For a long moment, no one spoke. The forest had gone still again, the only sound the faint hum from the cavern ahead — deep and pulsing, like the earth itself was breathing.
Al looked down at the pistol in his hand. It was solid, familiar — weight and balance exactly as he remembered. The faint heat from the barrel still bled through the metal, but when he blinked, the slide shimmered with faint traces of light, as though reality itself hadn’t decided what it was.
Pryce was the first to find her voice. “What in the Crown’s name is that?” she demanded, lowering her rapier but not her suspicion. “You had no weapon. We saw your hands empty, and then—” she gestured sharply, “—that appeared.”
Rhyosyn circled him slowly, her green eyes gleaming with wary curiosity. “You conjured it. No incantation, no focus, no catalyst. It simply… appeared.”
Idris folded her arms, watching him carefully. “You’re saying it wasn’t planned?”
Al shook his head, holstering the weapon — or trying to. There was no holster, but the pistol seemed to fade into his side as if sinking into shadow. That earned a hiss from Pryce and a startled curse from Evan.
“I don’t know how it happened,” Al admitted. “I needed it — and it was just there.”
Rhyosyn’s gaze narrowed. “Needed it?”
He nodded. “Where I come from, when things go wrong, you act. You don’t wait. You don’t pray. You move. I reached for what I knew — and the System must’ve answered.”
“The System,” Pryce repeated, her voice sharp. “You speak of it as if it’s a servant.”
“No,” Al said quietly. “More like… it’s listening.”
That silenced them again. Even the wind seemed to fade.
Evan finally broke the quiet, glancing toward the cavern’s shadowed mouth. “Listening or not, it saved our hides. I’ll not question a magic that works.”
Rhyosyn turned back toward the dark entrance, expression hard to read. “A weapon that answers need rather than command… I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“American magic,” Idris said under her breath, almost reverently.
Pryce’s lips thinned. “Or madness.”
Al smirked faintly. “Could be both.”
Rhyosyn mounted her horse again, eyes fixed on the black mouth of stone. “Then let’s see if your madness gets us killed.”
Al looked back toward the cavern, the hum deepening until it felt like a heartbeat under his boots. He drew a slow breath. “Ladies first?”
Rhyosyn’s answering smile was thin as a blade. “Try to keep up, Marine.”
And with that, they moved toward the singing dark.
They stood at the edge of the cavern’s mouth, the faint hum thrumming through the air like a pulse. The opening gaped wide enough for three riders abreast, but darkness swallowed the light a few steps in.
Evan dismounted first, her hand brushing her sword hilt. “We’ll go straight in,” she said. “Best to meet what waits before it comes for us.”
Al frowned. “That’s not how you’d do it.”
Rhyosyn turned, brows lifting. “Oh? And how would you do it, Outlander?”
He crouched, scanning the ground—loose gravel, moisture seeping from the rock, a faint airflow he could feel against his cheek. “You don’t just walk into a hole in the earth and hope for the best. You post security, check for second entrances, test the air for gas or poison. Then you send a point—quiet, eyes open, not charging in like it’s a bar fight.”
Pryce made a face. “You speak as if you’ve done this before.”
He looked up at her, eyes hard. “Afghanistan. We used to clear cave systems—insurgents hid in them. You never rush the entry. You plan for crossfire, for collapse, for the unknown. And you sure as hell don’t take horses inside.”
That earned him a few blank looks.
Rhyosyn folded her arms. “So your ‘training’ teaches fear?”
Al shook his head. “No. It teaches respect—for what can kill you.”
For a moment, no one spoke. The hum from the cavern grew louder, deeper, as though something inside was listening.
Evan’s tone softened slightly. “You think we should wait.”
“I think we should treat it like it’s alive,” Al said quietly. “If this is the place I think it is, that sound isn’t wind—it’s pressure. Something’s moving air in and out. Like breathing.”
That gave even Rhyosyn pause.
Pryce sniffed, forcing disdain back into her voice. “And what would you have us do, Marine?”
He smiled faintly, humorless. “What we always do when it’s dark and full of teeth—slow, steady, weapons up, no heroics. The Corps calls it clearing the unknown.”
Rhyosyn glanced back toward the cavern, eyes narrowing. “Then lead on, Outlander. Let us see how your Corps clears the dark.”
