Lithoniel

Lithoniel didn't dare to breathe or move when she looked at the creature roaming around the temple's entrance. It looked humanoid, but barely; its face close to an animal's muzzle, its hands as paws while its jagged nails were almost like claws. And yet it wasn't animal, though it moved liked one, on all four as it smelled those stone tiles where Lithoniel had walked.

Its size wasn't big, maybe even less than her, but it was deformed: its fleshy hunchback creating an imbalance with the rest of its scrawny body. Its skin was hairless and coarse like leather, filled with pale green lumps and foul pustules scattered everywhere across that sick yellow body.

But what stood out the most were its eyes, or better, the absence of them. There were just scars in the place where its eyes should have been. On the other hand, both its nose and ears were oversized, way too big for the rest of its body.

It lurks in the dark. It doesn't need to see down here.

Lithoniel thought as she looked around the temple, assessing her options. The creature wasn't going deeper inside, but it kept walking---or trotting---back and forth, obstructing her only way out. Maybe she could slip past it, but she had two big problems before she could even start thinking about that.

First, she had to cross that sea of bones, and if those huge ears were of any indication, she had to do it without making any sound; and second, she had to find a way to wake up the girl lying next to her. On the bright side, the pain on her arm had subsided for some reason, though she still couldn't feel it and for sure she couldn't use it.

"Liara" She whispered to her while she shook her shoulder.

Liara's eyelids flickered and opened, the drowsiness disappearing from her face as she looked at Lithoniel. But then her eyes widened, and the scratching sound of a scream came out from her throat.

She was watching Lithoniel as she'd never seen her before. Lithoniel covered her mouth with her hand, but Liara bit it like she was a rabid dog.

"Quiet" Lithoniel hissed to her. She didn't know what was going on, but they were both dead if she kept screaming that way.

However, Liara kept struggling, looking more like a scared little beast than an elf. That's when a second shriek, shorter but higher than the first one, resounded in the temple. Liara froze, while both of them looked at the same direction. The creature was sniffing the air there, its webbed foot stepping over a big bone, a femur, before crushing it.

At that cracking sound, it stopped, backing away, but it stayed there, waiting for them. After a minute or two, it turned its head sideways, then toward the entrance, its forked tongue making a series of clacks, close to strange popping sounds.

What is it doing?

These sounds could seem inconsequential, the nonsensical noises of a monster, but they repeated themselves, starting and stopping at regular intervals like they were following a specific pattern. A rhythm.

Don't tell me...She started but shook her head, what she was thinking was absurd. It's like...it is communicating with someone.

She continued to listen, but after some seconds the creature stopped and resumed sniffing the ground like a big horrid dog.

Maybe, I am overthinking.

"Liara." She whispered. "We have to leave."

But the small elf just squinted her eyes, staring back at her. It looked like she didn't understand a word of what Lithoniel had just said. Lithoniel frowned, but she had no time to think about what happened to her. She put her index finger on her mouth, and the pointed toward the temple's entrance.

Liara seemed to understand this time and nodded, very slowly. They started crossing that path of bones walking on their tiptoes, Lithoniel's good hand on the ebonwood handle of her hunting knife, the only weapon she had. They were almost halfway, the exit coming closer and closer to them when the fires on the braziers started to wane.

Not now. Just a bit more. Lithoniel prayed, but the fires kept going out one after the other until just a flicker of a flame on a single brazier was left. She and Liara stopped at the same time. Even with the light, it had been hard walking on that bed of bones without making any noise. Now? Close to impossible.

They looked at each other and then nodded. They had no choice but keep going. They'd just made some more steps when the last fire went out, and noise close to a branch snapping boomed inside the temple like a handclap. It was Liara stepping over a bone.

The creature head whipped in her direction. It dashed toward Liara in a matter of seconds, jumping like a frog. Liara ducked, and at the same time, Lithoniel drew and threw her knife in a single motion. It hit the creature when it was still in midair, the metal tip piercing its oversized earhole before going through its skull and the soft tissue of its brain.

The monster ruined on a pile of bones, one last shriek leaving its mouth as it went into convulsions. When the creature stopped moving Lithoniel sighed with relief, until she heard another shriek, followed by several others and then steps, converging quickly toward them.

"Run!" She yelled to Liara. The small elf dashed outside, Lithoniel following right after her. She didn't know if Liara was doing it on purpose or not, but she was retracing her own steps, heading in a different direction from where Lithoniel came.

The two of them were almost at the edge of the city when they started to come out. Dozen, then hundreds of those creatures crawling out the darkness, leaving their holes in the rock or the old ruins where they used to live. The last stretch became a mad rush, the creatures' bestial howls following them everywhere they went.

Lithoniel ducked just in time when one of them came out from a ruin and tried to chop her neck. They were so close Lithoniel could feel them breathing on her neck, their rancid smell like a punch in her stomach.

However as they started to get away from the temple, the strange cold and the darkness enveloping the city were replaced by the light and heat of fire. Liara kept running like she knew exactly where she was going, ran until they reached something like a gangway; a tiny bridge of stone, so small inside that sea of fire, Lithoniel would have never seen it if she wasn't following her.

If possible, the creatures behind them became even wilder, made mad by the closeness of their preys, or worse, the possibility they might slip away from their grasps. They crowded the bridge, shoving and elbowing each other, many of them falling and melting in the lava below because of the fight with their own kind.

Most of them, but not all of them.

One reached her and grabbed her leg, its twisted fangs opening holes in her leg as it took a bite at her. Lithoniel screamed before kicking it across the face, pushing it back. Then she stood up and started running again, but by then they were already on her.

Liara was nowhere to be seen. She was alone, the creatures warped paws almost touching her when she heard something coming from below her. The bridge. It was sinking.

The magma was like quicksand, swallowing the rock little by little, starting from the point where the creatures were more numerous. Lithoniel hobbled on the last piece of the bridge, the creature's shrieks filling the air as the lava ate stone and flesh.

At some point, the bridge made a turn, then a twist and another turn at the end, following the tunnel the lava dug in the rock like a coil of stone. But that stone was getting smaller, the heat almost too much to bear. However, Lithoniel could see the end of it, the point where the bridge rejoined with the rock face.

I can do it. She repeated herself while she dashed for the last time. Then she leaped, but with her leg in that condition, her jump was too short. It was just enough to cling on the rock, but she couldn't hold for long. Her hand started slipping, her nails scraping on the rock until she had nothing else to hold. And then someone grabbed her hand.

Liara.

She didn't leave.

Liara lifted her, little by little until Lithoniel was on solid ground and both of them were panting.

"Thank you." She said to her when she was able to talk again.

Liara didn't answer, but she didn't have to. The smile on her small face was better than any word and probably the best thing Lithoniel had seen in a very long time.