CHAPTER TWELVE
What Sleeps Below
Nera slept for fourteen hours.
Orion stayed by her side through the night, watching her breathe, occasionally reaching out to touch her hand just to reassure himself she was still there. She had collapsed into bed the moment they'd returned home, shrinking to pixie size and curling into a ball on her pillow, and hadn't stirred since.
Whatever she had done in those caves, it had cost her.
When she finally woke, the morning sun was streaming through the window and Orion was half-asleep in a chair beside the bed.
"Hey," she said, her voice hoarse.
He was awake instantly. "Hey. How do you feel?"
"Like I tried to arm-wrestle a mountain." She stretched, wincing. "Did we make it out? Is everyone okay?"
"Everyone's fine. Vex has questions. So does Denna."
"I figured." Nera sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes. "I didn't mean to... I wasn't thinking. I just felt that thing reaching for you—for all of you—and I reacted."
"You saved us."
"I revealed myself. That's dangerous."
"Revealing yourself is dangerous. Letting that thing eat us would have been more dangerous." Orion moved to sit on the edge of the bed. "What was it, Nera? What did you sense down there?"
She was quiet for a long moment, gathering her thoughts.
"There are old things in this world," she said finally. "Things that existed before the gods named them. Most of them sleep—they've been sleeping so long they've become part of the landscape. Mountains that are actually bones. Rivers that remember being blood."
"And that thing in the caves?"
"It was bound. Centuries ago, someone—something—put it to sleep and sealed it away. The crawlers were keeping that seal intact, believe it or not. They were part of the binding. A living lock."
"And when we killed the queen..."
"We broke the lock." Nera's expression was pained. "I didn't know. I should have sensed it, but I was so focused on the immediate threat that I missed the bigger picture. This is my fault."
"It's both our faults. I'm the one who killed her."
"With your mind."
"With my whatever. The point is, we made a mistake. Now we fix it."
"How?" Nera pulled her knees to her chest. "That thing is ancient. Powerful. I touched its mind briefly, when I pushed it back, and I felt..." She shuddered. "Hunger. Endless hunger. It's been sleeping so long, and now it wants to feed. The festival, all those people gathered together—it's like a feast laid out before it."
"Then we need to stop it before the festival ends."
"With what? You and me against something that old priests had to sacrifice themselves to bind?"
"We're not alone." Orion took her hands. "We have Vex and Denna. We have the guild. We have a city full of people who will fight to protect their home."
"They don't know what they're facing."
"Then we tell them."
"Tell them what? That a sleeping elder horror is about to wake up and eat their festival?"
"That's a start."
Nera laughed—weak, but genuine. "You're insane."
"I prefer 'practical.'"
"You're practically insane."
"And you married me anyway."
"Worst decision I ever made." But she was smiling now. "Okay. Let's go tell a city that they're all about to be eaten by something from the deep. This should be fun."
* * *
The guild's emergency meeting was the most chaotic gathering Orion had ever witnessed.
Guild leadership, city officials, senior adventurers, and representatives from the merchant consortium had all crammed into a conference room that was definitely not designed to hold this many people. Everyone was talking at once, voices rising and overlapping until the noise became a physical force.
"—can't cancel the festival! Do you have any idea how much money—"
"—safety of the citizens has to come first—"
"—one adventurer's report of 'something bad' is not enough evidence—"
"I felt it." Nera's voice cut through the chaos. She was human-sized, standing at the front of the room next to Orion, and there was something in her tone that commanded attention. "I touched its mind. I know what it is."
The room went quiet.
"What is it, then?" asked the guild master, a grizzled human woman named Helena who had clearly seen too much to be easily rattled.
"Old. Very old. The kind of thing that existed before the world had rules." Nera met Helena's eyes steadily. "It's been bound beneath those caves for centuries. The seal was tied to the crawler colony—when we killed the queen, we weakened the binding. Now it's almost free."
"And when it gets free?"
"It will feed. The song it sends up—the one that's been drawing people toward the water—that's just an appetizer. When the binding breaks completely, it will rise, and everything near the harbor will be in danger."
A merchant representative—a sleek human man who probably worried more about profit margins than people's lives—scoffed. "This is ridiculous. Ancient horrors? Binding magic? We're supposed to cancel the biggest festival of the year based on fairy tales?"
"They're not fairy tales." Orion stepped forward. "I've fought in those caves. I've heard the singing. Whatever's down there is real, and it's coming."
"You're the ones who broke the seal in the first place!" the merchant accused. "Why should we trust—"
"Because we're the ones who can fix it." Nera's voice hadn't risen, but something in it made the merchant flinch. "We made a mistake. We own that. But we're also the only ones with any chance of stopping what we accidentally unleashed."
Helena raised a hand, silencing further argument. "What do you need?"
"Time. Information. And every adventurer you can spare." Orion pulled out notes he'd made through the night. "The binding that held this thing—it was created somehow. There must be records. Temple archives, city histories, something that explains how it was done the first time."
"The Stone Quarter archives might have something," Helena said. "They keep records going back centuries."
"We'll start there. Meanwhile, the caves need to be watched. If anyone sees signs of the binding failing—more singing, creatures emerging, anything unusual—we need to know immediately."
"And the festival?"
Orion looked at Nera. She looked back at him.
"Keep it going," she said. "If we cancel and this thing rises anyway, we'll have thousands of panicked people trying to flee at once. Better to have them celebrating, contained, unaware. Easier to evacuate if necessary."
"That seems risky," Helena said.
"Everything is risky. This is the least risky option."
