“For a long time, I hoped she’d come back,” King said. “I like to think I’m over her leaving now, but sometimes, I’m not so sure.” He smiled. “I guess I need some mental healing too.”
I smiled sleepily back. “Well,” I said. “Her loss.”
King looked at me, amused. Then to my surprise, I felt his warm fingers wrap around mine, and squeeze.
I should have pulled my hand, but I didn’t. Instead, I squeezed his hand back. We stayed like that, till darkness began to overtake me.
“I guess,” I heard King say, just before I went out, “we can just learn to be our own people again.”
“I’d like that,” I mumbled, as I drifted off. “I’d like that.”
CHAPTER 51
I woke up with a start.
The skies were azure blue, and the sun was already fairly high. I shielded my eyes and sat up.
King was standing at the edge of the hole in the ground, staring into it with a frown. I rose and went to join him.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Very clear headed. It feels weird,” I answered. “What are we looking at?”
“The scouts still haven’t returned,” King said.
“Scouts?”
“The little round robots.”
“Oh.”
“There’s something down there,” he said. “Something must have broken them.”
“I don’t suppose they could’ve just gotten lost?” I suggested.
King gave me a look.
“Never mind,” I said.
“We’re going down,” King said. “Get your climbing gear.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “I thought the fact that something happened to our scouts would inspire the exact opposite reaction, but whatever.”
“It means it’s booby trapped,” King said. “And that means…”
“It’s the right path,” I finished for him. “Yes, I get it.”
“Then what’re you worried about?” he said. “Scared that a Kakiricatura is going to get you?”
“Ha ha,” I muttered. “You’re a rump hole. Let’s just go.”
We packed up our tents and fitted on our grappling gear. King took the lead, and we began our slow descent into the darkness. We didn’t talk as we went down. Instead, the dull echoes of our feet against the stone walls filled the silence. The further we descended, the wider apart the walls became. Also, the light from above grew fainter.
After ten moments of descent, we were engulfed in total darkness. Eventually, I heard a crackle beneath me.
“I’ve hit bottom,” King said. “Ow—you just kicked my head. Watch it! Hold, hold on. Let me help you down.”
I flailed blindly till I felt King’s fingers wrap around my waist and guide me to the ground next to him. Something smooth and cold was pressed into my hands.
“Put these on,” he said.
After some groping, I figured out that the object he’d handed me was a pair of goggles. I put them on.
I could see now. We were inside a tunnel, and everything from the walls to King’s body was washed in a faint blue glow.
“Mana-vision goggles,” King explained. “For when night vision goggles are useless.”
“Very nice,” I said, inspecting my own faintly glowing hands. I looked past my hands at the ground. There were pieces of metal and wiring, a few half-spheres. “Are those our scouts?”
King crouched to inspect the mechanical remains. “They are,” he concluded.
“So they didn’t even get farther than the start of the cave?” I said. “That’s fantastic.”
King turned to examine the wall behind us. There were holes in it. A lot of holes. King dug a finger down one of them, and pulled out a squashed piece of metal.
“Is that what I think it is?” I whispered, horrified.
King nodded. “It’s a bullet. A point-five unit length bullet by the looks of it.”
“Bullets are illegal in every world,” I said. “These aren’t even supposed to exist anymore. What kind of sick psychopath shoots metal projectiles at another living thing?”
“The serious kind,” King said. He cast his eyes down the tunnel. “The walls ahead must be fitted with motion sensors. And somewhere down there, there are a lot of sentry turrets standing by. We take a few steps forward, they turn us into sieves.”
“Muck,” I said. “What do we do?”
“We set off the sensors.” King smiled. “All of them.”
“Of course we do,” I said. “Because, psh, hump logic.”
“Has anybody ever told you that you’re really sarcastic?”
“It has been mentioned once or twice, yes.”
I listened as King explained his plan. Afterwards, I dropped my bag, strapped Tundra II to my belt, and bent over into a starting position.
“You’re absolutely sure this is going to work, right?” I asked, my stomach roiling with nerves.
“It’ll work if you flash flit properly,” he said. “Do you flash flit properly?”
“Decently.”
“Then let’s do this.”
I took a deep breath, and exhaled. My heart was pounding. I felt King’s hand rest on my shoulder, and squeeze.
“Hey. don’t worry,” he said, close to my ear. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I swallowed, and nodded.
“Just,” he said, “don’t stop moving. Not till I tell you to.”
I nodded again. Then, I swaddled myself with mana as thoroughly as I could, and…took off.
The tunnel walls flashed past me; a blur of solid blue. My foot touched ground again, and I pushed against it. I flitted through the air, and felt the wind resistance pounding against my skin, and rippling through my hair and clothes.
In the exact moment after my second step, I heard them: the whirring metal joints of automated guns swivelling to their target. Swivelling to target me. Just as the tunnel exploded with the deafening sound of fired bullets, a blue comet streaked through the space above me. There was a sound of grinding metal, a shower of sparks—a sentry toppled from one side of the tunnel’s ceiling, a pile of scrap metal.
