Before Alex realized it, the fight was over. The only forms he could see gathered in the clearing that were still standing belonged to the members of the Guild.
“That’s enough fog,” Alex called out to where he could see Clark’s large form carrying Ben’s much smaller one. Almost immediately, the fog began to lift. As it cleared, Alex and Nina quickly checked on their fallen and stunned classmates.
“I didn’t even get to stun one of them,” Nina said with annoyance.
“You stunned Anna,” Alex said, heading toward the entrance to the cave.
“That’s right,” Nina said with a smile. “That’s a memory that will keep me warm on a cold winter’s night.”
Alex pulled the goggles from his neck and handed them to Victoria as they both stepped up to the entrance of the cave.
“These worked great,” Alex said. “Thanks.”
“Daddy deserves all the credit,” Victoria said.
“What’s the next insanely impossible thing on the agenda?” Rafael said, walking toward the cave entrance as he pulled a shirt over his head.
“Now we seal the Shadow Wraith back in its prison,” Alex said.
“Are you sure you know how to do that?” Daphne asked, looking up at Alex with worried eyes.
“Maybe,” Alex said, looking at where the cave entrance opened to a thin stone stairwell that descended into the earth.
“Right now I’d prefer some of that cocky Alex bravado,” Rafael said.
“So would I,” Alex said and took the first step down into the cave to face the source of his fears and the focus of his life’s destiny.
Chapter 24: The Belly of the Beast
Alex kept a close eye on the rough-hewn stone steps beneath his feet as he descended into the cave. The steps must have been fashioned by magic because they were too long and too sturdy to have been made by hand in the scant few days since Alex had last been there. As he stepped down onto the cave floor, he raised the glow-wand over his head, its brightness increasing as he whispered the rune-spell that activated it. The chamber had changed since he had been there with his father. The wall where he had first heard the voice of the Shadow Wraith was broken open to reveal a smoothly-carved tunnel that curved downward and to the left. The gaping hole in the wall seemed to have been made not by magic, but by the hard work of many hands. Two iron stone-picks and three shovels lay on a pile of rocks that had been the wall.
“The hole to the tunnel is new,” Alex said to the others.
“Where does it go?” Nina asked, taking her brother’s hand in a tight grip.
“Down into the darkness,” Rafael said, leaning forward to sniff the air. “The rank-smelling darkness.” Rafa was right, Alex realized. The air wafting up from the tunnel did smell fetid and vile. Like something rotting.
“I think it goes down to the actual prison chamber,” Alex said, stepping up to the ragged mouth of the tunnel.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Daphne asked. “An invitation from Orpheus?”
Alex nodded and glanced up at Victoria as he stepped into the cave. She straightened her shoulders and followed him down into the darkness. The tunnel walls were smooth, as though bored out of the hard granite of the mountain with a white-hot auger, much like the tunnel to the dragon Gall’Adon’s lair. The floor of the tunnel was flat and glass-like, as though the stone had been melted rather than carved. Alex had no doubt that it had been created by magic. A powerful magic.
The tunnel continued to curve to the left as it plunged down into the mountain. The angle was not excessively steep, but after what Alex judged to be three turns in a spiral that dug into the mountain like a corkscrew, he figured they were at least a hundred and fifty feet below the mountainside. As they made their way down into the tunnel, Alex leading by the light of the magic glow-wand, the stench that filled the air and their nostrils became thicker and more pungent. Alex noticed that the others were already covering their noses as he covered his own with his hand. Two more turns and another hundred feet down into the mountain brought them to a level landing where the tunnel straightened for twenty feet and opened into a pitch-black chamber.
Alex didn’t pause at the bottom of the sloping tunnel, but continued down the narrow hallway toward the blackened room at its terminus. He knew what was in the room. He could feel it. Like a strong wind vibrating the strings of a violin, he could feel the dark magical energy of the room pulsing through him.
