Kara and Thorne

The emerald glowed with an unnatural light in Kara’s palm, burning like frozen fire. Her fingers trembled as she held it up to the temple wall, matching its facets to the crystalline indentation before her. Behind her, the chittering of the spider-priests grew louder, their metal-tipped legs clicking against stone as they scuttled through the darkness.

“Hurry up!” Thorne growled, his broad back pressed against the rotting wooden barrier they’d thrown across the corridor. The barricade shuddered as something massive slammed into it from the other side.

Sweat trickled down Kara’s neck despite the tomb’s chill. The emerald wouldn’t fit. She’d stolen it from the High Priest’s own chambers, slit his chitinous throat while he slept in his web-wrapped cocoon, but now—

Another impact. Wood splintered. Thorne cursed and braced harder, his muscles straining beneath his torn shirt. Blood still flowed from the claw marks across his chest.

“It’s the wrong bloody gem!” Kara snarled, running her fingers around the indentation’s edges. “The facets are—wait.” She rotated the emerald a quarter turn counterclockwise. There was a pattern to the cuts, like a key. If she could just—

A leg, black and gleaming and thick as her arm, punched through the barricade beside Thorne’s head. He smashed it with his war hammer, and the appendage withdrew with a screech that set Kara’s teeth on edge.

“We’re about to have company,” he said, voice tight. “If that seal isn’t broken in the next few heartbeats, we’re dead.”

“I know that!” The emerald’s glow pulsed faster now, matching Kara’s racing heart. She could hear them on the other side of the barrier—dozens of them, their alien clicks and whistles forming words she wished she couldn’t understand.

The thieves die slow. The thieves feed the young. The thieves birth the new brood.

Another leg splintered through, then another. Thorne’s hammer rose and fell, but he couldn’t stop them all. The barrier was failing.

Kara’s fingers found another pattern in the wall’s indentation—a spiral she hadn’t noticed before, matching one of the emerald’s deeper cuts. She turned it again, pressing it forward, and—

Click.

The gem sank into the wall. Green light blazed from the seams around it, shooting outward in a web of crackling energy. The stone wall shuddered.

“It’s working!” she cried.

“Better late than never!” Thorne roared back.

“Thorne, get back—”

The barrier exploded inward.

Thorne dove aside as timber and spider-priests burst into the chamber. Their bodies were human-sized but wrong—too many joints, too many eyes, mandibles where mouths should be. Black chitin gleamed in the emerald’s pulsing light.

Kara drew her sword as Thorne rolled to his feet beside her, hammer ready. They stood before the sealed doorway as the spider-priests flooded in, backing away until their shoulders touched the trembling stone.

The largest of the creatures stepped forward, its eyes reflecting the emerald’s glow like eight perfect mirrors. The High Priest’s successor, wearing the ceremonial golden chains Kara had stripped from his predecessor’s corpse.

“The seal breaks,” it clicked, mandibles working. “But you will not live to see what lies beyond.”

The stone wall behind them groaned. Hairline cracks spread outward from the emerald.

“Want to bet?” Kara spat. She reversed her grip on her sword, pointing it at the floor. “Thorne?”

“Ready when you are, love.” His hammer twirled once in his massive hands.

The High Priest raised its front legs, golden chains jingling. “Take them.”

The spider-priests surged forward—just as Kara plunged her sword into the flagstone at her feet. The blade snapped with a sharp crack, but the stone cracked with it, weakened by age and whatever power now pulsed through the walls.

The floor collapsed beneath them.

Kara grabbed Thorne’s belt as they fell, stones and spider-priests tumbling around them into darkness. Air rushed past her ears, drowning out the creatures’ shrieks. The emerald’s light disappeared above them, leaving them in total blackness.

They hit water with bone-jarring force. The impact drove the air from Kara’s lungs, but she kept her grip on Thorne as the current grabbed them. The underground river she’d gambled on finding swept them away from the falling rocks and scrabbling legs above.

Lungs burning, they surfaced in the swift-moving water. Somewhere ahead, the river would emerge from the mountain’s base—assuming they didn’t smash against the rocks first. Assuming the spider-priests couldn’t swim.

Splashing and clicking behind them answered that question.

“Next time,” Thorne gasped between strokes, “let’s steal something easier. Like a dragon’s egg.”

“Less complaining, more swimming!”Kara kicked harder, trying to guide them toward where she hoped the center of the current ran. In the darkness, every shadow might hide a rock, every splash might be a spider-priest’s leg reaching for them.

The current grew stronger, faster. The tunnel walls echoed with the rush of water and the clicking of their pursuers. Kara’s arms ached, her legs going numb in the icy flow.

Then she saw it—a gleam of daylight ahead, a tiny point of brightness growing larger.

“There!” she shouted. “We’re almost—”

Something grabbed her leg.

She went under, water filling her nose and mouth. Chitin scraped against her calf as legs wrapped around her ankle. She kicked blindly, but the spider-priest’s grip held firm.

Then Thorne was there, hammer swinging even underwater. The pressure on Kara’s leg vanished. She clawed her way back to the surface, spluttering.

The point of light grew larger, became an arch of day. The roar of water grew deafening.

“Kara!” Thorne’s voice barely carried over the noise. “I think this might be—”

They burst out of the tunnel into open air—and empty space. The river shot out from the mountainside like water from a spout, arcing down toward a misty void.

They were falling. Again.

Kara caught a glimpse of green treetops far below before the world blurred around them. She reached for Thorne, fingers finding his arm as the wind tore at them.

Behind them, spider-priests erupted from the tunnel mouth, their legs spread wide like falling stars.

But Kara wasn’t watching them. Her eyes fixed on something rising through the mist below—vast and serpentine, scales gleaming like polished bronze in the sunlight. Wings spread wider than temple walls, blocking out the sky as it spiraled up to meet them.

Well, she thought as the dragon’s golden eyes fixed upon them, at least we solved the problem with the spider-priests.