The comet was King, heavily wrapped in mana and flames. I could feel his heat radiating down upon me. His blade, Aiden, was in his hand. He bounced off the wall to the opposite side of the ceiling, and his blade sliced through a second sentry like warm curd.
As I flitted forward, more sentries aimed down at me—or they swivelled uselessly back and forth, unable to decide between us. King took advantage of the A.I’s confusion, and cut clean through the sentries. A few sentries actually blew up, raining fire and machine parts down on me.
I pushed myself, trying to move faster. King did the same. He flashed back and forth between the walls, sometimes soaring through the air, other times wall-running. His blade flashed like lightning again and again; sentries crumbled down, or detonated in balls of flames.
Suddenly, I could see light at the end of the tunnel.
“Watch out,” King cried.
There was one last sentry turret, fitted into the ground this time. It was big. It thundered as it released a flurry of bullets my way.
King suddenly appeared before me; a series of sharp clangs echoed as he blocked off the bullets.
I flitted faster, harder. I felt a searing pain in the side of my thigh. I yelped, and gritted my teeth, still flitting.
Just as we reached the last sentry, King bounced off the wall, and flipped into the air. Upside down, he swung Aiden, and cut through the neck of the turret. The turret fell face down. I flitted swiftly round it, right as it crashed into the ground.
We were in an enormous cavern now, with no perceptible ceiling. The light here was not natural light; it was from an innumerable amount of flaming spouts jutting out of the walls.
I lifted my goggles, and started to slow down. “What is this?”
“I said don’t stop, Everglade!” King yelled.
As he spoke those words, fire poured out of the
spouts, crashing down around us, golden waterfalls. The heat wave hit me like a brick.
We flitted through the cavern, and into another tunnel. But the flames followed furiously after us, burning up the air and making it impossible to breathe. I could smell my hair singing, and feel the backside of my clothing beginning to burn.
I made the mistake of looking back. It was like a flood; swirling against the walls, rushing forward, a blinding sea of light.
I couldn’t out-flit it. I wasn’t going to make it.
“Hold my hand,” King cried, ahead of me.
I reached for his outstretched hand, and when my fingers finally found his, they gripped hard.
“Hold on!” he said.
My feet left the ground; King’s speed was like nothing I had ever experienced. The aerodynamic drag was crushing. Even with my swaddling of mana, I could barely keep my eyes open.
The flames followed us out of the tunnel, and into a second cavern, this one even wider than the last. I sucked in my breath, when I realized that the earth ended a few hundred feet away, and that we were rocketing towards a gaping chasm.
“King—“ I began.
“I see it,” he said.
He launched us into the air, and we sailed across the chasm, the last embers of fire curling after us.
“We’re not going to make it,” I gasped, as we descended to the other side.
“We’ll make it,” King said.
“I’m serious!”
“We’ll make it!”
We didn’t.
King’s foot scraped the edge of the cliff, and we tumbled against the side of the earth. I flailed for King’s body, and caught hold of his leg. His fingers found the edge of the cliff. We dangled.
“Oh Light,” I gasped, quivering. “Oh Light, I think I saw my life flashing before my eyes. And I have spent way too much of it watching hoverball.”
“Climb me,” King grunted.
Summoning what was left of my strength, I pulled myself up King’s body. I reached the cliff, and hoisted myself onto it. I helped King onto the ledge. We collapsed onto our backs, panting for air.
“Remember,” I panted, “when you…” Gulp. “…threatened to…” Wheeze. “…leave me behind?”
King nodded, and swallowed. “Yeah?”
“I should’ve let you.”
We forced ourselves back to our feet. The path led into another cave.
“Damn these caves,” I muttered, as we walked towards it. “The last thing I want right now is to traverse another bloody—“
Something thin pulled against my shin. I looked down just in time to see the trip wire.
“Muck,” I said.
Explosion.
The force from the bomb at the mouth of the cave, flung me and King off the ledge, and sent us plummeting into the deep.
Everything was happening too fast. I only had enough time to expect my end: a quick splat against a cold stone bottom. Instead, I hit water. Freezing water. It snatched my breath away, almost as efficiently as a solid ground would have.
I sank into the frigid waters, flailing. Numbness swallowed me whole; I felt nothing. Only darkness surrounded me; I saw nothing. The ice filled my lungs, and the pain that engulfed my head shocked me motionless.
Consciousness slipped away. Then, it returned. Then, it was gone again.
I drifted through the infinite blackness.
I don’t know where it came from: the strength. I opened my eyes, and there was light, streaming in from somewhere beyond the water’s surface. There was also a silhouette floating above me, a man’s body. King.
I reoriented my body, and swaddled it with mana. I propelled myself.
I shot out of the water with King in my arms, and we crashed onto a rocky bank close by. For what felt like an eternity, I retched out the contents of my stomach onto the ground. By the time I was done, I was trembling.
I shed my jacket and undershirt, glad to be rid of the soggy weight. I crawled over to King’s body. The explosion had torn away most of his jacket, leaving his torso bare. I tried to resuscitate him with chest compressions. But my thrusts felt weak.
