Page 268 of Vasmora

I scrambled closer, visually examining him for any sign of injury. Aside from the layer of black soot across his skin, I found nothing visible. Even his leathers had remained intact.

Flopping onto his back, he breathed deeply, his eyes shuttered.

Handing Rho to Verena, I reached a cautious hand toward him. While warm, his body didn’t sear my skin. “Are you okay?”

His eyes flipped open and he nodded. “Just catching my breath. That glyph took the wind out of me.”

I exhaled my own trembling breath, running my hand across my forehead. “You scared me for a second.”

“Only a second?” He chuckled, and I slapped his arm, smiling. Groaning, he sat up and flexed his hand, where the glyph still glowed across his palm.

“Gods be damned. You can bring dead veins to life?” Lothare asked beside us, shaking his head as he stared down at the flaming trench. “Assuming everything doesn’t go to shit after this plague, you are going to be the most sought-after man in this world.”

Zevander snorted and pushed to his feet. “Not if you keep your mouth shut.” He swiped up a web-covered torch from the wall and strode back to light it in the vein. The pitch must’ve been centuries old, the way it smelled like bitter tar and stale smoke. “Let’s keep going.”

Our group trudged along, through the long and winding passage, until we reached a set of iron doors. Above them, the tympanum held chipped and moss-covered carvings of a strange, human-like creature, with long, curled antlers and multiple arms, clutching a staff and chalice. Its supplicants bowed around it, and behind them, a trench held flickers of fire. A vein, just like the one we’d passed through.

Bordering the stone relief was a dragon-like serpent consuming its own tail.

“Nihilion,” Zevander said beside me. “God of the void.”

We’d reached Cadavros’s nest.

Zevander ran his hands over the soldered seam between the iron doors. “It’s sealed. I’ll have to summon my scorpion to bust it open.”

“And wake whatever awaits us on the other side?” Kazhimyr shook his head. “There has to be another way.”

“I’m fairly certain Cadavros already knows we’re here.” Zevander turned toward Gavroche, who patted his hand along the adjacent wall where the stones hardly peeked through the thick, gray vines growing over it. “What are you looking for, Gavroche?”

Everywhere the boy touched, the leaves shimmered green beneath his palm. “There’s a small … here! It’s here!” Gavroche dropped to his knees, revealing a passage that was half my height. Pieces of broken stone lay in piles outside of it, indicating it’d been intentionally bored out at some point. He pointed toward its webbed entrance. “We used to follow the rats in here. Come!”

As he crawled toward it, Zevander gripped the boy’s shoulder. “We don’t know what’s on the other side of this wall. I’ll go first.” Dropping to his knees, Zevander swiped away the sticky webs and vines, then took the lead into the passage.

“Vines that grow without sunlight?” I asked, watching him disappear inside.

“Nulluxia.” Gavroche brushed his hand over the surface, summoning the green glow. “Grows in the dark.” He followed after Zevander, and I trailed third.

Grit and something wet squished against my palm as I one-handedly scrambled behind them while holding Rho tucked in my armpit. I squeezed my eyes shut, following blindly, desperate to ignore whatever squelched beneath my hands.

As darkness gave way to dim light, a grip of my arm startled my muscles, and I looked up to see Zevander reaching for me. Pushing to my feet, I took in the expanse of the room where torches flickered about a vast cavern, the size of which rivaled an ancient coliseum. The ornately carved stone pillars, archways and tiered cavea left me wondering if it had once been used for fighting or sport. The upper half of the room, swathed in white webs so thick I couldn’t see the ceiling, carried hundreds of cocoons that hung from thin strands. Others lay toppled on the floor around us.

“The villagers,” Zevander said, looking around. “There must be well over a thousand in this room alone.”

My mind couldn’t fathom the vastitude.

Flaking and peeling paint, adorned in gilding, offered only a fading glimpse of the images that decorated the walls. Tightly-woven webs stretched between the many statues interspersed throughout the room, and in the distance, looming over them all, stood the stony depiction of the creature I’d seen in the carving. Nihilion.

The low hum of moans sent a ripple down my spine, the muffled sounds of agony bleeding through the cocoons. A few steps away from us, a man reached out from where he’d managed to get his head and an arm loose from the tightly-bound webs that held him suspended. A creamy, white substance that reminded me of vernix on a newborn covered his skin and clumped between his fingers.

“Help me. Please,” he rasped. “Please help me.”

Zevander strode forward, drawing his blade, but Lothare stepped into his path and clutched his arm. With a jerk of his shoulder, Zevander wrenched himself free.

“He doesn’t look infected.” Lothare glanced toward the man and back. “His eyes aren’t black.”

A low, incessant ringing chimed in my ear, the sound intensifying. Growing louder. I clamped my eyes shut, flexing my jaw as I pressed the heel of my palm to my ear in a failed attempt to stem the noise. A cold sickness flooded my chest, and through the darkness of my mind, I saw a vision.

The man in the cocoon.