He had been concerned when they defeated the soul-captured guardians of the cave at the surface that the Shadow Wraith’s dark creature, that portion of its power that it projected into the world, would be recalled to attack them. When it hadn’t arrived, that had worried Alex all the more because it could only mean one thing — the Shadow Wraith knew he was there to confront it and whatever it had in store for him was more frightening than the dark cloud of evil that he had encountered before.
As Alex approached the end of the tunnel, he noticed that a broad iron door was set into the rock wall of the entrance so that it could be slid shut to block the chamber closed. He had only a moment to take note of the door before he stepped into the room, the smell of rotting flesh making him want to retch. He heard Victoria and Clark cough against the strength of the odor as they stepped up behind him.
Alex raised his glow-wand higher and cast its light around the cavernous cavity of smoothly-carved rock. The room was about fifty feet in diameter with a perfectly domed ceiling covered in small, hand-etched runes that glittered in the light of the wand as though filled with gold. The rune symbols swirled around the room in a wide spiral that spun in upon itself again and again and finally came to rest in a tight circle directly across from the entrance to the room. In the center of that circle of runes was a larger rune carved into the wall. The carved rune looked like an endlessly layered knot and appeared cracked and charred as though it had been attacked by a flaming sledgehammer. Alex knew that rune. It was identical to the rune that was carved in metal and hung around his neck.
As he stared at it in the dim light of the glow-wand, he knew what that rune was and where its power lay. It was the rune of spirit sealing. It was the final rune, the capstone of all the runes that ringed the room, the rune that held the Shadow Wraith locked away in another realm. The memory of how to pronounce it came to him as so many rune memories did, out of a fog that seemed like lifetimes ago, but with a clarity that was akin to suddenly remembering where a misplaced book might be.
Even as Alex began to feel a surge of hope and promise swell within him, he heard a crashing sound of metal hitting rock. Spinning on his feet, he saw that the iron door, it too covered in a stream of runes, had been slammed shut. Clark put Ben on his feet and ran to the door. Daphne reached out to steady Ben as Clark tried to push the door open, but it had no handle and did not budge.
“I am so glad you have come, Revenant,” a voice said. It was a voice he knew well, but which sounded different. More crisp and more feminine. And it wasn’t coming from inside his head. It was coming from behind him. “I have been waiting for you.”
Alex and the others turned and a chorus of gasps rose among them as they took in what they saw. Standing before the ruined rune at the center of the wall twenty feet away from them was the most beautiful and incandescent woman any of them had ever seen. Alex blinked his eyes and tried to clear them of what he assumed was an illusion. The woman was tall and slender with high cheekbones and long flowing black hair. She literally glowed with a soft luminescence that cast a glittering light upon the runes around the chamber. Her eyes were a deep, blood-like crimson, seemingly all pupil and no iris. Alex shook his head and tried to focus his mind, which suddenly seemed foggy and slow.
“It was sweet of you to bring your friends to join me as well,” the woman said as she stretched out her arms, palms upturned and fingers held wide apart.
Alex blinked hard and tried to concentrate. This was no woman before them. It was an extension of the Shadow Wraith, like the dark cloud that ha
d pursued him in town. Alex blinked again and forced his perspective to switch, to see the astral world instead of the physical one. As his perception shifted, the woman’s glowing body became a cauldron of swirling black oil that stretched out from her fingertips like slithering tendrils reaching for Alex and his friends, reaching for the blazing soul-essences at their hearts.
“Jah-Ne-Pha-Elon,” Alex said, his voice rasping and dry. He swallowed and spoke again, gathering the magical energy of the mountain and forcing it into the rune-spell. “Jah-Ne-Pha-Elon.”
As he spoke, Alex watched the oil-like streams of darkness flowing from the woman’s fingers wither and fade away. Alex felt the others beside him shift their feet as though they had only just realized what had been about to happen. His perception shifted again and he saw the woman as the others did.
A frown crossed the woman’s face and quickly transformed into a dazzling smile. “I did not bring you here to thwart me,” the woman said. “I have brought you here to join me.”