The guild master considered for a long moment. Then she nodded.
"You have until the final night of the festival. If this thing hasn't been dealt with by then, we evacuate—quietly if possible, forcefully if necessary." She turned to address the room. "This meeting is confidential. If word gets out and there's a panic, I'll hold everyone here personally responsible. Understood?"
Murmured acknowledgments. Unhappy faces. But no one argued.
"Good." Helena looked back at Orion and Nera. "Get to work. The clock is ticking."
* * *
The Stone Quarter archives were dusty, disorganized, and several centuries overdue for cataloging.
Orion, Nera, Vex, and Denna spread out among the shelves, each taking a section to search. The goal was simple: find any reference to the binding beneath the Saltmaw Caves, the creature it held, or the method used to contain it.
"This would be easier if anything were in order," Vex complained, pulling down a stack of scrolls that had clearly been misfiled. "Who puts naval trade records next to temple foundation documents?"
"Someone who was bad at their job three hundred years ago," Denna said. "Keep looking."
"I'm looking! I'm just also complaining!"
"You can do one or the other. Not both."
"I'm a multitasker!"
"You're a distraction."
Orion tuned them out, focusing on the shelf before him. He'd found a section of religious documents—prayers, ceremonies, records of miracles and disasters. If there had been a binding ritual performed centuries ago, there might be some record here.
He pulled out a crumbling ledger labeled "Sacred Acts of the Third Century" and began to read.
Most of it was mundane—temple construction, priest appointments, donations from wealthy patrons. But near the middle, he found something that made him stop.
"Year of the Drowning: The Leviathan wakes. Seven ships lost to its hunger. The Deep Priests convene."
"I found something," he called out.
The others gathered around as he read aloud:
"The creature that dwells beneath our shores cannot be killed—its flesh reforms, its hunger eternal. The Deep Priests, in council with the Sea Mother's chosen, have devised a binding. Blood must be given freely. Three anchors must be set—one of stone, one of salt, one of life. When the binding is complete, the Leviathan will sleep, and its dreams will become the crawling tide that guards the seal."
"The crawling tide," Nera breathed. "The crawlers. They weren't just an infestation—they were part of the binding."
"The queen was the 'anchor of life,'" Orion said. "And when I killed her..."
"You removed one of the three anchors." Denna had gone pale. "What about the other two? Stone and salt?"
Orion kept reading.
"The anchor of stone rests in the deep chamber, carved with the names of those who gave their blood. The anchor of salt is the cave itself—the minerals that weep from the walls, blessed by the Sea Mother's tears. As long as these three remain, the Leviathan sleeps."
"Two anchors left," Vex said. "That's good, right? It's not completely free?"
"Not yet." Nera's expression was grim. "But the binding is weakened. The more it pushes against the remaining anchors, the faster they'll fail."
"Can we repair it?" Orion asked. "Restore the anchor of life somehow?"
"Maybe. But we'd need to recreate what the Deep Priests did. We'd need..." She trailed off, reading ahead in the document. Her face went white.
"What?" Orion demanded. "Nera, what is it?"
"The anchor of life wasn't just the crawler queen," she said quietly. "It was a sacrifice. Someone gave their life willingly—their essence bound to the queen, sustaining the seal through her." She looked up at him. "To repair the binding, someone would have to do it again."
Silence fell over the archives.
"No," Orion said. "There has to be another way."
"I don't see one."
"Then we look harder." He grabbed another stack of documents. "There's always another way."
Nera didn't argue. But when she thought he wasn't looking, Orion saw her staring at her own hands with an expression he didn't like at all.
* * *
They searched until the archives closed, then continued by candlelight until the archivist physically threw them out.
The results were frustrating. They'd found more details about the original binding—the names of the priests involved, the location of the stone anchor, the specific prayers used—but no alternative method. The only way to repair the seal, every source agreed, was to restore the third anchor.
Which required a willing sacrifice.
"There has to be something else," Orion said as they walked home through the festival-lit streets. "Some loophole. Some alternative the priests didn't know about."
"Maybe," Nera said. But she didn't sound convinced.
The streets were still busy—festival revelers enjoying the second night, unaware of the danger lurking beneath their feet. Musicians played on corners. Couples walked hand in hand. Children ran with sparklers, trailing light through the darkness.
It was beautiful. It was everything a festival should be.
And it might all end in blood and horror if they couldn't find another way.
"Nera," Orion said quietly. "I saw you looking at your hands. In the archives."
She didn't respond.
"You're thinking about sacrificing yourself."
"I'm thinking about options."
"That's not an option."
"It might be the only option." Her voice was steady, but her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "You don't understand what I am, Orion. What I could do, if I gave everything."
"I don't care what you are. I care who you are. And you're not dying for this city."
"If it's a choice between me and thousands of innocent people—"
"Then we find a third choice." He stopped walking, turning to face her. "We have until the final night. That's another full day. We keep searching, keep thinking, keep trying. And if it comes down to it—if there's truly no other way—then we face it together."
"Together," she repeated.
"Together. I'm not losing you again."
She stared at him—this strange, stubborn human who had somehow become her whole world. Who faced impossible odds with nothing but determination and an unexplained power he still didn't understand. Who loved her without knowing her true nature, and would probably love her just as fiercely if he did.
"Okay," she whispered. "Together."
He pulled her close, and they stood there in the middle of the festival street, holding each other while the world celebrated around them.
One more day.
One more day to find another way.
And if they couldn't...
Nera pushed that thought aside and held her husband tighter.
They would find a way. They had to.
— End of Chapter Twelve —