The intensity of the ghouls’ cries picked up. The shadow, previously spreading out across where the entrance of the castle had once been, now moved backward, rejoining Jenus and the queen who stood by the outer wall.
“Something’s happening,” I said, shifting in my crouched position.
The earth began to tremble once more—this time it felt like it was coming from deep beneath the ground. Was Jenus calling on another supernatural beast to join him? The rubble of the castle started to shake. Any walls still left standing were sent crashing to the ground. An ear-splitting crack tore across the land where the castle stood.
Sending chunks of the gray stone flying backward, dark shapes emerged from the ground. We lowered ourselves further down behind the wall, avoiding the shards of splintering rock that hurtled our way.
I watched in utter disbelief as a gigantic hulk of black, slippery stone emerged from beneath Hellswan. Spiked turrets rose into the air and windowless towers of incredible scale bore down from above us. It was like a giant, forgotten creature pushing its way above the earth—buried for so many years, but completely untouched by the passing of time. The fortress gave the impression of being entirely carved from one piece of rock—I could see absolutely no evidence of joints, stonework or man’s labor. It was as if the depths of Nevertide had created this monstrosity itself.
“This must have been the entity’s home before it was banished to the lock,” Ben whispered in awe.
The fortress must have remained buried for centuries. A cold chill moved down my spine as I imagined it miles beneath where I’d slept—its silent, monolithic structure waiting to be unearthed.
We watched as the ghouls swept in through a large black arch at its center, disappearing into the belly of the fortress. Their cries became hollow echoes, oppressed by the sheer size of the rock.
“Enough,” Derek breathed. “We should get back to the portal. See how the others are doing. Lucas, head to the palace, let the rest of GASP and the army know what’s happened here.”
Gladly, I turned away from the sight of the fortress. Derek gestured that we should move back the way we had come. We moved as silently as we could back toward the trees.
Do you think that you can hide from me?
I froze. The voice of the entity whispered through the darkness, the soft tones brushing against my temples and worming its way inside of me. I spun around, seeing Jenus still miles away, walking slowly up to the fortress with his ghoul queen beside him.
I see everything, Tejus of Hellswan.
The others had stopped in their tracks too. Foolishly, I had hoped that now the entity had chosen a physical form, it would no longer be able to observe us in quite the same way—clearly I had been wrong.
I know you are watching me. But there’s nothing you can do to stop me. Not now. Your powers are insignificant, your efforts wasted. You cannot conceive of what I have in store for you. Just know that my revenge will be swift, merciless and absolute… The end of days is nigh, my friends.
We looked at one another, too tired and beaten down to be surprised that the entity had known what we were doing all along.
“Let us leave,” urged Derek again, his fangs protruding—the only indication of the rage that was simmering below the surface. “Ben, race ahead. Let Ibrahim and the others know that the entity is watching.”
If they attempted to make a move toward the portal now, it would be fatal.
As I dashed toward the trees, the last few words of the entity played on my mind. ‘You cannot conceive of what I have in store for you’—was that true? Hadn’t the entity shown me exactly what was to come? Or was this more evidence that I shouldn’t believe the visions? That they were lies planted by the entity to distract us?
There was something I was missing here, I could feel it—something about the energy surge that had helped Hazel and me at the barrier, and then the feeling while I was receiving the visions that there was some alien, additional power present…
“Faster!” Derek called out.
Ignoring my thoughts, I ran, pushing my muscles till they screamed, mindlessly following the blurs of the vampires ahead.
Julian
I looked over at Zerus, his dark features lit up by the campfire.
We’d stopped for the night, finding a spot at the foothills of the mountain range where Aisha and Horatio had put up barriers, enabling us to remain unseen by any creatures that might wander by in search of a meal.
Zerus was strange. I didn’t know if it was due to the weeks spent in isolation in the pit, or just because all the Hellswans were an odd bunch as far as I was concerned, but the guy didn’t seem to be all there. At Benedict’s insistence, he had agreed to guide us to a path that would lead up to the top of the mountain safely, but I felt that his strange mutterings and the slow, shuffling pace that he moved at would do nothing but delay us.