“I am here to…” Alex began to say and suddenly found he was not sure why he was there. He was there for a reason surely. He saw the woman smiling at him and struggled to remember what that reason was. To join her? To join her in what? And then he was not in the cave.
Alex was in the schoolyard fighting Dillon with his fists, punching the older boy again and again until he fell to his knees. Alex looked up to see his friends of the Guild and the other students around him cheering. Then Alex was not in the schoolyard.
He was walking through the town center, striding down the middle of the street. The sidewalks were lined with the townspeople four rows deep, all with one knee bent to the ground and their heads bowed before him as he walked past them. As he passed his friends and family, they raised their heads and cheered at him while his enemies like Dillon and his father, the man who had been mayor, trembled and quaked. Then Alex was not in the town center.
He was standing at the very peak of the Black Bone Mountains, his arms cast wide, dark clouds swirling through the sky above him as lightning struck down and shattered the earth below. His thundering laugh filled the air and rolled across the valley like a tidal storm. He could feel himself wielding more magical energy than he had ever believed possible. He felt it welling up from the land in great waves that coursed through him and were transformed into magic that was beyond imagining. Balls of flame hurtled through the air as the fields of the valley rolled like a carpet shaken by a giant hand. The buildings of the town below shivered and fell. The sky above opened up as a rift of energy swelled and rippled and ripped a hole between realms. From the hole, a swarm of black-winged demons descended to fill the air like a plague of insects.
Something stood before him on an opposite mountain peak. Something he had seen before. A creature. One he knew. One he did not know how he knew. A large white wolf, its eyes a piercing granite gray. He knew those eyes, but did not know how he knew them. Then a woman stood beside him. An old woman, with gray eyes like the wolf’s. He did not know where he knew this woman came from, but was certain he had seen her. She did not bow down before him as the others all had. This angered him and he raised his hand to smite the old woman when she spoke.
“This is not your destiny, Alex,” the woman said in his mind, her lips remaining closed. “This is only what it wants from you. You are the one who decides your path.”
Alex remembered who this woman was — Batami. This led him to remember who he was and he found himself back in the chamber of the Shadow Wraith, standing before the deceptively beautiful woman, watching her lips curl into a snarl.
“You may only deny me once, Revenant,” the woman said.
Alex did not know why she called him this, but he knew that he had little time to act if he was to have any hope of resealing the Shadow Wraith’s prison. “Daphne! Ben!” Alex yelled to his friends. “The rune in the center! Now! Release the fire now!”
“Fire!” Ben screamed, his body shaking more than ever as a torrent of orange-white flame burst forth from his chest and engulfed the woman who stood before the cracked central rune on the wall. The woman howled and staggered back as the flames tore through her and burst against the rune symbol carved in the wall. The woman seemed unharmed by the flames, but affected by them nonetheless. Her body became semi-transparent and lost its solidity in the flame. Daphne began chanting rune-words as she grasped Ben’s shoulder with one hand and raised her other to direct the flame and keep it focused on the large rune carved into the wall of the chamber.
Alex too began casting magic, gathering all the magical energy that he could and focusing it into the rune-spell that came to his lips as he concentrated on the broken rune, visualizing it becoming whole again.
“Ka’Neff-Sha’Tal,” Alex said and the woman screamed and writhed in the flame as the rune behind her began to glow a golden red. Alex repeated the word again and again, intoning it as he focused on making the rune complete and unbroken. As he did, the woman, the Shadow Wraith, for that is what she was, began to change. Her skin began to dry and crack like old black leather set to fire. Her limbs became like gnarled roots, her hands like jagged shards of bone. As she opened her mouth to scream, razor sharp obsidian teeth jutted forth at every angle.
A scream filled the chamber and a viscous black cloud erupted from her mouth like a stream of gaseous vomit. The oily black vapor stretched out toward Alex and, as it did, he felt his strength sucked from him like a thousand leeches draining his lifeblood. As the dark cloud reached out to encompass Alex, the rune on the wall began to dim and fade. Victoria started to step between Alex and the swirling mass of blackness emanating from the woman, but Alex stopped her with his hand.
