We walked down the passage for half an hour, seeing no signs of any other passages or routes, although we did hear the muted roar of waves and the gurgle of water rushing through some parts of the cave system. The cave remained large enough that Fang and the direbear were easily able to fit through them. The ceiling was fifteen feet high at least, and the width was always a few yards across. Eventually, we came to a section where the cave forked into three different tunnels.
“All right,” Friya said, “now we have light down here at least, but how are we going to figure out which way to go from here?”
“I’ll follow my nose,” I answered.
“I’m a werewolf, Vance, and I dare say I have a better sense of smell than anyone here,” Friya said. “All I can smell down here is damp rock, saltwater, and rotting seaweed. What can you smell that I can’t?”
“I’m following a scent that no mortal nose can pick up,” I said. “The stink of death. Old death.”
“This entire area must be saturated with it!” Friya exclaimed. “We’re under the ocean, and there have to be trillions of dead sea creatures everywhere.”
“No, I’m looking for a very specific death scent,” I countered. “I’m able to pick ‘em out now, like a human bloodhound. Well, a bloodhound god. You know what I mean.”
“And what scent is that?”
“Dead cave trolls. Cave trolls are the wyrms’ preferred snack, I’ve heard, so where there are a lot of dead cave trolls, we’re gonna find wyrms. And the caverns where the wyrms are won’t be under the ocean. It’ll be under Prand. If I can find the wyrms’ lair, I can find the way out of these tunnels.”
“Understood,” Friya said, nodding. “It seems there are things even a werewolf’s nose cannot detect.”
Anna-Lucielle stepped forward, looking nervous. “There’s, uh, one thing I’m worried about, Vance,” she said. “Percy mentioned that the last section is all underwater, and that you’d have to be able to hold your breath for five minutes while swimming through it—and that’s if you get the route right the first time. I, uh, I really don’t think I can hold my breath for even two minutes, much less five.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got a plan for that when we get there,” I said. “Nobody will have to hold their breath for longer than maybe a minute, ninety seconds tops.”
“You’re the God of Death, not the God of the Sea, Vance,” Isu said drily. “You’re not immune from drowning, and you don’t have the power to make others breathe underwater, much less yourself. And if you’re thinking of drowning us all and then resurrecting us when you’ve dragged us out of the water…”
“I definitely wasn’t thinking of doing that,” I said with a chuckle. “Trust me, there’s a way we can get through the underwater caves. You’ll see when we get there. For now, I’m going to do some scouting.”
I closed my eyes and fine-tuned my senses, sifting through all the ancient death that hovered and drifted here. It was astonishing how much there was. The oceans, it seemed, had held life for far longer than the land had.
When I’d first started out as an inexperienced, weak deity, I’d been able sense death only in the most crude and indistinct manner. I had known it was there, but I hadn’t been able to distinguish individual deaths among the great mass of it all.
Now, I realized that in those early days, I’d been seeing it all like an old, near-blind geriatric with thick cataracts over his eyes. These cataracts had slowly dissolved and fallen away as my power had grown. Now, they were gone completely. My death vision felt as sharp and crisp as any eagle’s, my nose as potent as a bloodhound’s when it came to sniffing out individual deaths.
Here, there were a great many dead marine creatures, and I could see them all—if seeing was even the right word to use for the process of detection I was using—but marine creatures weren’t what I was looking for. I concentrated more deeply, sifting through the immense mass of death scents, looking for the needle in this haystack. It was there, somewhere, I could sense it, incredibly faintly, like the hint of a smell of rain on a clear and cloudless day.
I pulled more Death power into myself, amplifying the potency of my senses. Then, finally, I got it—or, rather, it grabbed me: the faint but undeniably distinct death scent of dead cave trolls. I honed in on it, focusing all of my thoughts and concentration on this singular scent. In my mind’s eye, an ethereal trail of black light came into being in front of me, like a long thread of wool, floating in mid-air, guiding us through this dark labyrinth.
“Got it,” I said triumphantly. “Let’s go.”
“Are you sure?” Elyse asked.
“Does Elandriel eat goblin shit and fuck goats? Hells yes I’m sure. I’ve picked up the scent of dead cave trolls, and not just a handful of them, hundreds of the smelly bastards. And unless there’s some sort of underwater cave troll graveyard around here, or a bunch of cave trolls did the lemming thing over the cliffs into the sea, then I’m pretty damn sure I’ve found us a way out of here. The only reason there’d be so many dead cave trolls in the same place is because they’ve been shat out by wyrms in their lair.”
I led my party through the fork, taking the tunnel to the left; this was where the black thread
