by J. A. Comley
Niden finally sighed and sheathed his sword as the Verelios Beam remained stubbornly white, confirming his story.
The King was nodding.
“It is an honour to see you again, Princess Kara,” Ditte said, bowing to her as Niden shifted position. “Your husband would be overjoyed.”
Kara merely stared at him, her golden eyes conflicted. He had been her friend, once. Her husband's friend. Now, they were both traitors.
“And I am glad that you came to your senses,” she finally said, smoothly as any noble born lady, not a hint of her own emotion visible.
Niden gave her a crooked smile. It seemed she really was the same Kara he remembered, mostly.
“It is done,” Jensula said, coming out of his trance-like state.
“Good,” the King said. “Now, Ditte here claims the Sacrileon, Beky, is still alive in drodemion form. She is your target for the other vial. If she is not with the war party, then you must keep it for one of our leaders. By this, I mean General Okano, Commander D'Ordeley or Prince Niden, acting General for Cosmaltia. If one of them becomes a drodemion, you must save them.”
Niden made to protest, then fell silent. His grandfather was right. He and the other two were the beacons the army would be looking to.
“You should get below,” he said to Kara.
“No. I am an Inagium. I can help.”
“Sweetheart,” the King said softly. “You have been through—” He sighed. “Please. Go below. Help your grandmother. She will be overjoyed to see you. Tell her everything that has passed here, quietly.”
Reluctantly, Kara nodded and moved to the edge of the Hall, noticing the one they called Thira watching her. She hoped the Aurelian wasn't offended by her appearance. She didn't look offended. She looked interested. Very interested. Kara almost smiled.
She sighed, her head aching. She did feel tired, as if her life had been drawn out over one endless moment of horror. For so long, she had felt utterly lost within herself, fully aware of the evil that drove her body, that had murdered her baby, but incapable of containing it. She would help her grandmother but when Kyron arrived, she was going to fight.
***
Valana snarled and grabbed the back of Naleiya's cloak as she almost tumbled head first down the narrow stairs they were sneaking down.
Naleiya shook her head. “She's free. They made it.”
Valana's silver eyes were boring into her, as if to discover the source of the sudden madness.
“Makhi Jensula just contacted me,” she clarified, her vision clearing. “Kara is no longer a drodemion.”
“It worked?” Shaneulia exulted in a whisper. “I knew Eltara would figure it out.”
“And all the former traitors are in the City,” Naleiya said, still sounding a little dazed by the intense flooding of information. She shook off Valana's hand and stood.
“Good as that news is, it means that we have been walking around here for too long,” Zerina said, her eyes narrowing with frustration. “It must be nearly midday.” Time didn't seem to move normally within these black walls.
“We are nearly there,” Kal said, after Flek spoke. “Heny is just at the bottom of these stairs.”
At these hopeful words, the others dashed recklessly down the remaining stairs. A short corridor and a dead end were all that greeted them.
“Heny?” Shaneulia called softly.
“He is below,” Melor murmured, flicking his three tails in the direction of a square hole in the floor.
Biki, invisible, looked down.
“There are ten grobblers standing guard at the metal door Heny spoke of. The drop is about six feet.”
Valana smiled, her two curved swords appearing in her hands as if by magic.
Zerina held out a hand, her deep amber eyes holding the same battle-gleam. Valana's smile broadened and she handed the Cosmaltian Queen a spare long dagger.
Together, they dropped through the hole.
The ensuing fight was nearly soundless. The grobblers barely had time to register what was happening before both queens had silenced two each.
Valana swung her swords in an arc as four grobblers tried to surround her, their teeth and claws gleaming. She decapitated two before driving her blade into the another's chest. The fourth ran. Silently, she dropped her swords and took out her throwing knife, taking aim.
