Chương 14: Live

A dweller burst from the hole beside them, jaw wide, aimed straight for Lere's throat. He threw himself forward on instinct, head cracking into Solstice's forehead hard enough to see white, and the dweller sailed past both of them to slam skull first into the wall. They hissed in unison, twin sounds of pain lost under everything else already tearing through the tunnel.

More holes had opened up along both walls now, dark mouths spitting shapes out faster than either of them could track, the whole corridor coming alive at once instead of one threat at a time. Solstice staggered upright. Behind them, the masked man thrashed against his own bindings, sobbing, getting nowhere, panic doing exactly nothing useful for him. To his left, claws scraped stone.

Behind that, another set, closer, and another past that, the sound multiplying faster than his ears could sort it into anything useful. Another dweller hit Solstice from the side, driving him to the ground, its jaw already stretching wide over his face, drool stringing thick between its teeth. He shoved the pickaxe handle sideways into its mouth before the bite could land, wood grinding against teeth instead of bone. A hand closed around his collar and hauled him sideways.

Lere, kicking the dweller off him in the same motion.

"THAT BASTARD LEFT US," Lere hissed.

"No time for that." Solstice's breath tore ragged out of his chest, each word costing him more than he had to spare.

"Leave him. Stick to the plan. He's bait." Another shape dropped from the dark and Lere threw both hands up. A translucent plane snapped into being between them, catching the dweller mid-lunge and slamming it hard into the rock. Two more were already scrambling over the bodies of their own dead to reach the sound, undeterred, more of them somewhere behind those.

"DON'T LEAVE ME!" the masked man screamed from somewhere behind them, voice cracking apart.

"PLEASE, JUST UNTIE ME! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please…" Lere's head swung between him and the dark ahead, torn. Solstice limped a step forward and turned back.

"JUST LEAVE HIM!" Something came out of the dark and buried itself in Lere's stomach before either of them saw it coming, the strike so fast neither of them had time to react to the shape it came from. Solstice watched the broken pickaxe handle punch clean through him from behind, the same length of wood he'd jammed into a dweller's jaw seconds ago, now gripped in claws instead. Blood came fast, immediate, soaking through Lere's shirt in one long spreading stain.

"Sol…stice."

"Fuck!" Solstice threw himself forward despite his leg, grabbed a chunk of loose rock, and drove it into the dweller's skull until it let go, hauling Lere free in the same motion.

'What am I even doing here. I should have run. I'm getting myself killed over this idiot.' Teeth closed around his left arm from the side, a second dweller he hadn't even seen coming, and something inside it snapped wet and sharp, flesh tearing loose in a way his whole body screamed about at once. Lere hit the ground.

Solstice swung his good fist into the dweller's eye until it released him, his ruined arm hanging useless at his side, blood already running down to his fingertips, warm and then instantly cold in the air. He screamed through his teeth and bent down anyway, hooking his good arm under Lere's shoulder, hauling with everything he had left, and they moved. Behind them the masked man's voice kept climbing.

"PLEASE, I BEG YOU, DON'T LEAVE ME, PLEASE." Ugly and pathetic, cracking apart on every word, dwellers converging on the sound from every direction at once, three of them, then five, drawn to it like it was the only thing in the cavern worth chasing. One took him low across the stomach and opened him wide. Two more converged on him from opposite sides in the same breath, drawn by the same screaming that had brought the first. His screaming changed shape entirely.

"YOU BASTARDS! I'LL CURSE YOU ALL! YOU HEAR ME? YOU'LL PAY FOR THI…" His jaw went before the sentence could. Solstice kept moving. Lere's blood soaked through both of them with every step, his breathing slowing, thinning, edging toward something that sounded like gasping for air that wasn't there anymore. Solstice didn't look down at him. Looking down meant stopping, and stopping meant thinking about what he was dragging. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent.

Report any sightings. The tunnel narrowed. No more holes gouged into the walls here, no more places for anything to hide. No lamp left. No pickaxe. Just the dark, and the faint threads of color only Solstice could see, pulling him forward like they knew something he didn't. Every few steps his bad leg threatened to give out entirely, and every time it held anyway, because it had to, because there wasn't a version of this where it didn't.' Fuck this. Fuck all of it. What am I even doing.

