Bastial Explosion (The Rhythm of Rivalry: Book 3) (33 page)

They slowed to a light jog.

“Here.” Alex came in front of Zoke, aiming his back toward the Krepp. “Get on, Eff. I can carry you until you’re ready.”

As Effie was transferred, she noticed everyone’s breathing was like hers at that point. Even Zoke—she’d never heard him so tired. It sounded like he was sucking in twice as much air as everyone else, his breath loud and fierce.

Effie rode on Alex’s back long enough to begin drifting in and out of consciousness at least a few times, probably more. But reality snapped back into place when everyone began to murmur nervously.

They’d stopped by then, all of them crowding around Quessa, who was on her knees.

“You can let me down,” Effie told Alex, hopping off him. “What happened?”

“Quessa fell.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, trying to push herself back up to her feet. But one leg gave out, and she toppled over.

“Quessa!” Reela yelled. She and Alex helped the woman up. Then Reela looked at Quessa’s hand grabbing onto her shoulder. Effie noticed the blood coming through. “Quessa, you’re bleeding,” Reela said.

“I know. I was hit by an arrow, but it only glanced off me.”

Effie put a light on her. Then Alex drew his knife and cut away the shirt around her shoulder. There was a deep gash.

“It’s bad,” Alex said.

“I’ve had worse. We need to keep going.” Quessa staggered to her feet. With a little help from Alex, she made it there and started trudging forward. “Should’ve brought a chemist,” she muttered. “Effie, got it in you to light our path? I could use a break from doing so.”

The moment Effie let the light through her wand, she noticed a red stain on Quessa’s pants. It was on the low end of her right calf.

“Quessa, do you know that you’ve been cut on your leg as well?”

“Of course I know that. I was struck by a blade. I’m trying not to think about it because doing so only makes it worse, and we need to get out of here as soon as possible.”

An awkward silence followed as they continued forward.

“How bad is the cut?” Effie needed to know.

“Quessa, let us see it,” Reela said. “It looks like there’s been a lot of blood loss.”

“Leave it be!” But as Quessa turned to shout and her eyes caught the light from Effie’s wand, they rolled back in her head. The woman stumbled, but Reela caught her before she fell.

“Lie down, it’ll just take a moment,” Reela said, Vithos helping her set Quessa on her back and lift up her leg.

Quessa winced as they rolled up her pant leg. Effie got closer to put the light right on the wound. It was a deeper cut than the one to her shoulder, blood oozing without any sign of stopping.

“You shouldn’t be walking on this,” Alex said, retrieving a shirt from his bag and shredding it with his knife. “I’m going to wrap the wound. Zoke will carry you the rest of the way.”

“Bastial hell, fine,” Quessa muttered, defeated. “Just hurry up.”

Soon Quessa was back upright and balancing on one foot with the other tightly wrapped by Alex’s shirt. She rolled her eyes and let out a humiliated sigh as Zoke knelt down in front of her so that she could climb on his back.

They were off once again, Effie lighting the dark forest ahead of them.

“You’re much heavier than Effie,” Zoke commented. “Yet, you’re not much taller.”

“It’s called muscle,” Quessa said.

“It feels more like fat to me,” Zoke replied.

Effie couldn’t help but laugh. Reela and Alex let out a giggle as well.

“Why is funny that she fat?” Vithos asked.

That only made Effie laugh harder.

“Oh shut up.” Quessa wasn’t amused.

Chapter 27:

STEFFEN

It turned out that Slugari didn’t need to sleep as much as Humans. Unfortunately for Steffen, it seemed that neither did Javy Rayvender. Determined to reach Tenred territory, he pushed them onward, Steffen, Marratrice, and Jack soon dragging their feet along the hard dirt.

As excited as Marratrice was when she told Steffen that she’d convinced Queen to plant her evesal seed, she couldn’t remain that way as they trudged on without a break. Every few hours, Javy would tell Steffen to ask another Slugari where they were, and finally one replied that they were beneath Tenred. By then, everyone was too exhausted to talk. Even Queen agreed that she needed some rest after they got there.

