Chapter 41: Chapter 41 – Underground Terror

Tahar Shul was insistent that we visit the Tall School before anything else. I wanted to too. If this monster was as half as dangerous as they implied, I wanted to take a look myself and asses how strong it was. Benadora and Adrian decided to come with us, even though by Tahar’s word there was little of interest to see where we were going. The monster was ‘guarding’ the main artery through the construction, access to most of the deeper rooms wasn’t possible.

She explained to us that there were other entrances above the cliffs, but they’d been buried under the dirt after hundreds of years of disuse. Benadora had leapt at the chance and ordered the remaining members of our team to head up there and dig holes until they found one. The odds of that happening were small, to say the least. The Tall School had the footprint of a good-sized city and the sedimentary layer left no space for clues.

So we walked, and walked, and walked. It took us nearly twenty minutes to reach the entrance that she sought. When we arrived, a profound feeling of disquiet ran through me. The stone pillars invited us into the maw of a great beast. Pitch blackness awaited us inside. We would walk unsighted to find the monster that they spoke of. It was quiet. The gentle splash of a low tide against the nearby rocks.

“It’s here?”

Tahar nodded and prepared her weapon, “Yes, here. Deeper.”

“Benadora, Adrian, are you sure you want to come inside with us? It’s going to be dangerous until we are rid of this monster.”

She rolled her eyes, “Bah, a little danger never hurt anyone! What kind of scholar would I be if I was warded away from discovery by a monster or two?” Adrian didn’t seem so certain, but he was going to follow whatever his master said regardless…

The eagle-woman led the way. It’s difficult to describe the full scale of the building we were in with just words. I could imagine dozens of creature three times my height standing side by side in what was supposedly nothing more than a hallway. The walls were white marble, marked with moss and dirt that had gathered through years of moisture finding its way inside. Those walls were intermittently interrupted by the arrival of huge openings that split off into empty rooms and more pathways.

I was drawn to several piles of small stones, taken from the surrounding area and accumulated into mounds. They were the only visible feature of the hallway, but I quickly realized they were not a part of the original architecture. She knew I was looking at them. Her words were full of terror and foreboding, “Beast, leaves nothing. Crushes bone. Empty graves.”

Nobody wanted to risk their life retrieving what little was left. The darkness encroached quickly. Tahar withdrew a torch from her pack and struck it against a piece of flint. I retrieved a small glass lantern from my own bag and lit it just in case. “Where is this thing?”

“I do not know,” she said, keeping her voice low – “It could arrive. Any time.”

I felt the need to remind her before we met it for real, “We are not fighting.”

“No?”

“Observe first.”

She nodded.

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Happy that we weren’t going to be literally dragged kicking and screaming into a fight to the death with this fearsome monster, we continued even deeper. The light from outside was growing thinner by the step. And then we heard it, something rumbling nearby.

“You two stay back.”

Adrian didn’t need any prompting from me to duck into a side tunnel and hide. Benadora was surprisingly compliant too. I could always appreciate people who were good at following orders and keeping out of my way.

Tahar spoke with just a tinge of fear, “It comes.”

I saw them through the dark. A pair of big, beady black eyes. They caught the faint light from her torch and entrapped it within. It shuffled closer with an otherworldly gait. Even as it drove a straight path towards us, its body wiggled and moved like a snake. Its skin was pale, and covered with patches of white hair. A hideous, gaping mouth filled with crooked teeth – freely released a deluge of saliva onto the dirt below.

It was huge, bigger than the strange creature that had nearly killed me by the branch before. If not in height, in weight and volume. This was a beast that walked on all fours, it had to. Despite it closing the gap between us, it made no motion to attack us.

She whispered back to me, “Be still. Be silent.”

“[Inspect.]”

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