Zerina quickly yanked her borrowed dagger free and faced the two grobblers, who looked smug at having separated her from Valana. She could see the other four moving cautiously towards the silver-eyed Aurelian. Her own eyes narrowed. She lunged. Kicking off the wall to gain height, she drove the dagger into the nearest grobbler. Using her momentum, she swung around and drove the other grobbler's head into the wall with surprising force, the dagger slashing under its collarbone at the same moment. As she stood over it, a knife whizzed by her face. She turned and watched the final grobbler fall to the ground, clutching at its throat as it drowned in its own blood.
Both pairs of eyes blazed with adrenaline as the Queens looked up to the hole where the others' faces were just visible.
“Some gracious Queen you are,” Naleiya snorted, levitating herself down the hole, her amused eyes on Zerina.
“Here, clean your weapons with this,” Shaneulia said as she landed amidst the massacre. “Grobbler blood is corrosive.”
Valana accepted the vial and cloth, her silver eyes still fixed admiringly on the Cosmaltian Queen.
“You fight well,” Valana said, as Zerina handed back her dagger. Valana cleaned it, then held it up. “Keep it.”
Zerina smiled. In Valana's culture it was a great honour to receive a weapon like this. “Thank you,” she said, taking the dagger reverently.
“That's the door to the cavern,” Naleiya said, pointing at a wide metal door just a few steps away.
“Heny?” Melor asked, using his sickle-shaped claw to scratch at a black stone Flek had stopped beside.
Steadily, the rock shifted out of the wall. The women stopped talking and turned to look as Heny's head emerged from his body.
Naleiya felt her heart turn to ice. Heny's enormous blue eyes were filled with deep sorrow.
“Kyron has left his fortress,” Heny said, his deep voice echoing clearly in the sudden dark.
Naleiya lit her staff to give them light. The others looked shocked at the news.
Their horror was amplified as a wave of heat washed out from the small hole in the rock wall above of the door. Melor bounced up to it, then moved inside.
“I can see them,” Melor's voice called from the small tunnel, squeaking in terror. He scurried back out and landed lightly on the floor. “We have to hurry.”
Naleiya faced the door and sent a strong blasting spell at it.
“Get down!” she cried, just managing to get out of the way of the rebounding spell, herself.
She slammed her fist against the door. “It's protected! Magic won't work!” she cried, ignoring the pain in her arm where a little of her spell had sliced through her robe and left a bleeding gash. It would heal soon enough.
A woman's scream sounded from the other side of the door, the terror in it nearly palpable.
“No!” Naleiya threw herself at the door, pushing against it, knowing from Heny that it opened into the cavern.
“Help me!” she grunted, panic building in her chest. “We can't let them burn!”
Just as Zerina, Shaneulia and Valana pushed against the door, another agonised scream echoed out. A man's scream, this time. Naleiya snarled wordlessly at the door as they heaved together, not seeming to move it an inch.
“We will go on ahead,” Melor said anxiously, using his three springy tails to launch himself back through the small tunnel above the door.
“Quickly,” Biki said, flying Kal up and shoving him into the hole.
“Take this,” Naleiya huffed, still pushing back against the door as she handed Biki her brother's staff. “Get it to him!”
Flek made a running leap at the hole while
Naleiya spoke to Biki. His body stretched into a long, thin line, spinning like a drill. He shot through the hole easily.
Biki nodded and squeezed through the hole backwards, dragging the staff in after her.
“I won't fit through such a small space,” Heny rumbled as Aimee turned her scared amber eyes on him. “You go. I will be in soon.”
Aimee shot him a confused look as he edged back into the dark shadows outside Naleiya's light.
“Hurry!” she squawked at him before flying through the hole.
Valana swore as their heaving had no effect.
“Push on the count of three!” Naleiya said, “All together. One, two—” Naleiya's voice twisted into a scream as a skeletal hand gripped her shoulder.
***
Starla and the others had only waited a few hours when the cages vanished, proving Larkel's words true.
