“Yeah, it’s Kiran. Ki-ran.” I dragged out the syllables in my name while pointing to myself with a jabby finger. “Remember me? No, of course you don’t. If you did, you would have called or written or ESP’d out some telepathy from your brain like Aquaman, or something.”
I thought about Lal, and how he’d gotten himself on intergalactic television to send me a message. A message about how he, and the entire dimension, were waiting for me. A message about how I was the hero everyone needed. Why hadn’t Neel made a big old gesture like that? Why had he played it so cool when all I wanted to know was that he remembered I existed?
Neel didn’t seem to register how upset I was but kept staring at me in what I can only describe as a doofy way. “I … I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Where have you been all these weeks? Why have you been avoiding me?” I bit my lip to stop myself from saying more. Or rather, I tried to bite my lip. Because it was right then that I realized my entire body had the same see-through quality of the Rakkhoshi Rani on all my recent encounters with her.
“Kiran, I …” Neel began, but I cut him off, trying to get back in control despite being totally flustered, plus see-through.
“No, never mind. It so doesn’t matter. I bet you’ve been busy, right? So have I. Very busy. So busy! Busy, busy, busy! Busy with school, busy with your mom, busy with birds. Busy like a little buzzing bee! Bizzy, bizzy!”
“Wait, what?” Neel’s mouth twitched a little, and he started chewing on a nail.
“Never mind,” I mumbled. I needed to get ahold of myself. This was not the level of cool I’d been going for at all.
We were standing so close, I could practically reach out and touch him. Only, I couldn’t figure out how to get my arms and legs to move. It was like my soul was with Neel in the Kingdom Beyond Seven Oceans and Thirteen Rivers, but my body was still back behind Alexander Hamilton Middle School in New Jersey.
“Kiran, listen, you’ve got to get out of here. It’s not safe!” Neel tried to push me, but his hands went right through my shoulders.
“Stop that!”
Then, to my total annoyance, he tried it again. Again, his hands went through me like I was made of mist. I was there, but also not there. It was kind of disturbing.
“Oh, so you can’t wait to get rid of me?” My heart was beating fast as the hurt words spilled out of my mouth. “I’m not cool enough to hang with you anymore—is that what all this has been about? You didn’t want to be seen with a boring 2-D like me—or is it that I’m the daughter of the Serpent King? You afraid my blood is bad, and I’m going to go all rogue snake on you or something? Then why didn’t you just say that to begin with? Why pretend like we were friends at all?”
This whole confrontation thing wasn’t going according to plan. When I imagined it, I always sounded much more together, and Neel was usually begging for my forgiveness by now.
“Yeah, that’s exactly it—you’re a 2-D! Plus half snake! I don’t want to hang out anymore! Go home!”
I was about to be offended, but then I saw Neel’s eye do a weird twitch thing it always did when he wasn’t telling the truth. “You’re a terrible liar and a terrible friend!” I shouted. “Plus, what is going on with your hygiene situation here? You look terrible too!”
“Gee whiz, Prin-cess.” He said the word in that drawn-out, irritating way he always used to, that way that made me think I was the furthest thing from a princess in his eyes. “Sorry I didn’t spend enough time on my toilette.”
I gave a little snort. Immature, I know, but that word always sounded way too much like toilet to me.
Neel barreled on. “You know, you always know how to make a guy feel great about himself.”
“Stupid head!” I snapped. Honestly, I was feeling bad about my mean words because they were sort of accurate. Neel did look terrible. I mean, he was still handsome, but he also looked skinny and, weirdly for a half rakkhosh who hardly needed sleep, tired. He had big dark circles under his eyes, a fading bruise on his cheek, and one side of his lip looked a little puffy, like he’d been on the wrong end of somebody’s fist.
“Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, Kiran,” he said, his voice all defeated.
His change in mood gave me the second I needed to take in our environment: the gray walls, the steel door, the sound of moaning and groaning rakkhosh on both sides. Wait a minute.
I took this all in wonderingly even as I asked, “Neel, where are you exactly?”
