Arcane Traveler 1 by Terry Gibson

Author:Terry Gibson [Gibson, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

As it turned out, the section of hallway we’d entered into wasn’t trapped.

I pushed halfway into it, muscles tense to the point of hurting, before I relaxed. The place was more like a foyer than the hall before, and I wondered at the odd design of it all. There was literally nothing in this fifty-foot hall: no art hanging on the walls, no décor, no nothing. It simply led forward to another ornate archway like the one we’d entered through.

Our footsteps echoed as we marched on, but the sound wasn’t anywhere near as prevalent as it had been in the statue hall, the roof far lower in the corridor. My brain spun in circles as it tried to make sense of the lack of anything in the area, but I wrote it off as a rich people thing.

All the TV programs I’d ever watched with mansions always had wide-open spaces all over the place for some reason I couldn’t hope to understand. Having grown up poor, empty space was just one more luxury we couldn’t afford. Every inch of space was crammed with something, from old clothes to hand-me-down toys to empty boxes being saved just in case we needed to move suddenly—which happened all too often when I was little.

It didn’t help that we didn’t have all that much space to begin with.

This place—a fortress, I was beginning to think of it as, which was more fitting than a barrow—was nothing but space. My favorite childhood home—an old, beat-up trailer—could have fit snugly in the hallway we were passing through, with room for our yard, too.

I think all the space added to my nervousness about the place. It felt like we were raiding a presidential palace and not the ruins of an ancient species of beings I’d never heard of before today.

That didn’t stop me from going on, though.

At the archway leading out of the room, I eased up to it and peered through it, grateful for the magical goop Vyn had put in my eyes. I knew the place was pitch-black, but I could see as if it was daylight. Better still, with no lights to cast shadows anywhere, spots that would have been difficult to see in actual light were laid bare. If something lurked in the darkness, I’d see it.

That was both good and bad.

While I didn’t see anything moving in the darkness—other than the occasional insect—I did see something that spiked my adrenaline a little.

“What’s that?” Cara asked, having clearly seen the same thing.

We inched forward, examining the pile of rattly cloth and detritus I’d noticed from the entryway. The smell smacked me in the face it was so rancid.

“What the—?” Cara grumbled, covering her nose. “That’s rank.”

“It’s feces,” Vyn replied, her nose wrinkled up so hard that her eyes were just slits.

“And it’s fresh,” I noted, not likely that realization one bit, but there was more than that.

Something’s in here with us.

I spun in a slow circle, examining everything for a second time.

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