[TO BE REMOVED FROM WATTPAD ON 2/28/2025]
When an army of darkness falls from the sky, Alex Kingsley enlists the help of her male peers and ventures into spirit-infested lands to save humanity.
*****
She's...
I heard shouts and raging screams echoing down the tunnel, bleeding through the dark, and with a firm grip on my sword, I followed the fear to its source.
At the end of the passage, where the six tunnels dropped into the crater like the inside of a ghoulish teapot, a nightmare unfolded. Demons crawled up into the tunnels from the burning pit—creatures haloed in orange fire and floating embers. Above the crater, the remaining few soldiers fought wildly to keep the enemy at bay.
At the threshold of my own tunnel was Grismond. The Bear.
The colossus male chauvinist.
Two runners from our group lay behind him, groaning in pain atop the remains of a ladder. Horrified, I approached them and the screaming pit.
Within the inferno, the army of Pans roared in blind fury, closing their eyes to the light, covering their heads with their shields. Several men hadn't made it out of the chamber—their corpses trampled by the Pans that now climbed the walls of the pit, finding grips along the rocky soil. Soldiers struggled to keep them out of the exits, unable to flee, doomed to die if they tried.
In the north and west exits, a few men stood back to back—one soldier warding off the Pans in the pit, the other fighting the demons blocking their escape.
There was no sign of Will or Tom.
"You're running out of time!" I shouted.
Grismond jerked his head around, taking notice of me for the first time. "What are you doing here? You'll get in the way!"
Was he deaf? "Go on!" he insisted, his head bleeding heavily, his fighting labored. "It's too late."
Too late? Had he really planned to stay here, to sacrifice himself and his comrades while we bombed the tunnels?
I threw my hands up. "I'm stalling for your life, moron! We need to get out of here. Help me!" I motioned to the men at our feet.
A demon clawed his way to the rim of our tunnel and Grismond and I swung in unison, chopping his head off in two separate places and instantly turning him to smoke.
The Bear didn't ask questions this time.
He whistled loudly, and the brave stragglers around the pit responded with signals of their own.
Run.
Run like hell.
In my attempt to contribute something, I yanked one of the torches from a sconce in the wall and threw it into the pit, adding fuel to the Fields of Punishment. I took solace in the wails of anguish and fury that followed.
Grismond and I each grabbed a wounded man and pushed for the dark of the tunnel. I could hear the demons scaling their way up to our mine shaft, using one another to climb like an army of fire ants. Grunting and hissing, flesh burning and scabbing.
We twisted through the tunnel's maze, slowed by the weight of the wounded. Rounding another corner, we came to an abrupt, jarring stop.
Three demons stood in our way. Smiling like victors.
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My breath hitched, and I looked at Grismond and his stoic expression for answers.
How...? How had they evaded Rover and the others?
Had my team been ambushed just like the other lookouts? Were they already dead?
Claus, and Rover, and Fudge?
The wounded soldier I supported freed himself from my grip. Forcing himself upright, he placed himself in front of me, one hand nudging me backward and away from the Pans. He couldn't have been over nineteen.
"Go back to hell," he snarled at the demons, blood spouting from his lips.
The Pan's ghostly eyes crinkled in amusement. Then he stepped forward and sliced the soldier's throat open in the beat of a crow's wing.
In the flick of a wrist.
Dazed, I stumbled forward to catch the boy, and with trembling hands, eased him to the ground. I could feel my throat drying out, my tongue sticking to the back of my mouth and blocking my airway as I realized what was about to happen—and just how helpless I was to stop it. The boy's blood coated my hands, dark and sickly warm, and he choked, gasping for air through his severed windpipe, gargling blood. Eyes wide and frightened.
In less than thirty seconds, his hold on me slackened, and his eyes fluttered shut.
He was dead before I could even think it.
And I didn't even know his name.
Behind us, another two Pans appeared, singed by the tongue of flame, and I knew more of them were sure to follow. It was only a matter of time.
I swallowed the desert in my mouth, forcing myself to breathe, to push back against the surging panic.
Reining in the anger and devastation, I stood from the corpse and backed up to stand with Grismond. The Bear gnashed his teeth, and the man he held released a miserable moan. If we abandoned that soldier we might have been able to fight our way through together, but I knew neither of us could do that. We weren't ruthless.
"Smells different," one of the demons noted. It sniffed the air and grinned at me. "Good."
Okay.
So that wasn't creepyat all.
The others around him shifted, eyeing me with the same cautious hunger, the same strange enchantment. And then they began closing in.
Gritz. It was like the lions all over again. It was as if I'd somehow personally offended every demon of the netherworld. Like the devil had taped a kick-me sign to my back.
The largest Pan stepped forward, a single stride that brought him much too close. He smelled like rotten fish, and he looked like it too. "Nowhere to go, child," he said, his voice like a slow, painful incision. "Brace yourself for death."
I raised the vanadium blade Rover had lent me. I hoped none of them could see how badly my hands were shaking.
Be brave, I told myself. Be brave and die brave.
The Pan's lips twitched as if he could read my mind and my pitiful mantra.
I tensed, preparing for his advance, but before we could engage, the entire mountain gave off an enormous, guttural roar. The walls shook, and the old lamps above us flickered off, severed from their circuitry, limiting our only light source to the orange glow of the inferno and the pale light of the distant exit. Two more tremors followed, and the sound of crushing rock and exploding soil traveled down the tunnel like a war cry.