Caldreth and Krim continued their descent under Nethervale. The further they went, the more the underground resembled the inside of a geode.

  The path twisted through a labyrinth of violet glass. The crystals here were larger than those near the entrance, some as thick as tree trunks, while others grew in delicate, razor-sharp, spiraling clusters that brushed against the stone ceiling. The light was brighter now, a constant, drowning luminescence that washed out the colors of their clothing and made Krim's pale skin look sickly.

  "Keep to the center," Caldreth whispered, stepping over a patch of floor where the stone looked blistered and warped.

  Krim nodded, his eyes darting to the shadows. The low, rushing sound they had heard earlier was still there, a constant, scratching background noise, like dry leaves skittering over pavement. It was growing louder.

  A violent jolt tore through the ground beneath their feet, vibrating up through Caldreth's shins.

  "Hold," Caldreth barked, stopping dead.

  To their left, a section of the granite wall groaned. The stone didn't just crack; it bulged outward, as if something immense was pushing from the other side.

  "Get back," Caldreth ordered, shoving Krim behind a jagged pillar of quartz.

  The bulging stone wall shattered, sending a shower of granite dust and rock shards outward. Nothing stepped out of the hole. Instead, something grew out of it.

  In the span of a single heartbeat, a spear of raw, blindingly bright violet crystal shot out of the fresh fracture. It elongated with a terrifying screech as matter expanded, growing multiple feet in seconds before cooling into a solid, jagged spike.

  "The stone," Krim whispered, peering around the pillar, his voice tight. "It's bursting."

  Caldreth didn't answer. He was watching the fresh fracture. The new crystal was still smoking, pulsing with a rapid, frantic light.

  Then, the shadows in the cracks moved.

  The scratching sound became a roar. From the spiderwebbed fissures surrounding the new crystal, dozens of small, grey shapes poured out. They moved with a frantic, fluid speed, their many-jointed legs clicking against the stone.

  "Vermin," Caldreth noted, keeping his hand on his hilt but not drawing.

  The creatures, about the size of large rats but armored in chitin plates, ignored the two intruders. They swarmed the fresh, hot crystal.

  An ear-numbing sound filled the tunnel, the screech of grinding teeth on glass.

  Caldreth watched, fascinated and disgusted, as the swarm descended on the glowing spike. Their mandibles clamped onto the crystal, shearing off chunks of crystal and crushing it. As they swallowed, their grey abdomens began to glow with a faint violet light.

  "They're eating it," Krim realized, straightening up as he realized they weren't the targets. "They feed on the crystals."

  "Scavengers," Caldreth said.

  He watched the swarm cluster around the massive, jagged spike of blue crystal protruding from the wall. Their mandibles scraped against the hard mineral surface with a steady, rhythmic grinding sound, chipping away small flakes of the new protrusion.

  It was a slow feast. The crystal was immense, easily large enough to sustain the cluster for days, yet they worked with a singular, mindless focus, oblivious to the world around them

  The rock face around the jagged crystal groaned from the sudden expanse. Hairline fractures shot outward from the center, spiderwebbing across the dark basalt in a rapidly expanding network.

  Chunks of stone flaked away, falling to the floor, widening the gaps until the wall itself seemed to be peeling apart.

  And through the cracks, it was glowing.

  A low, vibrating hum began to emanate from the widening hole, a sound so deep it felt like it was rattling the teeth in Caldreth's skull.

  Beside him, Krim doubled over, clutching his head. His mouth moved, shouting something, but the sound seemed distant, muffled by the sudden pressure in the air.

  Caldreth didn't look at him. He couldn't. His eyes were locked on the hole in the wall.

  Inside the shattered rock, past the layers of basalt, something was moving. It wasn't magma, and it wasn't water. It looked like a storm had been trapped inside the earth. A blinding, jagged river of white-violet energy arced through the stone, branching and forking exactly like lightning cracking across a storm-dark sky. But unlike lightning, it didn't fade. It held its shape, roaring in a silent, continuous loop of explosive power.

  It was the most beautiful thing Caldreth had ever seen.

