by Logan Jacobs
Maaren watched her for a moment before she turned on her heel and gathered up twigs and sticks in her arms.
“We’ll need a fire,” the hunter explained. “It’ll get cold tonight.”
“I’ll help,” Ariette offered. “We can light it using my Hand.”
The Fae stood up and walked off to help Maaren gather kindling for the fire. They made a circle of stones and then dumped their collected sticks smack-dab in the middle. Ariette shot a tiny bolt of electricity from her Hand, and there were a few sparks as the kindling caught fire. Soon, the sticks were ignited, and they glowed with a roaring fire that gave off a very comforting heat.
“Neat trick,” Edora said thoughtfully as she watched Ariette sit down. “Electricity?”
“Yep,” the elf nodded and retrieved her own can of spaghetti. “You?”
“Fire,” Edora answered and pointed to her brilliant red curls. “Couldn’t you tell?”
“I just thought the red hair was for your temper,” Ariette shot back without missing a beat.”
“That too,” Edora laughed lightly, “but mostly for the fire.”
“Guess you could have lit that, then,” Ariette chuckled as she motioned to the brilliant red flame.
Edora just shrugged. “I’ll get it next time,” she replied. “Surely this won’t be the last night we’ll all spend together.”
We all finished our meals in silence and then decided each of us would take a one hour watch shift during the night. Edora was fairly confident we weren’t in immediate danger, but it never hurt to be extra cautious.
After all, the prophecy couldn’t come true if I was in the belly of some nasty ogre.
Chapter Twelve
I sat next to the fire as it slowly died out and turned to embers that crackled soothingly. It was now dawn, and the brilliant golden rays of the sun once again shone down through the branches of the trees. I had volunteered to take the last watch of the night so the rest of my friends could get some rest and relaxation, but this part of the job was certainly an added bonus.
The forest started to come alive in the morning dew, and I watched as two squirrels chittered angrily at each other and scampered up the trunk of a tree a few feet away.
I stretched out my neck as my watch turned to the next hour, seven, and shuffled over to wake the others up.
“Rise and shine, sleepyheads,” I bellowed out over the heads of the sleeping women. “It’s time to go meet up with a friendly ghost!”
Edora sprang up from her blanket, and her golden eyes narrowed in my direction briefly. I could tell she was annoyed by the abrupt end to her sleep, but she simply turned around and gathered up her stuff.
My team, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so quick to get up.
“Five more minutes,” Kalista mumbled sleepily. Her spiky silver hair was mussed with sleep, and she clutched onto Ariette’s leg like it was a prize teddy bear and slipped her eyes closed again.
“Nuh-uh,” Ariette said the moment she saw that Kal had a hold of her leg. She gave the appendage a firm shake as she tried to escape the dwarf’s grip, but Kal was holding on for dear life.
“Just needa lil more sleep, mmkay?” the dwarf mumbled. “We can always visit the Valley of Light in the morning.”
Ariette grunted and started to shake her leg so vigorously I was afraid she might kick the small dwarf in the face. Then, her eyes narrowed and a mischievous grin spread across her mouth. The Fae lifted up her hand, called forth a few sparks, and placed it directly on Kal’s shoulder.
There was the sound of an electric shock, and the dwarf’s eyes sprang open as she let out a shriek and released her friend’s leg. Her spiky hair was now even more unkempt, almost like she had stuck a fork in an electrical socket.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Ariette said with a giggle.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” Kalista replied calmly, and then she grabbed her bag and stood to her feet.
“And so the prank war begins,” Danira chuckled.
“You guys are like children,” Edora said judgmentally. She hadn’t been at all amused by Ariette’s wake up call.
“Children have fun, though,” Kalista pointed out to the Unseelie. “You should try it sometime. Life’s a journey, not a destination.”
“Is that from your line of inspirational posters?” Edora prodded. “Let me guess, it’s one with a baby griffin flying off into the sunset?”