My friend picked up his hands to show me. Both of his wrists were bound in cruel metal shackles. The chain from his wrists led to shackles that bound his ankles too. They glowed a magical green, which was obviously why Neel, even with his rakkhosh strength, couldn’t break out of them.
My feelings were going from angry and outraged to terrified. Neel was a prisoner. More than that, his eyes—there was something wrong with his usually confident brown eyes. They weren’t twinkling with laughter, or sarcastic, or teasing. They were scared. Defeated, even. It was an expression I’d never really seen in them before.
“You’re in demon detention,” I breathed, everything clicking into place in my head. “You got rounded up by Sesha’s minions for the game show.”
“A-plus, Princess. You move to the head of the class.” Neel sat down with a thump on the narrow bed.
In my shock, I’d somehow figured out how to move my transparent body. I paced back and forth across the floor, my legs kind of floating in midair. “You got rounded up to be bait in this terrible reality show! Somebody’s going to try to kill you as part of Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer?”
Neel smirked a little.
“Don’t smile, this is no time to smile. You’re in some serious trouble here,” I snapped. But then something else hit me.
“Wait a minute.” The terrible truth washed over me like liquid poison, making me dizzy. I had to sit down now too. “You got rounded up for me,” I said, hardly believing my own words. “Sesha put you in here because of me.”
“I don’t know.” Neel shrugged, then nodded. “Yeah, maybe. Probably.”
I felt like my stomach had bungee-jumped off the top of the Mandhara Mountain. It was my fault Neel was here. My fault entirely. No wonder he seemed so mad at me. He must hate me. How could he not?
Then something else occurred to me. Something else I deserved to feel horrible about. “Wait. Your mom’s been visiting me now for weeks through this Essence-Tyme thing, trying to tell me you were in trouble. Only … I didn’t understand what she was saying. I … I didn’t believe her.” My voice shook a little as I remembered how many times the Rakkhoshi Queen had tried to get me to understand. Only, I had just thought she was a villain out to trick me. In reality, she was trying to save her son.
“My mother visited you?”
“Of course.” I started pacing again. “She wants me to join the Who Wants to Be a Demon Slayer? contest and then, I guess, break you out before we’re forced to fight each other. Or something. She wasn’t super clear on that part.”
“No!” Neel leaped up from the bed. “You can’t be a contestant. No way.”
“What do you mean?” I pointed at my see-through body. “I can’t exactly break you out in this form. I’m barely even here.”
“No!” Neel repeated. “You’ve got to stay in New Jersey. Whatever you do, don’t come to the Kingdom Beyond.”
But I was pacing again, ignoring him. My mind was whirring, making plans. If it was my fault Neel was here, it was my responsibility to get him out again.
“I’ll become a contestant, and join Lal like he asked me to. I don’t know how much help your mom is going to be. She said something about having a block or something on her. Plus, no offense, she’s a little untrustworthy, what with her tendency to eat people and stuff. But together with Lal, and maybe Mati and Tuni, I should be able to hack the contest …”
All the details weren’t exactly clear to me yet, but the overarching mission was. I was going to get Neel out
of here, even if that meant becoming a contestant in Sesha’s game show after all.
“Lal and you will break me out?” Neel laughed in a way that made me a little worried about his mental state. “Lal and you?”
“Um, yeah?” I said.
“Kiran.” Neel was still laughing, but also, weirdly, kind of crying. “Lal’s the one who helped the contest producers put me here.”
“Wait. I’m sorry. I must have heard you wrong. Did you just say that your brother Lal helped put you in this … this …” I gestured around at the cold cell.
“This undersea fortress of a rakkhosh prison? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Lal’s not who you think he is anymore.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Absolutely, positively no way!” Neel was obviously delusional. The Lalkamal I knew was sometimes a little jealous of his older brother, and definitely in awe of him. But he adored him too. I couldn’t imagine gentle and sweet Lalkamal doing anything to hurt Neel. It was totally unthinkable.
“There’s got to be some kind of mistake,” I said firmly, remembering what Lal had said at the end of the IGNN broadcast. “Lal said something on TV about there being more treasures to save than I knew about. He must have been talking about you. If he wants to save you, he couldn’t have put you here. That makes no sense. So, the most important thing right now is for you to tell me how we can find you. Where is this detention center anyway?”
