Lance exchanged a relieved look with me at the knowledge that the people closest to us were okay just before we turned the corner into one of the men’s bathhouses and the stench of death hit us hard.
There were lumps of flesh and gore strewn all over the place, pieces of a destroyed body splattered up the walls and a severed head with terror filling his dead eyes lay floating in the middle of the central pool.
“Oh, for the love of the bulbous and everlasting moon!” Geraldine cried.
“What the hell could have done that?” Darcy muttered, her nose wrinkling in disgust as she looked at the remains of the body.
“Plenty of Fae could do that in their Order form,” Seth piped up. “Like Dragons or Manticores, or Lions or Bears or Wolves or-”
“A Vampire could do it easily,” Caleb added and Seth nodded thoughtfully. “Can anyone see tooth marks? Or claw marks? Someone pass me that arm.”
“I’m not touching some gross severed arm, dude,” Roxy replied with a shudder.
“No one touch anything!” Geraldine cried. “We must conduct a full investigation.”
“Oh my god, I think I know who it is,” Darcy breathed, stepping closer to the pool of water as she peered in at the floating head which was slowly circling in the current of the water. “Isn’t that the guard who was on duty outside when we went to Wasted Mountain, Lance? Barney Von something?”
“Oh yeah,” he agreed as he moved closer to get a look. “That guy was a dick.”
Geraldine gasped as she whirled towards him in outrage, but before she could say anything in protest to describing the dead guy as a dick, one of the rebels wailed in recognition.
“Noooo, not Barney Von Bonderville!” The girl rushed forward and started sobbing, and I exchanged a look with the others before we all wordlessly retreated, heading out into the tunnel and hurrying away.
We made our way to the dining hall and I looked up at the vaulted ceiling which had piercing golden stalactites decorating it, the glint of all that gold always tugging on the attention my inner Dragon in the way The Orb once had.
A waterfall tumbled down the back of the cavern into a gleaming pool where a stone seating area was built and symbols of the star signs decorated the wall around it, lit up in gleaming blue Faelights. The pool was full of auras that people had tossed in, making wishes on the stars to win us favour in the war, and I’d seen a few precious crystals in there too which had caught my eye. It was tempting to scoop some of the coins out too, but I guessed it would be a dick move to steal people’s wishes.
The tables were made of stone, most of them circular except the large rectangular one in the middle built for the ‘true queens’ and their entourage. There was a statue of a Phoenix bird beyond it, its wings outstretched and its beak open as if it were releasing a cry, a fire burning at its base and even more coin offerings had been tossed into those flames.
The floor glittered with constellations, marked out across the stone with gleaming jewels and to the right of the room, the wall was painted with an intricate map of Solaria that some of the more artistic Fae were still working on, every corner of our kingdom accounted for from the Polar Capital right down to the Neptian Sea.
The cavern was alive with hushed whispers and suspicious gazes as everyone in the room looked between each other, wondering if the person beside them might just be a killer and I gritted my jaw against the tension. As if we needed something else to worry about while we were trying to prepare to take my father on. Every day there were new laws and announcements which put more and more Fae at risk, and the rebels had been working tirelessly to relocate Tiberian Rats, Sphinxes and Minotaurs as his Nymphs closed in on them.
The Burrows were being expanded daily to house all the new refugees, meaning Seth, Caleb, Geraldine and the twins were spending a lot of their time wielding their earth magic to create a deeper and deeper labyrinth down here to house all of them.
Eugene Dipper had taken full command of the Tiberian Rats and their quarters had been made up of tiny tunnels which no one aside from them could enter in their shifted forms, insisting none of them minded shifting for sleep so that they could take up less space. The only problem was that the Rats required a lot of nesting material and for some unknown reason they had a strong preference for underwear which meant it was going missing from the laundry caverns every damn time any of it was sent to be washed.
The others moved towards the centre of the cavern and I started after them, but a hand grasped my elbow before I could take more than a few steps and I turned to find Gabriel Nox holding my arm and scowling at me. He was shirtless with his wings on display as usual and I arched an eyebrow at him, letting him know I wasn’t all that pleased to be stopped by him.