  He took a step closer. Then another.

  The air grew hot. The static charge was intense, making the hair on his arms stand up, sparking against his armor.

  Somewhere behind him, Krim was screaming, but the words were just dull thuds against Caldreth's consciousness. All that mattered was the light. He wanted to see how deep it went. He reached out a hand toward the crack.

  I wonder if I can siphon th-

  A spike of agony drove itself through Caldreth's left eye, blinding him. The tome was screaming in his mind, a chaotic, dissonant shriek of absolute rejection.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Caldreth gasped, the trance shattering. The beauty of the light vanished, replaced by a searing headache that brought him to his knees. The muffled sounds of the world crashed back in at full volume.

  "—VE! WE HAVE TO MOVE! CALDRETH!"

  Krim was grabbing his shoulder, hauling him backward with frantic strength.

  Caldreth stumbled, his vision swimming with black spots, allowing the necromancer to drag him away from the fissure. They scrambled down the path, putting a massive pillar of quartz between them and the open vein in the wall.

  Only when the blinding light was obscured did the screaming in Caldreth's head fade to a dull, manageable throb.

  Caldreth slumped against the welcome chill of the pillar, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. His heart was hammering against his ribs, a frantic rhythm that made his chest ache. A cold, oily dread coated his insides, the distinct, primal feeling of having stood beside something that could have erased him without a second thought. He felt small. Insignificant.

  "What..." He had to swallow the bile rising in his throat to speak. "What was that?"

  Krim was leaning against the opposite wall, looking pale and shaken, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose.

  "That," Krim wheezed, "was a raw leyline."

  Caldreth blinked, trying to clear the afterimage of the lightning from his retinas. "I thought leylines were... subtle. Invisible."

  "They are invisible because they are buried," Krim explained, his voice still trembling. "Leylines don't run near the surface; they carve through the crust."

  Krim pointed a shaking finger back toward the glow behind the pillar.

  "But that? That is the river itself. It is the raw life-force of the world."

  Caldreth looked down at the tome. It was vibrating with a low, angry buzz. It had hated that light.

  "Quite intense," Caldreth muttered. "I don't think the tome likes it."

  "Of course it doesn't," Krim said, straightening himself out. "That book of yours is woven from death and shadow. A leyline is pure creation. Never touch a raw leyline."

  Caldreth pushed himself off the pillar. He looked back one last time at the violet glow spilling around the corner before they moved deeper into the underground.

  They walked on. Gradually, the oppressive static of the crystal caverns began to fade, giving way to a heavy, stagnant silence. The air grew still, losing the ozone smell of the leylines and taking on the scent of old, dry dust.

  Then, the tunnel changed.

  The jagged, chaotic growth of the crystals stopped abruptly, as if cut by a knife. The rough, natural cavern walls smoothed out, transitioning from raw granite to polished black stone. The floor, once uneven and treacherous, was leveled into wide, seamless flagstones that fit together so perfectly that a knife blade couldn't slip between them.

  Krim slowed. He raised a hand and pushed his ghostly motes of light forward, floating upward to push back the oppressive dark.

  "This..." Krim murmured, his voice echoing, "is unexpected."

  Caldreth stepped forward, his boots clicking sharply on the stone. They had entered a massive hallway, wide enough for an army to march through in formation.

  Lined along the walls were towering pillars that curved and twisted like petrified muscle fibers, reaching up to support a vaulted ceiling that was lost in the shadows above. They were carved from a single, continuous piece of dark stone, veined with faint, dormant traces of red ore.

  "Architecture," Caldreth said, his voice hushed as he ran a hand over the smooth curve of a pillar. "Why would the Sangrathi build so far underground?"

  The floor was dominated by rows of massive, circular basins carved from dark metal. They lined the left and right walls, leaving a wide central pathway between them. Each basin was ten feet across, with rims that were stained a deep, permanent rust-brown.

  Carved into the ground under each basin was a channel. They crisscrossed the room like a geometric vein system, all flowing in a single direction, toward the far side of the chamber.

