Chapter 192 Chapter 192

Chapter 192 Chapter 192
Merrick

The air in the tertiary cavern tastes like battery acid and old blood, but the smell is almost sickly sweet. It travels up from the well like a bad dream. 

My head starts to throb and bile pushes up in my throat. One look at my companions tells me that the strange magic is having exactly the same effect on them.

But I won't stop. We are so close to the end that now I can taste it. Just one more push, just one more step, just one more kill…

We burst through the final bottleneck of the tunnel into a vast, cathedral-sized chamber carved deep into the mountain’s iron core. The ceiling looms forty feet overhead, jagged and weeping black condensation, while the center of the cavern pulses with a violent, blinding violet light.

The shadow-well.

It’s a spinning vortex of solid, writhing darkness suspended above a natural stone pit. Tendrils of black smoke lash out like living tentacles, licking at the iron walls and hissing wherever they touch raw ore. 

Around the perimeter of the pit, three dozen human captives are chained to iron pilings, their bodies trembling, their eyes hollowed out as their life force and terror are drained upward into the spinning vortex like fuel into a furnace.

"They're practically dead," Julian growls, his twin short swords dripping with dark blood, his chest heaving. “I won’t even do this to a human.”

They are suffering. I don’t need to read their auras to know that they are. I can see it written all over their faces. They have been down here for weeks, kept alive by the magic alone.

"If we don't break the anchor now, those humans will burn out before Nathaniel's team can reach the upper shafts,” Julian says.

"We break it," I snap, my voice hard as granite.

Enoch is howling so loudly in my head that my vision blurs at the edges with a wash of red-hot fury. But there's no room for hesitation.

A dozen elite shadow guards materialise around the rim of the pit, their faces hidden behind polished obsidian masks, long barbed spears of black energy humming in their hands. They don't speak. They charge.

"Apollo! Burn them!" I roar.

I have never seen my Ultima’s magic. Unlike Astraea, he doesn’t walk around spilling it everywhere. I asked him about it once, centuries ago I think, and he told me I never wanted to see what happened when he unleashed it.

This time, Apollo doesn't wait. He steps into the cavern, his golden eyes blazing with absolute solar intensity, and sweeps his arms outward in a wide, crushing arc. A wall of blinding white-gold fire erupts from his hands, sweeping across the cavern floor like a tidal wave.

He was right. I never wanted to see that.

Nor did I want to feel it.

The heat is instantaneous, stripping the oxygen from the air and turning the damp chill of the cave into an oven. It’s so intense that I can barely breathe. Even Julian starts to sweat, which is an odd sight on a vampire.

Three of the shadow guards take the full brunt of the sun wave, their obsidian masks melting into their skin as they scream and disintegrate into floating heaps of ash.

“The humans!” I call out. “Set them free.”

I can barely look at the Ultima. He is glowing as brightly as the sun, turning the interior of the mine a warm, golden-orange. But I see him nod before he turns to the humans. Their deaths are not painless, but it’s fast.

The remaining shadow guards break formation, lunging at us with their energy spears.

I intercept the leader mid-stride, swinging my broadsword with all the heavy, unyielding momentum of my upper body. The iron blade shatters his spear into a million glowing shards, and before he can recover, I drive my heavy steel-toed boot into his chest, sending him crashing backward toward the edge of the pit.

Julian is a blur of motion beside me, parrying a dual-blade strike from a shadow-caster, spinning low, and driving his blade upward through the attacker's ribs.

Humans start to walk out of the shadows. Their eyes violet, skins pale, cheeks gaunt. They’ve been held captive in the darkness, switched out like batteries when the ones on the wall died.

"Clear the humans,” I bark to the warriors pouring out of the tunnel behind us. “They can’t be saved."

Ordering my warriors to kill innocents never sat right with me, but we all know it needs to be done. The humans are only alive by the will of Lysander’s magic. As soon as we strip it out of them, they’ll die anyway. Slowly. Painfully. Screaming to the heavens for a release.

This is better. Cleaner.

But they just keep coming. As soon as my warriors kill one, another materialises, ready to take their place of the dead.

And still, I keep pushing forward, fighting my way step by brutal step toward the roaring vortex at the center of the cavern. 

Because I can see it now. I can see her. My daughter. My Hope chained to the wall - never growing, never aging, always crying for her mother, always fueling Lysander’s magic.

The closer I get to the centre, the heavier the spatial pressure becomes. It feels like walking through a deep stream of molasses. Every breath burns my lungs, every muscle in my back strains against the invisible, crushing weight of the dark magic radiating from the core.

A gigantic shadow brute - a towering monstrosity stitched together from dark matter and rogue bone - steps out from behind the spinning vortex, raising a massive stone crushing club, ready to bash heads in.

At least this thing is not alive. It never was. At least this thing deserves to die.

"Get back, King!" Apollo shouts, stepping up beside me, his hands glowing with blinding solar fire.

"No," I growl, dropping low. "He's mine."

I don't wait for Apollo to blast him. I launch myself forward, sliding under the brute's swinging club through the freezing mud and gore on the cavern floor. As I come up behind him, I drive both hunting daggers deep into the back of his knee joints, slicing through the thick tendons.

The brute roars, buckling hard onto his knees.

I pull my broadsword free from my back, leap onto his broad shoulders, and bring the heavy iron blade down with a vicious, two-handed arc straight through the center of his neck. The heavy head rolls into the mud as the massive body collapses into a lifeless pile of smoke and bone.

I stand panting over the carcass, wiping a spray of black ichor from my eyes, and look up.

Ten yards away, hovering directly over the spinning abyss of the shadow-well, is the core catalyst - a jagged, pulsing obsidian crystal that anchors the entire dark bridge to the palace vaults.

Through our bond, a sudden, sharp spike of heat flares against my chest. It’s Jo, shifting in her sleep. She’s having a nightmare, something awful judging by the fear shattering through her.

Then I hear her whisper in my head. “Merrick?”

“Yes, sweet girl?” I ask back. 

“I think my water just broke.”

I stop dead, my heart pounding in my skull. 

The timing could not be worse.

“You are afraid,” she says. “So am I.”

“I’m not afraid,” I lie and put my walls up so she can’t feel my emotions. “Go. Tell Rhea it’s time.”

“Are you done?” I can hear the tears in her voice. “Are you coming home?”

“Almost done, my sweet, sweet mate,” I reassure her and the hilt of my sword until my knuckles turn white. “I will be home soon. Go now. You have work to do.”