XLII

  The Shadow Over the Garden Wall

  Ashwing nosedived and slung upwards a moment before hitting the ground. She shot past the length of the stream, then curved over the waterfall. Rin jumped, and the summon had just enough velocity to yank her over the plateau onto the flat land above.

  I waited for Ashwing to make the return trip and ascended in a similar fashion.

  I cast a look over my shoulder once I crested the peak. The undead drake had disappeared…I wasn’t sure if that put me at more ease than when it was still watching us.

  Rin surveyed the horizon. Pools interrupted the sheet of frost. A short climb of steps separated each body of water, over which the water rushed. The largest pool was some ten meters above us with the source being another tunnel.

  “More climbing,” Rin said. “Just great.”

  The girl was using the butt of her trident as support. Luckily, there was a staircase on the right which circumvented the layered basins.

  “I think we’d best stick to following the water,” I said.

  Even in a maze, the water should eventually end in a source or a mouth. Chasing the latter would send us back to the drakes, so up it was.

  “Everyone else will be doing the same,” Rin said. “But I suppose that’s the whole point.”

  “You think there’s a point to this?” I said.

  “Killing us all counts as a point.”

  Touche.

  Three-pronged metal clanged with each step of Rin’s steps. The delve through the tunnel was a slow one. Even more so because of the path’s many side entrances: tributaries that fed into the main stream. We discussed checking them but decided against it. Our hands were already full. Our main goal was to reconvene with the team.

  “Signals closeby,” I said, gaze on my locator.

  With close again being quite relative.

  “The biggest clump is somewhere north,” I added.

  Before we could discuss the matter, the bond with the chick I had on scout duty pulsed. I made it hide in the closest tunnel to it, then steered Rin down the next tributary without pause. The attentive girl stopped using her trident because of the noise and leaned on my shoulder instead. We waited around a bend in the side passage from which we could see the main path but anyone looking in would see only the wall.

  A squad of a dozen undead stepped past, among them the one wearing the skin of an elk.

  Rin grimaced, then whispered: “That’s a lot. How do they know we’re here?”

  “They could be randomly patrolling,” I said.

  A clawed foot with three toes dug into the ice and dragged a figure into view. The eye on the side of the drake’s head didn’t show any discomfort at the dried blood blocking half of its sight. It hovered in the corridor…then sailed past.

  My brows touched. ‘It called the others here?’

  That must be why it was just watching instead of attacking.

  “We can’t fight them,” Rin said.

  “Not with your leg, no.”

  She shook her head. “If we engage even one, the others will be hot on our tail.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet.

  Rin continued to lean on me for support as we went down the side entrance. This path wasn’t a tributary. It was a lot less wide than the main road and the slope was twice as steep. The ceiling was also too low for me to use one of my chicks effectively. Not without the sound of its flapping wings reverberating off the walls like a gong.

  The path climbed upwards like a hill, which almost required me to carry Rin, and we got an uninterrupted view of the next part of the tunnel.

  A girl with a nasty scar on her cheek was in the middle of slurping a strand of noodles from a bowl of steaming water. Another disciple lied on his side and picked his nose. Defined muscles poked out of the holes in his sleeves, which were as dishevelled as his manners. Both were lvl. 15. They, and two others, turned our way.

  Rin pushed off me so forcefully I had to catch my footing. In the time I blinked, her trident rested at the throat of the disciple lying on his side.

  “Scream and he dies,” she said.

  The boy’s finger paused in his nose. “I would listen to her, Morgan.” He addressed another sitting against the wall.

  Morgan was a short but stocky boy with a stern look. He raised his hands and slowly moved to his feet.

  “Stay seated,” Rin said.

  Her trident dug a little deeper. A drop of blood pooled around the tip of the throng.

  Morgan sat back down. He smiled. “We’re not looking for any trouble. There’s enough of that down here as is.”

  “Right you are,” Rin said. “That’s why I’ll allow all of you to step aside before this gets messy and attracts the scorn.”

  Morgan frowned.

  ‘Did he not know they were nearby?’

  I scanned their party. The animal clothing suggested Black Fang, though none had a bonded spirit.

  ‘They’re physical cultivators.’ Those who forewent spiritual training for enhanced bodies wherever possible.

  “You’re injured,” the noodle girl noted.

  Gazes went to Rin’s leg.

  “You want me to kill him?” Rin tilted her head.

  The boy groaned and pulled his neck as far away from the trident as possible.

  “You can’t,” Morgan got to his feet, his smile growing. “Unless you want to kill all of us.”

  My lips tutted. ‘He’s smart.’

  He only needed Rin’s one comment to understand running wouldn’t be an option for us if we killed them. But the other way around? With their builds, they could get out of dodge before the first of us rose.

  The fourth member of their party, an unkempt boy who had a face only a mother could love, got to his feet too. “I say we take the chance.”

  The girl put away her food. “Sorry, Blake, you’re gonna have to take one for the team.”

