Until these tunnels are ours! Because . . .” Darktan grasped his sword but leaned on it for a moment to catch his breath, and when he spoke next, it was almost in a whisper, “because we’re in the heart of the Dark Wood now, and we’ve found the Dark Wood in our hearts, and . . . for tonight . . . we are something . . . terrible.” He took another breath, and his next words were heard only by the rats closest to him: “And we have nowhere else to go.”
