by A. K. DuBoff
“Yeah, I know.” I took a deep breath.
Another cave was up ahead. As we approached it, movement drew my attention. I tensed. “Uh oh. I think there’s something in that one.”
19
Kaiden readied his staff and Maris grabbed a dagger from a sheath at her hip, apparently not yet ready to rely on offensive magic alone.
I drew my own blade. Whatever was in the cave might be dangerous, and I wasn’t about to take any chances after our most recent encounters. I altered my path to dip to the left so we’d have better coverage of the cave mouth.
Scuffles and tapping sounded within the shadowed recess. My muscles tensed as I prepared for a beast to leap out.
When I was four meters from the cave opening, I caught a flash of gold as a tiny, scaled head poked out from the shadows.
Brilliant green eyes that reminded me of my own looked at me with curiosity, and the creature tilted its head. It crept forward, revealing a long neck that flared into a scaled body with four legs, folded webbed wings, and taloned feet. Dorsal spikes ran the length of the creature from the crest of its head to the tip of its slim, scaled tail. Its belly was a lighter shade than the top, and it had a glowing orange patch at the base of its throat.
“Uh, guys… is that a dragon?” I felt ridiculous asking, but there it was staring at me.
“Those are just a legend, aren’t they?” Maris asked.
I raised an eyebrow. “Like magic?”
Kaiden examined the creature. “I mean, it looks like I’d expect a dragon to look, but isn’t it a bit small?”
The cute little thing was tiny, no more than seventy centimeters from nose to tail. I got a sudden impulse to pick it up and bring it with us. “It’s not bothering us. Let’s let it be,” I said instead.
No sooner had the words left my mouth than four more heads appeared—blue, green, red, and black. They all had the same vibrant green eyes.
The red dragon squawked and jumped on the blue one, and the two tumbled off of the rock ledge onto the grassy hillside.
“Aww, they’re playing!” Maris squealed.
“I think these might be babies,” Toran conjectured.
“They’re adorable, I won’t try to deny it, but we don’t have the luxury of playtime right now.” Kaiden glanced down the hill at the advancing Darkness.
“No, we don’t.” I smiled at the baby dragons and then took a brisk pace up the slope.
After fifteen minutes, we reached the brow of the hill. The relatively flat area around the base of the tower was only four meters wide, and it was as windy as the shuttle’s sensors had indicated.
My hair kept smacking me in the face, so I quickly bundled it into a braid and tucked it inside the back of my coat to keep it out of the way.
Kaiden’s cloak beat around him in the wind. “I don’t see an entrance to the tower on this side.”
I inspected the smooth stone face. We could probably find a way up using the rope in our packs, but I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“Let’s walk the perimeter.” I set off to the left.
The winds remained strong as we rounded the northern side of the structure. There were no windows in the stone face, as far as I could see, and the ground level had no ingress points along the first half of the building’s circumference.
Finally, rounding the east side of the tower, a three-meter-tall reinforced metal door sealed an arched entryway. I grabbed the door handle and gave it a good tug. Nothing happened.
“Locked?” Kaiden asked.
“Or magically sealed. Who knows?” I frowned at the door.
“May I?” Toran asked.
I held out my hand. “Please.”
The large man gripped the door handle and pulled. Unlike with my attempt, the metal groaned, but it still didn’t budge.
“I can try to force it,” he said.
It was a tempting offer, but I wasn’t sure that was the best move. All of the tasks to retrieve artifacts on the other worlds hadn’t involved forcing open a doorway. Yes, we’d needed to engage in fights, but the built structures had all responded to the touch of someone aligned with the corresponding discipline. If that pattern followed, then I needed to be the one to open the door.
I motioned Toran aside. “Let me try again.”
The question was, why hadn’t it opened the first time I tried?
I thought back to our previous challenges. Toran had activated the columns with his bare hands, which is also how he fought. Likewise, Kaiden had had to cast magic at the stone pillars to activate the pathway to the island. Since I fought with a sword, maybe…
I drew my blade. In one swift motion, I slashed the steel across the metal door, leaving a golden streak where it scratched. The golden line glowed brightly for a second, and then the door dissolved before my eyes.
Kaiden smirked. “Well, that’s one way to open a door.”
“I do love to make a showy entrance.” I smiled back.
Inside, the tower was dark beyond the shallow pool of light cast from the doorway. I cautiously peered inside.
“Help me,” a woman murmured from the shadows in a voice so faint and cracked the words were barely intelligible.
“Stars!” I ran into the chamber.
Kaiden was a step behind me. He ignited a ball of light in his palm, illuminating the room.
The woman was chained to the far wall. Seated on the floor with her legs outstretched, her hands were cuffed at head level and she looked as though she’d been dragged across the ground and beaten.
Anger swelled in my chest thinking about what kind of horrible person would do that to her. “It’s okay, we’re friends.” I approached her slowly, checking for signs of a trap.