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “Like hell I am!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Morgan sneered. “Just take it on the chin. Your clan specialises in defence.”

  “She’s four levels above me!”

  Morgan sighed. “Fine.” Then he regarded Rin. “How about I make you a counter offer? Leave your token, and I’ll allow you two to pass. Fair, isn’t it? We all walk away with what we want.”

  ‘He wants our token?’

  That would make this the second instance of another party going after someone else’s token. What was collecting them good for?

  Essence condensed and swirled through the group. Blake pleaded for the others to stop.

  “Ashe,” Rin said, voice rebounding off the walls. “Can you absorb them?”

  The question was simple. Sounded so innocent.

  Perhaps it was the repeated, haunting wails inside my head. Perhaps it had to do with how tired I was—but the question didn’t eject from my head right away as it would’ve at the start of this Tomb.

  Could I?

  The shard never pulsed before blood was spilled or a being died, leaving me with no way of knowing what to hunt and what to leave well alone.

  My gaze narrowed. Phantoms of past pains throbbed in my abdomen. Writhed similar to a spoiled child crying for their toy.

  “What kind of nonsense are you spewing—” the ugly disciple trailed off.

  I breathed in. Air shifted like a loose foundation, came to rest heavy on the shoulders and pinned the party down. The shard stirred—roused from its sleep at the mere prospect of a meal.

  Hunger turned on the girl. Her black eyes went white underneath my gaze. Though her appearance was feral, the essence flowing through her was calm and quiet. Tranquil as a lake yet carrying the bite of a snake.

  Wings flapped in the distance and birds chirped, reminding me of the white stalker chicks.

  The unkempt fellow swallowed a lump. There was no mistaking the wild nature of his spirit, so the feline roar coming from within wasn’t a surprise.

  That left the two other boys, Morgan and Blake. Their essence was harder to grasp. It was more…regular in nature. That the sensation I got at least, and no animal sound let known its preference.

  But that didn’t mean they’d reject them.

  “I can,” I answered.

  The wail that echoed form behind me was soft, as was the sliver of orange hue shooting over my shoulders. The light touched the faces of all present, revealing skin whiter than that of a ghost.

  Morgan’s mouth opened and closed. “We…we…we didn’t mean what we said.” A simile of a smile managed to force its way onto his face. “How about we all walk out of here?”

  “Oh, now you want to part peacefully?” Rin snorted. She addressed me without looking. “Your call.”

  I only half heard the words and cast a roving eye went at her core. Her water essence was in direct opposite to mine, but she used heat in some capacity. Would that—I wrenched my gaze to the front.

  The Black Fang group cowered, shivered. Spectral thunder boomed somewhere in the distance. I could feel the blood, missed by the many droplets of storming rain, sticking to my palms.

  After a deep breath in and out, I placed a hand on Rin’s shoulder, and jerked my head to the road ahead.

  Rin scoffed at Blake. “It’s your lucky day.”

  The boy, still lying at the end of her weapon, gulped and slunk away once the trident retreated.

  The group didn’t know how fast to push themselves up against the walls and make room for us.

  Rin stopped in front of Morgan and held out her hand.

  He glanced down, confused.

  “Your token,” she said. “Did you think we’d let you keep it?”

  Lines burst onto his face. Teeth gnashed as he stole a glance at me. The token entered Rin’s palm not long after.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” she smirked.

  What followed was a descent as steep as the climb. The path curved many times. Finally, it opened up into another entrance that connected to the main stream. The ceiling had returned to normal, so I sent one of my chicks to scout ahead. She came up empty-handed.

  Rin sighed. “I need to rest soon.”

  That quick step to reach Blake’s neck had taxed her leg. The surface area of her thigh was entirely red as if it wanted to pop like a pimple.

  “After we cover a little more distance,” I said and inclined my head. “We can’t leave them in our rear.”

  Right now, the group could catch up to us in five minutes should they want to. A decent amount of risk…

  One I could’ve circumvented if I simply killed and absorbed them.

  “You know,” Rin said, “I really thought you were going to kill them back there.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  She studied my expression. “You never consumed a human before?”

  A small shake of the head.

  “I see…sorry…for putting you on the spot like that. I thought…you know, with your powers and all...”

  “It’s fine,” I sighed. I motioned for us to start walking again.

  Rin looked away, accepting the change of topic.

  But something within me drove me to speak.

  “It’s bound to happen anyway,” I said.

  First I absorbed simple monsters, then drakes, then an elite. The progression towards a human was obvious. And if there’s one thing I learned, it’s that the system had a way of forcing your hand if you tried to run from what was destined.

  “Are you scared?” Rin said. “Of consuming a human being?”

  I closed my eyes. For a moment, only our footfalls sounded within the tunnels. Ghostly cries broke that peace before it had time to settle. I glanced back over my shoulder. Reflecting within the walls of the ice maze was a pale, transparent face trapped in a permanent wail.

