Shadow and Memory

Part 2

"Wulfric." Carol said, tugging at his arm to get his attention.

He glanced over his shoulder to her, hand straying to the axe at his hip. "What?" He asked, looking back past them as if expecting to see a horde of unknown foes creeping up behind them. There were none, and he let out a tense breath. "What is it?" He asked a little more gently.

"It's the side tunnels." She said, gesturing to the tunnels that branched off from the passage they were on. "There are more of them, closer together. Before we passed them only occasionally but now it's every minute or so."

As they went along, Wulfric found she was right. The passages off to the side were clustering closer and closer together. Wulfric counted his steps, and though the winding uneven tunnel made it hard to keep an exact count they were getting noticeably closer together.

"You're right." He agreed. "But I'm not sure what it means."

"They're like roads." Carol said. "In the country, roads are long and only rarely cross others, but the closer you get to a city the more roads link off from the main trade paths. And when you get to the city itself then the roads form a tight pattern, like a woven net."

Wulfric nodded, understanding what she meant. "If you're right, then we're getting closer and closer to the heart of... something." He rolled his shoulders, his hackles rising, ears twitching.

"Should we turn back?" Carol asked worriedly, looking to him. "It could be even more dangerous up ahead and we've no way to know if this is getting us any closer to an exit."

He slowed their pace, eventually coming to a stop, ears still up and alert as he sniffed the air. "No, I think that these tunnels have a certain sense to how they're dug. There was a surface entrance at the ruin where we were being held captive, and many tunnels leading off from that. It was hard to see in our hurry to flee but I remember passing many side corridors as we ran out of the central chamber, just like the ones we're passing now. I think the pattern will hold, that we're drawing near to another ruin and that there will be another surface entrance somewhere within it."

"That seems like a bit of a risk to take." Carol said, looking up at him.

Wulfric didn't answer for a long moment, looking behind them, gazing into the dark tunnel they had just come down. "We don't have much choice in the matter I am afraid." He said calmly.

"Why?" Carol asked hesitantly.

"Because." Wulfric said, drawing his axe. "We're being followed. Run." For the first time since he had first gazed into the darkness down in these tunnels, something was gazing back. Two eyes, two large pale eyes were staring back at him out of the darkened tunnel, reflecting the low light. Wulfric was not sure what they belonged to but every instinct in his body was screaming at him to run, to keep away, an almost primal revulsion welling up inside of him like a physical symptom.

Carol glanced behind them and her eyes went wide with horror, before Wulfric grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. "Run!" He barked and she took off down the corridor, Wulfric at her side, axe at the ready.

They flashed past more side passages as they ran, no longer caring about pacing themselves or making too much noise. Wulfric didn't allow himself to panic despite the fear gripping at his heart. His sharp eyes flashed down the passages as they ran by them, and he saw more glimpses of whatever it was that called this place home. Humanoid figures wreathed in shadows, pale staring eyes, a flash of an arm or a leg. He smelled them clearly now that he knew what it was that surrounded him. The scent of these creatures had been omnipresent in the tunnels and he had mistaken it for some natural smell of the underground and ignored it in the same way he would ignore the smell of grass in an open field.