Whether male or female, their deceased friend was unrecognizable, even by the clothes. Frayed, insect-eaten bits of fabric clung loosely to the skeleton, with no flesh to be seen, but the stench was bad enough visions of decaying flesh and zombies to Solis’s mind. For an interminable few seconds, he stared down at the mostly-whole skeleton, darkness swirling endlessly around him, until a nudge to his shoulder startled him.
He whirled, coming face-to-face with Telsan’s beak. “Solis, we need to go! Whatever monsters are after us, we can’t just stand here.”
A growl from behind punctuated the Ornis boy’s words, and Solis gulped, looking backward to see a long, sniffing snout peeking out at them. “Okay, let’s . . . um, yeah. Let’s go.”
Solis broke into a run along with Telsan, catching up with Phoenix, who was already ahead, light feet pattering on the stone floor of the cave. The floor twisted upward, stone ceiling pulling with it before splitting off. Phoenix’s lantern illuminated the mist-shrouded walls. “Which way?” She hissed in agitation.
Solis charged by, Telsan hot on his wings. Hardly stopping to think, he took a left, then another, as the path split, soon before scraping to a halt. Telsan pressed uncomfortably against his wings, not to mention the stone walls of the tunnel, and Phoenix shouted, “What is it now?”
“Not quite . . . sure,” Solis muttered, even as another large boom echoed from up ahead. Scraping, clawing and shuffling sounds followed, and he began to backpedal. “Wrong way, guys, move! Pick another tunnel.”
“I’m starting to get claustrophobic,” Telsan complained as he turned around, batting Solis unintentionally in the face with his great wings. Phoenix was the first out, picking another tunnel and dashing through. Solis heard a small hiss escape her lips, presumably as she cut herself on the jagged cavern walls. Even Solis was getting claustrophobic, his panicked heartbeat rising in pace. The growls of monsters from the way they’d come grew closer.
Fortunately, this new tunnel soon widened out, though Solis had thoroughly lost his sense of direction. He had no time to fan or stretch his wings after escaping, however, as Phoenix continued to lead and no one was objecting. “Are we just supposed to keep running?” Solis called out, as though another Watcher or Harbinger or some such was watching their escape from the shadows (surely amused, if so). “Anyone? Help!”
Telsan muttered something to the effect that such cries would do no good, and perhaps only inflame the monsters’ hunger for fresh interloper. This protest came out in the form of “Solis . . .” followed by a string of unintelligible words—the subtle meaning of which was lost in the chorus of pursuing growl, of course.
Solis’ breath was coming in gasps, his legs afire with over-exertion, by the time Phoenix stumbled to a halt. He gratefully clomped to a stop behind her, wheezing, grateful for the break without even considering the reason.
“That’s—what’s that?” she said, pointing ahead, and Solis looked up, peering into the darkness to see ominous pale statues unmasked by their torch.
Telsan, the most fit of them, approached the tall humanoid busts, which stood squarish and tall over the pillars, his chest rising and falling heavily. “Ancient carvings,” he said between breaths. “No idea what kind of civilization, obviously. Sure we should be stopping, th—”
The ceiling detonated, drowning all other noise in a deafening stone roar, and rocks streamed from the cave ceiling. Telsan shied back toward them, narrowly escaping the flying rock shards. Solis yanked his friend farther back by the arm, despite the ineffectual timing of his intervention, even as Phoenix gasped.
She must have seen the pale shape uncoiling from the floor in front of them. It was some manner of wingless human, rising to a height of around five feet—the size and shape of a child. A girl, Solis thought, judging by the long ash-gray hair the spilled frantically over her shoulders. Her clothes were of some sort of tight wrapping, dull and dusty. For a moment, Solis mistook her for the ghostly “Guardian” they’d encountered earlier, but she was different.
Most alarmingly, of course, she was entirely undamaged from her dramatic entrance.
The girl rolled her shoulders and shot a disgruntled look at the three newcomers, as though peeved by their trespassing. The muttered in a strange, low, choppy language, and Solis had to cut off a sputtering laugh at the sound of it. The frown deepened, her glare focusing on him, and she said in the common sky tongue, “Well, what’s the issue? Can’t deal with a few monsters?”
His look said everything, because she sighed in response, muttering another displeased phrase in her strange tongue. Then, “Well? You did call.”