“We’ll get you out of there,” Maris said, rushing up behind me.
“Maris, wait.” I held her back.
“Why?” she glared at me.
I don’t know why I hesitated. It sickened me to see the woman suffering, yet something didn’t feel right about the situation. She could be dangerous, for all we knew.
“You have to assume this is part of the test,” Toran interjected. “Who is this woman and why is she here?”
“Exactly.” I stopped three meters from her. It was too suspicious that anyone would be chained inside a tower on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere—especially considering that there were no nearby signs of civilization aside from this singular structure.
“Why are you here?” I asked the woman, as much as I wanted to free her from her shackles and heal her. Just looking at her battered face made my own skin throb.
“Please. Release me. Before they come back,” she whispered.
I couched down. “Who put you here? Why?”
She shook her head, the motion jangling the chains binding her wrists.
“Look, I hate seeing you like this. I want to help you, but trust should be earned.”
The woman scoffed. “You wouldn’t trust a poor woman chained to a wall?”
“No one deserves to be treated that way, but that’s also something people don’t often do to others without reason—however misguided the action may be.” I looked her in the eyes. “Now, how did you come to be here?”
She cracked a smile, some vitality seeming to return to her. “Do you always question innocents?”
“How do I know if you’re innocent? If you’ve been wrongfully imprisoned, then you should at least have a story to tell. But you keep dodging my questions.”
“It takes wisdom to know when to act and when to observe,” the woman continued. Her voice was definitely getting stronger; there was no mistaking it now. Even her skin appeared more vibrant.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
She looked me square in the eyes—her intense, luminescent emerald irises now far different from the vacant appearance she’d had only moments before when we entered. “The more important question is, who are you?”
I took an unsteady breath. “That was weird.”
“Man, I thought were we just going to attack stuff. I wasn’t planning on mind games again,” Kaiden said.
“Shouldn’t expect anything to be so straightforward,” I replied.
“I thought maybe the encroaching Darkness was complication enough.”
“Whoever set up these trials didn’t know that would be the case.”
He shrugged. “Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t.”
I massaged my eyes with one hand. “I’m too on edge to think about records of events that haven’t happened yet.”
“Or maybe they have happened and we don’t know,” Toran cut in.
“Nope, not gonna think about it.” I shook my head.
“Help!” another voice called from the story above.
“Stars, not again.” I jogged toward the stairs.
“Elle, it’s not real,” Toran said.
“That doesn’t mean ignoring it is the right thing to do. It’s a test, and we need to participate if we’re going to get that artifact.” I bounded up the stone stairs two at a time.
The staircase curved around the outer wall of the tower, passing through a hole in the floor at the second level. With no windows, it was too dark for me to make out any details until Kaiden came up behind me with the light floating above his palm.
“Flashlight time,” I muttered, stopping to retrieve it from my backpack. I clicked it on as my companions all made it to the second story.
The space was relatively plain, with only a stone bench along the outer wall and a single, low stone column in the center of the room. What made it strange, however, was there was no sign of the woman who’d cried out the help, nor did there appear to be a way upward in the tower.
“Help, please!” the woman cried again.
“Where are we supposed to go?” I mused aloud. With nothing else appearing out of place, I approached the stone column at the center of the thirty-meter-wide room.
Upon closer inspection, the meter-tall column was a pedestal table sporting a broad, flat top engraved with foreign characters. The language was familiar, however.
“Hey, Kaiden, is this Laeric?” I asked.
He walked up beside me to examine the marks. “Yes, it is, but I don’t know what to make of it.” He swung his backpack around so it was hanging on one shoulder to his front and rummaged around in bag. After several seconds, he located an electronic handheld device. He smiled. “Translator. We’re getting better at this ‘planning ahead’ thing.”
I smiled back. “Please, enlighten me.”
Kaiden held the device over the top of the pedestal, and a screen on the back displayed a translation of the ancient words. There were six wedges, each labeled in order: Vengeance, Conceit, Valor, Humility, Cowardice, and Duty.
“No idea what to make of that.” I frowned at the translation. “Except, Valor is the name of this discipline, so maybe that means something?”
“Of those options, that seems like the one to pick,” Kaiden agreed.
Toran raised his fists defensively. “Why do I feel like a fight is coming?”
Maris drew a dagger. “I don’t like this.”
“Has to be done,” I replied. I pressed the stone labeled Valor with my right hand.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe you have to use a sword like with the door?” Kaiden suggested. He took a step back from the pedestal.
“Could be.” I started to draw my blade.
No more than two centimeters were exposed when the tower began to tremble. The walls opened up on all sides, revealing six identical stairwells leading into darkness. The stairs extended far beyond the outer walls of the tower, yet they were completely enclosed.
“Oookay, this is officially weirding me out,” I admitted.
“This one is all you, Elle. Where does your gut tell you we should go?” Kaiden asked.
