Blood of Gods

by Lola StVil

  I edge forward, testing each piece of ground before I put my full weight on it. Each step I take is as solid as the last one, and I’m starting to think I’m just wasting time, that maybe I’m being too careful. The bridge didn’t crumble away until after I had the dagger, and maybe this cavern will work the same. Maybe the danger won’t be unleashed until after I have the weapon.

  I am still cautious as I move, but I start to go a little faster, each safe step I take making me a little bit more confident. Maybe this weapon didn’t need so much of a guard because of its remote location. I mean it’s not like it’s somewhere anyone could accidentally stumble across it.

  I can hear the team shuffling along behind me and I glance back over my shoulder. The team has spread out into a loose circle and they’re facing in all directions, so at least nothing can surprise us. Rye is facing me, his eyes flitting all over, searching for even the smallest sign of danger. I know the rest of the team is doing the same, and I feel a rush of warmth inside of myself. They are all risking their lives to be here even though I am the one who has to get the weapon, and this notion cements my earlier promise. I will not let one of them die due to being possessed, something not their fault. I will take the risk of separating their soul from the Horseman, and I will be successful.

  Rye gives me an encouraging smile and I return it and then I turn back to face where I am going. I am three-quarters of the way across the cavern now. Another ten normal steps or twenty of these little nervous steps and I will be able to grab the spear. I feel my stomach roll, a mixture of nerves and excitement at the thought of being so close to getting the spear.

  I take another step and I freeze as the cavern begins to shake. I have just enough time to turn back to look at the team and I see my horror reflected on Rye’s face before the first wave of sand washes over us. I cough and splutter as I breathe it in, blinking furiously as it gets in my eyes.

  The dust settles, and through stinging tears, I can see the team still in place around me.

  “What happened?” Ya-Ya asks.

  I go to take a step forward and my lower legs won’t move. I almost topple over, but I save myself. I look down and see sand holding me in place. The cavern has filled with sand from the ceiling to just past my knee.

  I try to pull myself free and the others do the same, but the movement causes another flurry of sand from the ceiling, and when I blink away the sandy particles this time, I’m buried to my waist.

  “Someone open a portal,” I shout.

  “It’s too late. We won’t be able to get through it,” Mel says. “We’re stuck.”

  Another shake and another flurry and now, I’m neck deep in sand and the tears that flood down my face aren’t just because of the sand stinging my eyes anymore. I still have one arm free and I reach out to Rye with it. He reaches back for me, but we’re too far apart to touch and it hits me that I’m going to die here. Inches from Rye and yet unable to touch him.

  “I love you,” I mouth through my tears.

  “I love you too,” he mouths back.

  “What the fuck happened?” Ya-Ya asks again.

  “Our weight was too much for the cavern. We collapsed it,” Mel says sadly.

  No one has time to respond. The next wave of sand is falling, and I know we’re dead this time. It’s going to cover our heads, force us to breathe it in until we drown in it. Can you drown in something that’s not liquid? I don’t know, and now isn’t the time to debate semantics. It’s the time to accept that I have failed. I’m no Paradox. No hero. I’m just a kid who is so far out of her depth it’s unbelievable. And now the world will burn because of me.

  I close my eyes as the final wave of sand lands. I can feel it in my mouth, in my nose. I can’t breathe, can’t think. I claw desperately at the sand in front of my face, more out of instinct than because of any real plan. It makes no difference. The wall of sand before me is impenetrable.

  My lungs are starting to burn, and I desperately need to breathe. They are burning so much that I can hardly think from the pain. No, that can’t be true. It’s been mere seconds since the sand fell. I can hold my breath comfortably for longer than this. It hits me then. It’s not my lungs burning, it’s my chest. Or more specifically the gems in my tattoo.

  It feels like it did when I was being pulled to the alley behind Starbucks where we found the gate and the second Soul Gem, but it doesn’t matter how much it burns this time, I can’t follow it. Finding the gems was all for nothing. This has all been for nothing.

  My dad’s face flashes before my mind. He’s going to be heartbroken, and he’ll never know what happened to me. It’s not like the authorities are ever going to find us out here.

  The burning is intensifying, and I suddenly feel real panic start to rise within me. What if the heat sets the sand on fire? But would burning to death really be any worse than suffocating to death? Suffocating. That’s the word I was looking for earlier. Not drowning.

  My mind is doing crazy things, telling me useless facts, but above it all, there is the burning. The pull of the Soul Gem. My instincts are firing, and although I can’t explain it, I know I need to touch the second Soul Gem. I don’t know why; it can’t help me now.

  But focusing on the burning, on the pull of the gem, gives me something to think about other than my own imminent death, and I dig my hand through the sand. I know I’m almost touching it. I can feel the sand getting hotter as my hand get closer to my chest.

  My lungs are starting to burn from lack of oxygen, and spots of colored light are dancing across my darkened vision. I have seconds before I pass out and then my lungs will take over and I’ll breathe in the sand and this will all be over. But first, I have to touch the gem. Every fiber of my being is screaming at me to touch the damned thing.

