Chapter 26 - New Trick

  Alex’s boots pound against the sparking stones as he puts his entire focus on running. Every footfall is met with searing heat, every breath burns in his lungs, even the air singes his skin everywhere it touches. His pantlegs are starting to char, the denim turning brittle and flaking away in chips. His shirt isn’t fairing much better, embers having burned holes through it in patches.

  Seemingly at random, the flames had intensified and the heat skyrocketed. One second it had been hot, but bearable. The next, it was an inferno. Even on the outer-edge of the burning territory, right against the cavern wall, there’s no reprieve from the flames or heat.

  The one saving grace for Alex is that, with such intense heat, there’s no smoke near the ground. The thermal currents carry everything upward and inward, creating coils of sparking ash that twist and writhe like serpents. Even without smoke, Alex’s eyes still sting from the maddening heat.

  Hara handles it better, but even the Stone Hellhound has to pant. She lopes to keep up with Alex’s desperate sprint. Every time her paws impact the ground, the metal claws ignite new flames on the stone. Both had given up talking, reserving every ounce of concentration to just keep moving. The one time Hara had paused just long enough to look behind her, the hound’s heavier mass had started to deform the heat-softened stone under her.

  Alex lifts his gaze, desperately searching for some relief. The next tunnel-mouth is dozens of yards away, kindling a glimmer of hope. But that momentary lapse in focus is a critical mistake. Alex’s foot catches a bit of uneven stone, sending him stumbling for a few steps with sparks kicked up right into his eyes. Alex screams, panicking as tries to get the burning embers off his face. Even when he no longer feels the pinpricks of burning pain, his vision refuses to clear.

  “I can’t see!” He hoarsely calls out. He staggers, suddenly unsure of his footing. “Hara?” He frantically searches with his hands, groping at the empty air. All he can hear is the roaring of the updraft and the crackling of stone fracturing from the intense heat. Then she’s there, putting her head right into his hand.

  “Grab. Grab. Hold. Follow.” She urges at him, feeling his hand grasping at her neck. Alex had almost started to turn more towards the middle of the area in his confusion, and Hara can’t let that happen. She nudges at him to turn him back to the right path, then guides him as best she can. Hara lets out a worried whine, their urgent pace having turned into an uncertain crawl.

  “Hara, I can’t see. I can’t see.” Alex keeps muttering, even as he lets the hound pull him along. Every step risks tripping again, but staying still is certain doom. His one lifeline is the grip on Hara’s back, her steadying presence keeping him moving. One foot in front of the other, moving as quickly as he dares without being able to see, Alex finally feels a change in the air.

  The mouth of the next tunnel is within reach. Hara keeps urging Alex towards it, trying to steer him through smoother footing. So close! She knows she just has to get a little further. She knows Alex can’t last much longer in the burning land. And then finally, they cross into the tunnel opening. Boots and paws step off of scorching rock onto a smooth and glassy surface. A few more steps still, and they’re on sand.

  The fresh air kisses Alex’s singed skin. The breeze is still warm, but after the inferno it may as well have been an arctic gale. Alex gasps, sucking in lungfuls of cooler air. He shuffles his feet around, and feeling only sand, allows himself to collapse. He thuds down onto the warm sand, the coarse grit making him wince as it rubs against his heat-blistered arms. He tentatively reaches up, fingertips exploring around his eyes. He blinks and tries to rub around the eyelids, but even the lightest touch hurts. Even with his eyes open, all he can see is a red haze of light and shadow. He covers his eyes with his hands, his breath hitching in his throat.

  Hara watches Alex fall onto the sand. She was going to try and make him sit, but laying works too. Her amethyst eyes scan the area, seeing only ripples of sand coating the floor of the tunnel, and a bit further down, the sand spreads up the sides as Hell’s normal gravity reasserts. Water! Alex needs water! She sniffs, circling around Alex, trying to catch any scent of moisture on the wind. It’s faint, but she does catch just a little whiff.

  “Alex? Alex ok?” She asks, padding to him and nosing at his neck and cheek lightly. The man just winces and groans. Alex’s mouth is moving, but no words come out. “Alex safe now. Alex need water. Hara go find water.” She says. That gets a response, he lifts a hand to reach for her, groping blindly in the air until he feels her side and tries to grab on. “Alex need water.” She insists again, but is reluctant to pull away from his grip. “Please. Alex need water.”

  He wants to scream, his throat’s just too dry. He wants to tell Hara to stay, but his lips are too cracked and torn. But Alex knows she’s right. He does need water. He forces himself to let go of her. And he gives a pained nod, even that subtle movement makes the skin around his neck hurt. She touches her nose against his side one more time, then Alex hears the thumping beat of her paws racing away. Leaving him alone, blind, and helpless.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Hara follows her nose, chasing that scent of water. She has to hurry. She has to run! No! She doesn’t have to run! Hara knows how to do the trick! She skids to a halt, throwing up a spray of sand as she looks for something she can use as a landmark. There! A rock! With a blur, Hara crosses the distance in a single heartbeat. Again! She looks for another point, starting a chain of intent-movement jumps like Corvus and Alex had taught her. They gave Hara a new trick, and now, Hara is going to use it to save Alex.

