Page 32 of The Delver (The Vrix #2)
“A fork in the road,” Callie said as they stood in front of two branching tunnels. “Which way does the wind lead you, big guy?”
Urkot grunted, extending his forelegs to the sides. He’d followed the air current thus far, knowing it would take them to some sort of opening to the surface eventually, but he felt it from both branches here.
The tunnel on the left was narrower, with a lower ceiling, and the airflow… The difference was slight, but it was weaker.
“This way,” he said, stepping into the right tunnel. Callie walked beside him.
As they proceeded, the passage widened, and a strange, unsettling sense of familiarity teased at Urkot’s mind. He paused when they reached an opening on the tunnel wall. Only a moment’s examination told him it wasn’t a natural occurrence, but a deliberately shaped entryway.
Urkot moved to the doorway and peered inside, holding his crystal up to shed light into the chamber.
“What is it?” Callie whispered.
The chamber’s shape, its size, the little alcoves and shelves carved into the stone, it was all familiar to him. Tattered, dirty, threadbare silk cloth dangled from the wall and lay crumpled on the dusty floor in the corner. He doubted even Rekosh would’ve been able to guess the age of that fabric.
“This was a den,” Urkot said.
“Spiritstriders?”
He heard the fear in her voice, and reached out to her, settling a hand upon her lower back. “I do not think so. This is the same as the dens in Takarahl.”
“The statues, these dens… Did shadowstalkers live here?”
They backed away from the chamber, and as they continued along the tunnel, Urkot replied, “Perhaps. A big time ago. The first queen, Takari, led our kind to Takarahl from our old home, but the stories do not say where that was.”
More dens stood along the tunnel’s walls. A few had scraps of silk hanging at the entryways, though the fabric looked like it would crumble to dust if touched.
“I wonder if the thornskulls know this place exists,” Callie said. “It’s so close to Kaldarak. If there were shadowstalkers here, there must be some history of them. There must be some stories.”
“We will ask when we return.”
Striding along that tunnel remained odd for him. In some ways, it felt like being back in Takarahl—a Takarahl that had been abandoned and lost to time. It filled him with a sorrow he could not quite explain, balanced only by his deep curiosity.
Had Zurvashi retained power, would this have been Takarahl’s fate? Would she have bled the shadowstalkers dry until nothing remained in the city’s dark tunnels, not even their spirits?
Faint light spilled into the tunnel from a few of the dens where crystals grew in veins on the walls.
Urkot peered into one to find a wall and part of the ceiling collapsed.
Glowing crystals were scattered in the rubble, bathing part of the chamber in soft blue light while leaving the rest shrouded in shadow.
That blue seemed cold and harsh here, where it only served to emphasize the chamber’s emptiness. All it could truly call attention to was absence—of joy, of life.
Was this what it felt like to be a ghost? Trudging through empty darkness and finding no warmth or solace in the rare patches of light, only more nothingness?
With those heavy, uneasy thoughts churning in his mind as he and Callie neared a bend in the tunnel, Urkot almost didn’t notice the light scraping of steps from ahead.
Callie stopped half an instant before him, bringing him to an abrupt halt.
Something growled from around the bend. It was followed by guttural voices and scuffling, scrabbling sounds that echoed along the tunnel, drawing nearer.
Urkot met Callie’s gaze. Her eyes were rounded with fear, and he knew her thoughts had leapt to the same place as his—the spiritstrider that had set upon them in the dark.
Hearts pounding, he stuffed his crystal into his pouch, snatched Callie off her feet, and clutched her to his chest as he retreated.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him without question.
He gritted his teeth as he moved, his leg muscles straining as he struggled not to make a sound.
The spiritstriders, speaking to one another in those harsh voices, continued to get closer.
Urkot entered the first chamber he came upon without hesitation, finding himself in the den with the rockfall.
He hurried deeper inside. Callie curled up in his arms as he sank low in the space between the rubble and the wall, making himself as small as possible and hiding her body in the shadow of his own.
His claspers instinctually hooked around her hip to draw her more securely against him.
His markings glowed in response to the crystals.
The sounds from the tunnel drew nearer. Two distinct voices, arguing in words he could not understand; clicking echoing along the tunnel and within the chamber; limbs stomping and scraping stone.
