Chrome: Chapter 4

The Ballad of Cage & Smoke

The Ballad Continues…

Table of Contents ≡

CHAPTER 4

True to her word, Smoke did not tell the strangers to leave again.

Instead, she swept Cage through the trapdoor and fled underground. A tunnel led from their cottage to the ocean, and she raced down it, torch in hand, through the damp, spongy earth.

The strangers followed. They were not bound by mortal rules, by living chains. Death freed them to melt through the ground, and they dropped before the siblings, a choir of skeletons silhouetted by darkness.

“There is no running from this,” the leader said, still calm, still smiling. “If you leave, you doom time itself. Fire will ravage the land. Lava will boil the oceans. Nothing will grow in the wake of destruction. You are many things, Miss Smoke, but you are not a murderer, try as you may.”

Smoke hurled the torch at the leader. It passed through the skeleton as if the woman were air. His sister bunched her fists and stood before Cage, seething like a hundred wasps. “You will not take him from me.”

“Of course not.” The leader advanced: slow, careful. “We will take you both.” Her robe unfurled and covered the children.

Panic clogged Cage’s throat. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, free-falling through shadows. Smoke grabbed his hand and squeezed, anchoring him, but they plummeted through the earth, through stars, forever and always tumbling into oblivion.

When the darkness cleared, a citadel appeared. Massive, monstrous, a city of castles carved into the mountain itself. Gray stone as far as the eye could see. A galaxy of lanterns, glimmering orange light.

The leader bowed. “Welcome to Deadrock.”

---

We Await Your Return…

Table of Contents ≡

---

---