Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
“And where was Raptor’s crew?”
“Above.” My voice grows faint as more oppressive feelings sweep over me. The ghosts aren’t done talking, and I have no choice but to listen. They babble in my ears, voices frantic. Cold touches brush all over my skin.
One ghost is insistent, drowning out all the others. The voice gets louder than all the rest, and I shake my head, but it keeps pushing, shouting in that strange, unearthly babble of the dead. With it comes a flurry of images, and I realize whoever this ghost is, he’s trying to show me something. I relax…and dozens of images flash through my mind.
The room grows deathly cold. My teeth chatter. More images crash through my mind, flooding in like a surging tide. Tunnel after tunnel, some empty, some not, races through my thoughts. I see where the dead are lying, I see artifacts half-buried, I see—
A hand smacks me across the cheek, jarring me back to the present. “Ow!”
“Stay with us,” Rooster says, his face looming over mine.
I jerk backward, touching my cheek. “Why do you keep slapping me?”
“You sagged and looked as if you were going to fall over. And then your eyes rolled back in your head, and all we saw were the whites.”
“And you shook,” Smythe adds, giving me a wary look.
“Oh.” I rub a hand over my face, trying to scrub the flood of thoughts from my mind. “I just…I’m not very good with this yet. One of the ghosts is more persistent than the others. He’s pushing a lot of things into my mind. It’s hard to focus.”
“Are you all right?”
I nod. “I…I think I know a way out.”
“You do?” Rooster is shocked.
I touch my aching head, as if that will somehow help my thoughts clarify. I’m shown the same image again, of a thin wall between the tunnels. They’re like a warren hollowing out the ground, the tunnels of the Everbelow, and this one snakes on for a stretch and then comes very close to another tunnel.
A tunnel where they’ve been digging in the wrong place to find the artifact trove that’s very close nearby. It’s an old collapsed temple, and as I stare into the darkness, it forms in front of my mind’s eye. “Oh.”
“What?” Rooster demands. “Is it ratlings?”
I shake my head. I don’t know if what I’m being shown is still there, or if it’s an old memory long past and has been cleaned out. But the spirits seem to think it’s all still there. In fact, they’re urging me to go, their thoughts pushing and full of insistence.
“Why do you want me to go and find the treasure? Isn’t it your people’s?”
“I’m sorry, did you just say ‘treasure’?” Rooster asks, but his voice is faint. I’m too focused on the dead in the air around me.
A cold, spectral hand brushes over the torn sash on my shoulder. Ah. It’s not the ghost of some ancient Prellian, but an artificer who died in these tunnels and wants to show me what he was never able to claim.
“We have to get Raptor first,” I say to the air around me. “Does our tunnel cut to his? Or another?”
The vision cuts away, showing me the tunnel up from us, and then hordes of ratlings, biting and chewing on flesh. I scream, clawing at my clothing, as the vision fades.
I jerk back to myself just in time to see Rooster raising his hand again. “Do not!”
“You were jabbering,” he says, frowning at me.
“I was being shown the way. The tunnels are parallel to each other for a while, but this one rises up deeper in, and the one above us lowers, and so there’s a place we can break through.”
“And that’s what made you scream?” Rooster asks, doubtful.
“No, I screamed because it’s full of ratlings, and I think that’s what killed the ghost who’s helping me.” I shiver, rubbing my neck with my good hand. “But that means there’s probably a lot of ratlings in there yet, and that’s why the thieves sent Raptor and his group in. They want it cleared out and made safe. That’s where we need to go.”
“I don’t know that any of us have experience with ratlings,” Smythe says, his hand on his sword belt. “We’re enforcers in charge of keeping people in line, not animals.”
“Ratlings were people once,” Rooster comments. “Cursed people, condemned by the gods. But it doesn’t matter. If we want out, we must go through that tunnel. And if you’re not ready for ratlings…” He pauses and eyes our group. “Get ready.”
Forty-Nine
Raptor
It’s not going well.
I’ve never seen so many ratlings in a single tunnel. When we do run across one of their nests, they’re always clustered in large packs, but this feels like an entire city. Ratlings don’t fight fair, either. They climb all over us, biting and scratching and trying to get under clothing and behind shields. One falls and two more take its place. Which is common with ratlings, and yet most times a group can get their backs to a wall or move to a narrower tunnel to mitigate just how many attack.