“Wow,” Kal said in awe. “It makes jokes.”
“We should get going,” Danira grunted and brought us back to reality as she checked the bullets in her gun.
We all made sure to grab our weapons and our knapsacks before we fell in line behind Edora and continued to follow her through the forest.
Our team hiked along the forest floor for about four more hours, and then the trees began to thin. The thick redwood trunks gave way to a mixture of thinner uprights and small saplings, and the forest floor was no longer thickly coated in dead leaves. The leaves were more scattered about now, and we strode along hard, dry dirt. And then, as the trees thinned further and the sun shone brightly overhead, we came upon a huge rock face covered in patches of bright green moss, with an ominously dark opening in the center of it.
The rock face was at least twenty feet tall, and it looked like it was made of slate gray stone. It’s formations stuck out in odd places and looked almost as if it had been carved up by some enormous hand. It was long enough that I couldn’t see where it ended on either side, almost like it was a wall on the border of the forest.
I squinted against the sunlight and tried to peer into the dark opening to see what lay beyond, but it was no use. Whatever was inside was pitch black and unidentifiable from where I stood in the brilliant sun.
“That’s not much of a valley,” Danira grunted. The commander stepped forward a bit to peer into the archway with her hand firmly on her gun.
“On the inside, it is,” Edora assured her. The Unseelie squared her shoulders and gave the back of her jeans a little tug to lift them more snugly around her hips.
“Here,” Ariette said and picked up a large branch from the ground. She shot a bolt of electricity from her hand, and the end of the branch erupted into flames.
“Good idea,” Maaren said, and she picked up a branch of her own. “We need two.”
“Or three.” Edora shrugged.
The Unseelie warrior grabbed another branch, and we all watched in fascination as she grew a small ball of fire out of her palm and placed it gently on top. She waited until the flames grew and licked up her arm before she took her Hand away.
Maaren rolled her eyes and stuck her branch out to Ariette to light. Ariette did so, and then they all turned to look at me.
“Everybody ready?” I asked.
My teammates gave me a confirmation nod, and I stepped forward with a hand on my gun. I thought back to what Orion had said and breathed a sigh of relief. If I was going to die here, there would be no prophecy at all.
But that was just me. Any of my friends were fair game, and I wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to them.
Ariette led the way into the opening in the rock wall, brandishing her makeshift torch in front of her as we walked. Maaren took up the rear, and we were engulfed in warm orange light.
The opening led into a narrow tunnel, with barely enough space for us to walk single file. It went on for at least a mile, and then we trodded down the dirt path on high alert. The stone walls were blank, and there was no sound save for the crunch of our footsteps and the occasional squeak of some sort of rodent.
Suddenly, Ariette pulled to a full stop and gasped. Immediately afterward, I heard the sound of a small rock clatter down a huge chasm and fall a very, very long way.
“Halt!” she exclaimed hurriedly, and we all froze instantly. “I see why it’s called a valley now, Edora.”
The blonde elf pressed herself against the rock formation to her left, and then began to shuffle cautiously to the side. As she move
d, the Fae made sure to keep her back flat against the rock face. Soon, she completely disappeared from view.
Once I got a little closer, I could see the path continued along a narrow ledge set into a huge cliff face. If Ariette had walked any further, she would have fallen at least fifty feet and hit the craggy, sharp rocks below.
We all followed the elf’s lead as we stepped out onto the narrow path and stared down on the Valley of Light. I could see why it was called a valley, but it didn’t seem very “light” to me at all. It stretched out below us into darkness, but I had a gut feeling the place went on for miles and miles. There were huge, sharp rocks, like giant shark teeth from a great white, that stuck up from the floor. We could just barely see the tips of them from where we stood, but everything else was obscured in a thick white fog that roiled and rolled through the valley. Every so often, I could see a flash of bright white light, almost like an orb. My guess was these lights were souls. Other than that, the valley was enshrouded in a creepy darkness.
