The ogre hit the floor. General Hi’et stepped back, growling, and tossed her black hair out of her eyes.
“Feel better?” Corian asked.
“Well, it’s a start.”
L’zar materialized behind the fallen ogre and gestured toward the door leading to the corridors beyond. “By your leave, General.”
“Cut it out. We both know I don’t have a damn clue where we’re going.”
Ember floated toward the pool of bubbling black goo, her violet eyes swimming with tears. “We can’t just leave them in there. They need help.”
“Not anymore.” Byrd sniffed and brushed glass shards off his shoulder. “These assholes were keeping their prisoners alive. My guess is the electric rods and something moving through those cages. Nobody’s alive in there, fae. They’ve been left too long.”
Ember scanned the faces of the tortured magical prisoners, looking for signs of life. “We don’t know that. Can’t we just check?”
“Your heart’s in the right place, kid.” Lumil patted Ember’s back and steered her away from the pool toward the opposite side of the chamber. “We don’t have time, and they don’t have a spark of life left. Let them have their peace as they found it, huh?”
Ember turned over her shoulder to check one more time for movement, but that only came from the black bubbles bursting on the surface of the pool.
Cheyenne bit her lip and stared at her friend as the party gathered behind the exit to follow L’zar. If she makes it through this and doesn’t lose her mind, she can make it through anything. The halfling gently took Ember’s wrist and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” Ember grimaced at her friend. “But at least they’re not screaming anymore.”
L’zar waved his hand across the door, which opened slowly to let them out into another series of corridors. “Keep up. Two minutes tops and we’re at the courtyard.”
He looked at Cheyenne and nodded.
Her hand went to her pocket and felt the gold coin’s outline there. And then I’ll have to get this thing on a stupid table. Yeah, I’m ready.
L’zar gazed at the top of the open doorway, then darted into the corridor to lead them through the Crown’s fortress. The party quickly followed, racing against what little time they had left.
Chapter Ninety-Two
The corridors got darker and narrower as they ran. Cheyenne tried to look straight ahead and watch where she was going, but the activator kept catching her attention with bright flashes of light racing along the walls beside her. The instant the activator alerted her to the fact that they’d been found out, a siren erupted from the walls, groaning and wailing like a trapped beast crying out in pain.
“Shit.” Corian hissed as they ran behind L’zar. “Someone was bound to see us eventually. Sooner than we’d hoped, though.”
“Don’t stop!” L’zar shouted. “Just around this corner!”
A blaze of searing heat and roaring orange flames hurtled down the hall toward them. L’zar stopped at the front of their line, staring straight at the fire, but didn’t lift a finger to do anything. Cheyenne gritted her teeth and raised a shield in front of him at the last second, sectioning off the corridor from floor to ceiling before the fiery attack reached them. The blaze flared and brightened with an angry roar as it churned against her shield, turning the stone and metal corridor into a magical oven. The rebels leaned away from the glaring brightness, bearing the heat and the deafening roar until the flames subsided.
Cheyenne hissed and let the shield drop so they could press forward. Maleshi turned briefly toward her as they ran. “Way to use your head, kid.”
“Just trying not to lose it.”
The alarm wailed around them, and the second they turned the final corner, they were met by a full contingent of orc soldiers, all with the Bull’s Head embroidered on their black uniform chests, shoulders, and collars. The rebels hurtled down the next walkway, and Cheyenne almost stopped when she realized where they were.
They’d come out six stories above a massive sunken courtyard of black stone. The corridor they’d reached encircled the courtyard, open to the wide space in the center and separated by a narrow stone rail from the drop. In the center of the indoor courtyard stood the last Nimlothar tree, its gnarled trunk twisting up toward the domed ceiling far above. Gloomy gray light spilled onto the stone floors and the giant tree’s twisted roots, which protruded from the broken stone around it. The Nimlothar pulsed with a faint dark light, its branches mostly bare but for the occasional cluster of frail purple leaves that looked as sick and twisted as the rest of the tree.
This is it.
Cheyenne spun toward the orc soldiers heading toward them along the narrow stone walkway around the courtyard and the next battle began.
Spells flew in every direction. Maleshi and Corian met the first line of orcs charging toward them, silver light flashing as they barreled through the snarling Crown loyalists trying to run them down. Orcs screamed as they dropped over the stone rail and hit the courtyard floor at the bottom. There wasn’t much room for the other rebels to join the fight as the nightstalkers fought their way through the armed soldiers.
Footsteps pounded across the stone behind Cheyenne, and she turned in the opposite direction to see another wave of soldiers streaming from a second corridor opening onto the walkway. The first few caught sight of her and leered, then pounded meaty fists against their chests and broke into a run.
“Behind us too!” she shouted, summoning crackling spheres of black energy in both hands.
Lumil and Byrd turned and broke into matching grins of battle insanity when they saw the second group of orcs. “Excellent.”
Cheyenne fired her