“Help Daphne and Ben,” Alex gasped, fighting to maintain his control of the magical energy that flowed through him and into the carved rune. “Everyone help Daphne and Ben,” he croaked.
The woman howled again as Victoria, Nina, Rafael, and Clark each placed a hand on Ben’s wide shoulders and added their magical energy to Daphne’s, narrowing the stream of fire blasting forth from Ben’s chest and focusing it on the shattered rune. The black cloud recoiled away from Alex and dissipated. The Shadow Wraith tried to charge Alex and the others, only to find itself drawn back toward the wall as though tethered by some invisible chain. The woman screamed and began to change shape again, her body beginning to lose form altogether.
Alex continued to chant the rune-spell over and over as he watched the Shadow Wraith dissolve into a churning mass of darkness, a darkness that began to reform and take a new character. Alex realized what new form the Shadow Wraith assumed even as it loosed a defiant roar that drove into his brain like a blade and felt as though it would shatter his mind. It was a roar like one he had heard not so long ago. The roar of a dragon. The Shadow Wraith had returned to the form it began with so many centuries ago. A dragon’s head of swiftly swirling blackness filled the chamber before them, its eyes brimming with red-black flames that flickered in emptiness.
Alex could feel the Shadow Wraith’s power weakening, but he didn’t know if they would have enough magical energy to seal it back in its prison. It was only partially free or the rune on the wall would have been utterly destroyed, but Alex knew they were only holding it at bay. It fought wildly against the power of the rune-spell Alex chanted to fix the seal and it battled back the dragon’s flame that pushed it toward the dark realm where it would once again be imprisoned.
As the smoke-like dragon’s head roared in agony again, Alex thought he heard something like metal striking rock behind him, but he could not spare the attention to investigate the noise. A moment later, from the corner of his eye, he saw a spark of blue-white lightning engulf Ben. The flash of lightning lasted only a moment and Alex felt a wave of surprise wash over him like a bucket of ice water. Mei fell to the ground as a tree branch the size of a small club connected with her head, making a sound much like a melon being hit by a hammer. As Mei struck the ground, Alex saw who wielded the tree branch and was even
more surprised. Anna stood over Mei’s fallen form with a look of disgust and triumph on her face.
Ben, Daphne, and the others were momentarily stunned, but unharmed by Mei’s spell. Anna had interrupted the spell before it could do any real damage. But it was enough to distract them and cause the dragon’s flame emanating from Ben’s chest to nearly wink out. This was sufficient to restore some of the Shadow Wraith’s power and now it roared forth and grew as it tried to engulf Alex and his friends in its cloud-like maw of shadow-black teeth. Ben screamed and the flames burst forth from his chest stronger than ever. The shadowy form of the dragon’s head recoiled from the flame and its teeth snapped shut just inches from Alex and the others.
“Help them,” Alex yelled to Anna as the angry dragon roar filled the chamber again. “Help Daphne and Ben direct the fire!” Anna seemed momentarily frozen by fear in the face of what she saw, but she shook herself as though waking from a dream and rushed over to place her hand on Ben’s back.
Alex looked back to face the Shadow Beast’s dragon-headed form and chanted the rune-spell again, louder this time, shouting at the top of his lungs as he tried to draw and focus ever more magical energy. “Ka’Neff-Sha’Tal!” Alex screamed into the roar of the dragon’s head. He could tell the magical energy Anna was able to draw from the land and add to the control of the dragon flame Ben cast had made a difference. The dragon head of the Shadow Wraith grew smaller and receded toward the rune on the wall as the stream of flame grew more and more narrow. Under Daphne’s direction, the finger-thin flame began to trace the outline of the rune again and again. The rune began to glow a brilliant golden-white. As it did, the Shadow Wraith receded into the rune of the wall like smoke pulled through an open window.
The Dark Shadow of Spring Page 23
