by Bryan Davis
Elam awoke. As the glow of dawn cast its rays of yellow light over the field, a breeze wafted across the grass, brushing the blades against his cheek. He sat up and stared at the delicate white flower in his hands.
He lifted it close to his eyes. “It was red,” he said out loud.
Scrambling to his feet, he gazed out over the field. A wide path of white flowers stretched in the direction he had come as far as the eye could see. He raised the blossom to his nose and took a long sniff. He recognized the delicate aroma—earthy, yet sweet.
“It smells like Sapphira,” he said, sighing. “I hope she made it out okay.”
He tucked it carefully into his pocket, allowing the petals to stick out. After scanning the field for anything else new, he pulled on his cloak, lowered his head, and skulked toward the edge of the forest. There was no sign of the malevolent creatures that stalked the woods the night before, but he found the strange lump, a crumpled half-naked body, lacerated with long, bloody gashes on its hairy back.
Giving it a shove with his foot, Elam turned it faceup. With skeleton-thin bare arms and legs, it looked more like an emaciated man than a monster, but two sharp fangs overlapping its lips gave the corpse a beastly aspect. It seemed half human and half … something else.
Elam wrinkled his nose. This thing smelled worse than Nabal, even on a bad day. After glancing around, he pulled out the spyglass and peered into the forest. Nothing but trees and more trees.
He collapsed the tube and dropped it in his bag. “No time like the present,” he said as he strode in.
The leafy canopy darkened the tree-filled landscape, reminding him about possibly stumbling over the transparent man he was looking for. He slowed his pace and extended an arm, waving it from side to side as he shuffled forward, but after several minutes, his arm ached, so he let it fall to his side.
He stopped and raised the spyglass again, adjusting it to its maximum magnification. Turning slowly, and listening for the slightest pop or rustle, he studied every detail—gnarled elbows in the lower limbs, fungus-infested knots in most of the trunks, and multicolored toadstools peeking through the fallen leaves. But, other than organisms of decay, there was no sign of life—not a bug or a bird in sight.
Something moved. Elam froze the spyglass on the spot and waited, breathless. It moved again, a short, spindly form that seemed to flow like thick clear liquid.
“The gatekeeper,” he whispered.
Chapter 7
The Gatekeeper
When Ashley’s toes touched the floor, Walter reached for her and pulled her to a crouch, whispering, “There’s a girl over by the wall. She’s saying something, but I didn’t get close enough to make out the words.”
Ashley peered through the darkness, picking up the image of a girl standing in a dim light about thirty feet away. She kept her voice low as well. “How old do you think she is?”
Walter shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe fourteen? She’s kind of small for fourteen, but her face looks older.”
“If you got close enough to see her face, why didn’t you talk to her?”
“There’s a bunch of men lined up against the wall. At least I think that’s what they are. I only got a good look at one of them, a big guy with an ugly mug even a mother couldn’t love. He didn’t move a muscle, so I thought they might all be statues, but it looked like she was talking to them, so I wasn’t sure.”
Ashley strained her eyes. Multicolored lights mingled within dark depressions in the walls, illuminating vague forms, but the light was too dim to discern any details. “You have Excalibur,” she said, “so if the statues get aggressive, you can discourage them.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He stood and withdrew his sword. “I’d better keep it ready.”
She pushed the blade, making it rest on his shoulder. “Carry it like that and maybe you won’t scare her half to death.”
“Got it.” He strolled casually toward the girl.
Ashley followed, clutching the back of Walter’s jacket to stay close. As they drew near, the girl’s details came into focus. She was slender, maybe five feet tall, and her most obvious feature, her stark white hair, dressed her head and shoulders in snowy raiment. The flame from the lantern she carried made her eyes shine an unearthly blue.
Standing on a low stone platform, she spoke to someone inside a cleft in the wall, but it was still too dark to see whom she addressed. A huge body lay on the platform near her feet, apparently a giant of a man, but he, too, was shrouded in shadows.
