Lyren ran non-stop for more than forty-five minutes, her staff clattering against the undergrowth, her broken arm clutched tight to her chest.

  “Hurry human! We’re almost there!”

  Human. Again. I wanted to snap back, "My name's Myles, you pointy-eared racist," but my burning lungs wouldn't cooperate.

  I'd never pushed my body this hard before. My legs screamed, and my chest heaved as I struggled to match her frantic pace. But as the exhaustion mounted, something else began to rise with it.

  The burn in my lungs shifted. It didn’t feel like the lack of oxygen anymore; it felt like heat. A hot, wet heat, like the breath of a wild animal trapped inside my ribcage.

  I stumbled over a root, my hand slapping the dirt to catch myself. I glanced down at the ground, illuminated by the last dregs of twilight.

  I froze.

  My shadow was cast long and thin against the leaves. But it didn’t match my posture. I was on one knee, panting.

  The shadow was standing. And it wasn’t human.

  It loomed over the forest floor, a hulking, bristling shape with a thick, predatory neck and ears that flattened against a phantom skull.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head violently.

  But darkness offered no escape. For a split second, a pair of predatory violet eyes stared back at me from the back of my eyelids, burning with an intelligence that wasn't mine.

  I snapped them open, gasping, my heart hammering against my ribs. Get a grip, Myles, I thought. It’s the light. It’s just the weird, twisted branches casting shapes. You’re exhausted, you’re terrified, and you’re seeing things.

  I forced my eyes open, expecting to see a gnarled root or a bush that I had misinterpreted in my panic. But there was nothing there but flat dirt and moss.

  I looked back at my shadow. It was normal now. Just the outline of a kneeling man.

  See? Just your mind snapping under the pressure. No big deal.

  But as I stood up, the feeling remained, a low, vibrating growl spread through me that wasn't coming from my vocal cords.

  Get up, the sensation seemed to urge, ignoring my rationalizations. Run. Fight.

  Somehow I got to my feet, staggering after Lyren through the darkening forest like a drunk man, my feet catching on every root and stone. For all my childhood spent hiking with my parents, the dark and my own fatigue made me feel like I might as well have been wandering around blindfolded.

  Everytime Lyren glanced back, her green eyes flashed with impatience as she slowed just enough to keep me from falling completely behind.

  The last slivers of orange light disappeared from between the trees like blood draining from a wound, plunging the forest into a sudden, deep twilight. The vibrant emerald greens and burnished golds melted into shadowy indigos and violent purples, the ancient gnarled trees transforming into looming, indistinct sentinels with branches like thin spindly arms. With unnatural speed, the temperature dropped, raising goosebumps on my skin.

  The air grew heavy, carrying the scent of something musky and predatory. Unseen things rustled and clicked in the undergrowth just beyond the edge of my vision, the sound of dry leaves and twigs snapping under weight too deliberate to be wind. The shadows seemed to come alive, stretching and contracting with a pulse of their own.

  “What’s happening, Lyren?” I gasped, my breath ragged. “It’s like the whole forest is moving!”

  "Darroch!" she shouted, not breaking stride. Her voice was thin with exertion and panic. "They are hunting us! They can manipulate the shadows. Just follow me and don’t trust anything else you see."

  I had no idea what a Darroch was and if what was happening around us and the raw panic in Lyren’s voice was an indicator of what to expect I was positive I never wanted to meet one. This was pure survival. And despite her obvious contempt for humans, the fact wasn't lost on me that Lyren was risking her own life to drag my pathetic ass along with her.

  She veered suddenly, plunging into a shadowy fissure nearly invisible against the rock face of a small cliffside. The air inside hit me with the scent of wet stone and something nauseating, like rotting fruit in summer heat.

  I dove in after her, finding not a proper cave but a claustrophobic split in the stone. Lyren's slender form slipped effortlessly through a constricted opening, vanishing without a backward glance.

  My broader shoulders and six-foot-two frame did not.

  This is how I die. Wedged in a rock, about to be eaten by shadow monsters.