  I push my fingers through the last few grains of sand and they touch down on the gem. The heat is so intense it feels as though the skin is melting off my fingers. I try to snatch my hand away, but I can’t. It’s like the gem is holding onto it.

  I open my mouth to scream as pain floods my chest and hand, traveling up my arm. It’s a mistake. Sand fills my mouth. My eyes fly open, unseeing, just stinging. I feel an intense blast of heat radiating out of me and traveling through the sand around me.

  There’s a bright orange flash that sends a stabbing pain through my already stinging, blinded eyes, and then everything goes black.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A VISION OF TIME

  I can feel the heat of the sand beneath my knees through my jeans and the sun beating is down on my back. My eyes are closed but they’re not stinging and I can breathe again. Oh my God. I can breathe again.

  My eyes fly open and I blink a couple times against the bright sunlight. I’m on my knees in the sand, the medallion in my hand above the shape in the sand. I’m just about to lay the medallion into the shape and open up whatever door we need to get through to get the weapon.

  “Be careful,” Rye warns me.

  I have a deep sense of deja-vu and it suddenly all clicks into place. We’re not dead. We didn’t even get down into the sandy cavern. It was a vision, a warning. I’m about to open the cavern where we will get trapped and die if I don’t go down there alone.

  I pull my hand back from the shape in the sand as though I’ve been burned. I push myself to my feet. My legs are shaking suddenly but they hold me. The team frown at me in concern.

  “Sailor? What is it?” Rye asks, putting his hand on my arm.

  I don’t speak for a minute. I can’t speak. My throat has closed up completely, restricted by the tears I am trying to hold back. We were all dead down there. I couldn’t even reach Rye’s fingers in our last moments. Without stopping to think and talk myself out of it, I throw myself into Rye’s arms so hard he stumbles back a step. He catches himself and wraps his arms around me as I cling to him.

  He strokes my hair and whispers to me, asking me if I’m alright. I nod and press my face against his chest, br
eathing in his scent. I take a second to compose myself and then I pull away from Rye. I give him a nod, letting him know I’m okay and he can let go of me.

  “Sails? What’s going on?” Jinx asks.

  “I had a vision or something. I don’t know what it was but it felt so real. I used the medallion and when it clicked into place, the ground opened up beneath us and we fell into a large, sandy cavern. The weapon appeared. It was buried underground and it responded to the sound of my voice and showed itself. Rye said it was too easy, that something would happen, but we risked it. As we made our way to the giant column, the ceiling began to come in and we were… we were buried alive. I knew I was going to die, but the gem in my tattoo was burning and every instinct told me to touch it. I did and there was an orange flash. I think it gave me the vision somehow, and I had to touch it to pull myself back out of the vision,” I explain.

  “There was an orange flash did you say?” Mel says.

  I nod my head. After everything I’ve just said, I’m a little surprised that’s what she’s focused on. Not how close we were to the weapon, or the fact that we were seconds from death. But the color scheme. It’s such a Ya-Ya comment.

  “Sailor, that was no vision,” Mel says, her eyes opening wide. “That really happened. The orange Soul Gem has powers over time and how it moves. The gems aren’t meant to work until a person has all of them, but you’re the Paradox, you’re powerful. Somehow, you activated the stone, turned back time, and saved us all.”

  The whole team bursts into conversation at once. I ignore their chatter, their questions, trying to make sense of what Mel said. It’s impossible to turn back time. She has to be mistaken. But then the gem definitely did something. I felt it fusing to my hand. I saw the flash of orange light. Something definitely happened. And is it really any less believable that we came back through time than it is to think that gods and goddesses are not only real but are some of the best friends I’ve ever had? Probably not, but there could be another explanation.

  “Guys?” I say. “Are we sure that’s what happened? I mean surely it could have been a vision. I’ve had visions before from the first gem. I mean, nothing coherent like that, but still.”

  “It happened, Sailor. Deal with it,” Aziza says.

  I raise an eyebrow in her direction. How can she be so sure? Is she the Horseman and they know about this stuff? She seems to read my look and she rolls her eyes.

  “You said yourself there was an orange glow. That’s not the color of the gem that gave you the dreams,” she says.

  I can’t fault her logic on that score, but I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the fact I turned back time. It sounds so… so movie like. As though I’ve accidentally stumbled into some sort of remake of Back to the Future or something.

  “This is bad,” I say. “If I did turn back time, it’s going to have disastrous results. The butterfly effect is going to come into play. We were meant to die in that cavern and now we haven’t.”

  Sunday shakes his head.

  “Don’t forget those gems are the embodiment of the gods, Sailor. If they helped you, then it’s because actually, we weren’t meant to die in that cavern. They’re restoring the natural order of things. And it’s not like we went back hours or anything. The time we’ve stood here discussing this is more than enough time that we’d be dead by now. And nothing bad has happened.”

  Reluctantly, I have to agree that he’s right about that. We were only in the cavern for a few minutes, and we must by now have passed that point in time. And the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to come around to the idea that I did indeed turn back time.

  “So what do we do now?” Ya-Ya asks. “If we go down there, we die. If we don’t go down there, we won’t be able to kill the Horseman.”

