Maior heard it, too, and gasped aloud, alerting them to her.
Reina shoved Maior out of the way just as a limber grinning goat rushed them with a swiping claw. She met the tiniebla with Ches’s Blade, which was dull in the chamber’s darkness. The shrill clash rang in Reina’s ear, and she shoved forward with a grunt, cleaving the tiniebla in two. In two seconds, it was over, but the sounds stirred the dozen other tinieblas prowling the vicinity.
Maior ran behind the sarcophagi, shaking Reina’s concentration, and the meek flame snuffed out. Reina didn’t have a chance to summon another one. One breath later she had to jump out of the way as another ravenous tiniebla came slashing at her, fangs snapping and foamy spittle sprinkling her boots and arms. Fear screamed in her veins as the creature swung with its curved talons. She slashed back, screaming with the weight of her body to banish the tiniebla.
Her heart fractured at the sound of Maior’s screams.
“Maior!”
Reina summoned a second light as Maior’s footsteps alerted more tinieblas to the sarcophagi. A bipedal monster pursued Maior to the other side of the bridge, which she crossed without realizing more awaited her on the other side. Two tinieblas, to be exact, grinning at the prospect of easy prey.
Reina leapt after her, calling her name, and landed badly on her ankle.
Her flame unveiled the dark just as a tiniebla was about to shred through Maior’s abdomen. Reina threw herself at it. Both stumbled to the ground, her forearms skinning against the stone floor and her blade sliding out of her grip. Ancient dust stuffed her nostrils.
Instead of her belly, the tiniebla slit Maior’s arm open, and Maior shrieked.
Fear like acid filled Reina’s throat.
She desperately punched the tiniebla, which wrestled her, claws tearing through both her shirt and shoulder. Swallowing the pain, she fumbled for the fallen blade. Once she caught a grip of it, she hacked the snapping tiniebla into nothingness.
Maior fled from the second tiniebla, leaving a river of blood in her wake.
Reina howled in utter frustration. She vaulted to the stupid human, snatching her up before she could run any farther away. And Maior fought her, confusing her for the enemy. She kicked and bit and nearly deafened Reina with her screams.
Reina pressed her to her chest with one arm, whirling the blade with the other, slicing left and right to stop the tinieblas from having a go at them. Then she seized the first opportunity to leap atop one of the many elevated sarcophagi, out of reach.
“Stop!” Reina screamed at her.
Maior did stop, but she shook like a branch at the mercy of a hurricane, realizing she wasn’t in immediate danger anymore. The sticky hotness of her blood trickled between them, drenching their clothes.
“Use the galio to close yourself.” Reina’s voice trembled.
“What?” Maior whimpered.
“Now! This is what being a healer means. Use the galio on yourself,” Reina commanded.
Maior shakily stepped back, almost tripping off the sarcophagus. Of course Reina caught her. What she didn’t foresee was a tiniebla lunging up just as Maior summoned the healing spell.
Time snailed to a stop. With a gasp, Reina predicted it before it happened: the tiniebla’s talons ripping through the infuriatingly tender flesh of Maior’s neck.
Except a white light sprang out of Maior’s chest, blinding them. The light flew forward, creating a barrier between them and the lunging demon. The Benevolent Lady materialized inside the barrier. She stood unflinching, right at the barrier’s threshold, staring out at the vast chamber and its tinieblas like she had stood that night at Gegania.
Reina’s mouth hung open at the sight. She swung around, about to chastise Maior for not doing this sooner, and saw her as an unconscious crumpled heap over the sarcophagus.
“Maior!” Reina crouched, gathering her in her arms. Had Maior lost that much blood? She ran the back of her fingers against Maior’s cheek, feeling her warmth. Then Do?a Laurel’s apparition drew her gaze.
This was exactly how Maior had fainted on Gegania’s grounds, when Do?a Laurel had manifested to protect her.
Do?a Laurel’s potent light skinned the blackness from the chamber, revealing it to be a vast hollow in the earth. The ceiling was at the very least fifty feet high, erupted in stalactites. Ahead, past cobbled steps and a multitude of elevated sarcophagi, was an arched doorway.
It was the only way forward and the only way to Celeste.
Reina gathered Maior’s body like a bundle of fragile glass. She shoved herself into the air, leaping away from the tinieblas, which were stunned by the Benevolent Lady’s light. Reina sprinted to the doorway, meeting yet another tunnel.
Suddenly the chamber behind her shook in a thunderous explosion. Reina whipped around in time to see Do?a Laurel’s light incinerating every last tiniebla.
Reina bowed her head in gratitude—her sight spotted in flares from the light—then turned into the tunnel, allowing its darkness to swallow them whole. Soon after, Maior began stirring in her arms.
“Reina?” Her voice came out groggy and broken.
“You’re all right,” Reina reassured her, her heart still thrumming in her chest.
Maior moaned about her arm. About the pain. So Reina gently let her down before summoning the light of a flame. It filled the tunnel, revealing Maior alert and bloodstained but safe.
Reina sighed in relief. “Don’t ever run away from me like that again,” she said as Maior cast the stitching galio incantation.
“That wasn’t my intention. I just couldn’t see anything—including the tinieblas.”
“If I ever make it out of here, I will teach you bismuto,” Reina said with a nod. At this point, it was a necessity. She helped her up and allowed her to keep her arm as support.
“Are you able to control what you did back there, with the Benevolent Lady?”
The question only drew a deep frown from Maior.
“Fine,” Reina replied stiffly.
Voices drifted from the other end of the tunnel, faint and inaudible if not for Reina’s burning bismuto: a guttural one, and Do?a Ursulina’s.
Reina armored her heart in steel.
“Maybe it’s best if you stay here. I’ll go in there and bring Celeste out,” she told Maior, who moaned something about tinieblas. But they both knew it was a moot point, in the wake of Do?a Laurel’s ghost.
Reina walked alone to the end of the tunnel, where dim firelight pooled from the large passageway. The tunnel spat her out into a grand circular sanctum of carved stone. Its walls were rippled, as if layers of lava had descended the walls to meet the ground. But at a second glance, it became clear: The rippled stone was actually sculpted shapes of people. Bent heads and limbs, agonizing and reaching for salvation as the ground sucked them into the Void. A gruesome depiction of what had happened or what would. Lining those walls were the brutally wrought candelabra giving the sanctum its orange light. A stone bridge connected the entrance to the large elevated dais in the middle, where Do?a Ursulina stood before two opposing statues. The first was an upright man with billowing robes and a clean-shaven head. He aimed a blade not unlike Reina’s to the ceiling, where the design of a sun had been carved onto the smooth domed stone. The second statue, the one Do?a Ursulina faced, was of a man sitting on a throne, his face resting lazily upon his fist and his eyes shut. The statues of Ches and Rahmagut.