“Come on,” I whispered, and breathed into his mouth. “You are not leaving me alone here, you hear me?” I breathed into his lungs again, and tried more chest compressions. But my own muscles were through responding.
I collapsed onto King, shaking uncontrollably. My unexpected burst of strength was leaving me.
“Come on,” I panted against his chest. “Come on, you son of a bat.”
Little lights appeared beneath the surface of King’s torso. I leaned back to see rubriq dancing and flickering across his breasts and abdominals.
“Oh, thank Light,” I sighed, overwhelmed with relief.
King’s lids fluttered opened, and his gold coloured eyes glowed to life. He rested them on me. “Hey,” he croaked.
“Don’t do that,” I said, and noticed for the first time that my teeth were clacking.
“You look cold,” he said.
I shivered, and smiled. “What gave it away?”
Carefully, he reached out, and pulled me to him. His body was hot. The literal hot. It felt…good.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
After a moment or two, I was already feeling considerably warmer. King sighed.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “The water carried us down a few passages. But at least, there’s a bright side.”
“Oh?”
I smiled, and pointed up at the light I’d seen from the water. There was an opening high above us. Through it, I could see blue skies.
“Nice,” he said.
“Shall we?”
He hesitated. “No,” he said, to my surprise. “Let’s take a moment to breathe.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.” And I wondered if I was supposed to pull away from his arms now. But he didn’t say anything so, neither did I.
We just stayed like that for a while.
CHAPTER 52
The warm sunlight was delicious against my skin. I filled my lungs with cool morning air, and took a moment to be grateful that I was not a number of things; such as a body riddled with bullets or, a pile of smoldering ashes or, a drowned corpse at the bottom of a mountain. I closed my eyes, and savoured the moment.
“Can I get a hand here?”
King’s hand waved from the hole I’d just climbed out of. I helped him out. We were standing at the top of a small hill, the mountain range behind us now. As we surveyed the fields of green, King nudged me and pointed.
On the hill to our right sat the grey-green fort of Massah Tsukr.
“Muck,” I said. “I just realized something. Our instruments.” I looked down the hole. “They must’ve sunk in the waters.”
“Just call it back,” King said, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Aiden,” he cried into the hole. “Return.”
There was silence for a while. Then: the echoes of metal clanging against rock. Suddenly, Aiden shot out of the darkness and into the air. King stretched out his hand, and the instrument arced through the sky and came whistling down. The hilt planted itself neatly into King’s grasp.
I gaped. “Seriously?”
“Why do you think instruments mean so much?” King said. “These things are very thoroughly spelled. Get yours and let’s get moving.”
Feeling like a moron, I crouched by the hole and yelled into it, “Tundra two! Tundra two, return.”
Pause. Nothing.
“Tundra two,” I tried, a little louder. “Return.”
Pause. Still nothing.
“Please?” I added.
“Huh,” King said, looking thoughtful. “Yours must not have a retrace spell. Makes sense. It is just an imitation after all.”
“Gee, thanks,” I muttered, standing up.
“Stay close then,” he said, starting the walk towards Tsukr’s fort. I sighed, and ran my hands through my hair. Po was going to kill me.
The climb uphill was cake compared to the previous day’s trek. We arrived at the massive wooden gates of the stone fort in about half an hour.
“What do we do? Knock?” I asked.
King touched the gate. There was a thunderous groan, and the right half of the gate swung inwards. King looked at me and shrugged. “Not if it’s already open.”
We stepped inside.
We were in an enormous compound, edged with leafless shrubs and bare trees. It was unsettlingly empty. And yet, it was not. Because, there were children. At least thirty of them. A few Phyllians. I spotted two K’hars. Several Lilliths. Many Rubies. All bald. All boys. All covered from the crown of their heads to the soles of their feet in rubriq.
They were clothed in grey singlets and khaki pants, in spite of the cold. Even their feet were bare. They turned to look at us.
They stared.
“King,” I whispered.
“Just keep walking,” King whispered back.
We treaded cautiously across the compound. Most of the children were cold, expressionless. A few of them glared.
“I heard about this place,” King muttered into my ear. “I didn’t think it actually existed.”
“What is this place?”
“The Village of a Thousand Blades,” King said. “Supposed to be some kind of assassin’s academy. They kidnap black-blood children, mostly from Aurora and the Rim. But the very concept was ludicrous—nobody in S.I. or the Agency has ever taken it seriously. Not to mention that there’s never been an iota of evidence to think otherwise.”
I thought about that. “You don’t think—“
“That the Puppeteer was trained here?” King finished. “We can’t say for sure. Yet.”
We were unhindered in our march through the compound, till we arrived at the iron door of the main building. The door opened, and a man in a brown robe and hood stepped out.
He lifted his head slightly, and I caught a glimpse of scaly grey skin beneath the hood.
“Come,” he croaked.
He turned around, and walked back inside. King and I exchanged a look, and then followed him.
“Son of a bat was expecting us,” King whispered.
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