Chapter 70: The People Below

Chapter 70: The People Below

"Behind!" Silas shouted.

Caelan was already turning, but the hunter had gathered itself to jump. Maelin was still getting up beside him. Tavi stood across the basin; Dagna was lowering her shield, and Leander had turned toward the remaining front attacker.

Silas thumbed the case open.

The adamantite dart rose beside his shoulder. Split Focus let him keep track of Maelin and Caelan while directing the weapon, without the brief blindness that committing all his attention would have caused.

He sent it at the hunter’s head.

Wrong angle.

The warning came too late. The point struck its domed skull plate and skated away with an ugly metallic click. A bright scratch marked the armor. The hunter flinched and opened its jaws in a hiss.

Silas caught the dart before it flew beyond his reach. He slowed it, turned it in a tight loop, and aimed beneath the raised jaw, where pale scales showed between plates.

The correction dragged at his reserve. His back foot slid on moss. He bent his knees and kept his attention on the dart rather than wrenching himself upright.

The hunter jumped.

His weapon met it from below, driving into the exposed throat.

The leap broke short. The creature hit the paving a stride behind Caelan, clawing toward him despite the dart lodged beneath its jaw. Caelan turned fully and shot through its eye at close range.

It stopped.

Silas pulled the dart free and drew it back. His head rang. He took a breath and realized he had been holding the last one since opening the case.

At the front, Alden cut across the final hunter’s foreleg. Gareth finished it as it fell, then stepped back from the body.

"Hold positions," Leander said. "Check above us."

For a few seconds Silas could hear only Dagna’s breathing and the soft scrape of vines against stone. Caelan scanned the gallery arches with another arrow ready. Tavi moved around the basin without approaching the far stairs. Nothing else dropped.

The dead hunters lay around them: four from the front, five from the galleries, and the one that had hidden over the entrance.

Leander called for a headcount. Ten voices answered.

Maelin sat up, hair across her face, one elbow grazed. Silas wanted to kneel beside her and check everything himself. She caught him looking and raised her uninjured hand.

"I’m here," she said.

He nodded before trusting his voice.

Caelan looked at the dart hovering beside Silas’s shoulder.

"Yours?" the archer asked.

"Mine," Silas said.

"Under the jaw. After the first strike bounced." Caelan glanced back at the entrance arch. "Good correction."

"Thanks for finishing it."

Across the basin, Gareth was studying the dart too. His eyes followed it into the case. Silas cleaned the points with a scrap from his pouch, settled the weapon in its lining, and closed the catch.

Well, he knows about that now.

The cost bothered him more. Catching the hunters and correcting the dart had taken roughly a third of his recovered reserve. He had practiced outside the studio, but targets didn’t force him to change his mind halfway through a throw.

Leander set Caelan and Tavi to watch the approaches while the others checked injuries. Dagna flexed both wrists; a crack had crossed the corner of her shield before she dismissed it. Gareth had a claw score on his upper arm and only accepted a dressing when Leander told him to stop wasting time.

Isolde’s palm had healed. Her face was paler, though. Tavi returned briefly to offer her water, which Isolde declined before turning back toward the west gallery.

Alden’s calf had taken a shallow bite through the leather. Silas crouched to clean and cover it from his own pouch.

"Still walking?" Silas asked.

"Still walking," Alden said, then hissed when the dressing touched the wound. "Preferably after that."

Silas eased the pressure. His own forearm hurt when he reached for the tape, and Alden held the dressing in place while he tore a strip.

Nobody had suffered a crippling injury. Silas let himself feel glad about that. Maelin was a few paces away washing her elbow, irritated by a strap that kept slipping into the scrape. He could hear her, see her, and ask her to move.

He had watched that portrait turn gray on a screen. Here, Maelin caught the troublesome strap under her arm and carried on cleaning the scrape.

"There’s blood over there that isn’t ours," Elyra said.

She pointed beneath the collapsed section of the west gallery. Fallen stair slabs enclosed a narrow opening. Claw marks scored its edges, and torn moss led to a dark smear inside.

"They tried to get underneath," Alden said. "Couldn’t fit."

Leander kept the lookouts where they were and brought the others over. Silas crouched at the gap. A boot lay beyond it, attached to a leg in brown working trousers. A belt was tightened around the thigh. Farther in, a young man stared at him with frightened, bloodshot eyes.

"Don’t," the man said hoarsely. "Please. I’ll stay in."

"We’re from the academy," Silas told him. "We came after you. The creatures outside are dead."

The man looked past him at the others’ uniforms. His mouth trembled before he managed a nod.

Dagna and Alden lifted the top slab together. Silas held loose rubble away from the opening with Remote Grasp while Elyra shone a light inside. They widened the gap enough to draw the man out without dragging his injured leg across the broken stone.

His name was Perrin. He hauled ice for the stalls. The gate had swallowed his cart and dropped him here with the others; he had crawled beneath the fallen stair while the hunters attacked.

"Caught my leg," Perrin said. He looked at the belt. "I couldn’t make it stop."

Silas knelt beside him with fresh bandages. The thigh wound was still oozing, and Perrin’s ankle was swollen purple. They covered the injury and supported his leg while Dagna unfolded the rescue litter. He couldn’t put weight on that ankle.

"Were there other people?" Silas asked.

"Five or six. I didn’t count." Perrin swallowed. "The keeper from the corner stall, I think. They took them up there."

His shaking hand pointed at the bronze doors above the far stairs.

"Through those. Then down. I heard them going down steps for a long time." Perrin shut his eyes. "Someone was screaming. Then it stopped. I don’t know if that means—"

"You don’t have to guess," Silas said.

Perrin opened his eyes again. He looked young enough to have been among the students waiting outside.

Silas remembered the game’s route after this ambush: west gallery, bell tower, supply cache. He could picture the corridor leading to the chest. He had never heard anyone screaming down a staircase behind the bronze doors.

Leander helped settle Perrin onto the litter. "We take him with us."

"I’ll carry the front," Silas said.

Alden reached for the rear handles, tested his injured leg, and nodded before lifting. The bite was shallow; he could manage with Silas keeping the litter steady on the stairs.

Leander looked toward the open doors, then at Silas.

"You recognized that first attack. Do you know where they took the others?"

The familiar route was still in Silas’s head. It offered supplies and a sequence he understood, which made it tempting for more than one reason.

He looked at Perrin’s hand, still trembling against the litter’s canvas.

"Through the doors," Silas said. "Then down. That’s where he heard them."

Leander turned the formation toward the far stairs. Silas lifted his end, matched Alden’s careful pace, and followed.