by Bryan Davis
“Then laugh at this!” Walter swiped the beam at the closest Naphil. The light surged into the giant’s body, but instead of disintegrating him, it seemed to infuse him with energy. His skin glowed, and he sent out twin beams in a more vibrant scarlet than ever.
“Walter!” Ashley called. “Sapphira said they have plant genes, so they must be phototrophic. Light gives them energy.”
“Yeah,” Walter said, dousing Excalibur’s beam, “I guessed that.”
Chazaq loosened his hold on Sapphira, allowing her to breathe. “The inhabitants of Earth will learn of our skills soon enough. In the meantime, we will take Mara with us. A little insurance might be beneficial.”
Sapphira slipped an arm free and desperately gulped air. “He can’t … kill me. … If he does … he will die.”
“Is that so?” Walter drew back the sword. “You plant creatures might be immune to the beam, but I haven’t heard of one yet that can withstand an axe.” He charged at the Naphil he had energized and sliced through his leg, cutting it off just above the knee. The giant toppled over and crashed to the ground. As his life fluids poured out, he roared, writhing in pain.
Drawing back the gleaming sword again, Walter scowled at Chazaq. “Want to be next?”
Three of the Nephilim lunged at Walter, but he leaped out of the way, slicing a finger off one giant as he breezed by. The others made a circle around him and closed in slowly. Walter swung Excalibur frantically in every direction, lunging whenever one of the giants came within range.
“Stop!” Chazaq commanded. “We cannot afford any more casualties.”
As the Nephilim backed away, Walter let out a huge sigh, sweat dripping from his chin. The fallen Naphil now lay still in a pool of dark blood, his face ashen.
“Begin the ascent,” Chazaq ordered. “When we are fully energized on the surface, that little sword will not be so effective.” He stomped over to the rope and picked up Karen with his free arm, releasing Sapphira at the same time. As his arm locked Karen close to his body, she gasped and her head lolled forward. “Here is our new insurance. When we are safely out of this hole, I will let her go.”
Lifting his sword once again, Walter charged.
Chazaq squeezed Karen’s throat. “One more step, and she’s dead!”
As Karen gagged, Walter halted, letting the sword’s tip rest on the floor, his face flaming red. “Coward! Hiding behind the skirt of a little girl!”
“Not cowardice. Expediency.” Chazaq released her throat and waited while the other giants made a human ladder to the trapdoor high above. When the fourth giant’s hands reached the door, the others climbed up the bodies. Once the seventh Naphil began his climb, Chazaq transferred Karen to him. “Take her to the top. When we’re all safely away, we will return her.”
Seconds later, only Chazaq and the four giants forming the ladder remained in sight. The top one pulled himself into the air shaft, then reached down for the others. The three remaining linked themselves hand-to-ankle while the giants above hoisted them upward. As the bottom giant rose, Chazaq wrapped an arm around his feet and rode upward with the chain of Nephilim. “Farewell, valiant warrior. I must admit that you have great courage. It’s a shame you’re on the losing side.”
As Chazaq’s feet disappeared through the door, Sapphira stepped underneath and called upward. “How are you going to lower Karen down safely from way up there?”
Walter dropped the sword and rushed to her side, whispering, “Don’t give him any ideas.”
In a flurry of red hair and flailing limbs, Karen dropped from the ceiling. Walter held out his arms, and she crashed into his chest, crumpling his body. Karen rolled to the side and groaned.
Ashley knelt next to them and laid a hand on each of their heads. “Are you two all right?”
Walter blinked at her. “Not exactly a gentleman, is he?” Just then, the rope slid down, collecting in a pile on his leg, and the trapdoor slammed shut.
Laying a hand on her stomach, Karen wheezed. “I … can barely … breathe.”
Sapphira stooped at their feet. “I think Chazaq collapsed her lungs! We have to get her out of here!”
“I was working on building a pile of rocks,” Ashley said, “but those creeps knocked it down. We’ll have to start over.”