Walter stopped and stared. Ashley leaned close and whispered in his ear. “She’s beautiful!”
“I noticed.” He quietly cleared his throat and began edging forward. “Uh … I guess I’ll just introduce myself.”
The girl’s pale lips trembled. “I’ll get you out of here. I’ll get us all out of here, so help me God!”
Walter paused. “Is she talking to us?”
“Only one way to find out.” Ashley brushed the wrinkles from her jacket and marched ahead. “Excuse me,” she said as she hopped up to the platform. “Can you tell me where we are?”
The girl’s eyes shone with radiance, but her thin smile seemed less than joyful. “Ashley? What are you doing here?”
Ashley shuffled backwards and stepped down, pointing at herself. “How do you know who I am?”
Walter quickly joined her. He put the sword away and bowed his head. “Hi. My name is”
“Walter,” the girl finished. “I saw both of you from inside the Great Key when the dragons came through.”
“You did?” Walter combed his fingers through his hair. “Cool! I’m more famous than I thought.”
The girl stepped off the platform and extended her hand. “I’m Sapphira Adi. Pleased to meet you.”
“Pleased to meet you, too,” Walter replied, taking her hand.
Sapphira gave Ashley a formal curtsy, though it looked strange coming from a girl in old jeans and a tattered sweater. “I am honored to meet a princess, a daughter of the dragon king.”
“A princess?” Ashley glanced at Walter as she gestured for Sapphira to rise. “How do you know so much about us, and what is this place?”
Sapphira’s smile widened, but her eyes still gave away a somber mood. “I know about you, because I saw you on the day you were born. I watched you through your brother Gabriel’s eyes.” She spread out her arms, turning slowly in a half circle. “And this place is the mobility room, once used for training an army of giants that were genetically engineered from a blend of plant material and fallen angels.” She halted her spin and focused on Ashley again, her eyes wide and serious. “I think the son of King Nimrod wants to use them to take over the world, but first he has to get them out of this dimension. We’re thousands of feet underground in the third circle of Hades.”
Ashley’s stomach ached. The word Hades felt like a dagger in her gut. She pulled Walter’s sleeve and whispered, “The inscription in the stairwell.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Walter replied, not bothering to whisper. He nodded at the dark forms lined up in the wall. “What are those?”
Setting down her lantern, Sapphira stepped back up on the platform and took the hand of one of the huge men. Although several beams of light cast various colors across his indistinct body, only his hand and hairy wrist could be seen clearly. “These are the Nephilim, the giants I was telling you about.” She pointed at the body lying on the floor. “That one is named Yereq. I took him when he was just a seedling and weaned him from the soil by feeding him ground worm guts until he was ready for mobility, but he fell out of his chamber today and died.”
“He’s enormous!” Walter said. “Must be a lot of vitamins and minerals in the worms around here.”
“Walter!” Ashley hissed. “This is no time for joking!” She lowered her voice to a whisper again. “We’re in Hell, for crying out loud. And I think she’s upset about the dead giant.”
Walter scuf
fed his shoe on the floor. “Sorry,” he said to Sapphira. “I guess if you raised him from a seedling you must have been close to him.”
Sapphira smiled weakly. “I was, before they transferred him to mobility. I hoped I could talk to him after he woke up and before he could get to the living world, but …” Her brow suddenly wrinkled. “How did you get into my dimension from there, I mean, from the living world?”
Walter pointed up. “A dragon opened a hole in the ground, making a friend of ours fall in, so we followed a million-step staircase to find her, and that led us here.”
“A dragon made her fall down here? What dragon would do a terrible thing like that?”
“Arramos,” Ashley said abruptly. “But that’s a long story.” She swiveled her head, but darkness in the gloomy chamber kept her from seeing beyond ten feet or so. “Have you seen a girl wandering around here?”
“Does she have red hair and freckles?” Sapphira asked.
Ashley jumped, nearly losing her balance. “Where is she?”
“Right over here.” Sapphira picked up the lantern and lifted it close to the next cleft in the wall. A red-headed girl hovered inside, the beams painting her arms and legs with every color of the rainbow.