“Under one of the seven oceans, I don’t know which. But it doesn’t matter—you can’t try to find me!” Neel said harshly. “You won’t be able to. You’ll just make a mess of it anyway! Like you did in New Jersey when you thought you were saving Lal, but then I had to come save you.”
“That was only because you were sitting around letting Lal almost get eaten by that rakkhosh!” My heart was beating super fast now. Why was Neel being so mean? “I don’t care if you think I can do it or not. I don’t need your permission. I’m not going to let you stay a prisoner! And I’m not going to let you keep thinking it was Lal who did this to you!”
What I didn’t add was that I couldn’t let him blame his brother for something that was obviously my fault. Sesha was my birth father, and his weird issues were all with me. The Serpent King had been trying to transform me into a magical snake and get me to join his minions since I was born. And the fact that I’d not only gotten away from him last fall but destroyed his underwater kingdom made him furious, I’m sure. He had made Neel bait in a trap for me, and no one else.
The last time we’d fought him, Sesha had trapped Neel in a magical orb of infinite torture. I still remembered the demon prince’s horrible, gut-wrenching screams, not to mention Sesha’s laugh. My bio father had taken pleasure in causing pain, but I think his real goal was to torture me by hurting Neel. And he didn’t hesitate hurting me directly either. I could still feel the burning of my skin where he’d shot me with his green power bolts, trying to burn me alive. We’d barely escaped him then, and only because my moon mother had come to help us. So, I knew perfectly well what Sesha was capable of. And there was no way I was going to let him hurt Neel to get to me again.
“Kiran, don’t try to break me out. I forbid you!” Neel was practically growling now.
“Forbid? Forbid! Who do you think you’re talking to?” I shouted. “You can’t forbid me! I’ll rescue you if I want to and you’ll be grateful, darn it!”
“No.” Neel’s face turned stony, making my insides shiver. “You’re getting out of here, like ASAP. Who’s running your Essence-Tyme anyway? Did my mom hire Bangoma and Bangomee? She shouldn’t have gotten you involved in all this.”
But I was involved. Why didn’t he see that? “Neel …” I shouted, angry and sorry all at the same time. “I’m so sorry about everything. So sorry. I didn’t know …”
But Neel wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. All of his attention was now directed toward the cell doorway.
“Neel?” I guess there’s really no way to tell someone you’re sorry your evil serpent bio dad has captured him and put him in an underwater detention center fortress, all for the purpose of luring you into some yet-unclear doom. There was no greeting card or cute GIF for this, no matter how much I wished for one. But I had to get him to understand how bad I felt, how much I rejected Sesha. “Neel, listen …” But he didn’t even let me finish my sentence.
“Get out of here, Kiran! Get out of here and don’t come back!”
My not-even-present insides felt like ice. It was obvious Neel hated me. And to tell you the truth, I couldn’t blame him.
“Move!” he hissed, even as he chewed nervously on the side of his nail.
“Neel …” I tried again, not even sure what I could say.
“Get out of here, Kiran! There’s someone coming!”
That’s when I heard them. The footsteps outside the locked doorway getting louder and louder. Heavy footsteps. Inhuman footsteps. Oh, this wasn’t good. This was really, really not good.
“Kiran! If my guard manages to trap your essence, you’ll never be able to get home!”
What Neel didn’t understand was that I wasn’t going anywhere without him. Besides, I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to. I had no idea how the Essence-Tyme had gotten me here, and I had no idea how to reverse it.
Neel and I stood side by side, me with my trusty bow in hand, and him with what looked like a big wooden trident that had been propped up in the corner of the room. Wait, not a trident but something with a bit of rice and daal on it.
“A fork?” I hissed. “You’re going to fight off whatever that is with a giant fork?”
Neel widened his fighting stance, his chained arms and legs clanking. Like me, he didn’t take his eyes off the door, but snapped, “You think they let me keep my sword?”
There was no more time for banter then, because the door swung open and someone stepped into the small cell. Someone with multiple horns, skin covered in pus-oozing boils, and a very, very familiar face.
