Page 41 of Returned to the Vissigroth (The Vissigroths of Leander #6)

D arryck’s roar echoed off the ancient pillars, the sound of a warrior being caged. He paced like a beast barely contained, his hand clutched the hilt of his sword so hard that the leather-wrapped grip creaked under the pressure.

“I swear, if one more male tells me to wait while my mate is hunted like prey, I will rip down this entire snygging mountain!”

“We all want to run after them,” Myccael ground out, his voice was rough, almost guttural as he tried to keep his emotions in check. “But think, damn it. They want us to charge in. They want to separate us. Bleed us out like they did the dragoons.”

“They’ll expect force, not strategy,” I muttered, staring into the tunnel ahead. It felt like the mountain was holding its breath, waiting to see which of us would break first.

Darryck slammed his fist into a pillar. The entire structure groaned. “So what do we do? Wait for them to die? Wait until they’re not bait anymore but corpses?”

“Ney,” I said firmly. “We change the rules.”

The others stilled.

“We send a decoy force through the main passage. Loud, armed, predictable. Let them think we’re biting. Meanwhile, we scout every crevice in this mountain. Silently.

Myccael was already nodding. “Ekkarn can lead the decoy force. Take the loudest, bulkiest males and make it look like we’ve lost all reason. While the rest of us go quiet.”

"We don’t know what lies ahead, but those bastards do. So we don’t play the game they’ve laid out. We scatter the board.” I pressed out.

Darryck growled low in his throat. “Fine. But if one of them dies while we skulk in the dark?—”

He broke off, and silence followed his dying words, heavy, ragged, and broken only by the drip of some unseen leak deeper in the cavern. Darryck had given voice to what Myccael and I were feeling. The urge to go do something, to charge forward, was nearly overwhelming.

“They’re not alone,” Myccael said softly. “They have each other. They're brave and resourceful.”

Darryck thought about it for a moment, then shook his head, "Those creatures will know we're not among the dragoons."

"That's a chance we'll have to take," I admitted the flaw in my plan. "Let's put on some shirts to hide our scales. Take off our baldrics, anything that calls us out as vissigroth. Make the tallest and biggest dragoons wear them."

It wasn't a great plan as far as strategic moves went, but it was all we had. Even the biggest dragoon wasn't close to the size of a vissigroth, let alone a susserayn, but it would have to do. It was our only option as far as I could see.

"They could be watching us right now," Myccael warned.

"I’m sure they are," I agreed. "Dragoons!" I called the troops over and made them huddle around us. Darryck gave a grunt of reluctant agreement, but I saw the twitch of his jaw. He was still barely holding it together. We all were.

The dragoons I’d chosen to impersonate us—Vexan, Holm, and Rojan—shifted uncomfortably in our heavier baldrics. Vexan grunted as he fastened Myccael’s across his chest.

“This thing weighs more than a half-grown nicta.”

“You wear it like it’s your own skin, male,” Myccael said darkly, adjusting the ill-fitting shirt he had received in return.

Some of the seams were already ripping. “We need them to believe we’re charging.

If they can’t tell the difference from a distance, they’ll think we’re exactly where they want us to be. ”

“We might be running through these snygging tunnels for the rest of our lives,” Darryck muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “And never find them. Just rock and shadows and dead ends.”

I couldn’t argue. The mountain was a maze, half-forgotten tech, half-organic. Some of the tunnels curved unnaturally, others narrowed into slits a grown male couldn’t squeeze through. Worse still, the enemy clearly knew this terrain. We were fumbling in a trap designed to be a tomb.

“You’re right,” Myccael said quietly. “But Grandyr didn’t bring us this far to die chasing phantoms.”

I looked over.

He wasn’t talking to us. Not entirely. His eyes were fixed on something distant, some memory none of the rest of us shared.

“Grandyr brought us here,” he said again, louder now. “He called me. He flew me through the stars to this moment. He marked me. Do you think he would waste that? That he would gift me with his fire just to allow me to die in a tunnel?”

Myccael’s voice was steady. Sure. “He will guide us. We just have to follow.”

Darryck made a low sound in his throat, half frustration, half reluctant belief. “Then he’d better hurry the snyg up.”

“Dragoons,” I barked again, snapping the tension. “You three take point. Five more at your backs. You’re loud. You’re mad. You’ve come to gut Eulachs. If you see movement—chase it. But never alone.”

“Zyn!” they echoed.

