by Gabi Moore
The whole world seemed to change faster than he could manage. Just the other day he’d ran into a lady in the parking lot living out of her car. Her only companion was a small wiry dog. He’d noticed them parked out on the edge of the lot and walked over to see what they were doing there. This was before the entire parking lot was under his guards’ surveillance, but he was still trying to keep that kid Dion out of the mall when he saw her.
The lone car, a station wagon, struck him as a little bit strange as it sat out there by itself. Instead of sending one of his guys over to check it out, Karanzen decided to look into it himself. The car wasn’t in the best shape, but he’d seen worse ones in the lot. Even owned by people with money.
As he approached the car, Karanzen heard the dog yapping at him. He nodded at the person behind the wheel, unsure of what sex they were. They driver was slight and had an army cap on, but didn’t appear to be a veteran.
“That’s a pretty dog,” he said to her. “Are you okay? Do you need any help?”
“Oh, no,” the driver laughed. “I just came by to pick up some clothes.” By the voice, he could tell he addressed a woman. She had her head shaved close, something he’d never seen before, but it was hard to tell with the cap pushed down on her head. Her ears were pierced in several places, something else he’d never seen before.
Karanzen petted her dog, which seemed friendly enough. After a few minutes, he deduced she was some kind of traveler who went from one campsite to the next. She was young enough to have the luxury to wander the earth. He would have liked to discover her backstory, but there wasn’t time. He told her to check in with the security office if she needed any help, but the woman assured him her car was in excellent shape. As a matter of fact, she was a part-time auto mechanic.
Karanzen had her on his mind as he stepped out into the hall. He was thinking about the woman when he looked down the hall and encountered the mob of security guards, all of whom were dressed in grey with red hair. There had to be about twenty-four of them in the hall outside the office.
Before he could say another word, the guards shoved him back into the office. The sheer force of the bodies sent him flying backwards into the wall on the other side of the room. Karanzen slammed into it as the guards flowed over him, grabbing his arms and pinning him in place. Any six of them he could’ve handled, but he was outnumbered by the mob. As he swore curses on their future and past generations, the guards grabbed him and pushed him along into the inner office. His inner office, which was occupied by Seth Bach’s chief stooge, Matt.
“I told you,” Matt said to the struggling form of Karanzen, “things have changed in the way this mall is administered. You are no longer in charge of security. You’ve forced me to take drastic measures and now I have to decide what to do with you because you wouldn’t go. Why did you force me to do this?”
“Do what, you little punk?” Karanzen struggled to say something to Matt. “Tell these creeps to let me go or I’ll show you what I can really do.”
“I’m afraid you still don’t understand, Karanzen,” Matt sneered. “You are no longer able to give anyone a scare. Don’t you realize who we are?”
Karanzen looked at the crew around him who held him in place. They were all elementals. It was the only explanation he could come up with. The new guards had to be some kind of fire elemental.
“They’re all fire salamanders, aren’t they? I should have figured out by the way they looked. The temperature is already too high in this place. You’ve found some cheap elementals to work security and think you got a good deal on them. Well guess again, Buck-o, because they will never replace humans for the job. I don’t care how hot this place can get because the temperature doesn’t affect me. What happens when you get a whole room full of them in your glorious mall? They’ll set off every fire alarm in the place. What happens when they decide they don’t want to play by your rules any longer? You’ll end up with the entire mall in flames.”
“You just don’t like it you’ve lost another command, do you? “You’re done, old man. We no longer want or need you in this place.”
Matt was another kind of elemental, one Karanzen didn’t have any experience with. Matt was a sphinx, but the security chief didn’t know it. Just as Karanzen kept his real form private, so did Matt. His natural form was part lion and part eagle. Matt guarded the tomb of a pharaoh from beyond the circles of time and did so for the ten thousand years. He did his job so well, no one dared approached the tomb during the time he kept watch over it. It was a dull job, but he enjoyed it.
Every few years, someone was stupid enough to try to pry into the tomb. Matt would eagerly await their approach and hide himself behind a rock or in a sand pit. There were plenty of those in the valley where he dwelt. Once he got the job, the management preferred he didn’t bother them with the petty details on how many tomb robbers were intercepted or what he had to do to eliminate them. Should any they’re make it past his watch, his career would be finished and he sent back to the abyss... So long as he kept them out, he could always count on employment.
He grew to play with his victims after a few thousand years. The first thousand or so he spent perfecting his technique. It wasn’t for at least the second hundred years the humans learned to quit the direct approach to his jurisdiction. The poor pharaoh was only dead five days when the first fools decided to break into the tomb and loot it.
They didn’t even make it to the front door.
Matt remembered that one very well. One man had a mattock over one shoulder and a rope coiled around his body. Another carried several bags with him, as they intended to use them to haul off whatever gold could be claimed. It was night when they approached the tomb and Matt let them walk within ten yards of it before he made his move. After all, the men might have been in route to some other tomb. There were plenty of tombs in the valley, which didn’t employ supernatural guards. Most were looted soon after their occupant was interred. Some of them couldn’t afford the cost of the upkeep and they fell into ruin. Some had guardians that did little more than harass the thieves.
