CHAPTER 103: BAT

They gathered before the portal, watching its smooth surface ripple. Kaedros stepped through first, the others following.

A cool force resisted him for a heartbeat before yielding. On the other side lay a vast chamber, its twisting pillars of green-black stone smooth as obsidian and slick with a faint sheen.

"Where is this?" Taria murmured.

"Doesn’t look a Dream," Rauk said. It looked like any other Castle chamber, except for the strange coloration of the stone.

"It’s just the name," Gold said with a shrug. "Not an actual Dream."

"Of course we know that," Taria replied, rolling her eyes. She glanced down. "It’s dusty here... look at all this garbage.."

She stopped when Kaedros raised a hand. A small fire bloomed above them.

The "garbage" was not garbage at all. Bodies, hundreds of them, dried and shriveled, scattered across the floor.

The smell came next, a dry, rancid stench of death so old it clung to the back of the throat. Kaedros grimaced, his sharpened senses made it worse.

"There must be hundreds," Taria whispered.

"Just lying here... like they’re nothing," Rauk muttered. His sword was already in hand, though he didn’t recall drawing it.

"And not all of them are human," Gold called from ahead, crouched over a massive skeleton crowned with a horned skull. "No idea what this was."

Taria hissed at him not to wander off. "Wait for Kael’s orders."

Kaedros blinked at the reminder..he was the leader here. "We won’t learn much from these corpses. Even the cause of death’s gone. Stay alert. Search the room for anything unusual."

More fireballs drifted outward, revealing even more bodies.

The chamber stretched farther than it first appeared, a long rectangle that swallowed their light. They swept it slowly until Gold called out, he’d found a tunnel.

It was wide enough for four to walk abreast, built of the same green-black stone, though here the green gleamed brighter.

"Shouldn’t a prison have cells?" Taria asked, shifting her pack. "We haven’t seen anything remotely prison-like."

Kaedros opened his mouth to reply..then froze.

"Why are you stopping?" Rauk asked.

Kaedros tilted his head. Something... a faint sound... was winding its way toward them. At first it was little more than part of the air itself, but it grew quickly, a scream. Long, ragged, inhuman.

The others heard it now. The floor trembled. The tunnel shuddered.

Then they saw it.

A wall of distorted air, rippling and warped, screamed toward them.

"Prepare!" Kaedros barked just before it hit like the kick of twenty horses.

They were slammed into the smooth wall, ears exploding with pain. The sound was unbearable a shriek of tearing metal braided with the wailing of thousands. Kaedros tried to shout but the scream stole his voice. Nails dug into stone as he fought not to be hurled from the tunnel.

And then, silence.

They lay where they’d fallen, ears ringing with the echo.

"Well," Taria’s voice came muffled, "that was horrible."

Kaedros hauled himself upright, vision swimming. "We move."

"Probably a monster," Rauk said grimly. "One they left behind."

"A monster with a roar like that?" Taria tightened her grip on her spear. "I don’t want to see it."

Neither did Kaedros. Anything that could scream like that was likely far beyond them.

Gold laughed. "We’ll just kill it! Four of us, how hard could it be?"

"Unless it’s not just one," Rauk muttered.

Kaedros didn’t answer.

The tunnel stretched on. Twenty minutes of walking, no exit in sight. When the distant scream came again, Kaedros snapped orders, silver stone, now. Rauk threw up a smoke shield and poured every drop of magic into it.

Grey mist swallowed them just as the force hit, a screaming tornado.

Rauk staggered, core draining fast. The sound shredded the smoke faster than he could replenish it, each breath ripping more power from his lungs.

Then, suddenly, it stopped.

They exhaled in relief. Rauk sagged to one knee, sweat dripping. Nyra pressed lake water and Chef’s fruit into his hands to restore his mana. Kaedros waved off any rest.

They had to leave the tunnel.

The passage ended abruptly in open air.

They stood at the mouth of a tunnel carved into a mountainside, looking across a black chasm at a twin mountain opposite. A pale blue light filtered through a bruised-brown sky, illuminating a shattered stone that hung far above, whether moon or something else, none could tell.

The mountains were wrong, smooth black faces like obsidian, unnaturally flat, as if cut by a god’s blade. Between them yawned a void of shadow.

Kaedros enlarged his fireball and cast it down.

Bodies.

Hundreds—thousands—piled into a grisly pyramid of bone and rotted cloth, spilling into darkness.

"How many died here?" Taria asked, turning away.

"How many were here before the break?" Kaedros murmured. "Were they all this strong?"

"Collector, his people, everyone Joint Accord caught, they’re all here," Gold said.

"So the Accord killed them," Kaedros said.

"Or the Castle did," Gold countered.

Taria pointed. "What’s that?"

Four rusted poles jutted from the corpse pile, bent and streaked with corrosion, remnants of a platform.

It wasn’t far. Just buried.

They exchanged grim looks. Someone would have to jump down and clear it.

Kaedros opened his mouth..

...And a shadow peeled itself from the far side of the chasm.

A bat the size of a cow. Its wings stretched wide, its maw opened, and the same terrible scream tore free.

It began as a thin, rising whine, weak at first, then swelling in pitch until it needled the skull. The bat’s dull yellow eyes fixed on them, its mouth yawning open into a black, toothless pit.

"That’s the thing making that noise?" Gold hissed, red eyes flaring. Before anyone could answer, he leapt from the ledge.

For a heartbeat, his silver form hung suspended, white robe billowing. Then he dropped like a stone.

The bat’s wings snapped wide, veering aside to avoid the falling Ferron. The keening still poured from its throat—until it caught sight of Gold in midair. Surprise flickered in its gaze. The same shock rippled across Kaedros’s face... and the others’.

Because Gold was laughing.

Silver light burst around him, coalescing into a dull, molten sphere. Before he struck the mound of corpses below, his hand brushed the sphere, shaping it into a whip that cracked upward.

The lash of liquid silver looped tight around the monster’s elongated snout. The noise died instantly, smothered like a flame under water.

"Well," Taria breathed, staring at the struggling creature as its wings thrashed and Valor clung to the whip, grinning like a madman.

He yanked hard. The bat crashed down. The fall was short, and Gold landed atop a pile of brittle bones, their crunch muffled under his boots.

The silver whip retracted into his grasp, dragging the monster toward him. In a single brutal motion, he surged power through the liquid metal, hardening it. The whip’s edge bit clean through the bat’s snout in a spray of black blood.

The creature’s scream was raw and animal. It tried to gain height, wings beating frantically, but Gold didn’t give it the chance.

Two quick slashes—CRACK, CRACK—his weapon half-solid now, honed to a flexible, razor edge. The first blow caved part of its skull; the second split it open. Black blood and pale brain matter sprayed across the corpse mound.

The bat was dead before it hit the floor with a heavy thud.