We split.

Our baldricked decoys took the center path, boots ringing like war drums against the stone. Their voices were a fury of threats and curses, their blades drawn and gleaming under the sputtering torchlight. From a distance, they might just pass as vissigroths too enraged to plan.

The three of us slipped away in their wake, ducking into a narrow vein of tunnel, half-collapsed and shadowed.

“I hate hiding,” Darryck growled under his breath.

“We’re not hiding,” I murmured. “We’re hunting.”

We crouched in the dark, waiting for the clamor of our decoys to echo far enough down the main artery to cover our tracks. The quiet that followed was thick. Heavy. Like the mountain itself was holding its breath. No one moved.

We waited for a few more heartbeats. Long enough for sweat to gather between my shoulder blades. Long enough to start doubting the plan all over again.

Then Myccael flicked his fingers. Forward.

We crept down the side corridor, following the faint scorch marks of old torch brackets and the slick sheen of moss crawling along the seams in the stone. The tunnels here were tighter, older, made by the gods, not carved. Not made for mass movement. Made to confuse, to channel, to trap.

“Here,” Darryck muttered, crouching low.

A twist of blue cloth caught on a jag of stone.

“Oksana,” Myccael whispered, reaching out, but not touching. As if even brushing the fabric would make her slip further away.

“She left it on purpose,” I said. “Same as before.”

“She’s marking their path,” Darryck growled. “Smart seffy.”

We kept following the signs.

Breadcrumbs. That’s what they were. A faint scuff of boot tread on a patch of dry blood. More scraps of cloth, wedged between two stones. A smear on the wall that might have been a handprint—all of them placed, small, precise, and deliberate.

“They’re guiding us,” I said, and the words gave me the strength I didn’t know I needed. It told us that our seffies were alive and fighting.

“Or leading us into a trap,” Darryck muttered.

“Either way,” Myccael said grimly, “we’re going.”

We would not leave this mountain without them. We would get them back or die trying.

We turned down another narrow corridor, this one curving unnaturally like the inside of a ribcage. The air grew damper. The walls shimmered with something like condensation, but thicker. There were faint bioluminescent veins, tracing some long-dead Zuten circuitry that throbbed like a buried heart.

Darryck halted abruptly, one hand raised. My breath stilled as did my body. So did Myccael.

Ahead, barely visible in the wavering light, was another sign. A small knife. Human-made. Wedged into the wall at shoulder height.

“Thalia’s blade,” Darryck whispered.

I recognized it too. The handle was wrapped in the black-and-silver weave she favored. A gift from Myccael, once upon a time. It hadn’t left her hip in rotations.

“She’s marking territory,” I murmured, awe creeping into my voice. “This is some kind of message; they’re not just running. They’re fighting.”

“They’re stalling,” Myccael added. “Giving us time.”

“Let's not waste it,” I said, my voice hard now.

We kept moving, deeper into the mountain’s guts.

The tunnel angled downward, the floor slick with something too dark to be water.

The stench shifted from damp moss to rot and bile, so thick I could taste it.

I exchanged a look with Myccael and Darryck.

We all felt it. The air was wrong here. Heavier. Charged.

As if on command, all three of us stopped, our warrior instincts taking over before we even heard it: a faint scrape of claw on stone.

Then another.

With a loud screech, the breathless silence was shattered.

A shriek echoed down the corridor like a jagged blade as a mass of flesh and fangs barreled from the shadows.

Eulachs. The first one fell from the ceiling, mouth open in a snarl, eyes crazed with bloodlust and filled with the singular stupidity of a predator that has never been beaten.

He didn't stand a chance against my sword, which was already out as I shouted, “Ambush!”

Steel met flesh in a clash that rang through the hollow bones of the mountain. Another Eulach came from the side tunnel, then another from behind. We were surrounded. The three of us turned back-to-back in an instant, a circle of steel and fury.

“Watch for a super,” I barked between gritted teeth. “They hang back. Discharge a Zuten weapon and damn the consequences.”

“I’d rather fight three at once than be on the receiving end of one of those snygging things,” Myccael growled, ducking low as a claw swiped at his head. He drove his blade up through its jaw with one smooth movement.

“They don’t come to fight,” Darryck added darkly, cleaving through the thick skin of one lunging Eulach. “They come to end it.”

The Eulachs were faster than those we’d fought before. Stronger, too. As if they’d evolved overnight. And they weren’t just attacking, they were coordinating, driving us backward toward a funnel point.