  Panic flared hot and bright. My hyperventilating expanding my chest which only served to wedge me tighter. I thrashed, scraping my skin raw against the stone. My vision popped with imaginary lights as I desperately tried to push through, certain I'd die there. The heat in my chest roared, urging me to snarl, to bite the rock, to tear my way through.

  Then, a sudden, freezing pressure clamped down on my skull.

  It felt like talons. Sharp, hook-like talons digging into the gray matter of my brain, anchoring me.

  Calm yourself, a cold, voiceless impulse spread through me.

  I was only making this worse. Get a hold of yourself Garber. I exhaled all the air from my lungs and twisted my torso down and to the right easing the pressure on my chest. My legs pushed through, the ripping sound of fabric was followed by a sharp pain in my leg as I wrenched myself free. I let out a hiss, reaching down to feel wetness where rock had scraped the skin, but it was so dark that I had no idea if it was blood, sweat, or something else.

  I stumbled into the darkness on the other side, gasping for air. The phantom talons receded from my mind, leaving a lingering headache behind my eyes.

  "Lyren?" I whispered.

  Without a word, Lyren had vanished into the darkness of the tunnel. I couldn’t see anything after a few feet, and my chest tightened with each blind step forward.

  I reached for my pocket. My hand brushed against the large aluminum cylinder of my flashlight.

  “Motherfucker,” I swore at myself. “You are such a dumbass, Garber.”

  I pulled the flashlight out, but before I could press the button, something grabbed my arm, and I screamed in an embarrassingly high octave.

  “It’s okay. It’s just me, human,” Lyren shushed. “You were taking a long time.”

  I activated the flashlight on its lowest setting. Lyren clicked her tongue and shielded her eyes against the beam.

  “Is that really necessary?”

  I finally snapped. “First of all, my name is Myles, not human.”

  I was tired, I was in pain, and I was done.

  “Listen, I don't know you and I don’t know why your people hate humans so much, but right now I’m just a guy trying to not die in a pitch-black cave in an evil forest. So maybe cut me a little slack.”

  A flicker of embarrassment crossed her face. "Second," I continued, lowering the beam, "I can't see in the dark like you apparently can. So yeah,” I said, shaking the flashlight. “I need this."

  The woman recovered quickly, nodding in acknowledgement. Her slender fingers dipped into a small leather pouch at her waist, retrieving what looked like an orb the size of a ping pong ball covered in small runes.

  “Very well… Myles. I have never actually met a human before. I was unaware of your difficulties. I apologize. Please put away your magic light stick, and I will illuminate the path. The grotto is just up ahead."

  I tried to give her a small smile to acknowledge her using my name, but I was so tired and in so much pain it probably looked more like a grimace.

  "Aine, bless us with moonlight. Illuminate," she whispered. The orb in her hand pulsed to life with silver-white light. She guided us along a narrow tunnel that descended a couple hundred feet into the cliffside.

  As we walked through the tunnel, I noticed the tension in Lyren’s demeanor had relaxed a bit now that we were here, wherever here was.

  She led me to where the path turned sharply before opening up into a much larger area. Looking around, my jaw dropped. The cramped passageway had opened into a huge chamber that left me speechless. An underground spring bubbled up from a pool so crystal clear I could count the pebbles twenty feet below its surface, each one glowing with veins of something that might have been gold. The water fed lush carpets of moss in impossible shades of teal and indigo that pulsed with light like a heartbeat, while mushrooms tall as basketball hoops towered nearby, a honey-like fluid beading on their caps that seemed to be the source of the sickeningly sweet smell.

  The walls bristled with crystalline formations of opalescent white, catching the light and fracturing it into thousands of tiny rainbows. Above it all gaped a roughly circular opening in the roof of the cavern, ringed by vines thick as my wrist that twisted and braided themselves together, their leaves an iridescent silver on one side and deepest emerald on the other. Through this portal poured a column of moonlight so dense it seemed almost solid, striking the center of the spring where the water seemed to soak it in until it sparkled like a thousand motes of light.