I should have left him back there.' Something struck his foot. A dead dweller, sliced clean in half.

'Murren. That bastard's close.' He didn't know how he knew that. Maybe it was just something he needed to believe right now, an exit that existed because the alternative was unbearable to sit with for even a second longer.

"Sol." Lere's voice had gone thin.

"Just… leave me… it's too late for me anyways." Solstice set his jaw and kept walking, one foot in front of the other, refusing to let himself think past that. His bad leg caught on another corpse and both of them went down hard, the cold of the stone meeting them without mercy, no softness anywhere left in this mountain for either of them to land on. He forced himself back up, breathing ragged, and bent down again for Lere without a second's hesitation. Lere's hand found his, smearing warm blood across his skin.

"Sol. Listen. Just go." Solstice dug into his coat with his good hand, searching until his fingers closed around something small and rough. The last shard of Pale Salt he had left in the world, and he'd have burned through every scrap he owned for a fraction of a chance right now.

"Open your mouth. Hurry." Lere looked at him, weak, hands trembling, lips already going pale.

"It's fine. It's fine." It wasn't. Solstice knew exactly what wasn't fine looked like. He'd seen it enough times to recognize it in his sleep, and this was that, dressed up in a friend's face instead of a stranger's. Solstice watched the blood spreading beneath them with something that felt uncomfortably close to nothing at all. He gritted his teeth and pulled at him again.

"Stand up, goddamn it."

"It hurts, Sol. I don't want to die."

"Then live." He pulled harder, and his ruined leg buckled under him, vision swimming, his shoulder screaming where the bite had torn it open, every part of him agreeing that this was the exact moment to stop and neither of them listening. He dropped down next to Lere, chest heaving. Neither of them spoke for a moment. Somewhere behind them, distant now, the cavern had finally gone quiet, and the quiet was worse than the screaming had been.

"Sol." Lere's voice had gone rough.

"Up ahead, there's a crossroad. What ever you do, Don't go left. Left's got more of them waiting."

"Don't talk."

"If I don't talk, nobody talks." A weak, wet laugh followed it.

"Right?" Solstice's jaw tightened.

"You're not really Expansion, are you." Solstice looked at him, at the pale skin, the blood, the brown eyes still somehow steady despite everything happening below the neck.

"No." Lere let out a soft, broken chuckle.

"Knew it. Since we walked into this mountain." Solstice looked down at his own ruined arm.

"Why didn't you say anything." The question came out flatter than he meant it to, more accusation buried in it than he'd planned on letting show.

"Figured you had your reasons." Another cough, wetter this time, more blood at the corner of his mouth than the last one. Solstice tried to stand again, bracing his good arm against the wall.

"Can I ask you something," Lere said, before Solstice could bend down for him a second time. Solstice didn't answer. He'd learned a long time ago that silence bought him room to not promise things he couldn't keep.

"I have a brother in Ourola, his name is El.." A cough, wet and shallow.

"Please. Live. When you get out of here, look out for him for me." He held Solstice's eyes, and there was nothing performed in it, none of the easy warmth Lere usually wore like a second coat. Just the plain, tired want of someone who'd run out of time to ask for anything else.

"Selfish favor, I know… consider this your payment of me saving.. your ass."

"Do it yourself." Solstice hauled him upward anyway, arm shaking under weight that shouldn't have felt this heavy. Then: Something slammed into his back and sent him stumbling forward, three uneven steps he couldn't stop. When he turned around, a dweller was already on Lere, jaw already closing over his throat. Their eyes met. Lere's mouth curved, shaping one word without any sound left to carry it. Live.

Solstice watched the dweller finish what it started for half a second, no longer, and then he was already moving, legs carrying him forward before his mind gave the order. He didn't scream. He didn't stop. There would be time for whatever this was later, if there was any of him left to feel it once he was somewhere safe enough to stop moving.

'I will, Lere.'

'I will live.'