She frowned then, concentrating hard. Perhaps scratching would be the wrong word used. It seemed almost like a croon, a snap of strings twisted upon a violin. A call that echoed through the cavern, sharp but also so sad. She furrowed her brows and tried to form words on her tongue, attempting to explain it but failing to. "Something…Sings."
"Sings?" Dante barked out an incredulous laugh, electricity flickering. "You're fucking kidding me, of course, the Omega can hear it." He mocked, but she ignored him, listening for the sounds. It pulled taut, tugging at her chest. Rue was sure of it now, the call vibrating through her like a beacon.
"I'm pretty sure," she pointed down the path where the sound rippled. "It's that way."
"This is not a game," Dante mocked. "If you wanted to fuck with us, don't do it here when we could all die."
Rue snarled at him then, face to face. "You think I'd lie in this place?"
"Oh," Dante drawled. "I think you'll lie about everything."
"I want to get out too," she snapped. "I didn't sign up for this shit that you've got me into."
"You think we wanted a whiny bitch like you here?" Dante snorted. "You were just a convenient choice."
Rue stalked up to him then. She was bubbling with the tension in the space, charged with something flooding from the walls. And within the darkness, the situation that humbled them all reduced the emperors to mere mortals away from their godly thrones. "Well, last I heard. You fucking needed me because none of you have a guide that's stronger than I am, so if you've got a better idea then shut the fuck up and let's move." The silence that echoed after was startling, and the rage in Dante's blue eyes glinted back at her sharply. But she stood strong, unwavering with her words, she stepped away then, walking towards the path she'd chosen.
"We should split up," Dante hissed. But already the team was moving with her, and the zeus snarled, hissing a curse under his breath.
*
They were following her now with Kieran shining a steady light into the darkness. Her ears straining for the wailing. The cavern shrunk as they moved, the once high ceiling out of reach in the shadows had now funnelled into a tighter walkway of ink. It was odd that the interior was larger and longer than the exterior and Seraphim explained as they moved.
"Some kind of space dilation," he stated. "It is not unlike the technology we use."
Valentino crouched lower, moving quickly. "They are pretty advanced for monsters. Drove us fucking mad when they started teleporting away. But they're primitive enough for distance limits, and most of our abilities and technology can kill them."
Rue nodded, then frowned. "But if this is their home, are you sure the king's the last one here?"
"Positive," Altair replied. "The king starts running back to call for reinforcement when he knows he's losing. He does have a pack, which we recognise at the start of the fight. But we've killed them all, so we just have to kill him and then we're good."
Dante snapped then; voice dragged low into a flippant grunt. "So, are we getting closer?"
Rue scowled. "We are," she answered, her eyes dragging over the walls. There was a spider-like quality to the threads, stretched all over the cavern like an egg sack. But the deeper they moved the stickier the surface. It was almost as if eroded by time, lacking the bodies that were plastered to the surface of the cavern. "Is it all usually like this?"
"No," Levi answered. "This is the biggest hive we've ever seen."
"Usually," Altair spoke, hands stretched out, "it's only as big as a room with an extra corridor. Makes things easier, nowhere to run."
Rue nodded. It made sense. They seemed lost in this new space, frustrated by the maze. "But where do they come from?"
"They plant themselves on planets," Kieran said, a sigh on his tongue, sweat beading on his forehead. "We get reports of sightings in space. They fly over, dock on some unclaimed lands and craft their hives, then they start their infection, like wasps."
Valentino barked out a snort. "Fucking hate wasps."
"It fits them well," Kieran shook his head. "Fucking pests."
Rue hummed. "Then why are they called Lonely?" Her brows furrowed. The name was used sometimes and sprouted in articles and media to describe the locust-like insects. Lonely was a word associated with the monsters. "Some kind of insect name would have been better. They look like locusts to me."
The boys seemed to consider her words for a moment, glances exchanged as if it were a secret.
"Oh, come on. I'm already in here, is there really anything you must hide?"
Halcyon shrugged. "It's not really a secret. Just information that isn't complete. We have never seen their females," Halcyon said. "They're all male." Rue scoffed; eyes rolled as she darted faster through the caves. There was a worrying glaze in their eyes now, and occasionally they'd reach for her hands for a moment of guidance. If they all went into Rampage, Rue didn't know what the fuck she could do with a monster roaming the cavern with them.