  My brain couldn't make the geometry work. The cavern shouldn't exist—at least not like this. We'd barely gone two hundred feet into the hillside, yet here was this massive underground chamber. And that beam of moonlight? It made no sense. Outside, the forest canopy was so dense you could barely see stars, let alone get a spotlight effect this dramatic. Even stranger, the air here tasted clean and cool, completely free of the ominous stench that had followed us through the woods. It was as if the opening above connected to somewhere else entirely.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  I just let it go for now. It wasn’t like anything that had happened in the last couple of hours made a lick of sense anyway. So I just turned around, taking in everything the cavern had to offer. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

  This place makes the fanciest botanical garden back home look like a vacant lot, I thought, a familiar pang hitting my chest. Mom would have lost her mind in here. She would have wanted to catalogue every glowing mushroom, every rock formation.

  While I was distracted, Lyren was busy unclasping a worn leather necklace from around her throat. A rough, gold-colored crystal was braided into the cord, pulsing with a faint inner light. Her face was still pale, but she worked with urgency, kneeling to place the necklace on the damp earth near the cave entrance.

  She began to chant in a whisper, her hand hovering over the stone. Immediately, the air around the crystal warped. Translucent, golden films sprouted from the gem like soap bubbles, expanding outward to fill the opening. One by one they emerged, overlapping and interlocking until a solid, honey-colored membrane stretched across the entire entrance.

  As the final barrier locked into place, a sharp crack echoed through the small cave. The golden crystal fractured, then disintegrated completely into a small pile of shimmering dust.

  Lyren stared at the dust for a heartbeat, a look of profound sadness washing over her features. Then, as the final syllable of the chant died in the air, her eyes rolled back. She staggered sideways, strings cut, arms hanging limply.

  I moved quickly, catching her before she hit the ground.

  “Thank you,” she said weakly. “Maybe you humans aren’t as bad as the stories say...” Her voice trailed off.

  “Lyren. Lyren!” I shook her gently and her eyes cracked back open. “Is there something I can do to help you?” I asked her.

  “No,” Lyren said with a small chuckle. “Too much essence was drawn from the Veil through my body. I know better but I had no choice. Makin is going to be so disappointed… ” Her words trailed off as she started to nod off again.

  “I’m… I’m sorry,” she whispered, her eyes closed, voice barely audible. “If it’s not… enough…”

  Then she went completely limp in my arms.

  “Lyren? Lyren, wake up! What does that mean ‘not enough’?” But the small woman was completely unresponsive. I gently laid her down on a patch of the softest moss I could find. I checked her pulse, remembering some basic first aid from a Boy Scout badge I’d earned what felt a lifetime ago. She was still alive, her pulse faint but steady.

  I had no idea how to help her. I rummaged through her pockets to see if I could find anything. Hell, this was some kind of fantasy world. Who's to say she didn’t have healing potions or something similar? Then I mentally berated myself.

  Yeah smart guy, she had a magic healing potion this whole time and just decided not to use it. Pull yourself together, Myles. You are in a magical forest on another world sitting next to a real-life elven mage in an enchanted grotto. This is every nerd's fantasy, but here you are acting like it’s amateur hour. Get a grip.

  Lyren didn’t have anything in her pockets, but she did have some jerky and dried fruit in a small pouch at her waist. She also carried a small skinning knife on her belt and a thin dagger hidden inside her boot.

  “Not much to work with. She and her friends couldn’t have been expecting to stay in the forest overnight or else they would have had packs with supplies. But I guess that makes sense considering how she reacted to it getting dark out here.”

  I placed the food back in her pouch for when she woke. I was hungry, but not so much that I’d steal the woman’s only food.

  I walked over to the edge of the spring. There were tiny silver-skinned fish darting around along the surface, sending small ripples across the water. They were really active even though I couldn’t see any food source that might be causing their mesmerizing display. But after a moment I realized the fish were staying within the beam of moonlight. None darted more than a few inches into the darker waters before turning back to stay in the light. It didn’t look to me like there were any predators in the darker water, so it must be something about the moonlight that was making them so happy. I watched for a few more minutes but nothing else happened, so I continued exploring the cave.