  "It's a harvest floor," Krim whispered, tracing the dry gutter. "Gravity feeds the blood to the door. We fill the bowls, the door opens."

  "With what blood?" Caldreth asked. "We don't have enough."

  "I suspect," Krim said dryly, "the architects assumed visitors would bring their own."

  They followed the central path, stepping carefully over the dry, carved gutters in the floor. At the far end of the room, the path ended at a set of double doors.

  They were immense, carved from the same red-veined dark stone as the pillars, but there was no handle. No keyhole. The only feature was a complex series of reliefs carved into the stone, depicting streams of liquid flowing upward to feed a central, hungry maw.

  The floor channels ended here, feeding directly into intake grates at the base of the door.

  "Locked," Caldreth said, pushing against the stone. It didn't budge. "How do we open it?"

  Krim knelt by one of the channels. He ran a finger along the dry stone gutter. Where his finger touched, a faint, dormant rune flickered red for a split second before dying out.

  Caldreth sighed and walked over to the nearest basin, the one closest to the sealed door on the left.

  "Let's see if there's any residue left, maybe we can scrape-"

  Caldreth leaned over the rim of the bowl to peer inside. Krim's motes of light floated over Caldreth, providing an unwelcome view.

  His breath caught in his throat. The basin wasn't empty.

  Curled up in the bottom of the bowl, resting in the dried residue of ancient slaughter, was a pile of pale, wet limbs. There were at least six of them. They were tangled together like a knot of snakes, their smooth, eyeless heads resting on each other's backs. Their translucent skin rose and fell with shallow breaths.

  Caldreth lowered his feet back to the floor as quietly as he could.

  He looked at Krim.

  Krim was standing ten feet away, about to speak. Caldreth locked eyes with him and aggressively pressed a finger to his lips. He widened his eyes, shook his head, and pointed frantically at the bowl.

  Krim froze. He understood immediately.

  They began to back away, stepping softly on the flagstones.

  Clink.

  The sound came from Caldreth's hip. His scabbard had brushed against one of the stone pillars. It was a quiet sound. In this dead silence, it sounded like a hammer striking an anvil. From inside the basin Caldreth had just checked, a low, wet hiss emerged.

  Then, a head poked up over the rim.

  More Deep Stalkers. Its eyeless face swiveled left, then right. It opened its mouth, tasting the air, its needle teeth glistening. It pulled itself up, its claws scraping against the stone.

  Behind it, more hisses erupted from the bowl.

  Caldreth's hand drifted to his sword, but Krim caught his eye and shook his head.

  Krim raised his hand. The motes of light that had been hovering near them shot away. They drifted toward the center of the room, hovering over the empty walkway between the basins. Krim spread his fingers, triggering the motes of light to burn brighter.

  The creature on the rim snapped its head toward the moving light. It let out a chittering screech and vaulted out of the basin, landing on all fours. It scuttled toward the floating lights, entranced by the hot light.

  Two more crawled out of the same basin, following the first one toward the light.

  Caldreth and Krim backed up until their spines pressed against the cold stone of the locked door. They were trapped. The stalkers were between them and the entrance, and the door behind them was sealed.

  "They react to sound," Caldreth breathed, the words barely audible. "And light."

  "They are blind," Krim whispered back, his eyes fixed on the creatures circling his lights. "Subterranean evolution."

  Caldreth looked at the single basin the creatures had crawled out of. Then he looked at the other nine basins in the room.

  "Krim," Caldreth whispered. "Did you count the bowls?"

  "Ten," Krim replied, his voice tight. "Five on each side."

  Caldreth watched as a seventh crawled out of the first basin to join the others.

  "There's nearly eight of them in that one bowl," Caldreth did the math, and his stomach dropped. "If the other nine are full..."

  "Eighty," Krim finished. "Give or take."

  They stood in the shadows of the locked door, watching the small pack of monsters hiss at the floating lights.

  "We need blood to open this door," Caldreth whispered, gripping his hilt.

  "We have plenty of supply," Krim murmured, nodding at the Deep Stalkers. "The problem is the acquisition."