“It’s just up ahead.” Queen pointed at a wall of dirt with no entranceway but a small tunnel. It was barely large enough for Steffen to fit in if he crawled on his hands and knees.

“How do we get around this wall?” Javy asked.

“There’s no way around, only through it,” Queen replied.

“What?” Marratrice’s voice was a whisper.

“Through there?” Javy had just realized what Queen was saying. His voice was incredulous as he pointed.

“What’s on the other side?” Jack asked.

Queen looked amused, her mouth bent in a smug grin. “Nothing that’ll hurt you.” She wiggled forward. “As long as you’re careful.”

A Slugari just outside the tunnel slithered toward Queen when she approached.

“Any change in heat?” Queen asked in Slugaren.

“No. It’s the same as we left it. There will be no explosion anytime soon,” the Slugari replied.

“So it could’ve been this way for years?” Queen asked.

“Most likely.”

Javy tugged on Steffen’s shirt to bring him back a step. “What are they talking about?”

“I’m not really sure, something about heat and an explosion.”

Queen thanked the Slugari and turned to address them. “Are you ready?”

“How long does the tunnel go on?” Marratrice asked with a frightened tone.

That’s right. She doesn’t like tight spaces,
Steffen remembered. Even he was a bit nervous about crawling in. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for her.

“Not long,” Queen answered, giving no sign she was going to say any more on the subject. She turned and slithered into the hole at the base of the dirt wall.

“I’m going to wait here, if you don’t mind,” Marratrice told Javy.

“That’s fine,” Jack answered for him.

Steffen was tempted to stay back as well, but his curiosity outweighed his fear. Suddenly, he remembered Queen’s warning:
“Curiosity is more likely to kill you than fear.”

A chill went down his back.

Nevertheless, Steffen took a breath, got down on his hands and knees, and followed Queen in—determined to stay near her this time in case the tunnel got dark.

It wasn’t as bad as it looked…until he got to a turn. Just the sight of it sent his heart racing. Images were evoked of him getting stuck. Already the tunnel was growing dim.

“Keep going,” Javy said from behind. He pushed on Steffen’s feet.

“There’s a turn!” he yelled, pushing back against Javy. “Wait a moment.” Unable to bend his body the necessary degrees to make the turn, Steffen lay on his side and extended his arms around it, edging himself forward with his knees and feet.

He could hear Jack muttering, “My Bastial stars, I can’t fit through there.”

“Don’t be a coward,” Javy said. “If I can, then you can.”

“Queen!” Steffen shouted. “Don’t go too far ahead, we need your light.”

“I’m right around the corner,” she said.

Getting his waist around the turn was the hardest part, and for a brief moment Steffen thought he was stuck. Queen grabbed his arms with her little talons and tried to pull him forward. When Javy started pushing his feet, Steffen didn’t need to do any more work himself. His body slid through the turn.

“Only two more turns before we get there,” Queen said.

Bastial hell.

Steffen could hear Javy scraping his way through the turn next, muttering curses and complaining about how the tunnel should’ve been made larger. Queen ignored it or simply didn’t hear.

Jack wheezed and grunted, keeping the curses within his head. Though, Steffen thought he heard at least one come out.

There was a long stretch before the next curve in the tunnel. Fortunately, it was a touch wider than the first, allowing Steffen to get through without lying on his side.

After another long stretch and another turn, Steffen could feel heat pressing against his face. With Queen being the only thing he could see in front of him, he asked if it was her.

“No. That’s Bastial Energy you feel,” she informed him. “And it’s going to get a lot hotter soon.”

The tunnel led them to a small room that was tall enough for Steffen to stand with at least ten feet above him to spare. He wanted to take a deep breath and let sweet relief into his body through his lungs, but he was having a tough time getting used to the heat.