  Along the walls were formations that looked similar to stalagmites, except they were made of white translucent crystal that grew from the walls and floor of the cave, golden veins spider-webbed through many of the larger ones.

  “That’s strange. They don’t seem to be forming from mineral deposits in the groundwater like normal stalagmites and stalactites.” They all seemed to be pointing inward from all sides like gnarled marble fingers all reaching towards the same location. Every one of them was pointing toward the moonlight radiating down from above.

  “That must be some potent moonlight,” I mused. The thought crossed my mind to wade out into the spring and touch the moonlight. As weird as it felt to say, it was obviously magic light. “I wonder if it can heal Lyren?”

  But again, like with the non-existent healing potion, she would have used it to heal herself if that were the case. I sighed, looking back over at the unconscious elf. She barely looked alive, pale as a ghost and covered in dried blood.

  Lyren said she just used up too much magic, pushed herself too hard. But what did that even mean? Magical exhaustion? She might as well be an alien at this point for all I knew how to help.

  I took off my torn button-up shirt and ripped off a portion of the collar, wincing as the movement tugged on my injured arm. I walked over and dipped the makeshift rag into the spring water before rolling the rest of my shirt into a makeshift pillow and carefully tucked it behind Lyren’s head. I sat beside her, the glowing orb I had taken from her when she passed out still clutched in my hand, its gentle light aiding the moonlight to fill the darkened corners of the grotto.

  Lyren’s long braid had become frayed, which wasn’t surprising considering all the woman had been through. I brushed some stray hairs from her face and used the rag to wipe the blood from beneath her nose.

  I don’t know why it was bothering me so badly that she was covered in dried blood. My arms and legs were covered in blood as well. Some my own, but there was also Lyren’s blood from when I’d carried her as well as the blackened blood of the Umbral Chimera. For some reason, I felt so protective of this woman despite the fact that she hadn’t been particularly nice to me since we met and could easily kick my ass if she were so inclined.

  The tinkle sound of the silver fish playing was the only sound in the cave as I wiped down Lyren’s face and neck. Then I cleaned the rag and returned to wash her bare shoulder and arms. Keeping busy prevented me from dwelling on the fact that we were still in danger from the darrochs, whatever the hell that was.

  When I finished I tossed the bloody rag down on the rocks next to Lyren’s magic staff, I thought to myself. How insane is it that magic really exists here, I thought. I wonder if we survive this if Lyren might be willing to teach me some magic. But my excitement was tempered when I remembered what her people thought of humans. Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

  Hours passed and nothing happened. I wanted to sleep but I was afraid what might happen if these ‘Darroch’ showed up and no one was keeping watch. So I got up and washed myself at the edge of the spring.

  One interesting thing I noticed was when I cleaned the rag in the water the blood spread out a bit before dissipating, but when I cleaned off a particularly thick patch of blackened monster blood, the dark fluid sizzled in the water. It roiled and burned up just like that time Mom showed me what adding pure sodium to water looked like.

  “That’s definitely not normal.” I shook my head, heading back over to sit down next to Lyren.

  What the hell have I gotten myself into? I still couldn't wrap my head around everything. In the forest, Lyren used her magic words to call the wind itself to use as a weapon against the monster boar. Now she was unconscious, having spent the last of her essence, as she called it, creating a shield to protect us from some other kind of monster that she was deathly afraid of.

  But it had been a few hours now and nothing had tried to enter the grotto. Maybe she was just hallucinating about the danger. She was pretty badly injured, not to mention the trauma of seeing her friends die. I don’t know what to think but she said a lot of weird stuff I didn’t understand before she passed out.

  Finally I gave in, deciding that between Lyren’s barrier and the lack of shadow monsters attacking that I’d just lay down for a bit. The grotto was serenely beautiful. I found a soft patch of moss and settled down into it, staring up at the beam of golden light. Lyren was probably just being overly cautious after what happened to her friends, not that I blame her. We are safe here until morning.

  Just as my eyes began to close a reverberating thud caused them to snap back open. I turned my attention to Lyren’s glowing barrier.

  “Great job, numb nuts. You jinxed it,” I grumbled to myself.