All he could do was hope the spiritstriders wouldn’t enter this den, and that if they did, their eyesight was poor enough that they would mistake his dark hide for more shadowy rubble and his markings for clusters of crystal.
It was a struggle to keep his strained breathing quiet, and his hearts would not slow no matter how hard he willed them to do so.
The sounds from the tunnel now came from just beyond the entryway.
He held his mate yet tighter.
Please, let them keep striding…
There was another harsh exchange between those guttural voices. One word was repeated frequently, sounding very much like dak —no in vrix—but Urkot still couldn’t make out much else.
A spiritstrider hissed, and the sounds of movement in the tunnel intensified.
Figures came into view, indistinct in the scant light that reached the corridor, locked in a struggle that made them seem more like a jumble of mismatched limbs than two individual beings.
Urkot could tell only that one of the vrix was larger than the other.
The spiritstriders wrestled, slamming into the tunnel walls and scraping legs and claws over stone. When one struck the doorway with its hindquarters, fine dust and tiny pebbles rained from the top of the opening.
Urkot offered a silent prayer to the Delver.
No more rockfalls. Please.
The spiritstriders’ struggle swept the pair out of view, farther along the tunnel. Relief sparked in Urkot before he could quash it. The spiritstriders had passed; he and Callie just needed to wait a little while before moving on. The immediate danger was over, and this den was safe.
An agonized snarl from the corridor sent a chill to Urkot’s core.
The larger of the two spiritstriders stumbled backward into the chamber.
A female—four arms, four legs, no claspers, standing three segments tall.
There was a leanness to her frame that was not common in shadowstalker and thornskull females, accentuating the bones beneath her hide in some places and her powerful, sinewy muscles in others.
In the light of the crystals, her pale hide took on a bluish glow of its own.
She clutched a lower arm to her chest. Dark blood flowed from beneath the hand she’d clamped on her forearm. Her clawed mandibles spread wide, and she hissed at the doorway.
The smaller spiritstrider, a male, darted into the chamber, launching himself directly at the female. The speed and suddenness of his attack made Callie flinch and Urkot’s leg hairs stand up.
With a roar, the female fell. Before she’d even crashed to the floor, the male, whose glowing hide was crisscrossed with scars, was already winding the silk rope coiled in his hands around her limbs.
Despite her size, the female’s struggles seemed only to tangle her further in the silk. Within heartbeats, she was bound by arms, legs, and neck, the male holding the extra rope taut. She growled and snapped the air with her mandible claws, muscles straining as she fought the silk.
Growling, the male pulled on the rope, forcing the female’s head back. His slit opened, and his white stem emerged. Using the silk rope to control her and keep her mandibles away, he forcefully mounted the female, latching his claspers around her waist. A low groan escaped him as he thrust hard.
Callie’s breath hitched, and she hurriedly but quietly covered her mouth and nose. Urkot stroked her with his fingers, reminding her that he was there as his claspers clutched her.
Tangling his limbs around the female, the male spiritstrider quickened his thrusts, breathing harshly. His claws bit into her hide, producing dark drops of blood that gleamed in the dim light. The female snarled in pain and impotent fury.
“ Kir’ani, kir’ani, kir’ani,” the male rasped over and over again.
Mine, mine, mine.
As the spiritstriders rutted, their grunts and growls echoing off the walls, Callie trembled against Urkot. The savageness and hostility of this mating was so far removed from what he and Callie had shared in the grotto that he couldn’t consider it the same act.
Binding, conquering, and claiming were instinctual for vrix, but amongst shadowstalkers and thornskulls, they were urges to be explored with a willing mate.
What he was witnessing now…this was the old way.
A way that had produced so many cautionary stories, that had left countless males maimed or dead.
This was what Zurvashi had tried to revive in Takarahl through the High Claiming—this battle for dominance, this deadly game of conquerors and conquered.
This manner of mating that saw vrix acting like little more than beasts taking whatever they wanted, that encouraged violence and killing so only the strong could produce broodlings.
It was what she’d wanted of Ketahn—for him to prove his strength, his worthiness, by conquering her. To prove he was a mate worthy of a queen…or die trying.