"They might be like all of you. Alphas only, remember? Omegas in a cage?" She ran quicker, making a turn at a final forked path. "They could lay eggs like insects, plant shit in people."
"They float around in space, so they don't have an actual planet for us to attack," Halcyon replied, shaking his head. "There are theories that they're looking for Omegas, women to breed. But we've experimented and it doesn't seem to be the case. They're not compatible with our people." Of course they did, Rue scowled. If they could use Omegas to stop the hives, they'd have tossed out the girls like bait a long time ago.
"So, they're multiplying somewhere?"
"No," Halcyon shook his head. "They're an old, immortal species. All of the monsters are dated to be thousands of years old. We've studied their bodies and none of them are fresh and new. We believe they've lost all their females. There's no reproductive material left for them to procreate, hence the name. If there were eggs, we'd know from their age."
"Fascinating," Rue muttered. "There's a finite number then." She raised a hand then, signalling to them to be quiet. "It's here," she whispered as they crossed a final corner. The crone was louder now, a low gentle song that rumbled, twisting through the air like an ominous violin. It had her wishing she could plug up her ears for the noise was terrible, like a maniac sort of hissing in the air, twisting into a scream that almost resembled a sob. "Get ready—"
But they paused at a dead-end, a flat space of ink, four empty walls that mocked her decisions. Kieran's light stabbing upon every surface, revealing her mistakes. There was nothing in the room. What the fuck? Her heart fell. Dante's bark of laughter was incredulous, loud and annoyingly smug.
He turned to her with a smirk. "As expected, the Omega disappoints us with her tinnitus."
"Oh, fuck off," Rue snarled, eyes darting, cheeks flushed with shame. The singing was gone now, a silence replacing what was once a crazed cacophony and all she could hear was her heart, blood rushing in her ears. "It's here, I am sure." The pack was searching now, Kieran's lights flashing over the surface, flooding at all corners. And Rue stepped up to the wall at the end, fingers hovering over the surface. "It is here."
Seraphim frowned. "Did it avoid us somehow?"
Levi shook his head. "The space was tight I don't think we could have missed it. That King was massive."
Valentino hummed. "Reverberation from another location?"
Rue moved ear close to the wall. "It was here, I swear. The sounds are gone." She paused to think. "Fuck, it knows we're here."
Dante snorted. "I don't know what the fuck you were looking for," Dante smirked, smug as hell, electricity hissing in the air as he approached her with raised hands. "But now I've got a pack inching towards Rampage, and a useless Omega that brought us on a stupid hunt because of the voices in her head."
"Do you have to be such a goddamn asshole?" Rue snapped back, already inching backwards from where she stood. A sense of fear throbbed in her throat; gut instinct told her that something was wrong. Her eyes snapped up to the ceiling, combed down across the ink. "It must be in the fucking walls."
"There's no fucking way it's in the walls," Dante snarled. "Their walls are thick, viscous material that's tightly packed so that the dilation of space works. If it's in the walls we'd always have found them in the damn walls. Their walls cannot be broken through, it's goddamn hard stone-like material, something even I can't pierce through. Gods, you're going to pay for this shit—"
She should have expected the explosion of the Lonely from the surface, the eruption of scorching ink that blubbered from the walls along with a spray of debris that rained upon her skin. The darkness swept at her, the world accelerating into the spin, and the monster roared clawing for her throat. Someone behind her screamed her name.
In that brief moment, she saw the monster for what it was. A locust with a million eyes on its face, dripping dark ink from its clattering jaws. Antennae spewed from its head, and its legs were thin and ridged, with a thorax and an abdomen covered with iridescent plate-like wings. It appeared like a massive insect, but a blink and there was a flicker of something strange from within its glossy orbs. Human-like eyes reflected from within the chamber of its compound vision, widening steadily as it roamed over her features, pale lips forming strange words.
It was not her own reflection, she realised with a blink, but another's.
A humanoid creature.
Another blink and the Lonely pulled at her feet, dragging her deeper into the ink, swallowing her whole in one shove, the dagger in her hands was useless torn into a dark liquid that parted like water. And Dante leapt, skin rippling with blue electricity, pulling her free from the sticky ink and into his embrace, spinning her in the air to steal her from its grasp.
But it was not before the Lonely sank its fangs into his neck for a killing bite that should have been hers.
Read ahead to Chapter 48 on
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