One month. Thirty-two days of crushing darkness that pressed against eyeballs like thumbs, of air that tasted of sulfur and ancient stone, of following predators that should have been extinct when humans were still learning to make fire.
Shadow-walker led them through passages that defied mapping, the sabertooth's massive form flowing through spaces that seemed too narrow until they weren't. Behind them, the largest of the komodo dragons—who'd introduced itself with a rumbling Call me Ssilas—brought up the rear, forked tongue constantly tasting for danger that might follow.
"Left branch ahead," Shadow-walker's mental voice resonated through stone. "The right leads to magma chambers. Even I cannot survive there."
They'd learned to trust these warnings absolutely after Finn had nearly ste