I’d expected some sort of happy place, like the hereafter humans always dream about. A big place with rolling green hills and fruit trees and sunlight twenty four seven, even though time is completely obsolete in a world of souls. Not some dark valley in the middle of a cave where the air was so chilly it made the hairs on my arms freeze in place. I also didn’t picture a place where everything was nearly dead silent, save for the sound of our breathing and the occasional howl of wind.
This just seemed depressing.
“You guys used to take your heroes and important people here to live out eternity?” I hissed at Ariette. “This seems like a shitty place to spend the rest of time and space.”
“That’s probably why they stopped doing it,” she chuckled. “I could imagine that once word got out, people requested not to be buried here anymore. No matter the reason, we should be thankful our wizard is here.”
“So how do we get down there?” Edora muttered. “That’s where all the action seems to be.”
“I can fly us down.” Maaren shrugged. “I just have to be careful until I know what’s below all that mist.”
“Alright then,” Danira grunted with a firm nod as she looked down over the craggy rocks below. “Let’s go find a wizard, shall we?”
“Take my torch, would you, Milton?” Maaren asked gently.
The hunter handed me the burning branch, and I soaked up the heat that streamed from it. It eased the chill a little, but I still felt the bitter cold as it crept all the way into my bones. It almost felt like I would never feel the warmth of the sun again, and the dank, empty dread in my body was all that was left.
What an utterly charming place this turned out to be.
“Oh, before we go all the way down into this pit,” Edora piped up, “try not to kill anything. That’s not a good idea.”
“How can we kill something that’s already dead?” Kalista demanded. She peered over the edge of the ledge and shivered in anticipation and horror.
“You just never know,” Edora replied coolly, “and if there’s anything living down here, it serves a purpose. Don’t kill it.”
“Got it,” I replied. “Everything that is alive, stays alive.”
“Okay, are we ready?” Maaren asked.
We all nodded, and then the Fae reached out with her Hand of Air. Familiar cushions of air encircled my body, and I fell back against them as I was lifted into the sky with the current.
The hunter must have been practicing her magic, because she was able to lift the entire team into the air with one cast. Maaren moved us over the ledge so our bodies were suspended above the darkness, and then I felt myself begin to descend.
I held the torch aloft as we ventured down into the thick white mist, but slowly the circle of light it let off grew smaller and smaller, until it lit a circle no more than one foot around me.
The mist was even colder than the air had been, and I suddenly envied Kalista’s choice to wear a thousand layers of clothes. The chill seeped into my bones, and it was all I could do to keep my teeth from chattering and my entire body from shivering.
Finally, after a minute or two of travel, we touched down on the ground. It was soft and squishy, almost like we’d stepped onto sand. I lowered the torch to see what we were standing on, but all I found was more black rock. The surrounding mist had made it much more shiny and slick, but it was rock nonetheless.
“So, uh, how exactly are we supposed to find this Verituck guy if we can’t see more than a foot in front of us?” Kalista hissed in my ear.
I was completely at a loss for a moment. I hadn’t really expected the Valley of Light to be this kind of God forsaken place in the middle of a cave.
“Maybe there’s a directory,” Maaren volunteered.
“Sure.” Edora rolled her eyes. “Somewhere around here there’s surely a list of every single soul that was placed in here for the hundreds of years it was in use. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“No need to be rude,” Maaren shot back.
A tiny ball of light zoomed straight past us just at that moment. I caught a glimpse of it as it flew by and noticed there was a face inside its form. It was old and wrinkled, but it winked at me as it went by. I stepped back in shock as the light zoomed through the mist and disappeared.
“Did anybody else see the face?” I whispered.
“Those are souls,” Danira grunted. “They’re going to have faces, Milton.”
“Okay, progress!” Ariette exclaimed cheerfully. “Now we just have to find the correct ball of light.”