Valor was again the obvious choice, being the namesake of this discipline. However, just like something had told me to hold back from helping the woman, I had a feel that wasn’t the correct answer.
Assuming the staircases were representative of paths—not a stretch, since it was pretty literal—Vengeance, Conceit, and Cowardice were all obvious rejects. Humility and Duty, though, had appeal. After all, strength could easily be misdirected if it wasn’t balanced out by humility, and even otherwise vicious acts could be honorable when performed in the line of duty. Still, I wasn’t sure if the straightforward answer of Valor was the way to go or if I should pick one of those supporting components.
I stared at the pedestal, frozen by indecision. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Pick something,” Kaiden urged.
“Help!” the unseen woman cried again from all directions.
“Elle, not to rush you, but the Darkness—”
I held up my hand to cut Toran off. “I know. I’m thinking.”
None of the singular paths felt right to me. There was more to heroic acts than a one-dimensional characterization.
Without thinking, I slammed my hands down on the pedestal, pressing Valor and Humility with one and Duty with the other while holding the flashlight.
The stairways blurred as they merged into a singular path leading in the direction across from Valor.
Toran nodded. “A bold choice.”
“Looks like it paid off,” Kaiden added.
“Come on. There’s no telling what we’ll find up there.” I jogged toward the stairs.
The stairwell wove around the outside of the tower, despite having appeared to go straight outward from my vantage inside the second-story chamber. It spiraled for another six stories at a steep angle until it reached the tower’s roof.
I shut off my flashlight as we stepped out into daylight. I expected to get a spectacular view of the surrounding landscape, but instead I was surprised to see that the tower was surrounded by a strange mist. The light filtered through like it was a clear day, but everything beyond fifty meters away was blurred like looking through an out of focus camera.
“What’s with this place?” I murmured.
“I don’t know, but let’s get out of here fast,” Kaiden replied.
The focal point of the rooftop was the crystal monument we’d seen from the shuttle. It radiated a soft blue light like all of the others we’d come across, and I was relieved to see that it wasn’t yet clouded by the Darkness spreading throughout the rest of the land.
Floating in its center was a slim sword with a slight curve to the blade. The sabre beckoned to me, drawing me toward the monument at the center of the rooftop. I reached out toward it.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” a woman asked from behind me.
I pivoted toward the voice.
Standing before me was the same woman who’d been chained in the basement, but she was now dressed in a regal crimson gown and her golden hair was styled in ringlets. Her red lips were curled into a knowing smile and she evaluated me with her piercing green eyes.
“I’m here for the artifact,” I stated.
She nodded. “You have passed the first test. You desire to help, but you have learned since your youth that actions have consequences.”
“Don’t pretend to know what’s in my mind,” I replied.
“I needn’t pretend. I do know.” She clasped her hands in front of her, and I noticed she wore golden finger caps, which ended in sharp points.
My eyes narrowed. “Who are you?” I asked once more, though I didn’t expect an answer.
“A better question may be about what I am.” She began to walk slowly toward us. “And the answer to that is that I am a guardian created out of necessity. For all of the powers the ancients mastered, they were not immortal. I, and the two others like me, were created to pass on the knowledge that all others would forget,
so that the worlds could be saved in the time of their greatest need.”
The woman gazed to her left, and for a moment, the mist parted around tower and the encroaching Darkness was visible below. “You have been chosen, but that doesn’t necessarily make you worthy.”
“Then let me prove myself, as my companions have,” I replied.
“If you fail, then this place will be locked to you. Are you sure you’re ready?” The woman tilted her head.
“This place will be inaccessible, anyway, once the Darkness reaches it,” I replied.
“There are forces stronger than the Darkness.”
I came to attention. “There are? There’s a way to stop it?”
The woman smiled. “You haven’t answered my question. Are you ready to face the challenge?”
“Yes. I’ll do anything I need to in order to stop the Darkness.”
The woman inclined her head. “Very well. Prepare to face your challenge.”
She dissolved into scarlet mist, which flowed over the stone railing behind where she had been standing.
I placed my hand on my sword hilt.
Behind me, Kaiden, Toran, and Maris tensed.
A roar echoed from somewhere below the tower, followed by a concussive whoosh of massive wings beating. My heart skipped a beat as a red, scaled head with jaws two meters wide came into view.
The massive beast roared again and thrust its wings, creating a strong enough gust to almost knock me off my feet. It flew past the tower on the side and a patch on its throat glowed bright orange. It opened its jaws, releasing a plume of fire.
I squinted against the heat of the flames. “I think we found those baby dragons’ mom.”
20
I backed away from the stone railing. Setting aside the surprising revelation that dragons were real, the part about them being able to turn into mist and take the form of a human was definitely a new one. “How did it…?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Kaiden hoisted his staff. “Just need to fight it.”
My heart sank. “It doesn’t feel right to kill it.” A dragon… a creature that was by all accounts mythical. And it had babies…