“We’re not getting pinned,” I snarled, slamming my boot into the kneecap of a charging beast, then driving my sword into its exposed flank.

“On your left!” Myccael warned, whirling to cover me, but Darryck was already there, his blade slicing clean through the Eulach’s arm at the elbow.

It happened again; in a blink, the air changed. My skin prickled. My senses screamed.

“Watch out!” I barked.

We were still fighting off the first wave of Eulachs when something stepped into the flickering light at the far end of the tunnel.

Larger than the rest. Taller. Its skin was glossier, darker, as if it had been dipped in obsidian and left to harden.

But it wasn’t just its size that turned my blood to ice; it was what it held—a Zuten pulse weapon.

“Super,” I hissed.

The thing raised its arm. The weapon began to hum. I lunged forward, but too many Eulachs were in my way. I would never reach the thing before it discharged the weapon, uncaring that it would kill its own army.

"Cover me," Darryck yelled, and without hesitation, fully trusting that Myccael and I would do just that, he pulled Thalia’s dagger from his belt and threw it. The blade spun end over end, flashing once in the dim light.

It hit the beast just below its throat, straight through its unnatural flesh.

The scream that followed was not of pain; it was of fury. It reverberated off every wall. Pierced bone. The ground shook beneath our feet.

And worse—i t was echoed.

A howling broke out throughout the tunnels. Dozens of voices. All in the same unholy timbre. As if killing this one had wounded them all. The super Eulach convulsed, then collapsed. The pulse weapon sparked uselessly as it hit the ground.

The other Eulachs seemed to falter, but we didn’t. As one, we drove forward, cutting, cleaving, snarling. They tried to scatter, but there was no escape. Not this time. When the last one hit the floor, Myccael bent over, breathing hard.

“We lost the element of surprise,” he said flatly.

Darryck pulled Thalia’s blade from the corpse and wiped it clean on his sleeve. “I don't think we had it in the first place. They must have been watching us all along.”

I looked down at the pulse weapon, picking it up. “No more sneaking,” I decided. “We hunt now. These… things. The supers. They’re the real threat.”

“You think that scream we heard… is it like a hive link?” Myccael asked, tightening his grip on his sword.

“Possibly. Or something worse,” I answered. “Some kind of shared neural pain. Doesn’t matter. We’ve drawn blood.”

“And they felt it,” Darryck agreed smugly. "Let's find our seffies."

We didn’t get far. The tunnel widened into a broken, ancient hall, pillars half-collapsed, ceiling split by time and rot. The air felt wrong again. Too still. Too clean. My gut twisted.

“Wait—” I started, but it was too late. Nine shapes emerged from the shadows, not scuttling like Eulachs but walking. Upright and fluid. Too large for natural movement, and too precise for beasts.

Supers.

All of them.

And they were angry.

Each one held a Zuten weapon that pulsed with eerie blue veins, glowing like they were alive.

Darryck snarled. “We should have brought snygging blasters.”

“They won’t fire with us and them being this close,” Myccael muttered, his eyes locked on the weapons. “Too much risk. Even they wouldn’t survive a full discharge at this range.”

“They wouldn't discharge pulse weapons,” I agreed. “But these look more like blasters, so cover!” I shouted the last word.

We dove behind a fallen slab of stone just as the supers raised their arms. The first volley lit up the darkness.

Searing beams of blue-white fire cut through the air, so hot that it turned dust to vapor.

The sound wasn’t thunder, it was pressure ripping through space, a hum that drilled into bone.

Sparks exploded as the rock in front of us cracked.

“They’re taking down our cover,” Myccael growled. “One layer at a time.”

Chunks of stone flew over our heads. I ducked lower, shielding my face as debris scattered like shrapnel.

“We’re sitting in a snygging trap,” Darryck spat, blade drawn but held loosely at his side, useless against blasters. “We can’t reach them with swords. Can’t even stand without getting lit up.”

Another blast hit the rock, sending a spray of molten stone over my shoulder. My scales sizzled.

“That wall has maybe another minute,” I said. “If that.”

“We need to move,” Darryck said. “But we’ll be ripped apart if we charge.”

I peeked around the edge just long enough to see one of the supers recalibrating its weapon, adjusting the energy core with sleek, inhuman efficiency.

Myccael cracked his neck. “Let’s teach them what happens when prey bites back.”