The Seedbearing Prince: Part I by DaVaun Sanders Page B

The
wreathweaver's jaws did not budge as it rippled from the recess. It
moved laboriously, and looked as long as his house.
    Warm blood mixed with the cool dampness on
his shirt. Dayn fought panic. He whipped his staff around for
another awkward thrust and missed again. A threatening hiss
sounded, and the monstrous snake flared its claw-like hood.
    Dayn screamed in pain as the bony protrusions
dug into his skin, gripping him in place. The wreathweaver shook
him like a child’s caperdoll. Dayn kept hold of his staff, but the
curious orb dropped into the swallow boneyard.
    The wreathweaver coiled around Dayn's torso,
securing the meal that had skipped into its den. If he did not
escape now, his bones would join the doomed fliers at his feet.
    Positioning its jaws to swallow him head
first, the wreathweaver loosened its hold for the briefest instant.
Dayn twisted his body away, ignoring the teeth rending his
shoulder. For one sickening moment, the Dreadfall depths filled his
entire field of vision.
    He tumbled off the ledge. The creature
uncoiled fluidly, refusing to completely release Dayn's shoulder,
but too weak to pull him up. The leather harness sawed roughly into
his chest as his rope snapped taut. He slammed back into the cliff
face, crying out as his body sank into the wreathweaver’s upper
jaw. The creature released him and, retreated back to the ledge
above. Dayn’s gambit worked, he was free.
    The wreathweaver slithered back and forth,
its bony hood flared open like the leaves of a flysnare vine. The
snake’s movement pelted him with a rain of crusted beetles and muck
from the ledge floor.
    The red orb suddenly dropped down from the
ledge. Dayn lunged and caught it.
    “Thanks for that!” he crowed. Reclaiming the
artifact nearly made him forget the pain of his mangled shoulder.
The wreathweaver's cold gaze studied Dayn, and its forked tongue
lifted his scent from the air. “Now, how to get past you?”
    He stowed the orb in his pocket, then
sidestepped horizontally, rappelling back to where he first
descended. The wreathweaver trailed him, barring the way up.
    “Not as slow as you look,” Dayn said,
frowning. He swung like a pendulum from his rope, for a moment, but
he could not wait the wreathweaver out. The midnight sun would soon
pass from the Dreadfall. With no lantern and no moonlight, the
darkness would be absolute.
    The wreathweaver's tongue flicked out again,
deliberate and searching. It followed his rope, matching the rhythm
of his sway. Dayn’s puzzlement quickly faded to alarm.
    “No, no, no...”
    It lashed out with primal speed. The rope
snapped in its jaws.
    Dayn screamed in terror. The Dreadfall
blurred around him, the air whipping his clothes. The tattered rope
flapped uselessly from his harness like a kite's severed string. A
sick numbness spread through his body as he plummeted toward the
heart of Shard.
    Dayn fell faster than he ever thought
possible The cliffs poured past him like water, no matter how he
flailed. He lost consciousness, regained it again. Still he fell.
Despair settled into his bones, cold and deep.
    A sudden thrumming impression saturated
Dayn's being, yet seemed to escape his ears. The pit of his stomach
quivered, and his teeth began to ache. The very air seemed to
vibrate. He twisted his head against the howling wind, looking for
the source of sound that was not sound.
    Great ripples and folds scored the
Dreadfall’s unending vertical stone, as though the cliffs here were
once molten waves, now frozen in place.
    That’s heartrock! He had fallen
countless miles from the surface. The air began to warm
considerably. Dayn found himself clutching for the filthy orb,
surprised he still held it in his pocket.
    His freefall began to slow. At first Dayn
thought he imagined it, but the wind no longer tore at his clothes,
and he could make out features in the near cliffs. If I want to
be a courser, I better start thinking like one! He stopped
flailing and arched his back,