The Crystal Keep by Hillman Jon

Author:Hillman, Jon [Hillman, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

It could have been minutes, hours, or days. Down here in the dark cells, the only way in which Marigold was even aware that time was passing was with the slowly dwindling light of the torch beyond the cells. Pretty soon, that thing was going run out of fuel and then it would be darkness for the lot of them. No Cerulean Hair grew down here.

Haggar was sat on the sand, pawing at his mouth, and groaning each time his fingers touched something tender.

“Stop playing with it,” chided Marigold, though only half-heartedly; if it helped his friend pass the time, what did it matter? That tongue wasn’t growing back, no matter what he did, and pretty soon they’d all be rotting in the stomach of a Pit-spawned fucking worm anyway. Worm food. Fucking worm food. Marigold had often thought about the way in which he might leave this world for Greldin’s Halls, but not one of his wildest imaginings had involved him and his friends fizzing away in the belly of some over-sized pissing maggot. There probably wouldn’t even be any bones, and you couldn’t really bury soup, or determine what parts would go in which hole. Who of the clan knew that any of them were even down here anyway? This was a proper fuck up. The kind of fuck up you didn’t get to learn from. The kind of fuck up he had told Pettar to avoid. Perhaps one of his clan would eventually end up in Elsdale and find out just where Marigold had taken Magnus and Haggar and Pettar. Poor Pettar, killed for nothing. Perhaps someday the clan would avenge him. Marigold would most certainly be remembered by his clan. The Idiot Chief. What not to do if you wanted to run the gang for more than a few weeks. At least the clan now had a chance to go on with someone that had a little more sense to be in charge with.

The torch hissed out.

“Well, that’s just fucking great,” Magnus said.

“If you’re down here any length of time you’ll get used it, Magnus,” Nina said from the corner of her cell. “A torch is a rarity, you should thank yourselves lucky you even got one.”

“Very lucky,” Magnus grumbled.

A high-pitched clicking began to sound just outside the cells.

“The fuck is that?” Marigold spat, pacing to the front of the cell and dragging Haggar up with him. His eyes strained, he couldn’t see a damn thing in this darkness.

“One of the rakeworm’s ticks. The parasites that Lennan mentioned. Don’t worry, they can’t squeeze into the cells. If anything, they just add some variation to the monotony down here,” Nina finished dryly.

“Well that variation is what killed our lad, Pettar. If it comes anywhere near these bars I’ll rip its bloody jaws off.”

“Very manly.”

Marigold snorted with disgust, though he stepped back from the bars nonetheless.

Footsteps sounded from within the inky depths. A deep orange glow became yellow, became the flickering warmth of a new torch. The clicking sounds scattered as the forms of many robed cultists filed into the open space before the cells.

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