Chapter 111: Cave crawlers

The hall of phoenixes had never been meant for running. We tore through it anyway, the carved wings blurring on either side. Behind us, the mountain kept shaking. Every few seconds a fresh boom rolled through the rock, closer than the last, as if some enormous creature were pounding on the front door.

"Where?" I shouted.

"The last phoenix!" Jiang Wei called back, clutching his compendium tightly to his chest, his eyes wide with panic. "The one with its head turned! The old sect locks always hide in the one that breaks the pattern!"

I saw it at once. Among hundreds of phoenixes with their wings spread wide and their heads raised to the sky, one had its beak tucked against its shoulder, as if it were sleeping. Qing Yan reached it first. She laid her palm against the carving, and her fire flickered into the stone.

"It recognizes the seal," she gasped, her voice strained. "Barry, it’s opening!"

The wall groaned and split. A narrow staircase spiraled down into the dark, and a damp wind rushed up from below.

"Wounded first," I said. "Then Jiang Wei. Lu Chen, you’re next."

"I can go last," Lu Chen said stiffly, his hand gripping his sword.

"You can go when I tell you to."

For a moment I thought he would argue. His jaw worked, and his eyes burned with a quiet resentment. Then the mountain boomed again, and a crack raced across the ceiling above us. He dropped his hand and ducked into the stairwell without a word.

Qing Yan followed him, then paused on the second step and looked back at me. "You’re coming?"

"I’m coming. Go."

I was the last one in. Before I pulled the wall close behind me, I looked once more down the length of the hall. Across the far end, the first hall’s crystals had gone dark, and I could hear a sound like a thousand steps hitting the floor at once. I caught a glimpse of red armor and a flash of black glaives.

Then the wall closed, and the dark swallowed us whole. The tunnel was long, It wound downward for what felt like a mile, then leveled out into a rough-hewn passage barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Water dripped from the ceiling.

Qing Yan kept a small flame hovering over her shoulder, her new fans tucked into her belt. Every few steps she touched the hilt of the golden one, as if making sure it was still there.

"They’re quiet," she said after a while, her voice barely a whisper.

"The fans?"

"They feel... patient. Like they’re listening." She laughed softly, embarrassed. "That sounds foolish."

"Not in this world." I glanced sideways at her."How does it feel?"

"Like having my sect with me again." Her voice dropped. "I keep expecting my teacher to walk around the corner and tell me my posture is wrong."

"Was it?"

"Always." She smiled, a small, real smile, and bumped her shoulder against my arm. "She would have hated you."

"Everyone starts out hating me. It’s a gift."

"It is not a gift. It is a character flaw."

"I prefer to think of it as a talent for first impressions."

She rolled her eyes, but her hand found mine in the dark, and her fingers were warm. We walked on. Ahead, Jiang Wei had slowed to a crawl, studying the walls as he went. Every dozen paces he stopped to run a finger over a mark scratched into the rock, muttering to himself. The two survivors trailed behind him, still pale but moving steadily, the healing pills doing their work.

Lu Chen walked at the very back of the group, a few paces behind everyone, his head down.

I kept glancing at him. He hadn’t said a word since the hall. He hadn’t even looked at Qing Yan. It should have been a relief, and instead it nagged at me, like a splinter I couldn’t find.

He’s sulking, I told myself. Let him sulk.

The first attack came without warning. A low scraping noise came from somewhere ahead, and I stopped so fast that Qing Yan bumped into my back. The sound repeated, slow and wet, like something being dragged.

"Cave crawlers," Jiang Wei whispered, his face tight. "They nest in old tunnels. They hunt by vibration, and they usually travel in packs."

"How many?"

"If it’s a nest? Dozens."

"Wonderful," I said. "Everyone behind me."

Then the walls came alive. They poured out of cracks in the ceiling and holes in the floor, pale, many-legged things the size of large dogs, their bodies armored in overlapping plates and their mouths ringed with serrated teeth. They had no eyes. Every one of them turned toward us at once, their feelers quivering, and then the whole tide surged forward .

I stepped into the front of the tunnel and let my aura out. It wasn’t the big, blinding flare I had used on the stone cage. Instead I drew it close around my arms and fists, tight and dense, and I hit the first crawler with a straight right that crushed its shell and sent its body flying into the three behind it.

Then I felt something stir, a faint warmth along the inside of my wrist, right where the dark pattern lay. The scales there seemed to prickle, as if they were waiting to be asked.

Not now, I thought. Not with everyone watching.

But a crawler leaped for my throat, and I didn’t have time to think. I threw up my left arm out of pure instinct, and its jaws closed around my forearm.

I felt the teeth bite down. I looked down. Across my forearm, from wrist to elbow, a sheet of black diamond scales had flickered into existence, dense and smooth and glinting in the glow of the moss. The crawler’s jaws were locked around them, and the teeth were chipping. A second later, it let go with a confused whine.

I hit it with my other fist, and it stopped whining.

"Barry!" Qing Yan shouted. "Your arm!"