Chapter 167: Hunger Road

The Hunger Road had started its first run.

Red fire traveled up the tubes at the throat of each captive route keeper. The Caldera shook as commands shot up the walls of the crater and disappeared toward Grand Meridian. The team could feel the air warping around them with the heat, and the ground beneath their feet began to vibrate in long, slow waves.

Halren grabbed the nearest chart from a rack bolted into the stone and began to inspect it with quick, practiced eyes. "The pressure is building. If we cut a collar now, the route claim will consume the keeper. We need to get to the lower platform."

Tessa looked over the edge of the path and down the crater road. "There. The maintenance ring. It should have some empty conduits we can use. If we release the valves, we can send the pressure into the rock instead."

"Go ahead and use your little valves," Vordessa’s projection said from the red fire. "Every time you save one route, you feed hunger."

Nyra’s heart shard trembled in her hands. "The Caldera is using the route keepers’ fear to power itself," she said. "It will push them to their breaking point if they believe the road is going to reach their homes."

One of the route couriers started to cry as the tube at her throat grew brighter. "My daughter lives in Grand Meridian," she said. "Please." She wasn’t talking to any one person in particular. She was talking to the fire, to the road, and to anything that might have been listening.

Austin Veyron’s Maw trace tore open on his wrist, and the pain was sharp enough to blur his vision.

The Hunger Road knew him. It knew the routes he had traveled and the people in the Freehold’s lobby. It knew the food lines in the city and every one of his fears. And it showed him an option.

Use the road.

Devour the road.

Consume it before it can reach them.

The power felt limitless. He could feel the route spreading through the Caldera, every hunger it had infected, and every store of food it could reach. If he took one bite, he would be the source instead of Vordessa. No one would ever be able to use hunger against the people he loved again. It was such a simple idea, and it felt so comfortable, that it scared him.

Veyra stepped in front of him and blocked the fire from his view, until all he could see was her face.

"Name it."

"I want to consume the road."

"What would that create?"

"A route that ends with me."

"Then it would only change who owns it," Sable said, lifting the broken crown shard so that its pale light shone through the red fire.

Austin Veyron looked at the route keepers and the tubes at their throats. The road was using them as conduits to reach Grand Meridian, because it could only travel if someone owned it.

"We need to consume the direction," he said. "Not the people. Not the routes themselves."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Veyra nodded once, and the team sprinted toward the maintenance ring, half sliding down the crater road as loose gravel spilled out from under their feet and disappeared into the lava below.

They were halfway down when ash sentinels emerged from the bottom of the crater in front of them, climbing up the rock with slow, heavy movements. White-hot chains ran from their hands up to the tubes above, and red route letters glowed inside their hollow frames.

THE ROAD KNOWS WHERE TO GO.

Rin’s arrow struck the first sentinel’s chain without her even slowing down. The chain shattered and released red fire across the path, creating a wall of flame.

Orena used her spear to vault off a basalt rail and over the fire, landing in a crouch on the other side. Veyra cut her way through the fire with her glowing blade. Nyra stayed close to the route keepers’ tubes and used her resonance to block any extra pressure whenever the sentinels struck.

Tessa made it to the first valve, breathing hard, her map case clutched to her chest. It was sealed with red route letters.

ROUTES RETURN TO THE THRONE.

"Of course," she said, wiping the sweat from her eyes.

"The conduit we need is behind this," Halren said, tracing the seal with their fingers. "If we break through, the Caldera will send the pressure into something else."

"That something else could be another person," Ceryn warned.

"Only if we don’t know which route to send it through," Tessa said.

She opened her map case and took out a brittle sheet of paper. She unfolded it carefully, and her hands shook once before she was able to read it. "There’s an old lava channel under the maintenance ring. It doesn’t have any settlements or food routes connected to it. It’s empty."

Orena looked down at the cracked ground beneath them. "It can hold the pressure?"

"The builders used it when something went wrong."

"Then we’ll use it," Halren said, and everyone seemed to calm down a little after that decision.

Before Tessa could respond, the closest sentinel lunged at her.

Austin Veyron grabbed the sentinel’s arm and felt the route letters inside it light up. DEVOUR wanted the entire sentinel. He could feel its stored fire and its map threads, and all of it called to his hunger.

"Target," he said. "The return-to-throne clause on the sentinel’s chain. Not the sentinel."

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron touched his root chain to the red letters, and DEVOUR opened. The clause tasted like a road with no turnoffs.

ROUTES RETURN TO THE THRONE.

Austin Veyron consumed the word return. It went down easily, almost too easily, and left him feeling strangely disoriented.

