The steady crunch of the garzeth putting its four arms and two stubby legs into the wall echoed behind them as they ran up the stairs. Liam didn't think it was possible for something that large to be able to crawl along the wall like a spider. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say it was crawling like an insect, considering it had four arms and two legs which added up to six rather than eight. Either way, it wasn't something he wanted coming at him.
Even though a corrupted spider could be pretty damn difficult to deal with. He'd fought one off once. The real pain in the ass was getting over his fear of spiders and dealing with the way it kept coming down at him from the treetops rather than being down on the ground like scourgelings.
"I think there's a slight problem with your plan," Ana said.
"Once we get to the top, there's going to be nowhere to go," he said.
"Exactly," she said.
"I'm hoping there’ll be a window or something on the next level we can get through. Maybe we can jump down to the ground level and run away while that thing keeps going up and trying to find us at the top."
"And you really think it's going to give up our scent like that and not realize what's going on?"
"You tell me," Liam said, glancing down at her. "You're the one who's the expert on all this demonic stuff."
"The garzeth is more powerful than a scourgeling, but they can be just as single-minded once they have your scent. It’ll be very difficult to get it away from us.”
"Damn it," he muttered. But they kept going until they came up to the second level.
This looked like it was a barracks level, which made sense. They’d want soldiers to be close to the bottom back when this place was a going concern. The upper levels were probably given over to scouts keeping a lookout.
There wasn't much point in having a guard tower if you didn't have people looking out for things they were supposed to be guarding against, after all. Liam imagined it was a pretty mind numbing job.
At least until that last fateful night nearly twenty years ago when Isai fell and the world around it burned in magical fires.
"Careful where you step," Liam said, looking down at the floor all around them.
The beds in the barracks had obviously been taken by the fires that ravaged Isai so long ago when he was just a baby and had been discovered in a home in a village that had been ravaged by those very same fires.
Liam still boggled to think of the sheer heat and power of those raging fires that they’d been able to reach from the walls of the famous unconquerable city to the outlying villages. And of course the guard towers hadn’t been spared since they were in between the city and the outlying trade villages.
There were also guard towers at all of the gates around the city to provide a last defense to the city walls in case of an attack. Not that having guard towers at all the gates around the city had done a damn bit of good the night it burned.
Baron Riven had even said the towns were meant to provide a sort of of early warning. It was a very cold military calculation that any army approaching Isai would have to go through those towns before they actually reached the gates. Or, at the very least, they would have to go to the trouble of going around them, and those towns were always garrisoned with at least a small force of soldiers just in case somebody decided to try and take on the great city.
So the people in those villages were supposed to die to buy time for the people living in Isai. Nobody ever stopped to think that the attack might come from magic that came from the city itself. That the great city of Isai would be the one to burn first and then all the towns would go second as those fires raged out of control.
He shook his head and looked around again, taking in the barracks level and looking for something that might save them. The floor had clearly been taken in the fire. He stepped on one of the floorboards and it seemed to hold, though he didn’t know how long that would last.
"Whoever put this thing together really knew what they were doing," he muttered.
"That, or the fire didn't get in here as much as it did other places."
Liam turned and stared at the tower all around them. It was filled with the burnt out husks of beds that soldiers had used to sleep on once upon a time. He was surprised there was that much of them left considering the scale of the destruction.
"I'm pretty sure the fires got here just fine," he said.
His next look was to make sure there weren't any more of the gargoyles hanging out in the barracks level. He didn't see any, but the place was full of shadows cast by the orb of light hovering just in front of Ana.
"I don't suppose you could turn up the light on that a bit?" Liam asked.
"Could do that, sure," she said with a shrug. "The problem being that if I turn up the light, it's going to go out one of those windows and then we’re going to have every creature out there coming this way to investigate and see why one of the towers has light in it, or maybe some of those assholes from your Inquisition are poking around out here and they'll come to investigate."
She squeezed her eyes shut and shivered as she mentioned the assholes from the Inquisition. Not that Liam was going to get into an argument with her on that point. Everybody he knew who'd ever had an interaction with the Inquisition agreed that they were a bunch of assholes. And he was inclined to agree with it considering all the stories were in agreement.
If one person said you were an asshole that could be potentially dismissed. If everyone said you were an asshole then that was a pattern.
"Okay, turning the lights up is a bad idea," he said. "Why don't you stand over there and I'll walk across the planks and try to find a safe way to get to that window over there?”
He could see the window about halfway around the room. He thought about going around the edge, but the floor below was treacherous. There were support beams down below that he’d seen on the ceiling, though, and he hoped walking along those would keep the floor stable beneath him.