Before we could make another move, I felt the ground shift underneath me. It quivered violently, and it felt like we were having the rug yanked out from under us. Maaren fell sideways into me, and I caught her as the ground continued to swell.
“Guys, what the hell is happening?” Kalista called out.
“Get low to the ground,” I hollered back as the rock continued to move beneath us, and I started to lose my footing completely. I gave up my attempt to stay standing, so I crouched down to the ground. I clutched the torch in one hand as I flattened my other hand against the squishy rock and wondered if it was possible to get seasick on land.
The huge roar and crack of the rocks sounded against my eardrums as they shifted and moved, and it felt as if the entire earth was about to be swallowed whole by some giant monster.
Maaren rocked into my side again, hard, and I wrapped an arm around her waist to try and hold us both steady. The action forced me to release my hold on the rock, and now I was left with nothing to brace myself. The two of us stumbled, and the motion caused my torch to fly out of my hand and go dark.
Edora’s torch was also tossed from her hand, and it narrowly missed Kalista as it rolled across the landscape. The tiny dwarf somersaulted out of the way before her legs were singed by the flickering flames, and then the second torch went out.
We were now left with only one source of light, and its single orange flame did little to illuminate the area around us. The fog grew thicker and heavier, and a thin sheen of liquid formed on my face.
Suddenly, the ground I was on started to shift and bend, and I felt a sharp point begin to form under my right hand. It shot up so quickly I couldn’t react, and I felt a warm drip of blood run down my palm as it was sliced open. I let out a yelp of pain and pulled my hand away to see one of the jagged, tooth-like rock formations grow out of the ground. I could see another one start to form next to it, and a third began to grow inches away from that one.
“Everybody move forward now!” I hollered out, and we all took off in an awkward sprint.
Once we were in a safe position, I whipped around to see a huge rock rise out of the ground, right where we had been standing. Had we been a few seconds later, the six of us would have been skewered.
And then everything froze.
The roar of the rocks ceased, the movement stopped, and the tiny point that had formed under the meat of my thigh retreated back down into the ground.
&nb
sp; “Everybody okay?” Danira called out.
The fog was so thick I could barely make out the dark outline of the commander through the dense whiteness, even though she sounded as if she was a few feet away.
“All good,” I called back. “What the hell was that?”
“Was that my first earthquake?” Kalista asked excitedly. “Somebody say yes. That’s one more thing I can cross off my bucket list!”
“That definitely counts as an earthquake,” I responded as I searched the dense fog for the dwarf’s small frame.
“Sweet!” she sang out, but the sound was nearly drowned out by a monstrous, bellowing roar that bounced over the rocks and assaulted my eardrums.
“No more monsters,” Ariette groaned quietly from somewhere out in the fog. “Please don’t tell me there are more monsters.”
The fog seemed to get thicker and heavier with each moment, and the chill in my bones was almost painful now as I waited to see the creator of such a roar.
“Does anyone know what sort of thing could have made that sound?” Danira hissed.
“The guardian of the souls,” Edora answered, her voice not much more than a whisper.
Before anyone could answer, the roar sounded again. It was impossibly loud, and animalistic in nature, but with a hint of man in it. And then the pound of heavy, slow footsteps started to come toward us.
“Everybody run!” I shouted out just as the fog magically began to thin and clear.
The thick white mist was gone within seconds, and we all burst forward and ran in the opposite direction of the roar. My boots squelched along the squishy rocks for two paces before an enormous shadow landed in front of us and let loose a low, warning growl. I backpedaled fast and hard, and nearly slipped on the slick ground as I stared up at this new beast.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t a spirit. It was very much alive.
The thing had the head of a bull, but distorted and elongated so the snout was pushed inward and the face was more ovular than round, like it had been mashed with a human face. Two long, white horns twisted from its forehead. Each horn came to a point so sharp it could run a person straight through, no problem. To top it all off, there was a golden ring hung from the septum of the beast’s head.
