Chapter 16: The Monsters in the Cave, Part 3

"How is he?" List asked.

Valerie was still looking him over as she answered. "His leg is still broken. But at least for now, he'll be clear of anything life threatening. We should probably get him out of here. For some fresher air if nothing else."

Daniel let out a groan as his head began to lull from side to side. Valerie and List both exchanged a hopeful look. In another second, his eyes opened, though one couldn't quite open all the way with all the swelling under it.

"Am I dead?" he asked.

"Sure are," List said. "You're in the hells, and I'm your new demon cellmate."

Daniel's good eye widened as he took in List's appearance, and panic filled him. "What?!"

"List!"

"What? It was a joke!"

Valerie shook her head. "I'm sorry about her. She's . . ." List raised an eyebrow, prompting her to continue. Valerie changed subjects. "You're alive. You're safe. We were sent by your mother to come find you."

She felt a pang of sympathy for the boy. Unless he'd lived a prodigiously unlucky life, this was bound to be the worst day of his life. If she'd been in his shoes—well, in point of fact she'd been dropped into a nest of baby rocs when she was sixteen, and had handled the situation fairly well even before Arden rescued her—but if she hadn't had training as a monster hunter and ended up in a situation like this, she'd probably be terrified out of her mind.

"Those things," Daniel breathed. "Where are—"

"They're gone," Valerie assured him as gentle as he could.

"We killed them all," List added.

Daniel settled down a little then. He tried to sit up, accidentally putting too weight on his leg as he did, and let out a sharp yelp in pain. 

"Easy," Valerie warned. "Don't try to move. List, can you try and find something to make a splint out of?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know, just find something stiff and straight."

"Well—" List began

Valerie realized the opening her phrasing had made immediately, and promptly cut her off. "Gods and saints, just go."

"I'm going! I swear, you have no sense of humor."

While the girls took care of Daniel, Arden set about examining the cave. It was quite large, bigger than even four bugbears would have needed to sleep and store their spare food. But what intrigued him was how clean it all was. Comparatively speaking of course. The place was littered with the bones of past meals, dried blood, and other less dried filth, but at the same time, it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expect from a group of four relatively large bugbears. 

He took it to meant that they hadn't been here long, but the bugbears had all reached physical maturity, and the creatures were incredibly territorial not known for relocating unless forced. His first hypothesis was that this group had been forced out of its old home, likely by some larger threat.

Then he saw the distortion in the air.

It was subtle. A faint haze in the back of the cave, like the way heat distorted light over a desert, but there was no source of heat here. Cautiously, he extended the awareness of his soul out toward it. 

It was like taking a neon sunset to the face. Dazzling purples, reds, and oranges flooded his vision as the smell of a forest in autumn overwhelmed his senses. He pulled his senses back immediately, though he found himself left with an aftertaste of wine on his tongue.

"Um, are you alright?" List asked, having come over to try and conscript Arden's cane into serving as a splint.

"By the gods," Arden breathed. "It's a breach to another world."

List gave him the most uncomprehending look she could, and waited for him to make sense.

"There are countless worlds beyond Asher," Arden said. "In the Old World, travel between them was exceedingly common. Nowadays, most of the craft and devices used to do so are gone, and the amount of power required to do so as an individual is impossibly prohibitive. But, sometimes the space between two worlds can be warped and breached, creating a path. Almost every monster that wasn't created in some mad wizard's laboratory came to Asher that way. Including bugbears."

"So it's a portal," List said. "Why didn't you just say that?"

The reason was that portals and breaches were separated by orders of magnitude of stability, but Arden didn't say so, too engrossed as he was in the breach. A new explanation of the relative cleanliness of the cave came to Arden, and he felt an almost irresistible pull in the pit of his stomach. These bugbears had come from another world. Their homeworld, maybe.

Arden reached out toward the haze, until he felt a pressure pushing back against his fingertips. He pressed back, and white light began to ripple out from around his fingers. The air sparked and cracked, and started to take on the appearance of fractals of glass.

The space in front of him began to change. Instead of the cave wall, he could see trees with red bark and purple flowers, surrounded by bright pink undergrowth. The air was fighting him hard now, and Arden to strain to press forward, until he began to taste a difference in the air. Just as he thought he felt the push against him begin to lessen, something else pressed against his awareness. Something massive and unfathomably powerful descended on him, and he felt rather than heard what it said.

"No."

A crash reverberated through the cave like thunder, and Arden was flung back across the cave so hard his hat flew from his head. A moment later, the haze of the breach vanished.

"Dr. Siren!" Valerie shouted. "Are you alright?"

"Fascinating," Arden whispered. "Absolutely fascinating."

"I think he hit his head," List said.

"The legends all say it's impossible to leave Xykesh," Arden continued, mostly to himself. "Does that extend to spatial travel? And how?"

". . . right, well, good luck with that," List said. "Valerie, do you think a bugbear's femur would work?"

"List."

"Fine. I guess I'll go outside, find some sticks or something," List muttered.

She disappeared up the tunnel that led to the cave entrance.

"Dr. Siren?" Valerie prompted.

"Quite alright, dear," Arden said, dusting his hat off before placing it back on his head. "This place may very well be everything it was promised to be."

Valerie thought about everything she had heard about Xykesh before coming here. Namely, that it was a place people never left alive. She didn't particularly have much waiting for her back in Corsar, but that didn't mean she liked the idea of being trapped anywhere.

"Is that a good thing?" she asked.

