“Who is she?”
“Calls herself Kriz. She’s a Blood-blessed. Seems she’s been living down here for . . . a good long while. Beyond that, I can’t say. Kind’ve a language problem.”
Sigoral’s awakening was considerably more violent than Loriabeth’s, the Corvantine surfacing from his slumber with a flurry of kicks and punches. He continued to flail about on the floor, only abating when Clay pinned him down, though not before earning a hefty blow to the stomach.
“Hey!” Clay delivered a hard slap to the marine’s face. “It’s me, relax.”
The sound of a handclap drew his gaze back to Kriz. She stood between two pillars, gesturing at the chamber door, her movements even more urgent than before.
“Who in the name of all the emperors is she?” Sigoral demanded.
Before Clay could answer the chamber shook again, sending a fresh cascade of dust down around them as a large rumbling crack sounded from above. Abruptly the crystal’s light faded into a dim glow, leaving most of the chamber in darkness.
“That ain’t good,” Loriabeth said, scrambling to her feet.
“Get your gear,” Clay said, rising from Sigoral and moving to the packs.
“Your leg . . .” Loriabeth said, staring at his uninjured limb.
“No time, cuz,” Clay told her, casting a worried glance at the ceiling as ever more dust began to fall. He pulled on his own pack and lifted the others, turning to see Kriz disappearing through the chamber door, clearly unwilling to linger another second. “Come on!” he called to Sigoral and Loriabeth, starting after Kriz in a steady run. After a few steps he was gratified to hear the sound of them following.
He tracked Kriz through the corridor back to the shadowed interior of the building. Dust billowed down in ever-thicker cascades, the sibilant hiss of it punctuated by the thud of falling stone. Realising he had lost sight of Kriz, he came to a halt, Sigoral barrelling into him from behind.
“This place doesn’t have much longer,” the Corvantine observed, wincing as something large and heavy slammed into the floor close by.
“Got that right,” Clay said, handing the marine his pack and tossing the other to Loriabeth.
“Where’d she go?” Loriabeth asked, eyes bright in the gloom.
A shout came from the left, Clay picking out the flicker of a shadow and starting towards it at a run. “Stay close,” he told the others.
It took only a moment to find Kriz, standing in a faint patch of light cast down from above, apparently the result of a large slab of stone that had dislodged itself from the ceiling. Seeing them, she turned and started off again, sprinting now. Clay increased his own pace, yelling at the others to do the same. After a few seconds he saw Kriz’s slender form outlined in the doorway. The three of them exited the structure just as a thunderous cacophony filled the space at their backs. Clay came to a halt and turned to receive a blast of gritty dust in the face. He blinked away tears and when he looked again he saw a jagged matrix of cracks appearing in the structure’s outer surface. It seemed to sag in on itself as the cracks grew, issuing a terrible grinding roar as slabs of granite scraped against each other.
He felt a hard tug on his arm and found Kriz pulling him towards the right-hand side of the island. He lost no time in following, finding the prospect of remaining in this spot as the structure collapsed around them distinctly unappealing. Kriz kept close to the lake-shore, moving in a wide arc around the building to where a plinth rose at the edge of the water. She went to it immediately, slapping her hand to the crystal it held then turning an expectant gaze towards the water.
For a long moment nothing happened and Clay found himself casting increasingly nervous glances at the structure. The upper half of it had half fallen inward, the stone walls taking on a concave fragmented appearance whilst cracks continued to sunder the granite lower down. As concerning as its imminent collapse was, he was more afraid of what might happen to the monolithic shaft that rose from the building’s roof. If that comes down we’re all done for, he knew.
A rush of displaced water drew his gaze back to the lake, provoking a surge of relief at the sight of another bridge emerging from the depths. It was far longer than the one that had brought them to the island, disappearing into the mist a mile or so off shore. Kriz sprinted onto the bridge without preamble, pausing after a few yards to stare back at them as they failed to follow.
“Where’s she taking us?” Sigoral said. He had his carbine in hand and seemed to view the prospect of following Kriz onto the bridge with only slightly less trepidation than remaining on the island.
“Wherever it is, it’s gotta be better than here,” Clay said, casting a final glance up at the shaft before starting towards Kriz at a dead run. Loriabeth followed without demur, Clay looking over his shoulder to see Sigoral following suit, his caution perhaps overcome by a fresh tremor that shook the island.
Kriz maintained a swift and punishing pace along the bridge that Clay soon found hard to match. His leg might have been healed but it seemed to possess some residual weakness from the drake’s bite. He stumbled several times, coming close to pitching over the side of the bridge. Fortunately Loriabeth was there to steady him and he managed to keep going.
Kriz eventually slowed to a steady run, allowing them to catch up, then coming to a complete halt when they had covered perhaps three hundred paces. They all turned to regard the island, chests heaving. The tremors seemed to have stopped but the damage done to the structure was plainly irreversible. The upper half gave way completely, subsiding down to shatter the base, raising a thick cloud of dust that spread across the lake surface in a grey-brown fog. When it cleared Clay could see that the huge shaft had lost its base. It still hung there, impossibly huge as it seemed to float without any anchor to the earth. He turned to Kriz, finding her staring at the ruins with tears streaming down her cheeks. A sob rose in her breast and she turned away, lowering herself to her haunches and hugging herself tight. The despair had returned in full and she seemed resolved to surrender to it, at least for now.
He watched her sob for a time, motioning the others to silence when they couldn’t contain their questions. Kriz exhausted herself after several long minutes and he reached out a hand to hers, touching it briefly. She opened her eyes to regard him with a gaze of utter desolation, as grieving a soul as he had ever seen.
He jerked his head at the shaft dangling above the vanished island. “Guess that was your home for an awful long time, right?”