The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

I regain consciousness underwater. My lungs burn. My head throbs. And all around me, the water rushes. But I don’t panic. I have come closer to drowning and do not fear it. Again, thanks to Ninnis.

Just as I decide to swim with the current, turning my body forward, the river falls out from under me. As I flip, head over heels, I see snapshots of the river, now an endless waterfall, turning into a broad, fine mist next to me. I see water far below, frothing with white where the waterfall meets it. This water stretches out and away further than I can see, but there is a shoreline to the left and something else. Something large.

I focus on the approaching water. I vaguely remember hearing about someone jumping off a bridge into water to kill himself. I’ll reach terminal velocity—one hundred twenty miles per hour—in about fifteen seconds. At that speed the water will feel like solid stone. I’ve been falling for six seconds.

Ten seconds into the fall, there is no more time to calculate. I strike the water, feet first (this saves my life) and plunge deep under water. The impact doesn’t kill me or break any bones, but it does fog my mind nearly to the point of unconsciousness. I must have forgotten to breathe while falling because my lungs scream for air. I know the surface must be near, but in the weightless dark I don’t know which way is up and with my lungs empty, I lack the buoyancy to float.

I’ll float just fine once my dead body fills with gas, I think.

I swim. I have no choice. But I choose the wrong direction. When my head strikes the hard bottom, I know this for sure. Spots dance in my vision, possibly from lack of oxygen, possibly from the impact. Either way, I’m disoriented.

My body fails me, going limp. My mouth is close to opening. My vision fades. I slide to the bottom, which now feels like a soft cushion and use the last of my energy to clutch my mouth shut. I feel water rushing over me, pulling my hair over my face. And then, once again, darkness claims me.




I open my eyes and see a rock cut so perfectly at a ninety degree angle that I know it’s manmade. This thought keeps me from closing my eyes again, despite how badly I want to. I’m battered from head to toe. My lungs hurt. Muscles I didn’t know I had cry out in pain. But the carved stone is a mystery my mind cannot ignore.

After squeezing my eyes shut a few times, I can focus beyond what lies right in front of me. I twist my head, turning it down an incline of several more angled cuts. A massive staircase. Each step is four feet deep and just as tall. The stone steps descend into what I can only describe as a lake. It reaches out to the dark horizon which sweeps up and over me, concealing the cavern ceiling that must be a half mile high. Maybe more.

I roll over, sit up and freeze. A pair of black eyes stares at me from the water. Unlike most of the monsters living underground, I recognize this one. It’s a Weddell seal with an unmistakable patchwork of dark brown and beige skin. Exactly how I can identify this creature, I can’t recall, but the only thing that makes me doubt its identity is that we’re far underground.

“How did you get here?” I ask it.

It responds by sliding back into the dark water.

Something about seeing it move triggers a faded memory. Not from my past. This one is recent. The soft bottom of the lake, where I should have drowned. The water rushing past. This out-of-place seal saved my life.

“Don’t go,” I say. As it slips away, I stand and hop down the steps and into the water. But it’s gone before I can reach it. It surfaces again, thirty feet out, rolling on the surface to catch a breath before diving back down. A smile creeps onto my face as eight more humps rise and fall. A family. It’s nice to know not everything in this subterranean world wants to eat me.

Before turning away, I see my dim reflection in the water. I haven’t seen my face in so long, I feel like I’m looking at a stranger. My skin is paper white. The blue around my pupils, which are open wide, has been reduced to a thin line of color. And my hair is streaked dark red. There appears to be as much blond hair as red, but...hasn’t it always been that way?