Lionel's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Lionel faced the tunnel with the seed on his back and Varro leaning on his arm. New claws scraped the dark below. He needed a way out before the creatures reached them. The main passage led up, but it was the loudest and most open route. Whatever came from below would meet them there. "Not that way," Varro said. His voice was thin. Blood soaked the dressing on his side. "Another path. Hidden. I found it before you came." Lionel had allied with this scavenger three days into his siege of the vault. Varro had killed a xeno with his bare hands to survive here. But an oath sat heavy on Lionel's back, and he trusted no route he could not see. "Show me," he said. Varro tried to stand alone and buckled. His knees folded. He caught himself on the slab and breathed hard. "Behind the fallen wall," he said. "West side. Narrow." He could not lead. He could barely point. Lionel would not walk his brothers' seed into a crack he had not checked. The creatures were still distant. He had a moment. He pulled a lantern from his belt, a polished servo-skull with a glowing core. He had taken it from the cache of dead marines. He twisted its base. Warm light spilled across the vault. He left Varro against the slab and moved to the west wall. Rubble blocked it. He shoved the broken stone aside and found the gap. He raised the lantern into the dark. The passage ran narrow and dry. No claw marks. No droppings. No fresh scent of the bugs. It climbed. He followed it ten paces and felt cool air move against his face. Air from outside. The path was real. But the lantern's light also showed him what waited at the far end. A shape filled the passage where it opened. Huge. Stone spikes jutted from its hide. Green veins glowed under cracked skin. It turned one bright eye toward the light and roared. A troll, twisted and wrong, wedged in the only clean way out. Lionel backed to Varro. The dragging sounds from below grew louder now. Behind them, the swarm. Ahead, the troll. "Your path is blocked," he said. "Something guards it." Varro coughed red. "Then we make it move." He nodded at the lantern, then at the guns piled by the dead. "It came for the light. Give it more." Lionel set the lantern deep in the narrow passage, its glow bright against the stone. The troll pushed toward it, jamming itself into the gap, chasing the light away from them. Its bulk sealed the crack behind it as it climbed. The hidden path was clear of creatures now, but the troll had taken it. Lionel hauled Varro up and turned back toward the main tunnel. The swarm was closer. He had traded one blocked route for another, and the seed still had no way out.