Bleeding Kyber Chapter 4: 04_ Struggle for Freedom(3)

Read chapter 4 of Bleeding Kyber by theRonin_666 on NovelPedia.

Herald surfaced in a chamber he didn't recognize, gasping and spitting river water. The flood had caught him in a half collapsed corridor, tumbling him through the current, until he surfaced in a chamber where the flood had settled to chest height. Thankfully he wasn't alone. Pytor was there, clinging to a broken support beam, his face a mask of blood and river mud. And around them, scattered like wood, were maybe a dozen other survivors, slaves and controllers alike, hard to tell apart when death claims everyone equally. "Kid," Pytor wheezed, "tell me you have a plan for this." Herald didn't. He had a dull blade, a piece of chocolate that was now a brown smear in his pocket, and a crystal that was pulsing faintly against his chest. He'd noticed the pulsing about thirty seconds ago. He was trying very hard not to think about what it meant. "Survive," he said. "That's the only plan I have." "Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I'm so glad I threw my chance in with a-" The water between them exploded. The creature rose like a nightmare, its eyeless head parting the water surface. Water streamed off its pale green flesh. Its mouth, if it could be called a mouth, was a vertical slit that ran the length of its head, and when it opened, it revealed rows of teeth that curved inward, designed for gripping, for holding, for pulling things down into the dark. A controller, one of the ones who'd made it to the water surface alive, was screaming on the far side of the chamber. The creature turned toward the sound, its flapped limbs fanning out like a net, and then it was moving, faster than anything that size should move, a green torpedo of hunger. Of fear moving with a disturbing grace, full of a wild beauty. The creature moved with a disturbing grace, full of wild beauty. The feeling that rose in Herald's chest was wrong. A strange awe no man in death's grip should feel The controller didn't finish his scream as it swallowed him alive. Pytor grabbed Herald's arm with a grip like iron. "We need to move. Now. Now, kid." But Herald wasn't looking at the creature. He was looking at the wall behind it, where the flood had torn away a section of rock to reveal something that shouldn't have been there. A metal door. Something that glowed, very faintly, with a light that shifted from red to blue and back again, that was how it looked to him. A door. Or a hatch. Or something that was definitely not part of a mining cave, that was shifting rapidly in colors of red and blue. The crystal against his chest pulsed in time with the light. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. "The old tunnels," Herald said, and his voice came out distant, as if someone else were speaking from far away. "They connect to the abandoned mines." "Who cares?" Pytor was already dragging him toward the nearest corridor, away from the creature, away from the slaughter. "The whole place is coming down! We need to get to the surface!" But the surface was a long way up, the water was still rising, and the creature was still feeding, and the light, the red and blue light, was pulsing faster now, a heartbeat, a question that Herald didn't know the answer to but suddenly, desperately, wished for it to stop. Before it attracted the monster still feeding. The ceiling groaned. A crack split the rock above them, raining dust and pebbles, splashing the water and attracting the monster's attention. "Pytor!" "I know! I know! Just swim, you useless half-half!" They swam forward, their limbs splashing water around as they felt like dogs peddling in water. The distinction stopped mattering after the first death. The water dragged at their limbs, cold and thick with river silt. Behind them, the creature finished with the controller and began to sweep the chamber again, its limbs brushing against floating corpses, searching for living prey. A body bumped against Herald's shoulder, a slave, a young man with a tattoo on his neck that Herald had seen before, in the mess hall, laughing at something. The body turned o