It felt like he was standing just outside an open oven. “Where’s this heat coming from?” he asked. The only thing in front of him was stone, like the side of the mountain. In fact, as he looked to either side, it did seem like that’s what he was looking at.

The rest of the room had been created with walls of hard dirt, just like the rest of the Slugari colony. Only in front of him was smooth stone, as if a mountain had been buried and the Slugari had dug to the edge of it.

With the room being just large enough to fit two Dajriks shoulder to shoulder, Steffen had no concept as to how far the slab of stone in front of him stretched. The Slugari hadn’t dug far enough on either side of it to tell.

“I don’t understand,” Javy said, giving the alcove a quick inspection.

“Touch the stone in front of you,” Queen instructed.

All three of them reached for it and quickly retracted their hands. It was too hot to touch.

“What is this?” Jack asked.

“Bastial Energy rises from deep within our world,” Queen explained. “It permeates through soil, water, everything that’s not too thick and sturdy to contain it. But when it does reach something that it can’t pass through, it doesn’t go back down where it came from. Instead, the Bastial Energy builds and builds, growing hotter and hotter. That’s what we have here.” Queen pointed at the stone.

“It’s dangerous,” she continued, “which is why we’ve closed off this area except for a small tunnel. As more Bastial Energy becomes trapped, eventually the stone won’t be able to contain it. Then there will be an explosion. Depending on how much Bastial Energy has been trapped, these explosions can be devastating to the land.”

Steffen stepped back, finding Jack and Javy doing the same.

“And how much Bastial Energy is trapped here?” Javy gestured with a quick jerk of his head. “You Slugari can sense BE, right?”

“Yes. There’s a lot. That’s all I can say. The explosion this would produce would be enormous.”

“What kind of explosion?” Jack asked. “Would there be fire involved or only the stone cracking and BE shooting into the air?”

“No fire,” Queen answered. “Unless you want there to be.” Her head tilted. “Remember, we’re below Tenred territory right now.”

Steffen could almost hear Javy’s thoughts as his eyes went wide and he asked, “When will it explode?”

“Without assistance, it could be a few years or even a hundred years.” Queen tapped the stone with her claws. “The wall hasn’t yet begun to swell, so we have no idea when except that it’ll be a long time.”

“But you can make this explosion happen sooner and cause fire to be part of it?” Javy asked.

“We can. We’ve done it before to clear pockets of Bastial Energy we didn’t want building up in our colony. Though, we’ve never dealt with one this large. We can’t predict the damage it’ll do to the ground above.”

“How do you go about exploding it?” Javy asked.

Steffen felt sweat dripping from his forehead. He never thought he would be eager to get back into the tunnel, but he could barely wait.

“There’s a plant that emits a small explosion of fire when it gets hot enough. We put them into clusters, chip the stone wall, stuff the clusters in, create a trail of them out of this tunnel, then light the trail. A stream of fire will explode through, reaching the stone wall and cracking it enough for Bastial Energy to escape. As I’m sure you know, BE feeds on fire, and fire feeds on it. As soon as the stone is cracked, the BE will push through and tear its way up through the soil. The stone will collapse in on itself, giving BE a chance to escape. It will jump out, pushing any loose boulders and dirt along its way so they fly into the air. Because of the fire fed to it, the BE will be blazing red. I can’t say exactly what’ll happen, but I’d imagine the ground above will crack, boulders the size of Humans will fly through the air, dirt will burst and rain down on everything, and red flames of hot BE will torch anything even close to the cracking ground.”

“I see…” Javy rubbed his chin with four fingertips as he stared at the stone wall.

“But there’s no way to know how far the cracks will spread, how extensive the damage will be?” Jack asked, far more concerned than Javy.

“That’s the problem,” Queen said. “We’ve been told that you Humans don’t wish to kill everyone in Tenred, only those who fight against you. We respect that. However, once we set this explosion, there’s no way to know who’ll suffer from its wrath.”