CHAPTER 25

The Quatori following the pack through the swamp suddenly made more sense. They had not attacked at any one point, only drew near enough to push them onward. Lis shook her head; Quatori with the capability to plan...to lay traps.

Illaise was a blur, winding and struggling around the half transformed creature that attacked her. She deftly avoided the thing's bite—and it was trying to bite her, its exposed teeth snapped toward her throat and limbs. Lis raised her dart launcher, feeling rather stupid. Six darts would do nothing for her, not with more creatures than that already racing her direction. Her time was short, and her aim would have to be perfect. She raised a shaking arm, using her left hand to support it slightly. As soon as Illaise worked herself free for a moment, she shot.

She didn't even have a chance to see if her dart flew true, a half formed wolf charged in from her left. Like a true Quatori, it paid no attention to what happened around it, it simply dove toward Lis, all hunger and instinct. It was too close to raise her dart launcher; the only thing she was capable of doing was scrambling backward out of the way. That didn't stop the beast, it turned from its path, skidding on the loose rocks, using its arms to pull itself back.

Her heart thudded loudly, it felt as though its rapid beating stole all the space in her chest to breathe. She managed to get her arm, and the dart launcher up between them. Desperately, she pulled at the lever that would settle the next dart into place. Her fingers trembled, the stench of rotting flesh overwhelming her senses for a moment.

The lever was stuck.

She whimpered as panic surged through her. She gave up on the lever for the moment, rolling awkwardly out of the creature's path once more. A fist sized stone ground into her naked hip. She grabbed it and whipped it toward the beast's head. It glanced off of the furred temple, a surprisingly accurate shot that should have caused the creature to collapse...or at least blink.

As if she hadn't struck it at all, it pressed forward, some unholy driven gleam flashing in its eyes. She pulled at the lever once more, ready to cry when it finally released and did its job. In the next instant she shot. The beast slammed into the ground, Illaise, in human form on it's back. She placed one hand on each side of the beast's head and turned it sharply, eliciting a sickening crack.

“Now!” She cried, the sharp tones echoed against the canyon walls. Her words were not for Lis, but her team, yet Lis did not have the mental focus to see what she signaled. Illaise grabbed her arm, pulling her from the dazed stupor she found herself in.

Three more of the possessed were closing in.

“How many more of those darts do you have, Rogue?” she asked, releasing her once she began to follow on her own. They dashed now toward the underground entrance. Lis could hear the sound of creatures on the slope behind them. They were much faster, in their recklessness, and she felt terribly exposed with her back to them.

“Four.”

Illaise grunted but it was not an impressed sort of sound. Her head tilted toward the east and she considered the sky.

“Looks like we are on our own. Let's see if we can't surprise our way to that entrance,” she panted.

Lis peered around her, pressing herself to keep up. The threat of being overtaken helped push her to speed, even while her legs were crying for rest. It was hard to even estimate the number of bodies watching them from below.

“Surprise?” Lis managed. They were quite obviously barreling down the side of the slope, in full view of those at the bottom. Even if most of them were blind, the sound they were making as they ran was nothing short of thunderous.

Though she had been forewarned, it still disturbed Lis to see whole and healthy Shifters mingling among the beasts.

“Yes, perhaps we can get a feel for how badly they want this,” she flashed her hand into the air and Lis' stomach sank. The glyph shone slightly in her palm, reflecting light that wasn't there to reflect. No wonder the Quatori had found them in the swamp, that thing was like a beacon to them. Even now the focus of the creatures seemed to be in Illaise's direction.

“You stole the Archon's glyph?” And how had she not noticed the entire time? Illaise had been naked or a wolf for the duration of the trip...there were not many hiding places in such forms.

“Don't worry, he can get it back, all he has to do is send his warriors after it. Hopefully, in time to get our asses out of here.” She mumbled something else that Lis couldn't catch and Lis realized that this had been her plan all along. She was not suicidal. She knew full well that her band of Shifter warriors were no match for this camp, so she lured the Lords after them. That, more likely was the reason she had allowed Lis to rest. To ensure that the Dragon Lords had a chance to catch up.

Lis found herself looking at the eastern sky, as well, willing the dark winged silhouettes that would normally cause her fear to spike. Hells, if they didn't show up, she was as good as dead...so where were they? They neared the entrance now, a seething group of defenders in the way. There were still some behind, as well, though the sound of their pursuit had dropped back a little.

“Hold your breath,” Illaise warned.

“What?”

She didn't answer, her arm flung forward and Lis watched as both the glyph and the bundle that she had provided her soared to the center of the gathered enemies. A few figures, the Shifters who had remained whole, seemed to sense the trouble and scrambled backward from where the two items landed with a distinct crash. The others, however, surged forward and toward it, eagerly pushing each other from the way. None were able to move well in the confusion that followed.