  I instinctively held the light orb up, willing the illumination towards the cave entrance which very much did not work. The faint light was stubbornly consistent in its omnidirectionality, so I stood back up and quietly walked over to the barrier. I may or may not have been holding my breath as the light of the orb crept up to the edge of the translucent bubble that covered the entrance. The darkness on the other side prevented me from seeing anything at this distance. I took a step forward. Then another. Finally, the light slid up the bubble causing it to glow faintly.

  The sound had definitely come from the barrier, but as I squinted I failed to see anything that might have made the thud from before. The light of the orb partially reflecting back at me struggled to pass through Lyren's shimmering barrier. It was like looking through thick, warped glass. I leaned in.

  Thud!

  “Ahh! Holy shit!” I yelled, stumbling back as the bubble wobbled like something heavy had run into it. I slammed my hand over my mouth. Lyren hadn’t told me if the barrier blocked sound or not. Backing up against the wall, I waited to see if my scream had been heard. A dark silhouette formed just on the other side. It was hard to make out the details, but the shape was disturbingly humanoid.

  I sat the glowing orb on the ground and readied the bat when the creature pushed against the rubbery texture of the barrier. A large thin-fingered hand pressed deep into the shimmering distortion, stretching it until it looked like it would rip.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  Scraaaaape!

  A second hand raked across the barrier, leaving a trail of shimmering, dissolving light in its wake. I was only feet away. My injured arm throbbed, my heart hammered against my ribs.

  The silhouette of the creature’s head tilted, as if listening. Then it pulled away from the barrier. For a split second, I thought it might leave, defeated by Lyren’s spell.

  But then it returned, pressing both hands and its face against the barrier, stretching the membrane until it thinned enough for me to see the darroch clearly for the first time. The creature pressed its face against the barrier, stretching the membrane until it thinned enough for me to see.

  Horror, cold and absolute, washed over me.

  It wasn’t a beast. It was something far worse. It looked like a person, an elf, maybe, that had been hollowed out and filled with nightmare fuel. Its skin was a slick, semi-translucent gray membrane, where the light almost seemed to bubble from beneath its skin's liquid surface. Beneath the wet gray exterior, glowing orange veins cast a sickly, radioactive glow onto the cavern floor. Hard, sharp protrusions of blackened bone jutted from its shoulders and head like corrupted fins.

  But the face… God, the face.

  It was gaunt and skeletal, the skin pulled tight over the bone. Deep within the sockets, where eyes should be, burned two orbs of amber light. They didn't just glow; they swirled with a manic, chaotic energy that felt like it was screaming at me.

  And the mouth was a ruin. The flesh of its cheeks had been ripped open all the way to its ears, creating a permanent, gory grin. The jaw hung unnaturally low, revealing rows of needle-like, translucent teeth that gnashed together with a wet, clicking sound.

  My eyes were wide as saucers and my legs started shaking. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

  But as I looked through the barrier into those burning amber eyes, something inside me clicked.

  I felt a phantom weight superimposed over my body, heavy fur and coiled muscle. My lips pulled back from my teeth in an involuntary snarl.

  Prey, the creature inside me howled. But I still couldn’t bring myself to stand.

  The darroch hissed, a sound like grinding glass, and a drop of black saliva sizzled against the barrier. The fear the creature induced in me, I’m embarrassed to say, had me ready to release my bowels. I would climb straight through a magical beam of moonlight if it meant I could avoid that fucking thing. But there was no way up to the ceiling of the grotto that I could see.

  And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I spotted movement behind the darroch through the drum-tight film.

  The distorted vision of two more identical monstrosities, their bioluminescent veins flashing in aggressive, rhythmic pulses, pushed their way into the small cave opening. Their burning orange eyes locked onto me through the barrier, their ripped-open mouths widening in anticipation. I swallowed a whimper. We were absolutely fucked.

  I couldn’t see it but on the wall behind me my shadow stretched and transformed, looming larger than I was. The human face of the shadow warping as an elongated snout formed, a ferocious fang filled snarl spreading above me, silent and unseen.