“It’s Karen!” Ashley leaped up to the platform and latched on to her hand. “Is she okay? Can I pull her out?”
“Don’t!” Sapphira withdrew a small, rectangular object from her pocket and showed it to Ashley. “It’s a digital counter. As soon as it drops one more tick, I think everyone will wake up. And it won’t be long. I’ve been watching it for years, so I know it’s almost ready to hit zero.” She put the counter back in her pocket. “We have to wait. Yereq died because I tried to wake him up too soon.”
Ashley grabbed Sapphira’s wrist. “Did you put her in there?”
Sapphira winced. “No. I can build growth chambers, but I’ve never put someone inside one.”
Slowly loosening her fingers, Ashley sighed. “Sorry. It’s just that she’s my adoptive sister.”
“It’s okay.” Sapphira set the lantern down and rubbed her wrist. “I just came here today for the first time in quite a while, and after Yereq died, I went out to get a cloth to wash his face, and when I got back, Karen was in Yereq’s chamber. I have no idea how she got there.”
Ashley followed one of the colored lights back to its source and touched the edge of a brick that emitted a yellow laser beam. “Do these bricks have some kind of magnetic field generator that keep her and the giants suspended?”
Sapphira touched a brick on the opposite side that shone a blue beam on Karen’s hand. “I think so. They create a field inside the chamber that counters gravity, and the colors feed the photoreceptors inside the giants. We don’t have sunlight down here, so Mardon had to invent something to simulate it.”
“Who’s Mardon?” Walter asked.
Sapphira picked up the lantern and hopped down to the main floor. “He’s the son of King Nimrod I told you about, the scientist who came up with these inventions. He’s been gone for years and years, but I know he’s up to something. I just don’t know what it is.”
Ashley pushed on a brick in Karen’s wall cavity. “Have you thought about taking one of these out to see what happens?”
Sapphira looked up at Ashley. “A thousand times, but I decided I didn’t want to deal with a giant if it woke up in a foul mood. Since Mardon trained them, I don’t think they’re going to be friendly.”
Walter edged closer to Sapphira. “So why are you here? Can’t you find a way out?”
“I’m pretty sure I can leave,” Sapphira replied, “but I need to figure out how to take Ashley’s brother Gabriel and her sister Roxil with me.”
Ashley spun away from Karen. “My brother and sister are here?”
“Roxil’s behind me,” Sapphira said, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb, “and Gabriel’s standing right next to you giving you a hug.”
Ashley swiveled her head. For a brief second, she thought she saw a young man extending an arm around her shoulder, but the vision quickly faded. “There’s no one next to me.”
“Oh, he’s there, all right.” Sapphira covered a grin with her fingers. “You just can’t see him.”
“Another ghost?” Walter asked.
“Don’t get me thinking about ghosts again,” Ashley snapped. “This place is already creepy enough.”
Walter raised his hands in a surrender pose. “I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers, but I’ve seen lots of stuff weirder than ghosts lately.”
Blowing out a loud sigh, Ashley shook her head. “You’re right. … I’m sorry. I’m wound up so tight, I’m about to pop a spring.” She shuffled toward Sapphira and Walter. With every step, she imagined a ghost following her, raising a shiver. Perching on the edge of the platform, she looked down at Sapphira. “There’s so much weird stuff going on, I don’t know what to believe.”
Sapphira reached up and laid a gentle hand on Ashley’s forearm. “Let me see if I can show him to you. That should ease your mind.”
“Fair enough.” Ashley firmed her jaw and nodded. “Seeing is believing.”
Sapphira addressed the space next to Ashley. “Gabriel, can you shrink enough to fit in my hands?” She waited a second and cupped her hands together. “Good. Just float up here and let’s see if I can make you glow.” She blinked at Ashley and Walter. “You might want to stand back. I’m not sure how this is going to work.”
