ShadowSong [Book 3]

Chapter 51 - Runes to Ruins

The wind whipped Banshee's hair around her visor as she crouched low and shadow shifted on Cryo's back, so high up that the people below looked like little more than multi coloured specks on the starstone below.

She felt secure. Steady. This was familiar territory. Sky, shadows, frost, and a mission that they couldn't afford to fail: retrieve Nereid's Ascended.

Banshee glanced over Cryo's shoulder, easily spotting DragonFae's violet glow some distance below and behind them. To cross the lake with stealth, DragonFae had wrapped her enchanted swing around Golem's stones and was floating the two of them over the rooftops. It wasn't as fast, but the sheer amount of magic it would have taken to negate Golem's weight for Cryo to fly the two elder Luminaries would have left DragonFae drained before they arrived.

With any luck, Wyvern and Skinwalker would have no idea they were coming.

The City disappeared beneath them, leaving the rippled, star-flecked surface of the lower Celestial's Falls lake glimmering below them. Not long after, Cryo drew near the Celestial's Falls themselves, hovering close to the mountain side as he looked for the entrance to the ruins.

Wiping droplets from the waterfall's spray off her visor, Banshee reached out to the shadows, searching for the pocket that was different to the rest. Upon finding it, she leaned over Cryo's shoulder a little further and pointed. Without a word between them, Cryo descended, heading for the pocket of light among the shadows nestled in the mountainside.

A gentle layer of frost swept over the damp ferns tucked into the cracks of the rock as Cryo landed on a narrow ledge. It was higher up than Banshee had imagined, though she supposed for it to remain hidden, it had to be. It was well above any height than any regular civilian bothered to climb, the rocks far too slippery with moss and trickles of moisture to be considered safe.

Banshee vaulted off Cryo's back, glancing down at a solid metal 'U' hammered into the greenish-black rock face by her foot.

Well, apparently not high enough for everyone.

Banshee took the lead. With one hand resting on the sheathed hilt of Grief, she reached back for Cryo with the other and led him into the dark, narrow passage, trusting the shadows to keep them sure-footed. The roar of the waterfall faded as the passage curved to the left, leaving the echoing drip, drip, drip of the water ringing in her ears--yet it wasn't long before the sound of the waterfall returned, even louder than it'd been before.

And with it came the sound of a fight.

Banshee quickened their pace as the passage began to widen out and the shadows thinned. The waterfall was almost deafening, but among it, the sound of Lightblasters and cries of pain echoed off the damp, rocky walls, louder and louder with every step.

The passage ended, not in a hollow pocket of rock as Banshee had expected, but in a large, breathing cavern hidden directly behind the falls.

The thunderous wall of water covering the cavern's mouth plunged into the lake far below, and only a narrow bridge of rock spanned the ravine between the cliff where Banshee and Cryo now stood and the platform across from them--where Skinwalker was making short work of the ten or so Hunters, keeping them away from where Wyvern stood before a blue, glowing section of rock.

For once in its copy-cat life, Skinwalker was fighting in its base form. Its hulking, furred body was weirdly nimble as it avoided the Lightblaster shots, reaching out with those gangly arms while slowly but steadily disarming the Hunters.

No, not disarming. Skinwalker was playing with the Hunters. It was enjoying itself, pretending to be trying, but in the ten seconds Banshee watched, it didn't shift once. It was doing the bare minimum necessary to keep the Hunters away from Wyvern. It disarmed them, only to turn its back on them and allow them to pick up the weapon again.