Al moved ahead of them without hesitation, his steps measured, eyes scanning the ground and ceiling. He didn’t look back to ask permission — he simply took point, gesturing for Evan and Idris to spread and cover the flanks. His movements were economical, deliberate, like someone who had done this a hundred times before.
The women watched him for a moment, their expressions caught between irritation and curiosity.
Rhyosyn broke the silence first. “He acts as though command is his right.”
Pryce’s lip curled faintly. “A man taking point before three noble houses? It’s indecent.”
Catrin, the swordswoman, tilted her head, her gaze following Al as he motioned silently to the guards. “Indecent, perhaps. But effective.”
Rhyosyn shot her a look. “You’d let a man give you orders?”
“I’d let anyone give me orders if it meant not dying in a hole,” Catrin replied coolly. “He moves like someone who’s lived through worse than this.”
Evan and Idris exchanged glances, faint smiles flickering across their faces but saying nothing.
Pryce huffed. “Still, it isn’t natural. Men don’t lead. They assist. They advise. They certainly don’t command.”
“Maybe in your house,” Catrin said dryly. “But I’ve yet to see any of your ‘natural’ leaders stop a charge barehanded.”
Rhyosyn turned her gaze toward the cavern where Al had paused, half-shadowed by the flickering light from her staff. “He’s wrong,” she said finally, almost as if convincing herself. “He doesn’t understand our ways. He acts by instinct, not training.”
“Perhaps,” Catrin murmured, “but instinct has a way of keeping soldiers alive.”
Pryce frowned, torn between disdain and uncertainty. “It still feels wrong. A man shouldn’t look like that when giving orders. It makes people listen.”
“Then perhaps that’s his danger,” Rhyosyn said quietly. “Not his strength.”
The hum from the cavern deepened, vibrating through the earth beneath their feet. Al turned back to look at them, silhouetted against the faint, pale glow spilling from the mouth of the cave.
“You coming,” he asked, voice low but steady, “or waiting for permission?”
That earned him three sharp looks — but one by one, they followed.
The darkness swallowed their words as the sound of their footsteps joined the cave’s eerie song.
The air inside the cavern was colder, heavy with mineral damp and the faint metallic tang of old water. Every sound carried — the scuff of boots, the creak of leather, the faint jingle of weapons.
Rhyosyn’s staff cast a dim, flickering glow that painted the walls in shades of amber and shadow. The tunnel opened into a wide passage ahead, and the humming was louder now — resonant, layered, almost harmonic.
Al raised a hand. “Hold up.”
The women stopped, startled by his sudden command, but something in his tone made even Rhyosyn obey.
He looked around — the uneven ground, the low ceiling, the sense that the darkness went on forever. This was no place for firelight. It left too many shadows.
He reached for his shoulder. I need light, he thought. Something steady. Not a torch — a flashlight.
And just like before, the air shimmered.
A moment later, a solid, olive-drab cylinder settled into his palm — cold metal, textured grip, the faint weight of a standard-issue Maglite. He thumbed the button.
A beam of white light cut through the dark. Pure, focused, blinding.
The nobles recoiled as the cave illuminated — glittering stone formations, dripping stalactites, a mirrored pool that reflected their startled faces.
“What sorcery—” Pryce began.
Al ignored her, sweeping the beam across the chamber. “This is more like it,” he muttered, voice half awe, half soldier’s focus.
The light caught movement — not life, just the shimmer of moisture — and he took a slow breath. “Caves like this? They go for miles. You could fit a battalion down here if you wanted to.”
Catrin frowned. “You conjure tools as easily as blades. How is that possible?”
Al glanced down at the flashlight, its beam unwavering. “Maybe because I expect them to be there.”
“You expect them?” Rhyosyn repeated.
He shrugged. “Back home, you don’t think about your gear not existing. You just reach, and it’s there. Guess the System agrees with me.”
Rhyosyn stared at him as though trying to see the shape of something invisible. “You act as if this power obeys you.”
“Maybe it does,” Al said. “Or maybe it’s just listening.”
He moved forward again, light sweeping the path ahead — and then stopped. A sound. A shift in air pressure. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
He reached down, instinct guiding him again. “We’re not alone.”
Before he even thought the next words, a shape formed in his hand — matte black, polymer frame, a pistol that hummed faintly as though the System itself disapproved of its intrusion into this world.
