Caelum set the climbing order, and Dawson didn't fight him on it. Yara went first since she'd scouted the shaft before and had some idea which sections of the spiral could take weight. Dawson followed, then Éloise with her rapier strapped tight so it wouldn't catch, then Kifah. Unit 4's fighters had rigged a harness for Malik out of belt webbing and a pack strap—ugly, but it held—and two of them had him between them while the third carried their half-conscious teammate on his back. The kid's head kept dropping forward.
Blancard went last. Caelum stayed second to last to keep an ear on him.
"You sure about this?" Caelum asked him before they started, keeping his voice low enough that it wouldn't carry up the shaft.
"About what? Climbing a wet staircase with one arm in the dark through a bat colony?" Blancard tested the first step with his boot, the stone slick and uneven under his sole. "Sounds like a Tuesday at the old district."
"We didn't have bats."
"We had Instructor Alec. Close enough."
Caelum almost smiled, and then they were moving, and there wasn't anything to smile about anymore.
The spiral was worse than it looked from below. Each step bled into the next at odd angles, some wide enough to plant a full foot and others barely a ledge, and the stone was wet and smooth in places where water had been running down the walls for god knows how long.
Caelum had to press himself close to the rock and test every foothold before committing, one hand on the wall and the other gripping his spear, because he couldn't bring himself to stow it completely. His boots kept sliding on the slick stone. No lamps—Yara's rule and the right one, because any light would bounce around the wet shaft and hit every bat above them.
And there were a lot of bats. Caelum could hear them now that they were inside the shaft proper—not just the breathing from below, but the actual sounds of them—jaws clicking, wings reshuffling, claws scratching stone as they adjusted their positions. The colony was packed along the walls. He kept his breathing shallow and his movements slow and tried not to think about how many of them were above his head right now, because that wasn't a thought that helped with anything.
"Step's gone here," Dawson whispered from above. "Gap about a metre. Hug the wall and stretch across."
That got passed down the line in fragments, each person whispering to the next. When it reached Caelum, he found the gap and pressed himself flat against the rock, reaching his leg across to the next solid step. His boot caught the edge, and he pulled himself over, then leaned back toward Blancard. "Gap. Metre wide. Wall side."
Blancard grunted. Caelum heard him feeling for it, the scrape of his gauntlet on rock, a pause that went on too long, and then the sound of him hauling himself across with one arm and a wedged elbow, his boot slipping once before finding purchase. His breathing was getting worse. Heavier, wetter, and he was trying to keep his mouth shut to muffle it, but in a shaft like this, everything carried.
He's not going to make it to the top at this rate, Caelum thought, and then pushed it away because there wasn't an alternative. Blancard would make it because he had to. That was the extent of the plan.
Partway up Caelum, I dug the RS stone out with one hand and pressed it flat against the wall. He pushed a thread of current into it, and the crystal sat cold under his palm for a few seconds before warmth came back—faint but real, and this time the stone buzzed against the rock for a full second. Then it cut out and went dead again. Closer than the corridor below, but still not enough. He pocketed it and kept climbing.
"Anything?" Blancard asked from below. He'd seen him checking.
"Flickered then died."
"Great."
"We're going in the right direction at least."
"That's comforting at least."
Caelum let out a breath that was almost a laugh. Even now, even with one arm and lungs that sounded like they were full of gravel, Blancard had that same dry tone he'd had back in the corridor when he was carrying Malik.
They kept going. Time got strange in the dark—could've been twenty minutes or forty, Caelum honestly couldn't tell. The spiral kept winding, and every few turns, another step would be crumbled or missing, and they'd have to feel their way past it. His legs were burning from the steep angle, and his fingers had gone past raw into numb, which was probably worse. Below him, Blancard's pauses between movements kept getting longer, and at one point, Caelum heard his boot slip and the quick scrape of his gauntlet catching the wall, and neither of them said anything about it.
The air changed. Caelum noticed it gradually—the stale taste giving way to something warmer with actual movement to it, a draught pushing down carrying that organic smell from before, thicker now, almost gagging. Yara stopped, and everyone went still down the line.
"Ledge," she said. Barely a whisper. "Room for everyone."
Caelum stepped off the spiral onto flat stone, and his legs almost buckled under him, the sudden level ground confusing muscles that had been braced at an angle for the last half hour. Blancard came up last, and his bad arm gave out on the final step, and Caelum grabbed his harness with both hands and pulled him onto the ledge, the dead weight of him surprising somehow even though Caelum had watched him deteriorate for the last hour.
Blancard sat with his back against the wall, breathing through his mouth with his eyes shut. His bad shoulder was sitting at an angle that looked wrong.
"You alright?" Caelum said.
Blancard opened one eye. "Define, alright."
"Alive and not falling."
"Then yeah. Barely."
The bats above them were thick. Caelum could hear them everywhere—clicking, rustling, hundreds of small bodies folded tight against each other. If he raised his arm, he'd probably touch one. He kept very still and very low, watching Unit 4's fighters lower Malik onto the stone.
They were careful. Inch by inch, easing him down, and they almost made it clean. The buckle on Malik's harness caught a loose bit of rock as they set him flat. A clink. Metal on stone. Small, barely anything.
The clicking stopped. All of it, everywhere, at the same time.
No.
Pressure shifted above them. Something large is changing position in the upper shaft, displacing air. The bats nearest to the ledge started shuffling sideways, claws scraping rock, pulling away from whatever was coming down. Making room for it. That part scared Caelum more than anything else because the colony knew what was above them, and they were clearing a path.
A vibration rolled through the stone under Caelum's hands. Deep, deliberate, not breathing—something being produced on purpose. He felt it in his teeth. The smaller bats went completely silent in response, and the shaft was suddenly the quietest place Caelum had ever been.
Two dim points of light appear above the ledge. Reflected, not produced. Set wide apart—too wide, too far apart to be anything close to the size of what they'd been climbing past. Fixed on them. Not blinking.
The matriarch was awake. And she'd already found them.