Roan's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Roan knew only one way out of the ruins, and the stone had just swallowed it. He pressed his back to the wall and raised his cracked lantern. The trapped firefly inside sputtered weak light over six frightened faces behind him. These people had hired him to guide them through the cursed temple. Now a wall of fallen rock sealed the passage ahead, and the dark around them had started to move. He lifted the stolen temple key in his other hand, though it opened no door here. Mud and old claw marks crusted his leather jacket. He had walked these halls once before, the day his lantern first cracked. He had sworn never to come back. The expedition's gold had changed his mind. "Stay close," Roan said. "Do not spread out." Something large shifted behind the rubble. Stones clicked and slid. A long limb pushed through a gap, thin and muscled, ending in hooked claws. Then a head followed, lean and wrong, its jaw hanging with dripping teeth. The thing dragged its ribbed body into the passage. It had cleared the rockfall from the far side, and now it stood between the expedition and the only exit Roan knew. A woman behind him screamed. The beast's head snapped toward the sound. Roan thought fast. The rubble had not fully blocked the passage. The creature had torn an opening through it. If he could drive the beast back through that gap, the expedition could climb after it and reach the far tunnel. "Get behind that broken pillar," he told them. "When I move, you run for the hole it came through." He swung the lantern off its hook and gripped it hard. The firefly flared as he shook the glass. Roan hated what he did next. He hurled the lantern at the beast's face. The cracked glass shattered on its snout. The firefly burst loose in a bright flash. The creature shrieked and reared, clawing at its own eyes. Roan grabbed the nearest man and shoved him toward the gap. "Now! Go!" They scrambled over the loose stone. One by one the expedition squeezed through the opening the beast had made. Roan pushed the last of them ahead and dove after them into the far tunnel. Behind him the creature thrashed in the dark, still blind, still screaming. They did not stop running until the sound faded. In a low chamber they fell against the walls, gasping. Roan counted them. Six. All alive. Then he looked at his empty hand. The lantern was gone, smashed on the beast's face in the passage behind them. He still held the temple key. But the firefly light that had guided him through these ruins for years was dead. They had escaped the beast. Now they stood deeper in the cursed temple than Roan had ever gone, with no light and no path he recognized.