Like… I’m not getting the whole picture. I can sense it, now that I know what to look for. The dragon’s head was turning slowly as he spoke, scanning the rising stones like he was trying to peer through them.

  He stopped, looking west, to his left. There. Something’s masked.

  “How close?” Bonner demanded, taking a quick step towards the closest column.

  A brief pause, then…

  Close! Ryn snarled, the claymore ringing out of its sheath in his hand.

  The mage didn’t hesitate. With a string of incomprehensible words he reached out and took hold of an uneven protrusion of rock along the side of the stalagmite. His entire arm pulsed with a faint green light, and with a crunch he tore away a piece of rubble the size of Declan’s head. At once his words shifted, coming harsher, and the stone started to glow as the old man enchanted it with heat.

  “Cover your eyes!” he shouted.

  Then he hurled the small boulder into the air, in the direction Ryn had indicated, throwing it with no more apparent effort than a child lobbing a toy ball.

  Declan, Ester, and Ryn did as they were told in the nick time, shielding their faces with raised arms just as the thing arched and fell. There was a flash of light, then the BOOM of an explosion that shivered across the air and shook water and dust free of the ceiling above. Declan dropped his hand, watching with a jolt of fear as a rain of white-hot gravel thudded and plunked in a wide spread into the darkness.

  The echoing sound of the eruption did nothing to hide the screech of surprised pain, sharp as a sword drawn against solid ice, nor the clambering scuffles of something large scrambling away into the depths of the cavern.

  There was no mistaking that call, that keening, piercing shriek. It rang through Declan’s ears, bringing with it a cold spasm of terror that had every muscle in his body tense in fearful anticipation.

  None of them spoke for a long time after the sounds of the creature disappearing into the blackness faded. They stood, unmoving, to a one straining to make out any sign that the thing was turning around, was coming back to challenge them. The only noise came from Orsik and Eyera, whose throaty growls rumbled in the stillness, the warg’s hackles lifted and yellowish teeth bared in the direction Bonner had thrown his heat-woven stone.

  “Well, I suppose we know why the witch wanted us down here, now,” Ester finally managed weakly, trying and failing to infuse some light-heartedness in the statement.

  No one answered her. Declan would have liked to, would have liked to meet her attempt at keeping their disposition positive, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  All of you, step away. Ryn was next to speak, and he made no attempt at hiding the gravity of his tone as he sheathed his great blade again with a snap and held it out for Bonner to take in both hands. I’m going to turn.

  Not a word of protest arose, and Declan, Ester, and the old man all hurried away from the dragon, the half-elf coaxing the warg along with them. The moment they were clear, Ryn’s form shifted and expanded, heavy, corded muscle boiling into being, wings sprouting from his back like sales from some black ship. Stone columns cracked and shattered under his swelling bulk, the closest stalagmites giving way to crumble beneath massive, clawed feet.

  Within seconds, Ryn’s rh’eem had been replaced with the gargantuan presence of his born form.

  We need to get moving. Quickly. The dragon’s great head rolled around to fix them with a single eye, white-gold depths gleaming among the floating orbs they were now almost level with. If it comes back, it won’t be to observe us.

  “Which way, though?” Declan called up. “I doubt we’ll find any kind of current, in a place as big as this.”

  In answer, Ryn lifted a leg to point with a clawed toe the diameter of a strong man’s thigh. I can sense the east wall. It’s not as far into the dark as it might seem. The only way is forward, unless any of you think it’s a good idea to go west?

  As one the other three all looked to the left, in the direction the sounds of the beast had vanished.

  “Lead on,” Ester managed to get out first, this time achieving the faintest hint of false cheer.