“See if you can get your chains loose,” Starla called to them as they managed to stand, the chains just long enough.
She leaned over to watch their efforts. “When you get free,” she added as Raoul found a loose rock and began to beat his chains with it, “escape to the Royal City.”
“No,” he said stubbornly, between hits, “I said I'd get you two down.”
“This cage is sealed by magic, Raoul. It'll never—”
Her words were cut short as Raoul shouted in triumph. He was still wearing his chains, but they were no longer attached to the ground.
“Impossible,” Larkel began.
Raoul was looking around trying to find a way up to the cage holding Larkel and Starla when he gave a startled cry. His chains had dragged him forward a few feet until he was closer to the pit than any of the others. Then his chains soldered themselves to the ground again.
“Everyone stop,” the High Lord boomed. “Kyron is no fool. If you break free of your current position it will only put you in line to die first.”
Elise screamed, her eyes riveted on a point just ahead of her brother.
Starla gasped in horror as she watched the lava begin to rise. Kyron must have left the fortress. The heat of the cave was suddenly stifling. Carvings she hadn't noticed began to glow on the walls and the heat abated, slightly.
Raoul screamed in agony as a small drop of lava, bubbling out from the molten flow, seared through his bare foot. The pool was no more than a few feet away from him, now and rising fast.
“Raoul!” Starla shouted, shaking the cage uselessly.
Her eyes shot around the cavern, frantically searching for a solution as her friends whimpered in fear and then began to cry out in pain as the rising heat began to bake their skin.
As if in answer to her silent prayers, a familiar bird call echoed through the cavern.
“Aimee? Aimee!” Starla cried as her little sparrowhawk flew into the cage.
Starla heard the Sacrileons gasp and call out the names of their own companions.
“How?” Starla began, but was interrupted as Aimee yelled.
“Biki! Up here!”
“When you were all captured, Heny stayed here. Flek took the others back to the City for help. Heny stayed to guide whoever came to help you.”
“Who's here?” Larkel and Starla asked together.
As if to answer their question, Biki was hovering before the cage, Larkel's staff clutched in her arms.
“My staff!” Larkel darted a hand through the bars and accepted the precious gift. Quickly, he closed his eyes, working through Kyron's barrier. He knew they had little time left to them.
“Hurry, hurry,” murmured Aimee, looking from Larkel to the cavern floor where the lava had crept forward by another few inches.
Starla followed her gaze, horrified by the thought that they might come so close but still be unable to save their friends.
“These chains have to be removed,” Melor said, going to Fey.
“We'll have to do it,” Litzie said, her velvet voice grave as she stood in front of Rya.
“No. Don't even think about it,” Gaby said sternly as Biki and Kal faced their Sacrileons, too.
“Ifwedon'tallwillbelost,” Flek said, standing before Gaby.
“No,” Rya growled, her sharp teeth glistening.
In that moment, the metal door to the cavern flew off its hinges, flying from the wall and landing in the growing sea of lava.
A huge beast, made of entirely black rock, barrelled in through the gaping hole in the wall. Taking in the scene with its small, blue eyes, it roared and smashed a fist into the ground.
The humans cried out in terror and Starla fought the urge to cover her ears as the ground heaved and broke.
A deep fissure opened up just in front of Raoul, running from one end of the cavern to the next. The encroaching lava spilled down into its depths, away from those chained to the ground.
“That should hold for long enough. Get away, companions,” the giant stone creature said, waving the animals away from the Sacrileons. Its voice was very deep, and familiar.
“Heny?” Starla choked out, looking wide-eyed at the transformed snabble.
A deep laugh rumbled in its chest as it moved forward.
Three woman suddenly rushed in behind him.
“Shaneulia! Zerina! Naleiya!” Starla cried, joyfully.
Beside her, Larkel's eyes snapped open. Now that she was more attuned to magic than before, Starla could feel more clearly the waves of raw power rolling from him.
The cage began to plummet towards the lava.