Illaise grabbed Lis' elbow, pulling her off course just in time for one of their pursuers to race past her toward the commotion. Smoke spewed forth in a low laying cloud. A cloud of death. And they were running straight toward it. Illaise didn't bother to divert their path and Lis took her advice and held her next large inhale. Her body protested immediately, but she didn't dare listen to its demands for air. Already, they ploughed through the smoke, avoiding grappling and prone forms, pushing ever forward to the underground entrance.

Something tangled with her feet and she went down. She spun as she landed, taking most of the weight on her hip, but even still, most of her breath escaped in a whoosh of precious air. Illaise was on her immediately, her hand clasped upon Lis' mouth and nose, denying her the instinctual inward breath.

Illaise pulled at Lis, but whatever had tangled her legs was still there. She risked a look down, or that direction anyway. A surge of nauseated panic washed over her at the sight. There, at her feet, was the remains of a corpse. Her foot had stuck within the ribcage and was bound there until she could maneuver it out. The thing didn't bleed, and Lis gathered it was once one of the possessed. Now, its head had been torn nearly off. She squeaked beneath Illaise's fingers and kicked at the corpse desperately. Illaise shook Lis' head, drawing her attention back to the smoke and the understanding that to breathe would be to die...or would it? Commotion still waged around them. Unless creatures were still racing inward toward the smoke, Lis' poison was not nearly as effective as she hoped it would be.

Once assured she would not do anything stupid to cause her own death, Illaise released Lis and moved toward the corpse at her feet. Using her impressive strength, she cracked open the ribcage and extracted Lis' foot. Lis tried to turn her mind away from the fact that her stomach contents wanted to vacate. She didn't have time to throw up. Scrambling to her feet, she pressed on, Illaise at her back, toward the entrance.

Whether the poison worked or not, it did create an impressive amount of smoke. It occurred to Lis that Illaise's warriors must have taken similar tactics and the resulting cloud was from more than just Illaise's bundle. At last, they reached the underground entrance, which was good because, along with Lis' lungs, her eyes had started to sting and she had the uncomfortable thought that the poison might be able to work its way into the bloodstream by invading other parts of one's body.

The entrance looked much the same close up as it had from a distance. A jumble of sticks and boulders without any great form that rose up enough to shelter a ragged hole in the earth. The smoke around the entrance was thinner, too.

Lis dove for the space, throwing her body to the ground and sticking her head into the darkness, gasping dramatically.

“Shhh,” Illaise warned from beside her. She didn't seem distressed at all, as though she wondered around without breathing often. Her chest heaved a little harder, but that was the only sign that the dash had affected her. “There are true Quatori down there, lots of them, can't you scent it?”

Now that Lis' faculties were able to focus on something other than her bodily needs, she could smell it. How would they manage a descent into such overwhelming odds?

Footsteps approached behind them, and a set of legs staggered into view. One of the un-possessed Shifters. The smoke was beginning to clear behind them, but still, the man should have been dead.

Her creation had failed.

Lis caught Illaise's glare and raised her chin. It wasn't her fault there had been no time to test the bundles. The Shifter might not have been dead, as he should have been, but he was disoriented; from her angle, she could see him wobble. A loose stone in his path was his undoing and he fell toward them. Both Illaise and Lis rolled from his path, as he tumbled past and into the dark pit.

She had yet to think about how far the descent might be. It was a long moment before he hit the bottom, with a sickening crunch, and she heard no more movement.

“He's dead now,” Lis told Illaise defensively. Not exactly a recovery from her failure, by the evidence she might have intoxicated the enemy instead of causing the widespread death she had hoped.

Another noise caught her attention. A wet slurping sound. Quatori. They had heard the man's fall and were feeding on him while his corpse was fresh. She couldn't see that far down past the stones and wooden support beams, but she assumed there were several Quatori. Even one was too many for two Shifters without a dragon to do physical damage. She still had her darts, and they had been designed to give Shifters a physical edge against their invisible foes, but recent events had shown Lis that simply assuming her contraptions would work was dangerous.

A screech joined the noise, but it didn't emanate from below. Past the last wispy layers of smoke, the dark shapes of descending dragons focused on their position, but these were not the shapes that they had hoped for. The mangled snout of the leader was all Lis needed to create a lump in her throat she was unable to swallow around. Of course he was there, he had been tracking the glyph to begin with.

Lis froze against the ground, unable to do anything else while she watched the beast descend.

“Down you go,” Illaise muttered, jerking her head toward the darkness, “before the rest of these assholes recover, or the bigger asshole finds us.”

She must have mistaken Lis' fear stunned pause for a question of her sanity, for she gave Lis a little shove. “Go,” she lowered her voice even farther. “The Quatori are feeding, they are distracted. Just stay silent and we will be fine.”

Lis tried not to feel morbid that they would use the death of one of their own kind as a distraction. She also tried not to feel like she was moving toward her most certain death.

The mutilated dragon, the Master, screeched once more before snarling and crunching one of the possessed Shifters that had annoyed him between massive jaws.

With that encouragement, Lis swung her lower half into the hole and, clutching the stone handholds tightly, descended into darkness.