  Ryn didn’t bother trying for stealth, as they moved. Declan supposed it was for the best, given the dragon’s size and the sheer impossibility of him managing the confines of the cave quietly in any fashion, but he still flinched every time the huge, surging form knocked down another half-dozen columns of stone with every lumbering step. It made the going easier than it might otherwise have been, though, especially after Bonner’s shouted suggestion they take to Orsik and Eyera’s backs. As it was Declan’s first time doing so, he wasn’t displeased when Ester clambered up first, then lent him a hand to help him mount the pack-laden male and settle into the space behind her. Given the circumstance of their situation, however, he found himself regretfully only faintly capable of enjoying the pressure of the woman’s upper back against his chest. If anything, he was aware more of the tension in her shoulders as Orsik bounded after the dragon, and of the nervous glances she kept shooting off to their left.

  She, like him, knew all-too-well the company they now kept in the dark…

  Despite the added weight of riders, the warg demonstrated themselves indeed more adept at managing the ruinous path left in Ryn’s thunderous wake than Declan, Bonner, or even Ester would have been capable of on foot. A lifetime among the ragged crags of the Tears proved their worth as the animals leapt and bound nimbly over the scattered rubble, clawed paws finding purchase even on the slick stone. They kept pace with the dragon without much trouble, and Declan was surprised to find the experience not at all inferior to riding a horse. Orsik’s ribs were narrower, the ridge of his spine a little prominent in places that would have done better with more padding, but this mild discomfort was made up for by the male’s agility and deftness. It was a different sort of ride, Orsik’s loping gait swelling up and down more than the stable pace of a stallion’s, but it was one Declan thought he could get used to.

  Then Ester looked west yet again, and he remembered what it was they were running from.

  For whatever reason, nothing leapt at them from the forest of stalagmites in the time they kept moving. For a good ten minutes Ryn continued his cacophonous rampage through the chamber, Bonner—riding a little ways behind them on Eyera—carefully keeping his floating orbs of light even with their progress. The crushing falling of the stone became monotonous, and Declan eventually tuned it out, focusing instead on studying the unchanging panorama of their surroundings. It bothered him—more than he was willing to say out loud—that the beast hadn't fallen upon them yet. They’d caught it unawares, finding it out despite its masked presence, and the shock of Bonner’s spell showering it with molten shrapnel might have explained the thing’s initial fleeing.

  But now… Declan would never have expected patience from such a creature. Not without a specific purpose.

  “It's a trap,” he grumbled, voicing the suspicion he’d been developing for several minutes.

  Unsurprisingly, Ester nodded from her place in front of him, not even bothering to turn around. “Without a doubt. Otherwise it would have been on us by now.”

  Declan grunted in agreement, not bothering to ask the woman if she thought Ryn and her father were aware of it. If he’d figured it out, he was damn sure those two had done so the moment the beast ran away in the first place.

  “Think they have a plan?” he asked instead, fingers kneading the hilt of his bastard sword—still bare in one hand at his side while they rode—as he sought any way to calm his nerves.

  “Damn well hope so!” she half-shouted back as the crashing sound of Ryn sweeping a smaller line of pillars out of his way with a clawed foot drowned out most all sound in its echoes. “If not, at least we know we’re less likely to starve to death!”

  Declan snorted at the black humor. “There’s more of your father in you than meets the eyes, if you’re going to start making jests like that.”

  Ester laughed hollowly, shifting her weight with him to accommodate a swift turn from Orsik as the warg managed the newly felled rubble with ease. “It comes out when I’ve nothing left to lose.”

  Declan chuckled, and would have said more, but stopped himself when the male came up short beneath them. Ryn had quit his advance, and with something between relief and apprehension Declan saw that they had reached a sort of narrowing in the cavern, a place where the entirety of the ceiling shifted drastically downward in a single, colossal slab of broken earth. The ground before the dragon, too, was equally changed, falling away drastically into blind shadows. Before anyone could ask it of him, Bonner brought down some score of his lights, guiding them through the narrowed gap, illuminating a line of heavy stalactites which had fused with the closer stone of the ground to bar their path.

  “Shall I clear the way?” the mage asked of the dragon.

  Ryn snorted an almost-amused refusal.