The sentinel’s chain went limp, and it fell to one knee. It turned its hollow head toward the bottom of the crater, then toward the map of the empty conduit. It no longer knew where to send the pressure.

Veyra cut the sentinel’s weapon away, and Rin shot out the second sentinel’s route letter. Orena held off the third while Tessa and Halren forced the valve open, straining against the rust.

The maintenance panel broke open with a loud screech of metal that echoed off the crater walls.

Heat washed over the team as red pressure shot out of the tube system. Halren pulled the second valve, diverting the pressure away from the captive route keepers. A new line opened beneath the ring and sent the pressure down into the empty conduit, which glowed faintly as it took the surge.

The Caldera shook, and the tubes above them faded.

"Now!" Nyra shouted.

She raised the heart shard and wrapped its blue-black light around the first route keeper’s collar. It would keep the route from pulling the keeper through the claim.

"Do you want us to remove your collar?" Ceryn asked the courier.

"Yes," she said with a shaky breath.

Tessa sliced the collar off with her maintenance blade, and it dropped to the ground. The courier fell, but she was alive. Ceryn caught her and held her up while she gasped for air.

The other route keepers saw what had happened to the first one. For a moment, nobody moved. They had stopped believing they would ever leave this place, and now one of them was sitting on the stone, breathing free. The crackle of the fire was the only sound as they listened to Ceryn’s question. Some answered yes right away. Others wanted to know whether their route partners would be freed first. One refused until Halren assured them that the conduit was empty.

It wasn’t the quickest rescue, and every collar was a risk, but they did it.

"You shouldn’t have to ask," Vordessa’s projection said from the fire, her broken face twisting with impatience. "The road doesn’t ask the villages if they want to be consumed."

"That’s why we aren’t the road," Nyra responded, without looking up from the collar she was holding in place.

They were still working their way along the ledges, freeing one keeper after another, when the Hunger Road pulsed once more. This time, instead of using the route keepers’ tubes, it tried to flow through Austin Veyron’s wrist mark. Red-black fire traveled up his arm, and DEVOUR growled. The road was trying to turn him into a route.

"Target?" Veyra shouted.

Austin Veyron could see a line at the center of the road. It didn’t tell him to travel. It told him that only one could decide where all the hunger went.

"The compulsory direction clause," he said. "Not the road. Not the keepers."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron took a deep breath, glanced once at Veyra, and stepped into the red stream.

Heat closed around him, and the road showed him every one of its destinations: the pantry in Grand Meridian, the stores in Ashbridge, Coalwater’s well, and Emberline’s rail depot. Every hunger the road knew became something he could take and command. He felt so small compared to it, like paper held up against a fire.

For a moment, he wanted to let it decide for him. Let something stronger than himself choose what was important.

Then he heard the freed courier speaking to one of the other route keepers. "We can decide where we go." Her voice was weak, but it was all he needed to hear.

He found the line at the center of the road.

ALL HUNGER TRAVELS IN ONE DIRECTION.

Austin Veyron consumed one.

The Hunger Road shattered with a sound like a great chain snapping, and it broke into pieces.

Red routes scattered from the Caldera’s central line and shot off in every direction. Some went into the empty conduit and died there. Others ran along cold routes that no one used anymore. But one headed north through the crater wall and disappeared into a new mark on Tessa’s map.

Frostmarket Refuge. It was a winter settlement on the north side of the trade snowline, far from anywhere they had fought so far.

"That route is alive," Nyra said, her face pale, staring at the map as her heart shard followed the line. "It will consume a settlement that’s already low on food."

The Caldera’s fire began to die down, sinking lower into the crater like a wounded animal.

"You consumed the first road," Vordessa’s projection said with a small smile. "Run along and consume the rest."

Her projection disappeared and left the crater darker and quieter than it had been since they arrived.

Halren began walking the route keepers to the maintenance platform, calling each of them by name. There was still pressure building beneath them from the Caldera, but not nearly as much as before.

Austin Veyron stared at the new route heading north, a thin red line crawling across Tessa’s map toward a place none of them had ever seen. His Maw trace pointed toward Frostmarket Refuge. It wasn’t as strong as it had been before, but it was still hungry. The tear on his arm had closed, leaving only a thin red-black line behind.

"Next target?" Veyra asked, soot covering her face.

He looked at all the route keepers they had freed, sitting along the ledges in small, exhausted groups and passing water from hand to hand, and at the splinter that had broken off from the Hunger Road.

"Frostmarket Refuge," he said. "Before the hunger learns how to winter."