The great tower began to vibrate, a loud cacophonous sound of rumbling.

  “Let's go away, hurry!” Said Neadora.

  “Down here! Come along now you!” A voice from the ground called out.

  It was Cassoway, he was reaching up and out of his hole and waving to them. They ran to the opening.

  “Wait… where is Henry? No, don't tell me… he's fighting Ashwen isn't he! No he'll be killed!” The round elf tried to exit the tunnel but both Neadora and Paul pushed him back inside.

  “There's no use! It's going to move any second now!”

  As if on cue a thunder crack sounded, like a dozen cannons going off in unison. Paul looked back.

  What the hell?

  It was gone, the tower that had just stood not even a hundred feet behind him. It along with a rather large circular chunk of the ground that had surrounded it.

  Paul stood blinking stupidly at the gaping scar in the soil. He scratched his head and gave a whistle.

  "Is it supposed to do that?" Paul asked. Neadora looked in Paul's direction.

  Cassoway just stared, lips parted. "I've never been around when it moves," he managed after a minute.

  Paul snapped out of it. "Right, not important. We need to get Wystan back inside the walls."

  Paul heaved the elf into a more comfortable position and climbed down deeper into the tunnel.

  The passage down was awkward, the tunnel was barely wide enough for Paul’s shoulders. He tried not to bang Wystan’s head against the rough dirt, but it wasn’t easy. Cassoway scuttled ahead, grunting with every little rise and bend. Neadora followed.

  The passage wound on for what felt like forever. The only sound was Cassoway’s grunting and Neadora’s muttering, he could hear the scrape of his boots. The air was thick and a little bit wet, and every so often a clod of earth would drop from the ceiling to land in the back of Paul’s neck.

  “You couldn’t have made this a little bigger?” Paul hissed at Cassoway’s boots, which were barely visible in the gloom ahead.

  “Would you rather I collapsed the whole blasted tunnel on us? Maybe next time you’ll dig your own way out,” Cassoway snapped.

  Neadora, grumbling, “How long does this go on for? Are we nearly there?”

  “Not much farther,” Cassoway wheezed. “We should come out just behind the second wall. Unless I miscounted. In which case, we’ll all drown in the old sewer. Ha!”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Wonderful. Just wonderful.

  Paul had the creeping sense that the whole world was pressing down on his back. First Dallin, now Henry too. Who else would he lose? Would Wystan be next?

  He tried not to think about it. So he kept moving, shoulders hunched, dragging Wystan’s limp weight through the squeezing dark.

  Cassoway cursed as he scraped his knuckles on a root. “There’s a bend up here. Mind your heads, unless you want to lose an ear.”

  Paul ducked. He caught a clod of dirt square in the face anyway. Neadora was right behind him, and he could hear her cursing softly. After another eternity of crawling, the tunnel sloped sharply up. Cassoway grunted and slithered ahead, then suddenly stopped.

  and the air changed. A draft brushed Paul’s face.

  Cassoway huffed, “There, see? Told you. We’re right beneath the inner wall.”

  “Let’s get him out of here,” Paul grunted, shifting Wystan higher onto his shoulder.

  A moment later, the tunnel ended in a rough stone wall. Cassoway pressed his hands against it and began to mumble. At first nothing happened, then the stone shivered, as if it were water. With a last splutter, the stone folded outward, leaving a dark, ragged opening.

  They poured out of the tunnel, blinking like moles. The air was impossibly fresh, even if it was scented mostly of sewage and ancient lichen. Paul half-dragged, half-carried Wystan through the damp opening, Neadora came tumbling out after. Cassoway rolled onto his elbows and wheezed.

  “Gods, I thought I’d die in there…” Neadora was bent double, running a hand over the tips of her ears as if to check they were still there.

  Paul adjusted Wystan’s limp weight again and started off towards the castle. They reached the cover of the castle's shadow without incident.

  “Perhaps you had better go alone, Paul. The magi aren't too popular right now I imagine.”

  Paul simply nodded and continued up to the castle bridge. Before he knew it he was alone and faced with two guards who were very confused to see what they saw.

  ***

  It wasn’t until Paul got Wystan inside, shut the door, and put his back to it that he let out a sigh of relief.

  He propped Wystan on the cot. The elf looked more like a scarecrow than a living being, skin sallow, ears twitching even in sleep. Paul found a flask of water and trickled some past Wystan’s lips. The elf coughed and nearly choked.

  Paul did not sleep that night. He found himself pacing the cramped perimeter of his chamber, then returning again and again to the battered workbench jammed against the wall. There, in the flickering lamplight he checked the seams of his armor, looked over the rifle prototype and finally decided to hell with it and yanked out his red journal and began to sketch.

  At first, it was just an aimless line, then another, then a circle, then a wild profusion of arcs and cross-sections. Paul’s mind ran in circles just as his pen did, but somewhere in the anxious whirring of his sleep-deprived thoughts, a sort of clarity surfaced. He began to draw in earnest.

  The sketch grew from a vague mound to a domed carapace with thick wooden ribs. He added a pair of massive wheels at the base.

  A hatch at the rear, then a planked wedge. He shaded the heavy front, set a stub-nosed cylinder in the prow. For a long time, he stared at that detail.”

  He sat back and took it in. It looked like a crossbreed of a Roman battering ram and a Renaissance siege engine, da Vinci’s fever dream as rendered by a sleep-deprived undergraduate. He wasn’t even sure it could be built, let alone driven into battle.

  I have to go show Elric.

  Paul gathered up his journal and began towards the door. He spared one look back at the lump in his bed. Wystan still slept and the soft lights of morning illuminated the blisters and cracks on his face. Paul's stomach churned for a moment, but he pushed it down. Shoved into the box where he kept all the things that made him feel bad. He hoped it would hold, there seemed to be a lot going into it these days. He opened the door and went off to find Elric.