Page 95 of Vasmora

Sickness dragged at his guts as he looked over her ravaged body.

Her nose and half her lips had been consumed, along with her neck and left arm. Part of her scalp and half her face had been flayed, exposing the raw flesh beneath, her eyeball missing from its socket. Both legs had been bitten away at the kneecap, presumably by the older beasts. The only arm she had left reached out for him, trembling, the other looked like it’d been hacked away a blade, its edges smooth .

Kazhimyr grimaced, staring down at her, wondering what dark magic kept her alive.

“Kill … me. Please. I … beg … you.” Her voice hardly rose above the wet chewing and tearing sounds, as the serpents continued to feast on her.

His jaw hardened, her pleas failing to move him. “As so many have begged you.” Kazhimyr slowly lifted the helmet away and tucked it under his arm. Whatever glimmer of hope had shone in her eye moments before dulled to dread. He cocked his chin in satisfaction, staring down at her pitiful form. “Where is she?”

“Kill … me.”

“Tell me where she is.” Perhaps it was the promise in his voice that prompted her to give up the argument.

With slow, jerky movements, she turned her head toward a mound that resembled a body, but mostly consumed, the pale skin ravaged and torn from her face. From where he stood, Kazhimyr caught sight of dark hair matted in blood. So much blood, where she lay on a bed of glowing fungi just like the general.

He clenched his jaw so hard, flashes of light struck the back of his eyes, and he drew his sword, a crushing tide of grief and rage blurring his vision.

He’d failed Maevyth. Failed Zevander. Their lives, the price of his incompetence. .

The moment Loyce closed her eye, a look of peace claimed her expression.

No. He would give her no peace. She would suffer for as long as her cold, worthless heart continued to beat.

Kazhimyr tucked his sword back into its scabbard.

“May you rot in Nethyria,” he seethed, the fury tightening his throat, and he turned his attention to what was left of Maevyth.

“No! Please!” Loyce screamed. “She’s … ‘live!”

Kazhimyr ignored her, bones crushing beneath his boots with each cautious step around the general, eyes locked on the feeding serpents as he made his way toward Maevyth’s ravaged remains. Brows pulled tight, he unhooked his cloak and draped it over her body. “Forgive me, Zevander. For I have failed you.”

“I … swear to… you! She … li–” A gut-wrenching scream split the general’s words, but without offering so much as a glance her way, he narrowed his sights on a tunnel entrance at the far end of the cave, nearest to what he was certain was the nest. He strode toward it, watching the third charnelyth, who tracked his movements as he rounded the pool. The other two kept their distance, warily growling from afar.

A long, crackled hiss echoed through the cavern, the queen uncoiling herself with his approach. She reared back, and while a quick prayer to the gods slipped through his mind, his pace didn’t slow. He kept on toward the opening, never taking his eyes off the massive serpent. The moment he entered the tunnel, he ground to a halt. The unnerving prickle of insects crawling beneath his skin sent a tremor through his muscles. A cold, sickening dread gurgled in his chest.

“Find him,” that disturbing voice spoke again, reverberating in his skull.

Kazhimyr pressed a palm to his ear and screwed his eyes shut. His feet set into motion without much prompting from his head and he took long strides through the tunnel, ignoring the clicking and hissing sounds around him.

A thud from behind shook the ground beneath him, and Kazhimyr paused his steps, turning around slowly. Faint fingers of light from the cavern stretched through the depths of the tunnel, outlining the silhouette of a creature that stood upright, slightly taller than himself, on long, skinny legs. He caught the gleam of a chitinous shell and a vague shape of mandibles.

Click, click, click.

Its mandibles tapped together, and again, a chorus of hissing and chittering answered, indicating there were far more of them. The high-pitched ringing from before struck his skull, and Kazhimyr clenched his teeth, the sound piercing his eardrums like needles through thin parchment.

He shook his head, but it wouldn’t relent.

A darkness clouded his eyes, a storm rolling through his vision, as blackness closed in from his periphery.

Then, as quickly as it arrived, the murk dissolved to sharp clarity.

The hissing and chittering silenced.

A shine on the tunnel floor drew his attention to the creature that’d stood there only seconds ago. Kazhimyr stepped toward it, lowering to one knee beside where it now lay. The pitch blackness gave way to a soft green glow that outlined the shape of a spider the size of a rabbit devouring the beetle man, its green guts spilling onto the floor.

Kazhimyr jumped to his feet, stirring a collective clacking sound overhead. Hundreds of the bug-like creatures crawled over each other, heading toward the mouth of the tunnel in the opposite direction.

Slowly Kazhimyr turned to find a door at his back, the panel for the lock bent away. He opened it with ease and passed through to a cell, the entrance of it wide open, the door lying busted and bent on the ground. To the left of him lay Melantha’s mutilated and half-consumed body covered in much smaller beetles, her legs severed.