But the pharaoh who hired his services could afford the best and made sure he had the most effective security he could buy. So when the first thief approached the tomb, Matt was ready. The man pleaded with him, but Matt would have none of it. He knew the law and what happened to tomb thieves who broke it. If he hadn’t taken the stories seriously, perhaps others would in the future. In fact, when Matt sent the bodies back to the next of kin, no further tomb thieves attempted to break into the Pharaoh’s crypt for another five years.
But it never stopped them. Eventually someone would get the bright idea they could dance into the tomb and take whatever they wanted. And then Matt would appear. By then, it was too late. Only once in the years had he overlooked the sins of a tomb thief. He remembered her very well because he stopped her from walking into his territory.
Each of the tomb guardians had a specific area they monitored. There were no guardians at any of the tombs next to the one he watched, so Matt spent many evenings sitting on top of the pharaoh’s tomb and watched thieves break into the ones next to the one he guarded. They quit doing it after the first thousand years because everyone knew they were empty by then. The thieves would stare at the tomb he watched, decide it wasn’t worth the risk when they saw the bones that which surrounded it, and leave.
But one young lady decided to make the attempt five thousand years into the job. Matt watched her walk up the trail and stop to look at the bones he used to decorate the perimeter. Bones lasted a long time and served as the best “Keep Out” sign imaginable. He could see her think about it from his location. As she put her foot on the line etched in the sand, Matt made his appearance.
“You really don’t want to do that,” he told her. He’d used his standard human form, because it seemed she should have the option of using free will to determine whether or not to cross the line. As long as he gave her a warning, he might as well do it in human form.
She was startled and backed up. “Why is that?” she asked him.
Matt gave her credit. She didn’t panic and run as he’d expected.
“Because if you don’t, I get to eat you,” he informed the potential tomb robber. “There hasn’t been anything of value in the tombs around the one I watch in thousands of years. But the one I watch is still intact since I’m on a long-term contract. Now turn around and leave before I change my mind. You have crossed the line and it’s within my contract to consider you fair game.”
The woman turned and fled. He never made the same offer again for some reason.
“So you’re also an elemental,” Karanzen said to the grinning figure of Matt. “I can’t imagine how he got control of you. At least these ginger boys have an excuse; he’s worked some kind of spell over them.”
“Some of us don’t have to be bound,” Matt said. “Trust me, I like this job better than the last one I had and the pay isn’t too bad.”
It was sometime during year eight thousand that Matt decided the job was no longer fun. The idiots who approached the tomb thinned out by year five thousand and he was forced to get creative by year six thousand. He came up with the questions by year seven thousand. As a sphinx, Matt had access to all manner of forbidden knowledge the humans didn’t. It dawned on him that to allow the robbers a chance to answer a question would make the assignment interesting for a change. He consulted a few other sphinx guardians who told him they’d done that too for several thousand years and only once had a human beat them.
Matt liked those odds and compiled a huge list of questions to ask anyone he caught who attempted to break into the pharaoh’s tomb. Since he knew ten other sphinx guardians who’d done the same thing for thousands of years, it didn’t take him long to come up with his list.
The way it worked was simple. If a thief answered his question correctly, they could live. They wouldn’t be allowed to take any treasure with them; such a thing would violate his contract. But they could live to tell their friends and family what happened when they ventured into the land around the forbidden tomb. If they guessed wrong, the thief was added to the pile of bones which surrounded the tomb.
For some reason, no one ever answered the questions he put to them correctly. Ever riddle he hit them with was answered wrong. This puzzled him for a long time until Matt realized the thieves were not from the most educated classes.
One day, a man appeared at the entrance to the tomb. The bones formed an entire wall around the pharaoh’s tomb by then and Matt was forced to wait for the occasional fool who tried to scale them. He hadn’t had a break-in attempt in months. The last victim agonized for two hours over the question he put to him and Matt was forced to end it when it was painfully obvious he didn’t know.
The man pushed the bones aside and walked into the perimeter of the tomb’s territory. Matt watched him come over the rise from the next tomb, which was crumbled by neglect, when he saw the man walk past the wall. Thrilled to have some new entertainment, Matt appeared next to him in full terrifying sphinx form.
“If a ship sank on the border between Egypt and Libya,” Matt asked him. “Where would the survivors be buried?”
“The survivors would not be buried anywhere because they survived,” the man said to him with a big smile on his face.
Matt was stunned. Never before had anyone answered one of his riddles correctly. He’d used that one twelve times, but no one ever figured out the paradox inside it. Perhaps the sudden appearance of a sphinx unnerved them, but they never once got it right.
“Very good,” Matt told him. “You get to live. You should also know that you are the first person who has ever solved one of my riddles.”