  “I have to go down alone,” I say with a certainty that I suddenly feel in every part of me.

  “What? No way,” Rye says.

  The rest of the team is also arguing with me, but Rye’s voice carries over everyone else’s. I wait for the babble to die down before I try to explain. If I don’t, then they’ll only hear snippets of what I’m saying and that will just lead to more protests.

  “Yes. It’s the only way,” I say when the team has fallen mostly quiet again. “Mel said that the ceiling came down because we were too heavy. If there’s just me, then I think it will be okay. Like Sunday said, the gods must have had a reason for helping me, and they wouldn’t have done it if there wasn’t a way to get the weapon. We can’t repay them for that by making the exact same mistake again.”

  “Umm, guys? We’ve got company,” Jinx says.

  I look behind me and see a pack of Slip Demons approaching us. To be honest, it’s not the worst thing that could have happened. It means that we have to make a decision and fast. They’re still a ways off, but we won’t have hours to debate solutions, and even Rye will have to accept I need to do this alone.

  “Rye, we don’t have time to argue about this. Whatever saved us, I don’t want to repay it by making the exact same mistake and getting us all killed again. I’m going down there alone and the rest of you can stop these demons,” I say. “There wasn’t anything down there that could hurt me except the extra weight caving in the place.”

  “I don’t like the way you keep saying that as though we’re all fat.” Jinx laughs.

  I give him a look and he sticks his tongue out at me. I roll my eyes at him and turn back to Rye.

  “Look I get it, but you’re not going down there alone. I’ll come with you.”

  “No,” I say instantly. “You’re needed up here to help fight the demons.”

  That’s true, but it’s not why I said no to him. I keep seeing his face in my mind, his body buried up to the neck in the sand. I keep seeing the way we stretched out to each other and couldn’t reach each other. I keep seeing him mouth I love you. And I know whatever happens to me down there, I won’t risk him dying with me.

  “I’ll go with her,” Aziza says. “I can protect her if anything happens.”

  “Sailor?” Rye says.

  My mind is working overtime again. Aziza is the Horseman. She has to be. She wants to be alone with me at the moment I get the weapon so she can take me out. Well that’s just not going to happen. But it might be easier to get this over with instantly. To grab the weapon and then have her attack me, expecting me to be taken by surprise when really, I’ll be expecting it. And then I can save her and we can go home. There’s a thought that I like. Having this whole thing over with and going home.

  “You know the risks, right?” I say to Aziza.

  “Death by sand. Yeah, I get it,” Aziza says. “Now get on with it before those demons get close enough to follow us in there and get us all buried alive.”

  I nod my head in agreement, adrenaline surging through my body. I get back down onto my knees.

  “Everyone else stand back. The cavern is about twenty square feet and I don’t know how much of the ceiling falls away to let us in,” I say.

  The rest of the team moves away from me and Aziza, who nods encouragingly at me. I hear shouting behind me and I glance over my shoulder to see the team running to meet the Slip Demons. Only Rye remains watching me. I turn back and get the medallion out and slip it into the shape. I turn it and wait for the click, tensing up and ready to drop through the air into the cavern. The click comes, and sure enough, I’m falling through the air again.

  I’m ready for the fall this time and I land on my feet. I drop to the ground and roll, absorbing the impact of the fall. I get to my feet with Aziza beside me.

  “A, B, C…” I start.

  The ground shakes beneath me instantly.

  “D, E, F…”

  “What the hell are you doing, Sailor?” Aziza asks.

  I nod in the direction of the slightly raised column.

  “The weapon is on there. The column responds to the voice of the Paradox. Last time, I recited the
alphabet a few times because I didn’t know what else to say,” I tell her. “Shield your eyes because when it finally locks into place, it gives off a bright red flash.”

  She shrugs and nods.

  “Whatever works I guess,” she says.

  I continue reciting the alphabet, and finally, the column stops moving and flashes red. I wait for my vision to return to normal and I look at the column. The box is there again. Aziza looks at me and then looks at the box, her eyes open wide.

  “Well shit. You really have done this before,” she says.

  “You thought I was lying?” I say.

  She smiles and shakes her head.

  “No, of course not. But you have to admit it sounded fanciful at best. While I believed you, there was still a little part of me that couldn’t quite believe it. You get that, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes.” I laugh. “I was the one who did it, and honestly, I couldn’t quite believe it myself. I still can’t to be honest.”

  “So what happens now?” Aziza asks.

  “Last time, I walked towards it and the team covered me from behind. But nothing happened. Except the cave-in of course. I think that’s the only threat. We don’t want to risk putting any more weight than we have to on the ground. You wait here and I’ll go and grab the weapon.”

  “Rye will never forgive me if I hang back,” Aziza says.

  “So we won’t tell him then.” I shrug. “Seriously, Az, you can throw fire from your hands. If anything does happen, you can attack just as efficiently from there as you can from right next to me.”

  “But what if something else happens? What if say the ground opens and you fall through it?”

  She’s awfully determined to stick by my side and I’m more convinced than ever that she’s going to attempt to take me out as soon as I grab the spear.

  “Well, that’s a chance we’ll have to take.” I shrug.