Sapphira raced through her words. “There might be an easier way back at the museum room. The portal is gone, but if the dimensional barrier is still thin, I should be able to get us through. Even if we go to an unexpected dimension, at least we’ll be out of this place, and maybe I can figure out what to do from there. But there’s no way Karen can get very far in this state.”
“Sapphira’s right,” Walter said, struggling to his feet. “Ashley, you’d better try to heal Karen right now.”
Ashley pointed at him. “I was just thinking that.” She sat down and pulled Karen up into her arms. “Better stand clear, Sapphira.”
Sapphira backed away a few steps. “I think I’ve seen you do this before. How does it work?”
Walter picked up Excalibur. “Ashley is a healer,” he explained. “When I shoot the sword’s beam through the ground and into her, somehow she uses the energy to heal people. Since I’m an heir to King Arthur, I can make the sword do some pretty cool stuff.” He raised the blade and summoned the beam. “Watch.”
The shaft of light burned into the ceiling above. Walter slowly lowered it to the ground, making it sizzle across the scattered debris as it sent up gray puffs of smoke. Then, guiding it toward Ashley, he called out, “Ready?”
Ashley hugged Karen’s heaving body close. “Ready!”
The streak of energy surged into Ashley, lighting up her whole body. White beams poured from her eyes and into Karen’s chest. As arcs of energy danced around both girls, Karen cried out with a loud moan.
“That’s enough!” Ashley shouted.
Walter jerked the beam to the side and shut it down. The light from Ashley’s eyes blinked off with a tiny popping noise. Then, like a heated coil cooling down, her radiance faded. “Whew!” she said, rubbing her eyes, “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”
Karen, her face gaunt and dirty, shook her head slowly. “I hope someone wakes me up soon. I don’t like this dream at all.”
Walter put the sword away and hurried over to the two girls, extending a hand to each of them. “I think this nightmare is far from over.”
“Can she walk?” Sapphira asked. “With those Nephilim heading to the surface, we should get going. There’s no telling what they’re planning to do.”
Karen stood and tested her legs. “Yeah. I’m okay.” She squinted at Sapphira. “Who are you?”
“I’ll explain later.” Sapphira marched toward a door at the far end of the room, tongues of white fire emanating from her hands. “Everyone follow me. That includes Gabriel and Roxil. I’ll be our lantern.”
“Wait.” Ashley limped to a pile of rubble and tossed fragments to the side. She pulled out a finely polished, rectangular block and held it up. “Is this one of the gravitational field bricks?”
Sapphira looked back. “Yes, but it’s only one of seven different kinds.”
Ashley spotted the strap from her duffle bag and yanked it out of a pile, then stuffed the brick inside. As she unearthed another brick, a miniature landslide from the top of the pile exposed an enormous bare foot. “Hey!” she called. “One of the giants is still here, and it looks like both legs are intact, so I don’t think it’s the one Walter killed.” She leaned closer. “He has six toes on his foot!”
“They all do. Six fingers on each hand, too.” Sapphira continued her march toward the door. “That giant is Yereq, the one Karen replaced in the growth chamber. I’ll have to figure a way to get his body out of here, but that can wait.”
Walter wrapped his arm around Karen’s back and followed Sapphira. “I wouldn’t bring too many bricks in your bag,” he called back to Ashley. “We might have to haul it pretty far.”
“True.” Ashley dropped the second brick on the floor. “They’re probably all pretty much the same.” She hustled to catch up with Walter and took Karen’s hand.
After following Sapphira for about a minute, Walter looked over at Ashley. “What do you think?” he asked. “Does she know what she’s doing?”
Ashley blinked at the strange girl who left a fiery aura in her wake, literally blazing the path ahead of them. “I don’t know what she’s all about, but when she looks at me, I feel like she sees right through me, like I’m standing naked in front of God himself.”
“I think I know what you mean.” Walter laid a palm on his chest. “Whenever I see those bright blue eyes, my heart beats like a bongo on steroids and tries to jump up into my throat.”
Ashley felt a pang deep inside and swallowed back a sigh. “I guess if I were a guy, I’d feel the same way. She really is pretty.”