He brought it up smoothly, sighting down the beam of the flashlight.
The nobles stiffened as the weapon materialized, the air around it crackling with strange energy.
“By the Triumvirate,” Pryce whispered, “he called another.”
Al’s expression hardened. “No,” he said softly, the familiar weight grounding him. “I just called mine.”
The hum from deeper in the cavern shifted — a note higher, sharper, almost questioning.
Rhyosyn swallowed, eyes fixed on the pistol. “Marine,” she said quietly, “what manner of weapon is that?”
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze stayed locked on the darkness ahead, muscles taut. “One that gets real loud,” he said finally, “when things go bad.”
And as if answering him, the hum in the depths of the cavern changed again — no longer a song, but a pulse. A heartbeat.
The tunnel narrowed ahead, the ceiling dipping low enough that Al had to crouch as he advanced. The hum that had filled the air moments before was gone now—replaced by something smaller, sharper. A rasping scrape of claws on stone. The whisper of breath.
He held up a hand, signaling for silence. The beam of his flashlight swept the darkness in a slow arc, tracing slick stone and ragged stalactites that dripped with mineral tears. The air smelled faintly of rot and ammonia.
Something moved.
The light caught a flash of scaly hide and pale, leathery ears pressed flat against a skull too narrow for comfort. The creature hissed and scrambled back into the dark. Another answered from above, a rasping chirr that set Al’s teeth on edge.
“Kobolds,” Rhyosyn breathed, her staff lifting instinctively. “They dwell near old dragon sites.”
Al muttered, “Of course they do.”
There was a rush of motion—shadows breaking from the walls. The flashlight beam struck a dozen of them at once: man-sized, hunched creatures covered in mottled scales, their faces a warped cross between rat and lizard, eyes milky-white from generations underground. They blinked and shrieked, recoiling from the sudden glare.
“Light blinds them!” Catrin shouted.
Al grinned tightly. “Then let’s make it hurt.”
He twisted the flashlight toward them and fired. The pistol barked once, echoing through the chamber like thunder. The lead kobold collapsed in a spatter of black ichor, the others screeching and flailing, claws raking at their faces as they tried to flee the light.
Rhyosyn threw her staff forward, a wave of fire chasing the retreating creatures, the sudden heat filling the cavern with the stench of burning scales. Pryce darted past her, her rapier finding throats in quick, economical thrusts.
Evan and Idris moved like clockwork, cutting down anything that slipped past.
“Don’t let them circle!” Al shouted. “They’ll try to draw you into the dark!”
“How do you know that?” Pryce demanded, parrying a lunging kobold.
“I’ve fought their cousins!” Al snapped. “Different planet, same idea!”
The creatures were fast and desperate, hissing through broken teeth, their claws sharp enough to scrape steel. But the light—the light—was death to them. Every time the flashlight beam cut across them, they shrieked and stumbled, blinded, exposed.
Rhyosyn’s magic flared again, searing the walls with arcs of molten fire. Catrin moved to cover her, blade flashing as one of the creatures leapt from a ledge. It never landed—Al shot it midair, the sound deafening in the close space.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the noise stopped. The survivors fled into the fissures, their chittering fading into the dark.
The smell of smoke and blood filled the air.
Al lowered the pistol slowly, scanning for movement. “Anyone hit?”
“Scratches,” Idris said, wiping her sword clean. “Nothing deep.”
Rhyosyn’s staff dimmed to a steady glow again. She stared at the carcass nearest her—its twisted body still twitching, the skin somewhere between hide and sinew. “You’ve fought things like these before?” she asked.
Al nodded once. “Different shapes. Same eyes.”
Pryce frowned. “What are they?”
“Kobolds,” Rhyosyn said softly, crouching beside one. “They worship dragons, protect their bones and eggs. They should not be here.”
“They weren’t here for us,” Al said, stepping closer to the tunnel that led deeper. “They were guarding something.”
Catrin’s eyes followed his beam of light down the narrow passage, where the stone floor sloped steeply into shadow. The hum had returned—fainter now, but pulsing like a heartbeat.
“Something,” she murmured, “or someone.”
Al’s hand tightened on the pistol. “Either way,” he said, “we’re going to find out.”
The beam of his flashlight cut forward, slicing through the dark as they descended deeper into the earth.