  Doing his best to lay still, Alex tries to just rest. His whole body feels burnt and raw, and he almost laughs at the thought of himself laying there like a half-cooked steak. Almost, if every movement didn’t make his cracked skin sting and ache. So he lays there in the sand, listening to the wind drawn into the burning territory by the thermal current. He keeps blinking, his eye-lids feeling like sandpaper. But each time it hurts just a little less. Without anything else to go on, he just focuses on the sound. And catches a hint of something sliding across sand.

  The water is closer! Hara can smell it better now. Then on one of the intent-movement leaps, she sees it. The glimmering reflection of water. She dashes towards it in a mad rush. She slides to a stop next to what appears to be, for all intents and purposes, a tide-pool in the sand. Looking around more, she spots many more reaching further down the tunnel. She sniffs at the water, then takes a slow lap with her tongue. Clean. Fresh! She prances on her paws in joy! Alex is going to be ok! And then she freezes, her joy crumbling like the sand. How is she supposed to carry water back?

  Frantically she looks around, but nothing she sees could help her. Hara lets out a low, desperate whine. “Something. Please. Something.” But all she sees is sand and water and stone. Stone! Hara had done something to the stone before! She made it move! How? HOW? She tries to remember. Alex falling, the tunnel, slick with water, chasing, needing to catch him. She remembers feeling little fire inside start dancing. How did she do it? She needs rock to be a bowl. She needs big bowl to carry water. She focuses on what she needs. She focuses on what she needs to do. She stares at the pool of water, “Please. Need.” And her little fire dances.

  The sound of something sliding on the sand gets closer. It couldn’t be Hara. She just left. Alex can’t see, can’t speak. All he can do is lay there, praying that whatever he hears isn’t something deadly. There isn’t any sound of feet thumping on the sand, just an undulation of something sliding across it. Thoughts of snakes flit through Alex’s mind and he feels his breath hitch in his chest. The sound gets closer and closer, until he’s certain whatever it is could be within arm’s reach. Then it stops.

  Hara’s little fire responds. Her Animus. There’s a crunching sound as the sand around the pool compresses. The water splashes as it’s forced out of the spaces between the grains of sand. Hara keeps focusing. There’s a grinding, crushing rasp as the sand is forced to fuse together. But Hara doesn’t stop. Something inside tells her that it’s too fragile. If she moves it, it will break apart. So she changes the way she thinks about the bowl. Not just hard. It has to be solid. There’s a loud crack, like a boulder being split. But instead of falling apart, she just made something whole.

  It takes the hound a few more minutes to figure out how to move her water pool. She tries pushing its edge first, but that just makes it spin. Then she tries to drag it by biting onto one edge. That has better success but the jerking motions she has to make just causes the water to splash. Then she thinks about Alex’s knapsack, and that gives her the idea. Within moments, she uses her newfound ability to shape a loop of rock extending from the pool’s edge. And then carefully, Hara slides under it, letting it hook against the crystals on her back. Now she can get the water to Alex!

  “Are… You… Dead?” The words break into Alex’s mind, making him jerk in place, startled. They were spoken like Corvus and Hara, more telepathy. And they were slow, drawn out, like the speaker had to carefully form the words. “No… You… are… still… alive…” It continues. Alex tries to reply, but all that comes out is a raspy cough. “Not… long… though… I… can… wait…” The voice isn’t threatening, but Alex can discern a hint of hunger in those words. Despite the pain it causes, Alex tries to sit up from the sand, tries to move away from where he’d last heard that sound before. A shaky hand draws the knife from his belt, holding it wardingly in front of him.

  “I… won’t… hurt… you…” The voice comes again. “I… am… patient… I.. can… wait… for… the… end… to… come…” Alex swings the knife through the air, blindly striking out. But he hits only empty air. His mind conjures images of snake monsters, sea-serpents. Without his sight, Alex’s imagination turns against him, giving form to the voice in his mind.

  Then the howl reaches him. A sonorous, haunting howl that had once made his blood run cold. But now it reinvigorates him. Hara is nearby. “Ah… Your… friend… is… back… That… is… too… bad… I… will… have… to… find… a… different… meal…” The voice says, and Alex hears a much more rapid slithering across the sand as his unknown visitor retreats. And within a few more moments, Alex finally hears the thudding of paws against sand, and something far heavier being pulled across the ground.

  “ALEX!” Hara exclaims as soon as she can see him, as soon as she can connect mind to mind. “Hara find water! Hara bring water!” She mentally shouts at him. She watches as he drops his knife and slumps back against the sand again. A few more moments and she’s beside him. “Here. Alex. Here.” She says, nosing under his arm and lifting his hand onto the lip of the stone basin. She’d managed to get it back with about half of the water left. The rest left a trail of wet sand leading back down the tunnel.

  Alex gropes at the stone bowl, feeling the cool wetness on it. Then he reaches down the inside, feeling the cool water touch his hand. With a gasp, he savors the sharp coolness against his singed skin. He pulls himself upright again and tips his upper body over the edge, plunging his face into the water.