“Yeah. She is. But that’s not what causes it. I’ve been around pretty girls ever since we left West Virginia, so I’m used to it.”
A surge of warmth flooded Ashley’s soul. She glanced at Walter, but he kept his eyes focused straight ahead. She opened her mouth to reply, but Karen squeezed her hand, making her pause. Ashley squeezed hers back and kept silent. Walter had given them an honest compliment, and they both basked in its soothing tenderness. Nothing more needed to be said.
With only Sapphira’s bodily glow lighting the wide tunnel, they had to pick up their pace to stay in the oracle’s trailing halo. Karen stumbled, but Ashley caught her and braced her back.
“You going to make it?” Ashley asked.
Karen winced and continued her hobbling steps. “Depends on how far it is. I guess I needed a little more healing.”
“Almost there!” Sapphira called. Her sweet voice echoed, rolling past their ears like a lilting melody.
“I guess she heard you,” Ashley whispered. “We have to be quieter if we want to keep any secrets from her.”
“Secrets?” Karen whispered back. “Don’t you trust her?”
“I’m not sure yet, but it’s best to keep our own counsel for now—you and Walter and me.”
Karen focused on the circle of light surrounding their guide. “Maybe, but like you and Walter said before, there’s something really cool about her. She has so much confidence and life, I want to believe her. She reminds me of Bonnie.”
“Bonnie? Why?”
“Even without all that fire, she just kind of … you know … glows.”
Ashley watched Sapphira’s white hair bouncing in the midst of her full-body halo. As they passed through a darker part of the corridor, the aura strengthened, making the tunnel seem like a moonlit path. “I think I know what you mean,” Ashley said. “I’m trying to be cautious, but it feels wrong not to trust her.”
After a few minutes, Sapphira stopped under an archway at the end of the tunnel and pointed into the darkness ahead. “Ignite,” she called. As if in response, a light flickered somewhere in front of her. Still pointing, she called out, “Ignite,” several more times until the chamber beyond the archway filled with an orange glow.
She waited there, her blue eyes shining to match her radiant smile. When Walter, Ashley, and Karen joined her, they entered a huge cavern.
“I called this the museum room.” Sapphira extended her arm toward an enormous building. “And here is the museum, the first floor of the Tower of Babel.”
Ashley gazed at the magnificent structure, following its ancient architecture upward until it disappeared in the dim upper recesses. Tapering slightly as it rose, the curving wall revealed etchings of human shapes and archaic words, carved deeply into sun-baked bricks. Recessed arches framed tiny windows at precise vertical intervals, perhaps lookout points for guardians of the ancient city or maybe air vents for the tower’s inhabitants to help them find a cooling breeze. Old-fashioned lanterns lined the exterior perimeter, their flames painting the walls with an orange tint.
“It used to be filled with thousands of scrolls,” Sapphira continued, “but I could only keep the most important ones. I needed fuel for heating during the years I couldn’t get out. I usually keep the lanterns off to save oil, but I thought you might like to see the museum.”
Ashley walked slowly toward the massive doorway, still gawking at the amazing sight—one of the oldest artifices in all recorded history, once holding the greatest library the world at that time had ever known and now housing ancient documents of incalculable value.
Although she longed to browse the remains and drink in its educational bounty, her eye caught something of more immediate and practical value. Scattered around the walls she found a few scrolls; piles of old books, magazines, and newspapers; and a glass gallon-sized jug filled with clear liquid. She touched the glass and turned toward Sapphira. “Is this drinking water?”
“Please, help yourself! I collected that stuff during my visits to the land of the living, and the water is from our springs.”
Ashley withdrew her empty water bottle from her bag and filled it from the jug. After taking a long drink, she recapped it and tossed it to Walter, who shared it with Karen. Ashley picked up the jug and raised her eyebrows at Sapphira. “Want some?”
“No, thank you. I need very little to survive.”
“Really? Why is that?”
Sapphira lowered herself to the floor and sat cross-legged. “Maybe this is a good time to tell you the whole story. Now that I think about it, even if I can make a portal, it might take us to the exact spot where the giants will come out, and that probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Let’s give them some time to move out of the area.”