“Hi, Big Bwother!” the young demon bellowed.
“Your prison guard is Bogli?” Even though she was bigger now, almost as big as a grown rakkhoshi, I recognized the creature. Bogli had just been born from a well of dark energy back in November, when she’d chased my parents, Neel, and me, almost killing and eating us. Then Neel’s mother, the Queen, had shown up and revealed Bogli was her adopted daughter, which meant she was Neel’s sister.
“Yeah, Bogli’s my personal guard. Someone’s idea of a not funny joke, to use rakkhosh to guard rakkhosh.” Neel waved his fork at Bogli’s belly. We only came up to the young demon’s waist now. I realized she’d grown in other ways too, with webs between her toes, gills along her neck, and webbing fanning out beneath her giant arms.
“Hey, you’re that girl with the mean pointies!” Bogli bellowed. I rubbed one of my ringing ears. Even though she’d grown up a little, Bogli still didn’t have any vocal volume control. And she obviously remembered when I’d hit her with burning, moon-magicked arrows the last time I’d seen her.
“Lay off her, you teenage rebel of a rakkhoshi!” Neel yelled, waving his fork.
I lowered my weapon a little and turned to Neel. “Are we supposed to attack your sister?”
“That monster’s no sister of mine!” Neel snorted. “She rebelled against my mom, dropped out of demon school, and then the next thing I know, I see her here.” He turned to Bogli. “Hey, rakkhoshi, what happens if Kiran and I try to run away from here?”
Bogli’s eyes grew an angry crimson. “You no do that!” she shouted. “You do that, I eat you!”
Bogli lunged at us, her huge claws out, fishy drool streaming out of her mouth. “You stay here, Bwother! Or you die!”
“You see?” Neel called out to me. “Fire!”
I let my arrows fly. Unfortunately, about 50 percent bounced right off Bogli’s scales. The other 50 percent that found their mark didn’t seem to do much damage, but hung there kind of boinging around.
“Uh, Neel?” But he was already
on it, stabbing at Bogli’s slimy skin with his fork-slash-trident.
I know it sounds weird, but it felt good, to be fighting alongside Neel again. Like it was where I should be. Well, except for the whole it-being-my-fault-he-was-here-and-him-hating-me part. That part pretty much stank.
“What happened to her anyway?” I yelped as Bogli swiped at me with her algae-streaked nails. I almost lost my balance, slipping on slick stone floor. “What’s with all the webs and gills and stuff?”
“Bogli is my name I am,” snarled the soggy beast. “A rakkhoshi from the water clan.”
“Clan gifts don’t appear until rakkhosh are teenagers—which is about two months after they’re born,” Neel explained as he dived out of the rakkhoshi’s snarling but lumbering reach. “When Bogli got her clan gifts, she decided she wanted to be underwater with other rakkhosh like her, not living aboveground with my mother.”
I remembered with a flash the listing of rakkhosh clans I’d read about in The Adventurer’s Guide to Rakkhosh, Khokkosh, Bhoot, Petni, Doito, Danav, Daini, and Secret Code by the famous demonologist Khogen Prasad Das. When I’d left the Kingdom Beyond last fall, Neel had given me a copy of the book by his demonology professor, and I’d gotten into the habit of reading it whenever I’d missed my friends. Which meant all the time. I could see the page about demon clans in my head:
Elemental Rakkhosh Clans
See Air Rakkhosh
See also Fire Rakkhosh
See also Land Rakkhosh
See also Water Rakkhosh
I’d read the entire section a few weeks ago, during a really boring social studies class. The awful, drooly rakkhosh that had broken into my house last fall to take my parents couldn’t fly and liked to eat electric appliances, for instance, because he was a fire demon. On the other hand, the fangirl rakkhoshis who had chased Neel and me during our flight to the Kingdom of Serpents could fly because they were air demons. Of course, Neel’s mom was the queen of them all, and therefore, had powers that stemmed from all four elements. So Bogli was a water rakkhosh, huh? Wait, what was that thing about water rakkhosh vulnerabilities?
Game of Stars Page 5