  Then he made a heavy turn and, with a barreling sweep of his ridged tail, smashed several of the obstructing columns aside to leave a wide, jagged opening for them in the settling dust.

  Get through. Quickly. I think it’s following us.

  The dragon’s words had the hairs on Declan’s arms standing on end, and neither he nor Ester managed to keep themselves from shifting around to peer into the darkness at their back. As though to confirm Ryn’s words, Orsik himself half-turned beneath them to growl in the direction they’d come, his sister joining in a moment later.

  “I’d say the beasts would agree,” Bonner said in a strained voice. “I’ll go first. You two—” he gave Declan and Ester a pointed look “—follow as close behind as you can. Ryn will watch our rear.”

  They nodded in understanding, Ester bringing Orsik’s attention around again with a click of her tongue and a calming pat to his side while Bonner led Eyera carefully around Ryn’s foreleg, approaching the breach. There was a pause, then he and the female vanished over the edge of the cracked ledge, the sound of the warg’s claws digging against more unseen stone. Ester coaxed Orsik forward next, and after they’d passed the dragon they found themselves looking down over a steep incline of some twenty feet, ending where a waiting Bonner looked up at them from Eyera’s back in the glow of his lights.

  Orsik only took a moment to paw along the lip of the rise, finding some ideal path invisible to human eyes, then leapt down in three loping bounds.

  They came to a skidding halt by Bonner, along the slick slant of a wide expanse of relatively clear stone. It was as though the world had been broken and shifted by some incomprehensible force of god or nature, the entire space around them—ceiling included—angled like part of the earth had shifted an untold time ago. The moisture that had formed the wall of caging stalactites Ryn saw too had not held firm, here, carving instead into the rock as the condensation of millennia ran along the slant. Shallow channels had formed, for which Declan was immediately grateful, because they offered Orsik some purchase on the wet surface.

  Otherwise, he had a sinking feeling they might just have slipped and slid right into the black, gaping chasm that waited, like the entrance to a hellish abyss, not twenty feet down the incline.

  “Gods above,” Ester hissed, catching sight of the massive pit as well. Declan sympathized with her alarm. Without the bristling presence of the stalagmites rising all around them, even the bare few winged orbs Bonner had drawn through onto this side of the break offered decent lighting, but within their glow the great opening did not end. It extended, a sea of nothing, into absolute emptiness, as if whatever earth might once have been there had been consumed in a dreadful, devouring void.

  “Earthquake,” Bonner told them, voice reverberating nightmarishly in this new, more-open part of the cavern. He’d pulled Eyera up carefully beside Orsik, and was himself eyeing the chasm. “Terrible one, at that. Only thing that could create a place like this. Looks like it swallowed half the damn mountain.” He looked up, cupping a hand over his mouth to call out to Ryn above them. “Be careful coming down. I’m not sure how stable this shelf is.”

  Declan had never heard of an “earthquake” before, but he could deduce the concept, and Bonner’s statement offered no soothing of his rapidly-fraying nerves. He glanced down, eyeing the stream-cut ground beneath them until the crunch of stone lifted his attention in time to see Ryn struggling to pull himself through the opening in the break. The space was just wide enough to accommodate his massive bulk with his wings tucked tightly to his side, and the remnants of the broken stalactites gave way as he wriggled and jerked, tearing furrows five feet long into the slope and ceiling while he fought to gain traction.

  Then, with a final snarl and heave, a good chunk of the ledge beneath him broke off in a torrent of shale and gravel, and Ryn half-scrambled, half-bounded down the slope to join them with several heavy thuds of his clawed feet. Coming to a stop, the dragon pulled himself up to look around at their five. He seemed rather pleased with his success, right up until he caught sight of Bonner’s bone-white face.

  What? he asked in alarm, looking down at the stone beneath him, where the others were staring in unified horror. What is it?

  None of them answered, Declan, Ester, and Bonner all holding their breath in fear.

  When they didn’t plummet into oblivion, there was a collective exhalation of relief.