Walter, Ashley, and Karen joined her on the floor. With the museum looming like a tall haunted house and Sapphira’s unearthly blue eyes shining, a midnight hush fell over the chamber. Sapphira told her story from her first memory of her slavish life under Morgan’s tyrannical rule, through her adventures with the dragons, all the way to her role in rescuing the great creatures from Dragons’ Rest. When she finally finished, she let out a long sigh. “And now, we, that is, Gabriel and Roxil and I, are hoping to find Makaidos.”
“But now he’s called Timothy,” Walter said, pointing at her. “How in the universe do you find a guy who blew up in a house but didn’t show up in Kingdom Come?”
Ashley tapped his knee. “Walter! This is my father we’re talking about. Get a clue.”
“Sorry.” Walter shrugged his shoulders. “It just seems too weird to be for real.”
Ashley locked her gaze on Sapphira’s blazing eyes. “Like everything else going on around here.”
“So,” Karen said, leaning close to Sapphira, “all the dragons had to do was say Jehovah-Yasha, and they could go through the veil?”
“Yes.” Sapphira took Karen’s hand, and her glow covered the younger girl’s arm. “But for dragons, a confession is much more than just words. To penetrate the veil they had to believe in Jehovah’s Messiah in order to pass on to eternal life, just like humans do.”
Karen nodded slowly, eyeing their clasped hands as the glow spread up to her shoulder. “That makes sense.”
Ashley took a sip from her water bottle and recapped it. “So now that you’ve eaten from the tree of life, do you think you might live forever?”
Sapphira pulled her hand, but Karen hung on, covering it with her other hand. As the glow washed over Karen’s face, Sapphira smiled at her. “I don’t think I would die a natural death, but maybe I could be killed.”
“But if anyone tries to kill you …” Walter slapped his hands together. “Smack! He gets the hammer.” He pushed against the floor and rose to his feet. “That was a cool story, but I’m ready to get out of this creepy place.”
Sapphira drew the clutch of hands to her face and kissed Karen’s ring finger, her lips passing across the rubellite and turning the gem white for a brief moment. Releasing Karen, she got up and walked past a pair of matching sleep mats, stopping at a
clear spot on the floor. “The portal used to be right here,” she said, spreading out her arms, “so gather around, and I’ll try to get everyone into the fire.”
Ashley followed her to the open area. “Into the fire?”
“It’s the only way.” Sapphira brushed a hand across the air. The lanterns surrounding the museum winked out one by one until only two remained lit. “Trust me. You won’t feel anything except a tingly sensation.”
Her eyes adjusting to the dimmer room, Ashley edged closer, a new anxiety weakening her legs. “How about Gabriel and Roxil? Will they come with us?”
Sapphira laid her arm around an invisible bystander. “Gabriel’s already right next to me, and Roxil’s behind him, so I think they’ll come along. If not, I’ll try to come back and get whoever is left.”
Bright plumes of fire erupted from Sapphira’s palms. As she waved her arms in a wide circle over her head, a cyclone of flames swirled above, growing in diameter. Walter, Ashley, and Karen huddled underneath, and a fiery wall lowered around them, a cylindrical curtain of dancing orange tendrils.
In spite of the warmth, Ashley shivered. The yellow tongues licked the air as they created a stream of hot, dry wind that slurped the moisture from her eyes. She shut them tightly. A tingle crawled along her skin, like a swarm of centipedes creeping up her back. Then, with a loud whoosh, the hot air swept upward, and damp coolness returned.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” she said, opening her eyes. “In fact, it was kind of”
Ashley gulped. The museum was still there! The old books, dirty scrolls, and sleeping mats were all still there! She swung her head from side to side. Walter, Karen, and Sapphira were gone! Now shivering harder, she hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms. “Walter?” she called, her voice quaking. “Karen?”
No answer.
She took a timid step backwards, but her elbow struck something solid. She wheeled around and came face-to-face with a dragon!
“Aaaugh!” She fell backwards and landed on her seat. “Who are you?” she shouted, pedaling her feet to scoot away.
