THWACK.
The crossbow bucked against Elara's shoulder with the force of a mule's kick.
The bolt flew true, cutting through the shimmering heat of the Glass Forest. It didn't hit the Queen's eye—the monster moved at the last second—but it struck the joint where the massive pincer met the head.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The bolt lodged in the chitinous armor.
Then, the alchemical payload detonated.
BOOM.
It wasn't a fire explosion. It was a concussive blast designed to shatter rock in the mines.
The Queen's head snapped back violently. A cloud of purple ichor and shattered crystal erupted from her face. The blast wave rippled through the clearing, shattering the nearby delicate fulgurite trees into a rain of deadly glass confetti.
SCREEEEEEECH!
The sound was deafening. The Queen thrashed blindly, one of her massive pincers hanging limp, severed by the blast. She flailed, her tail striking the glass ground, sending tremors through the soles of Elara's boots.
The smaller, translucent male scorpions panicked. The explosion had overloaded their vibration-sensitive organs. They skittered away, chittering in terror, vanishing back into the camouflage of the forest.
"Elara! Down!" Ciro shouted.
Elara dropped to the ground, covering her head as shards of glass rained down like hail. They pinged off the crossbow and sliced into her tunic, but she didn't feel the pain.
Silence slowly returned to the clearing, broken only by the wet, ragged twitching of the dying Queen.
Elara looked up.
The Queen lay on her side, blue liquid pooling beneath her shattered head. She was dead.
Elara lowered the crossbow. Her arms were trembling so hard she could barely hold the weapon. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps.
"You got her," Ciro's voice came from the left.
He limped toward her, brushing glass dust from his hair. He was bleeding from a dozen small cuts on his arms and face, and his tunic was sliced to ribbons, but he was grinning.
It wasn't his Jester smile. It was a real, feral grin of survival.
"I missed the eye," Elara whispered, staring at the corpse. "I aimed for the eye."
"You hit the neck joint," Ciro corrected, reaching her. He pulled her up, checking her quickly for serious injuries. "Better. You severed the nerve cluster. Instant kill. If you had hit the eye, she might have thrashed for another minute. A minute is long enough to kill us both."
He squeezed her shoulder. His grip was firm, grounding her.
"Good shot, partner."
Elara looked at him, then at the dead monster. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a cold nausea. She had killed a dog yesterday. Today, she had blown up a monster.
"We need to move," Elara said, her voice hollow. "The noise... it will draw others."
"No," Ciro said, turning to the carcass. He drew his short sword. "The explosion scared off the smaller ones. They are cowards without the Queen. And we aren't leaving yet."
"What? Why?"
"Because we are starving," Ciro said simply. "And because she has something we need."
He walked over to the Queen. He didn't look like a prince or a hero. He looked like a butcher entering his shop. He knelt by the tail and sliced open the bulbous segment. A clear, gelatinous substance oozed out, smelling faintly of ozone.
"Scorpion jelly," Ciro explained. "Pure protein. It tastes like battery acid, but it will keep you walking for two days."
He handed a chunk to Elara. She swallowed it whole, grimacing as the electric taste hit her tongue, but the surge of energy was almost instant.
"One more thing." Ciro moved to the Queen's shattered head. He used his dagger to pry loose one of the massive, purple crystal shards from her armor. He wrapped the hilt in a strip of leather and handed it to Elara.
"A new dagger," Ciro said. "Steel rusts in the Ashlands. Glass doesn't. This will cut through armor better than iron."
Elara took the makeshift weapon. It shimmered in the sunlight, beautiful and deadly.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Don't thank me," Ciro stood up, wiping his blade. "Thank the lightning."
He looked at the sun. It was fully up now. The air shimmered so violently that the horizon looked like liquid.
"The cave system," Ciro said, pointing to a dark fissure in a rock formation about a mile ahead. "We need to get underground. The sun is the real enemy now."
The silence of the cave was heavy. It had physical weight, pressing against their eardrums like deep water.
After the blinding, searing kaleidoscope of the Glass Forest, the underground tunnels felt like a different planet. Here, the sun was a myth. The air was cool, damp, and smelled of wet limestone and ancient decay.
The only light came from patches of Ghost-Moss—bioluminescent fungi clinging to the ceiling like constellations of sickly blue stars.
"Watch your step," Ciro whispered. His voice bounced off the walls, multiplying into a dozen ghostly whispers. Step... step... step...
"I hate this," Elara murmured, stepping over a puddle of black water. She gripped her new glass dagger tightly. "It feels like the mountain is listening to us."
"It is," Ciro said, checking the flickering screen of the datapad. "The Old Kings built these tunnels to amplify sound. It was an early warning system."
He paused, leaning against a stalagmite. In the blue light, he looked like a corpse. His skin was grey, his eyes sunken.
Elara noticed his stumble. She was there instantly, her shoulder under his arm.
"We need to stop," she said firmly. She pointed to a dry alcove raised above the tunnel floor. "We rest. Two hours. That's an order, Wolf."
Ciro looked at the stubborn set of her jaw and gave a ghost of a smile. "As you wish, Princess."
They climbed into the alcove. Sitting in the dim blue gloom, sharing the warmth of their bodies, Elara uncorked the waterskin.
"Tell me," she whispered. "About the weapon. The God-Killer."
Ciro closed his eyes. "It is a legend. Project A.R.E.S. The scrolls say it could level a mountain with a single beam of light. If it is still in the armory... one shot could vaporize Kaelen and his entire army."
"Or it could blow us up," Elara pointed out.
"Better to die by a god's weapon than by a Prince's whip."
Ciro opened his eyes and looked at her. He raised a hand, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw.
"He looks at you like you are a prize," Ciro whispered. "I look at you, and I see the only thing in this wretched world that is real."
The distance between them vanished. Elara leaned in, her breath hitching.
Clatter.
A sound echoed from the tunnel below.
Ciro's hand moved from her face to his sword hilt in a blur. The tender moment shattered.
"Quiet."
They pressed themselves against the shadows.
Scrape... Drag... Scrape...
A figure emerged from the darkness below. It was humanoid, but wrong. Skin pale as a maggot, stretched over emaciated bones. Eyes sewn shut with rusty wire.
A Hollow.
"Don't look at it," Ciro breathed. "They are blind, but if they hear you breathe..."
The creature paused. Its mouth opened, revealing jagged teeth.
"...help..."
It wasn't asking for help; it was mimicking a sound it had heard long ago. A lure.
"...water..."
Elara clamped her hand over her mouth. Behind the creature, two more emerged, dragging rusty pickaxes.
The first Hollow sniffed the air. It reached out a skeletal hand toward the wall of their alcove. It began to climb.
Ciro prepared to lunge.
Suddenly, a deep, rhythmic thrumming sound vibrated through the tunnel floor.
VMMMM... VMMMM...
The Hollows froze. They shrieked—a sound of pure terror—and scrambled away, fleeing down the dark tunnel as fast as spiders.
"What was that?" Elara whispered.
Ciro checked the datapad. The screen was glitching red.
"That," Ciro said, staring into the deep dark, "was the ventilation system of the Mining Outpost coming online."
He stood up, his face grim.
"Rest time is over, Princess. The automated defenses just woke up."
And beneath the hum, Elara could hear something else.
Footsteps. Heavy, metallic, and rhythmic.
Marching toward them.