"Sure thing," she said, nodding at him and then wincing as she held her stomach.
He moved as quickly as he dared. They were stuck between a monster and a crumbling floor. He didn't want to step through that crumbling floor and serve himself up to the garzeth waiting for them down below. But at the same time, he didn't want the garzeth to have time to climb up to this level and eat them while they were still trying to figure out how to get through the floor.
He could tell from putting his weight down past the stairs that the floor wasn’t holding up very well out there, but he was able to find one of the support beams that ran across the floor and he mostly kept to that. He closed his eyes and tried to remember how everything looked down below when he looked up at the ceiling.
He opened his eyes and moved slowly, trying to remember the layout of the support beams. Trying to step as lightly as possible, for all that he knew it wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good if the floor gave way.
He got about halfway and moved his foot out. He stuck it down and the floor crumbled, but he could see the cross beam from down below. He also thought he could hear snuffling from down there, and he didn’t want to think about what that meant.
He walked a little more quickly to the window, then looked to Ana. She merely leapt across the room, stepping down onto the boards that weren't supported by a massive beam from down below like she weighed nothing. It brought to mind the way she'd been standing in a tree earlier when she looked down at him at their first meeting.
He stared at her as she finally came up next to him at the window.
"What?" she asked, smiling at him. It was a smile that had his guts churning.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" he said.
"Just because you're having trouble getting across here doesn't mean I'm going to have trouble," she said with a shrug.
"Making comments about my weight?” he said.
"There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with your weight," she said, her eyes traveling up and down his body in an inspection that seemed thorough.
“Why didn’t you just do that from the beginning?” he asked.
“Because I’m not exactly doing well here,” she said, glancing down to her stomach with a hand over it. “And I can’t do that every time. Especially when a garzeth just clawed me.”
“Right,” he said, clearing his throat. “Either way, we have a problem here."
"I'd say," she said, looking out the window.
There were bars on the window. Clearly it was meant for people to be able to look out, but they didn’t want people getting in. They had a view of the Isai walls off in the distance. He could see an eerie otherworldly light rising from the city that reminded him of some of the books he'd read that talked about a glow in the sky in the far northern and far southern climates. A glow that nobody could explain by traditional magical means. A glow that had disappeared when the two worlds were joined together.
At least everybody assumed that glow had gone now that the two worlds had been joined together. It was possible it was still there, but those were lands nobody could get to without moving through the demon kingdoms, and Liam certainly wasn't going to go up there to get a look.
"What does that glow mean?" he whispered.
She turned to look at him, and he was suddenly painfully aware that she was so very close to him. All it would take was for him to lean forward just a bit and he would be able to press his lips against hers.
Then he blinked and tried to take control of himself, because it seemed like there was another brain that was suddenly trying to call the shots, and he couldn't help but think that brain was going to get him in trouble before this was all said and done.
She also blinked, the glow growing in intensity in her eyes for a moment and then coming back to normal.
"I have no idea what that glow is," she said.
"Seriously?" he said.
"Do you think I know everything about everything?" she asked.
“You certainly act like you do,” he said.
“Because I know a lot of things,” she said, her chin jutting out in defiance. Then she deflated. “But I don’t know what that is.”
“Damn,” Liam muttered. “I figured you might know a little bit about the demonic magics that are left over in that city."
"Demonic magics?" she said with a snort.
“Well… yes? That’s what everyone says ravaged Isai. Albert working with forces he shouldn’t.”
“Don’t blame us for your mad sorcerer,” she said, some heat coming to her voice. “That’s just humans trying to blame us for your sins. Like you always do.”
"You're saying you're not to blame for Isai burning," he said, a little bit of heat coming to his voice as he remembered how his parents died. The life that had been denied to him. How it was all…
Well, maybe it was Albert’s fault. But demons had moved into these lands after the city was scourged, and so everyone assumed they had something to do with it as well.
"We didn't have anything to do with it," she said. “Not that any humans believe us."
Liam sighed, then he looked over to the other end of the room. That garzeth was still down there, though he couldn't hear it now. That was worrying. It didn't seem right for something that large to be able to move that quietly. He should be able to hear it lumbering along the wall doing its impression of a spider or an insect or something.
"We need to move," he said.
And just in time with that, as though he'd been inviting disaster, a massive clawed paw shot up through the wood right next to them. Liam let out a surprised cry and moved on instinct more than anything, pushing Ana behind him as he pulled his sword out and slashed as the garzeth let out a bellowing roar right underneath them.