  “Bloody oversized reptile!” Bonner seethed, some color coming back to his cheeks. “How, under the eyes of any god, did that constitute ‘being careful’?!”

  Ryn snorted, and looked about to answer when he froze. His head swiveling to face the darkness further along the angle of the shelf, to the north. He stilled, his focus distinctly aimed.

  People? he asked after a moment, turning a little and taking a step towards the edge of the light. I feel like there are people nearb—?

  Every inch of the dragon stiffened, then. His head flung back in their direction, white-gold eyes wide as they looked down the slope, spined ears suddenly spread. In the same instant, Ester gasped and groped for an arrow, bringing her bow around Declan and leaning out to draw it in the direction of the open lip of the chasm behind them.

  The dragon’s howled warning came only an instant of a second later.

  AWAY! AWAY FROM THE EDGE!

  It was likely only Orsik and Eyera’s instincts that saved them, following this. They, too, must have heard whatever sound had given away the ambush, because together the siblings leapt and flung themselves about-face just as a dark, twisted shape pulled itself over the edge of the abyss with terrifying speed. It surged up onto the incline so quickly that Declan at first caught only the merest glimpse of clawed hands and large, leathery wings in the glow of Bonner’s light, his mind struggling to register the other details of the monster.

  Then the drey was lunging for them with that familiar, horrible screech, and Declan had a fraction of a second to take the beast in in truth.

  It was simultaneously much like the horror he had watched Ryn and Bonner fight to the death over a month ago now, and yet completely different. This drey did not bear the oversized wolf’s head of its vanquished kin, sporting instead the features of a massive, antlered elk. It was heavier than the other had been, too—much heavier—its manish chest five feet broad and striped with brown fur that descended to cover its hoofed legs, behind which curled that horrible, barbed tail. Scaled arms of a blue-red sheen rippled with muscle, each limb more than a foot thick as it reached with its taloned fingers for the group, and its cruel, savage teeth were the same as the wereyn’s, uneven fangs that were too-large for its mouth.

  Despite the differences, however, in the drey’s eyes Declan saw the same hungry evil, the same pale, colorless savagery.

  WHAM.

  Ryn, moving with what could only have been all the speed in the world, slammed into the beast with a sound akin to flesh striking stone. In one moment it had been feet away from crushing Ester’s head with an outstretched hand, then in the next it was flung aside, smashing into the sloped wall of the break nearby with a chilling scream of angry pain.

  There was the rumbling warning of Ryn taking in a flooding breath, and Declan got a hand up just in time, covering his eyes and shutting them as tight as he could.

  The rumbling howl of the dragonfire, so close the heat struck them all with enough force to send their clothes rippling, was deafening in the echo of the chamber. It set Declan’s head to pounding, and he cursed as he blinked away the blinding light he hadn't quite been able to block out, struggling to regain his vision in the hopes of finding the drey’s bones tumbling along the shelf into the chasm.

  There was no such luck, of course.

  Despite its size, the beast proved as quick as its long-dead brethren. It had managed to take flight, the fur of its legs barely smoking, and was darting and dipping away until it spun to hover tauntingly over the emptiness of the pit.

  BONNER, PROTECT THEM! Ryn bellowed, barreling forward while his own wings stretched and spread. I’LL HELP YOU AS SOON AS I CAN!

  Then he was off, taking to the air after the elk-headed creature

  “Help us?!” Declan shouted in confusion over the reverberating keen of the monster as it dove to meet the dragon. “Help us with wha—?!”

  And then the crunching clatter of falling stone reached him through the ringing in his ears, and Declan whirled on Orsik’s back to look up, up the incline, where a new presence had knocked loose some of the rubble left in Ryn’s destructive wake. Too late he recalled that their hurry through the cavern had not been one of choice, but of necessity. They’d been running, after all, struggling to put as much distance between them and the creature which had been stalking them through the dark.

  And now that second monster was gazing down on them, pallid eyes affixed on their grouped forms from within a massive ram’s head, crooked fangs bared in wicked anticipation.