“You must have some really stupid people coming in here,” the man said to him.
“You have to wonder how bright a person is that would rob a tomb guarded by me,” Matt agreed. “And they all know I’m guarding the pharaoh’s tomb. What idiot tries to make it past me just for a chance at some gold cups?”
“Quite a few from these bones.”
“Now please go,” Matt said. “You get to live because you solved my question. Stay here any longer and I’ll have to eat you.”
“I’ll go, but can you answer one of my questions?”
“I’ll certainly try.”
“Would you like to come and work for me? I could use a good sphinx.”
And so Matt the sphinx made the acquaintance of Seth Bach, the builder over the abyss. He ended up going to work for the real estate developer and found it much more rewarding than attacking people who tried to raid tombs. The clientele might be the same, but they were easier to deal with once you didn’t have to eat them.
“So you see, Karanzen,” Matt told him. “They answer to me now. All I have to do is tell them to get rid of you and you’ll be a pile of ash. So why don’t you just leave the mall peaceably and not cause me any problems?
“Who said we work for you?” one of the security guards snapped at Matt.
“Who else could you be working for?” he demanded. “Seth Bach summoned the last ones. He’s summoned you too and I work for him as well in the operations department. This means I have dominion over you. Case closed.”
“It doesn’t work that way because we weren’t summoned by your boss,” one of the other security guards said. “Since he didn’t call us up, he can’t put us down. So no, we don’t have to follow your orders.”
“Then what are all of you doing here?”
“We want to know what happened to our comrades who were summoned here and disappeared. A few of them made it back after encountering a young lady with a fire opal. How did she know fire opals could put us in a daze? Your master brought us here to deal with some young kid, or so we were told. It seems the target was not as easy as we were told. We want our friends back before we do any more jobs for him. Since they were sent down here, it was the reasonable place to look for them. Now tell us where we can find them!”
“Looks like you little plans have run into an iceberg,” Karanzen told Matt. “Guess I don’t have to worry about the consequences because I don’t work here anymore.”
“You can’t talk to me like that!” Matt snapped at the security guards. “Do you have any idea what I can do to you?”
“Do you have any idea what our combined strength can do to you?”
“I’m a sphinx, you idiots. I’m made out of stone. This is just a convenient form I use. This form is made out of stone too, although I look just as human as the next man does. Now get out of my way. You can’t burn stone!”
“Ever see molten rock? Lava? Magma? I think you should reconsider.”
“Boys,” Karanzen said. “I am out of here. Matt, have fun, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving person.”
The next second, Karanzen was gone, replaced by a cloud of flies. The flies buzzed all over the back office and spread everywhere until they pulled together and swarmed out of the room. In a few seconds, the flies could be heard in the hallway as they made for the nearest outside exit.
“So what happened to them?” the security guards said to the human version of Matt, whom they had cornered in the office. “Talk or we turn this entire wing of the mall into a volcano. And we can do it.”
“I don’t doubt you can,” Matt told them, “but you’ll have to deal with someone else as I’m needed elsewhere.”
And he vanished. The chair behind the security chief’s desk was empty.
“You forgot to tell us he could do that,” one of the security salamanders said to their leader, who had stood directly across from Matt before his disappearance.”
“Guess that leaves the kid they were supposed to corner,” he said. “We’ll need to find him if we want to know what happened to our people. Anyone know where he might be?”
“I’d expect it would be in the fire element section of the mall,” another one of them said.
“Okay, let’s go find him.”
Chapter 12
“Dion, you are in great danger,” a voice said to his left. Dion turned to see the form of his grandfather standing next to him. The old man had appeared out of nowhere, but he was used to it by now. Even his three companions didn’t find the sudden appearance to be of much issue.
“I’ve been in danger ever since I began this quest,” he told the older man. “What could possibly be worse?”
“Fire elementals. Salamanders are on their way here. You need to get out of the building right away. Take the nearest emergency exit. I’ve disabled the alarm, you can use it with your friends to leave the building.”
“Why can’t I tackle them inside the mall?”
“Too risky. They might burn the entire mall down in their anger. Several of their number was lost when your friend with the fire opal banished them today. They want to know where their companions are, but there is no way to know because the opal caused them to lose their sense of direction. Just get out now. I have to go. Bye.” And his grandfather vanished.
Dion turned to look at the emergency exit door on the other side of the concourse. He was close to this final destination, but he could not ignore this threat.
“We have to get out of here,” Dion told his friends as he took Lilly by the hand and hauled her to the door. Sean and Emily followed them.
Minutes later, they were outside the mall. Dion walked around the perimeter of the mall and saw no sign of the security guards. He walked with his friends and headed in the direction of the parking lot. There still were quite a few empty sections in it.
Dion walked around in the lot and waited. If his grandfather was right, they would be here very soon. He couldn’t understand why they held him guilty for the loss of the other fire elementals, but these creatures were not known to be the most rational of beings. At least he still had the censer in the bag next to him.