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"The kind of power it would take to make the things we've heard a reality is staggering," Arden said. "It has to come from somewhere, and it has to be here for a reason. And the things we've seen already. You don't need to feel bad about not recognizing a dragonblood, Valerie. They don't exist. Or they didn't, as far as we or anyone else outside Xykesh knew. Imagine the things we could uncover here. Not just monsters, but—"

He was cut off by a growl so loud it shook the ground beneath their feet. List swearing followed a second later, and whip cracks began to echo through the cave.

Valerie looked concerned, and Daniel's face drained of what little color it had recovered. Arden's attention snapped toward the tunnel, even as he spoke a prayer to mend Daniel's leg. Conversing power was all fine and good, but making sure everyone was able to run from danger was more important.

List came hurtling back into the cave like a missile, striking the cave wall with a sickening crack before crumpling to the floor. Red lighting sputtered across her body for a few more seconds before fizzling out.

And then, the biggest bugbear Arden had ever seen stomped into the cave.

It had to stoop to get through the tunnel, and even inside the cave proper, it was only a foot or so from scraping the ceiling. Its arms were as thick as columns on a building, and its smallest teeth were the size of daggers.

The monster came to a stop as it saw the ruined bodies of its kin scattered across the ground. Its movements slowed, and it bent to sniff the closest corpse.

"Hedwig, eat your heart," Arden whispered.

The giant bugbear fixed its eyes back on them, and roared.

"I think I . . . found Mother," List said, her voice weak. 

"All of you, run!" Arden shouted, and immediately threw both his hands forward to shoot a lance of divine light. 

This was exactly why he made sure to save his stamina. There was always a bigger monster waiting around the corner.

Valerie grabbed List by the shirt and hauled for her life, yelling over her shoulder for Daniel to help her. It took a few seconds for the boy to snap out of his terror, but eventually he did, and the two of them dragged a still limp List out of the cave as fast as they could.

Arden wished he was better at healing. There were priests who could heal wounds faster than their opponents could make them, but the nature of Saint Hedwig made his own healing prayers slow and ill-suited to getting off in the middle of a fight. He couldn't get List back on her feet. But he could keep the bugbear focused on him.

His blast wasn't nearly so effective against this bugbear as it had been on the smaller one, leaving only surface burns on its chest, but it was bright and flashy, and it caused enough pain to make the bugbear want to make him stop, so it did its job.

It swung for him with a tree trunk of a limb, and he slammed his cane on the ground to release a burst of force and knock the blow aside. He didn't wait, pressing forward and driving the head of his cane into the monster's knee as hard as he could. It didn't do much.

When the next attack came, Arden summoned a divine shield in front of him. A spiderweb of cracks formed in its golden surface, but they vanished a moment later as Arden reinforced the shield with his will. The bugbear, annoyed by the suddenly manifested obstacle, threw its whole body forward, crushing Arden and his shield into the cave wall.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Arden caught the tail end of List disappearing up the tunnel and out of danger.

Good. First problem sorted.

Which only left the giant bugbear, and the massive set of teeth trying to bite through his shield.

---

"Let me go . . ." List moaned weakly. "Can still . . . fight."

"No, you cannot," Valerie said as she kept dragging her. "Saints, you're lucky you're light."

"Just tell Arden to . . . top me off," List insisted. "It caught me by surprise. I can . . . take it."

"List? Shut up," Valerie said. "We're almost out. And besides, he's busy."

---

Arden jammed the bugbear's mouth open with his cane and used his free hand to fire another bar of light straight into its throat. It didn't kill the thing, but it did convince the monster to finally drop him. The priest rolled away, gasping for breath, and blasted again, this time cutting a deep gash in the monster as he did.

For the first time, the bugbear retreated, and Arden had time to gather himself.

He held his cane out, and he reinforced the weapon with a prayer, causing a golden outline of a mace to surround it. Clearly, he hadn't been hitting it hard enough.

Evidently, the bugbear had the same idea about him. It drew in a deep breath, and as it did, its already massive chest and arms swelled to nearly double in size. It every muscle bulged, veins prominent under its skin. Arden stopped. He’d never seen a bugbear do anything like that before, and his mind raced with questions about what might have made it possible. Before he could answer any of those question though, he did have to survive the next few seconds.

As quickly as he could, Arden dispelled his weapon enhancement, and instead summoned an afterimage of golden armor around his entire body.

---

Valerie and Daniel finally took a break when they were a good distance from the cave entrance, both of them panting for breath.

"What . . . do we do now?" Daniel asked.

Valerie tried to speak, found herself completely out of breath, and cleared her throat before trying again. "We should start heading for our horses. They're . . . that way."

"Can we even get her on a horse?" Daniel asked, looking at List.

"Solve that problem when we get there," Valerie said. "Come on. Dr. Siren will catch up with us when—"

A thud reverberated out through the hill, and Valerie looked up in time to see the hillside erupt in a geyser of dirt and rock as Arden was flung straight through it. He arced through the air, crashing back to the ground at their feet like a golden comet.

The armor he'd summoned around himself dispersed to nothing, and the scholar let out a groan. Miraculously, his hat was still on his head.

"Interesting," he said with a strained voice. "I wonder if the bugbear's homeworld is somehow more conducive to their strength and size."

"Dr. Siren!"

"Hello Valerie. Daniel. List," he greeted. "One moment please."

He recited a prayer for a few seconds, until he and List both were sitting back up.

"Need a hand with that thing?" List offered.

"Appreciated, but I don't think yours alone are up to the task," Arden said. 

Before List could protest, the cave entrance exploded in a similar explosion of earth that had spat out Arden, and the bugbear emerged.

". . . fair enough," List conceded. "Run for our lives?"

"Excellent plan,” Arden agreed, and all four of them did just that.

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