Starla didn't scream. She had felt Larkel's arm catch her around the waist and then they weren't in it any more. They glided gently towards the others. The cage melted and gurgled as it sank into the lava, Starla and Larkel watching from the other side of the fissure.
Larkel moved forward, healing Raoul's burned skin and broken arm, not bothering to wait for permission. Raoul was too busy staring at the lavafall to notice, until his bones sunk back through his skin. Then he screamed, falling to one knee.
Starla smiled at her friends and rescuers, then back at the hole in the wall where the door had been. Through it, strode a feline woman with a group of ragged-looking strangers behind her.
She recognised Rosila from Larkel's memories, her little skeletal hands pointing out their targets to the people behind her.
Larkel stepped forwards several steps, as if to greet the newcomers.
“Queen Valana,” Larkel said formally to the silver-eyed woman, even as his sister threw herself into his arms, one arm pulling Starla into the hug, too.
“High Lord Larkel,” Valana said, looking amused that he would bother with formalities in the face of such danger.
“Look,” Starla urged them.
Five of the strangers, all men, were now kneeling in front of the Guardians. The remaining women had gone, after a moment of indecisiveness, to kneel before Elise, Antonio and Pierre.
“They're part of the group that betrayed us,” Naleiya murmured. “They were caught sabotaging the baby magmus pit. Rosila freed them. They have chosen to do this.”
Starla suddenly realised, with a dreadful sense of horror, what these strangers had come to do.
“For Galatia!” Rosila suddenly cried.
The men and women grabbed the chains of the person before them, screamed intense agony for a moment and then collapsed at their feet as the chains vanished.
Elise and Antonio looked around with eyes wide in mute horror, then quickly scooped up a prone twin each, as if desperate to hold on to something from home.
Pierre smiled benignly at the woman who had taken his Curse, brushing her hair from her face and rearranging her limbs so that she could be sleeping.
“There will be rivers of silver and flowers of gold,” he murmured, patting her hair gently before rising.
Starla watched as the Sacrileons rose to their full height, flexing their obsidian bodies.
Fey hissed in frustration. “The Sacred Stones are no longer in the fortress. Kyron must have taken them with him.”
“Qu
ickly, we must leave,” Zerina said. The lava was already nearing the brim of the fissure.
Larkel faced it, grunting as he held it back. It was rising faster now that Kyron was getting further away. A wave of lava began to tower above them, Larkel's spell the only thing holding it and its searing heat at bay.
Rosila looked torn, standing midway between Father Joe and Raoul. Starla's lighter spirits were suddenly punctured. One of them would not make it out. Not unless one of the others here chose to give their life.
“My dear,” Father Joe said to the emaciated woman, “if you feel you must save someone, save him.”
The Sacrileons were already carrying the other humans out through the arch. Zerina and then Valana were taken out, too. Lua was creating flying discs and Fey was causing stalagmites to burst from the floor to shoot the flightless pets up on to them.
Finally, Rosila made her decision. Her frail scream echoed briefly and Raoul's chains disappeared. Grunting, he hauled himself upright and began dragging her prone body away.
There was a great rumbling and shifting of stone against stone as Heny reverted to his original size, his eyes looking too big for his face once more. Litzie nabbed him and hurried out, her wings flapping desperately against his added weight.
“Leave her!” Larkel bellowed at Raoul, seconds before his barrier was forced back by several feet, swallowing Rosila and nearly taking Raoul, too but for Naleiya dragging him back with magic. Even his enormous powers were no match for the raw energy of the exploding earth. Kyron was the only one who could keep a volcano tame.
Only four Sacrileons returned, looking exhausted.
“We have to leave now!” Naleiya shouted, “Kyron's runes are draining their energies!”
He nodded and Raoul, protesting and pointing at Father Joe, was scooped up by two Sacrileons and carried away to the oculus where Fey used her element to spring them out.
