Two Eyes Cenote tiburon

what measure khusobek had not known could be taken was robbed a thousandfold at the crying sound of kiyya's warring voice.

around him the python's suffocating grip slackened; the crocodile had kicked the body aside and seized hard for his son, up onto aching limbs jellied by air-loss and dragged there by instinctual terror; his pupils stood black and wide in the shellshocked gaze, body moving rote to drag kiyya bruisingly in iron limbs and thrust him out the door.

an automaton, blank, quivering;

by now the cries, the grappling; they had drawn others who poured —

his chest was heaving; he could not breathe —

"kiyya," weakly, weakly over the din of —

there, there, the good stone of the wall behind his tormented spine, and the agony that filled his body now was unfamiliar, violating; adrenaline fading in titers until he comprehended the —

— vision narrowing as he clutched for the wall, as vomit at last swam up his throat; mercifully he turned away and felt its splattering over his forepaws, his elbow sliding down as he sank near the putrid puddle.

get up! get up!

the breath simply would not stay inside him; he gasped draughts of the air in the corridors beyond, crying to the gods for so much as a glimpse of starlight.

you have never been so weak, urged the toxicity of man's mind, the only life-rope to which khusobek might now cling. he yanked himself with all might upward, back onto the waver of his stumbling legs. they gained strength only as he thought of kiyya again, whirling, whirling, shouting wordlessly in a terror too bleak to utter the boy's name lest the demon in the cell hear it.

blood dripped slowly from his torn wrist; he noticed not in limping fright to find kiyya, to whisk him up into the furthest reaches of the palace, away, away.