grinned and winked, "Zyn, Mother."

Oksana giggled, and I fell in. All three of us giggled like schoolgirls for a moment before we sobered. Oksana glanced up worriedly at the ceiling. “We can’t stay long. This place doesn't look stable. The ceiling could go at any moment.”

“Then let’s grab what we can,” Thalia said, already bundling a second weapon into her belt. “And find a place to use it.”

We each took two of the blaster-looking things, praying they worked like blasters too, but we were out of options.

The dust thickened behind us as we crawled back out of the collapsed space. It was almost like I could feel the walls growing restless again.