Walter scooted behind Sapphira while Ashley stepped close to Karen and the wall of giants. A tiny flame sprouted from Sapphira’s hands, then three tongues of fire that rose several inches, like a blazing flower with flaming leaflets. A radiant silhouette formed in the center, a boy with dragon wings on his back. He glowed orange, his eyes trained on Ashley as he reached for her and pretended to pull her close in a loving embrace. Finally, he seemed to let out a sigh, bowing his head with his hands folded at his waist.
“He can’t speak,” Sapphira explained, her blue eyes brighter than ever. “But at least you can see him now.”
Ashley felt her mouth drop open. “That’s … that’s my brother?”
Walter leaned over Sapphira’s shoulder from behind. “He’s an anthrozil! Cool!”
With a breathy blow from her lips, Sapphira extinguished the flames. As Gabriel faded away, she let her hands fall to her sides. “Like I told you, your dragon sister is here, too. Roxil was born to Makaidos and Thigocia long before they became your human parents, but she’s also in an energy state, so you can’t see her either.”
“This is just too much!” Ashley laid her palms on her head and closed her eyes. “I think my brain is choking!”
Walter covered Ashley’s hands with his own. “How do you give a brain a Heimlich maneuver?”
Ashley jerked her arms down and spun toward him. “Walter!” she shouted. “This is serious! If Roxil’s really here, then Arramos lied, and my mother’s in big trouble.”
“Sorry.” Walter raised his hands again and backed away. “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”
Turning to Sapphira, Ashley softened her tone. “I apologize for my outburst, but I need to get everything straight in my head.” She took a deep breath and tried to smile, but it felt like a queasy grin. “Maybe I should start with these giants. If they’re programmed to wake up at any minute, things could get ugly around here.”
“That’s probably true,” Sapphira said. “Mardon isn’t around to give them orders, but he did train them to fight, and Morgan taught them to hate. If you know anything about Morgan, then you know what that could mean.”
“Know about her?” Walter wrinkled his nose as though smelling a foul stench. “She wanted to poison the whole Earth with some kind of weird gas, so she probably didn’t spend her time teaching the giants table manners.” He glanced toward the spot where they climbed down the rope. “Getting out of here as fast as possible makes a lot of sense to me.”
Ashley wa
lked up to the wall cavity again and took Karen’s limp hand into hers. “But we have to stay here for Karen, whether she wakes up or not.”
“I didn’t mean me.” Walter nodded at Ashley. “You two go. It’s a long way up, so you’d better get moving.”
“Uh-uh!” Ashley shook her finger. “No way I’m leaving you alone to face a bunch of giants.”
Walter reached back and tapped Excalibur’s hilt. “I have an ugly giant skewer. I’ll be fine.”
“But someone has to help you get Karen up the stairs.”
“We’ll take it easy. We’ll get there eventually.”
Ashley wagged her head. “There has to be another way.” Tapping her finger on her chin, she scanned the wall of giants. “No scientist would create such an elaborate system with a timed shutdown and not include a manual override, so there has to be a way to do it. Then we could all leave with Karen and not worry about these gorillas.”
Sapphira raised a finger. “There is a way.” She hustled to the end of the line of wall cavities, disappearing for a moment in the darkness. A few seconds later, she returned with a scroll. “Mardon documented everything he did,” she said, unrolling one of the dowels. “I think he left a code that describes the shutdown procedure. I tried for years to figure it out, but I gave up on it and stuck the scroll in the corner.”
Ashley took the other dowel while Sapphira continued unrolling. “It’s near the end.” She set her finger on the yellowed parchment. “Here it is. It’s seven lines of numbers. I tried matching them to letters a thousand different ways, but nothing made any sense.”
Leaning over their shoulders, Walter let out a whistle. “That looks like a job for Larry.”
“Maybe.” Ashley frowned at the scribbled entry. “I can’t pick up any obvious pattern. Even the number count in each row isn’t consistent.”
Sapphira touched Ashley’s shoulder. “Mardon used the combination six, nine, and thirteen to unlock a door and a gate. Does that help at all?”