  “It’s not that I’m afraid of it,” I said, not looking away from the spirit. “I always knew you had to be willing to kill to even enter this world.”

  “Then what?” she asked.

  My head turned back in front. We were almost at the entrance to the main tunnel. But my attention was on the churning in my stomach, the twisting shard, which lamented what it had lost. That boiling, festering anger took shape and warped into something colder.

  “It’ll be on my terms.”

  When it finally happened, when I snatched the soul out of a human being, trapped their existence within the garden for all eternity, and decomposed their matter into compost, the decision would be mine. Not the situation that called for it, the call of some tree, or even a stomach pain, no matter how heavy that pain may be.

  Because the one that had to live with it was me and no one else.

  Rin’s warm, laboured breathing seeped through my robe and heated my skin. “You don’t need to carry such a burden alone, you know.”

  I glanced into her deep blue eyes. They were tumultuous like an ocean right before a storm. Yet somehow, the waters were inviting.

  “Your decisions are keeping me alive too,” she said. “And if it ever came down to us or another group, I’d ask you decide to eat them without hesitation.”

  “So think of it as doing me a favour,” she continued. “That’ll let us share the blame.”

  I chuckled. “I don’t buy that being your only reason.”

  She raised the shoulder I wasn’t holding up. “Never said it was. I’ve got a clan to feed at home. Getting into your good graces will pay out well.”

  “If I don’t die in this tomb, you mean.”

  “Which is why we need to find the others.”

  She stopped in the middle of the entrance to the main pathway. “Well? It’s not nice to leave a lady hanging.”

  A sharp and heavy sound wave crashed through the tunnel from our rear. There was an undercurrent of wrongness to it.

  “I say we get out of here.” I put a spring to our step. A breath later, I added: “But I’ll think about it.”

  She smiled.

  We didn’t meet more of the scorn, which allowed us to keep our eyes on our locators.

  “We’re drawing further away from them,” Rin said.

  And no matter which side entrance we tried, the other markers didn’t grow any closer. Not even backtracking helped.

  “We’re being led,” I said.

  “By what?”

  “The Tomb,” I answered. The guiding totem had broken after I reached the Shrine of Valour, but I still had the idol on me.

  Its function could be similar.

  Rin glanced at me, then the path ahead. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

  Neither was I. But we stopped trying to change direction and simply followed the road to its end. The tunnel entrance widened, until it was a tunnel no more and merged with the remainder of the environment.

  We stepped out in a chamber that made me question whether we were really underground. Because though the walls rose like those of a dome, the ceiling wasn’t visible. Instead there were what looked to be clouds hovering in the air. On the ground, pillars of frost pushed out of the floor. Some were thin and long, others short and thick. Others reached high enough they touched the clouds.

  It was like a valley of columns.

  I sent some of my chicks ahead, then guided Rin down a slope into the bowels of the vale.

  It wasn’t long before I noticed something off: there was no noise in this place. Even the ringing of our footfalls was swallowed.

  Rin extended her hand towards one of the shorter pillars and wiped at the surface. Fog cleared. I peered. There was something inside. Something black and…

  “It’s a corpse,” Rin said.

  I inched closer. The indiscriminate blackness fizzled out for the shape of a head. A human in black robes. Their eyes were open wide and locked in terror.

  My head swivelled to regard the room. There were hundreds of these pillars.

  I shook my head before dark thoughts could sink their hooks inside my brain and pushed on.

  The pillars…corpses…covered nearly every inch of the ground. But they slowly grew less dense as if we were approaching the end of a thick forest. Through the gaps between them came the first sight of a structure of black ice. When more pillars made way, a wide, sweeping staircase appeared that led onto a walled platform with many uneven terraces. More columns awaited at the top of the staircase. These were not mere offshoots of frost. Shallow grooves ran along the structures. At the very top of the columns, sat a double-animal depiction. Birds, lizards, bulls, and many more species which combined to give each pillar had its own, unique carving.

  ‘Just like in the Shrine of Valour…’

  I fished the idol out of my storage ring. There was no change to the object.

  Rin limped forwards, her eyes on the hall in the centre of the platform. Dozens of pillars held the great building up. At its front was a smaller staircase leading to a set of double doors.

  “What is this place?” Rin said.

  “It must be a shrine,” I said. “That, or a grave—”

  “It’s a temple.”

  We turned as one. Standing near one of the columns was a man in black robes adorned with intricate gold markings. I called him a man, but he could not be human. For that his skin was too grey and lifeless, his eyes entirely too black.

  The not-man’s lips stretched wide. “Come, children. Your gift for reaching our holy abode awaits you.”

  He didn’t wait for a response and headed towards the hall.

  Rin and I shared a glance. The girl shrugged. “Where else are we going to go?”

  …

  We followed behind him.

  If you want to support Ashborn, please check out my , where you can read up to 18 chapters ahead.