The Uninvited Guest [Unknown | Antarctica]

[Thalia]

 

The Nemesyne continued to talk, though by then Thalia had begun to simply tune it out. It muttered about stars, its mother, and a duty it seemed to feel it was being prevented from completing – though by the plaintive way it decried the last, it seemed to feel Thalia was always the one responsible for getting it into trouble. She quickly realised that despite its bluster the creature was simply afraid. It carried the light high in the hook of its tail but it did not walk ahead, just trotted warily beside her as she forged on through the narrow tunnel with arms outstretched to balance against the rocky walls. It had called this place home, but she was wondering now if what it actually meant was they had left whatever strange world had housed the water guardian. That surely meant they were somewhere inside the rock that thrust upwards from Lake Baikal.

She had not been cold when she woke, not in the snake’s coiled embrace, but she shivered now. A swimming costume was not exactly the ideal garment for exploration of a mysterious underworld, and she hadn’t kept hold of the shimmery blanket when they’d stepped through the glowing archway because it had been soaked through. Or maybe she hadn’t even picked it back up after she nearly slid into the guardian’s pool – everything had happened so quickly in those last confusing moments. Either way, though she was barely dressed, the chill that cut through her bare arms and legs now carried the promise of a bite far colder than Baikal’s waters had been. Although maybe at least a little of the sensation was actually fear.

Because if they weren’t under the rock on the lake, she didn’t want to think about what might lay above.

When they eventually reached a fork in the darkness, Neme suddenly shot off at an upward incline, the light bouncing spirals and shadows all around as it left her behind. For a moment it loomed like a giant against the wall. But its shadow quickly diminished again as it returned just as fast.

“Smell that?” it asked, paws tapping an impatience dance for her to follow.

Thalia squat in front of it, arms around her knees. Her skin felt like ice under the press of her palms. She could in fact smell nothing, but by the sudden perk of the creature’s demeanour, she presumed that what it meant was fresh air and not an indication of where to find Tristan.

“You’re as lost as I am. Is this the first time you ever left the other place?”

Neme’s ears flattened against its skull, apparently indignant. “You never needed the Nemesyne here,” it bristled, offended. Its tail swished, sending the light dancing, and it blinked its big eyes, looking up above them – where no stars led their way. Its shivery fear only lasted a moment before it returned to imploring her again. “The Tristan is gone. Should have listened to the Nemesyne! Told him so. Come now and follow!”

Thalia’s chin fell to rest on the tops of her knees. Maybe it was actually sensible to leave and find Sierra first. Her eyes were not gold like Tristan’s but she clearly had the same connection to the wolves that followed the both of them, and maybe she would be able to use that to more easily navigate this warren to actually find him. With some despondency Thalia recalled that she had promised to bring him back. It had been Tristan’s own choice to follow into the unknown oblivion beneath the water, and she did not feel guilty about that, but there was a deep clawing feeling in her chest nonetheless – that this ill he suffered now was entirely her fault. Whatever cold creep of memory tried to surface, though, it was swallowed instead with resolution.

“If you won’t help me, Neme, then I’ll just have to do it alone,” she said, as stubbornly as she had declared she was diving the lake in the first place.

The creature did not respond with words. Its lip curled once, flashing razor teeth, and then the darkness around it began to ooze deeper. The red glow of the jewel above its eyes flashed and winked out, and as the after impression of crimson light faded she realised it had actually gone.

Thalia blinked in surprise, hurt at its abandonment at that moment of all moments despite what she’d said. The power-wrought ball dropped and began to roll, spinning past her feet and into the thick shadows beyond, until it hit what appeared to be the impenetrable rock of a deadend. As she watched, the threads that held it together began to unravel and fray, until it disintegrated right through.

As the last of its pale light faded, she crawled after it. The tunnel in this direction led downwards, and when her fingers touched what her eyes had said was rock, they passed right through.

---

It was different and not behind the hidden entrance. In places the walls and floor were as smooth as glass, as though the earth itself had been tamed into submission by an unfathomable power. For some reason she thought of the rearing horses of the Ascendancy’s Arch, then. A flow of red veins cast a dull light, and while the way led down, it fell at an unnatural angle; like the passageway itself had been tipped. But as she descended the biggest difference was the blossom of heat, pleasant at first on her stiff limbs as she wiggled and blew on her sooty fingers, but less so when it began to band around her chest. Every breath drew like a furnace by then. Sweat beaded and slid down the side of her neck.

In places the floor ruptured, oozing actual magma. The first time she encountered it she called out Tristan’s names in the hopes she would not need to continue; the heat off it blazed, and what if he wasn’t even down here? There had been unsettling noises for a while now, like something still a way off thundered a heavy step. She fancied she could actually feel little shuddery vibrations through the entire structure. The whole place might break apart with them still in it, and it seemed a terrible way to die, but escaping without him seemed a worse way to live. Fortunately, though the scalding earth around the fissures sparked her soles, she managed to nimble her way around them. Her feet seemed sure. She ignored the pounding of her own heart.

The tunnel finally ended, widening to a platform encased in darkness and the terrifying glow of a shimmering heat. At the far end, thick bars rose from the ground and disappeared into the pitch blackness above. A gold-eyed face was pressed between them, intense to what lay ahead, and for a moment she was running in relief. Until she realised what Tristan was staring at.

Thalia’s eyes could not easily pierce the veil of shadows from which the shape emerged towards them, but it was large and carried chains that it looped and held in its thick arms. The noise it made as it moved rattled her soul. Certainly it was not a man.

Her legs fell out from underneath her.

“T-T-Trespass,” it intoned. There was nothing pleasant in the scrape of its voice as it passed its judgement upon the soul in its cage. It looked nowhere else but the small mortal it towered above. “You are con-d-d-demned.”

A glow swirled out through the rivers of lava, and for a moment Thalia caught sight of its grotesque face as inscriptions over its skin pulsed in time with the same questing light. Flesh crawled away from its skull, which gleamed black as volcanic glass. There was no beat of power that she recognised, even as the luminescence travelled beneath where she sat and sped into the cage itself. But clearly it did something.

The chains creaked as its grip tightened and released. The creature flinched, expression twitching into a grimace. “An E-E-Error,” it said. “And an anom-m-maly.”