Myths & Magic: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection

by Kerry Adrienne

  I stopped halfway to sitting down on a rock that looked a lot like a chair. I chuckled at what I had just been thinking. I was in the center of the earth, fighting for my life against monsters from who knows where, and I was worried about what kids at school would say about me. My chuckle bubbled into a laugh, but I clamped down on it and cut it off.

  “It’s good to see you laugh,” Jacob said, coming up to me. I saw Sam moving off to sit with Zach and Emily out of the corner of my eye. Those two had not been more than a foot apart since Zach had defended her. How long ago was that? Two or three months? It seemed like it.

  “I was just thinking of something ironic,” I said.

  “You want to share?” he said, his eyes twinkling in my headlamp light. I was able to flick my eyes back and forth to his, but not maintain contact. As he had said before, it was a start.

  I told him what I had thought and he laughed. It was a beautiful sound, and it made my heart ache. It sounded a little bit like Rick’s laugh.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll let everyone know what really happened. I already told you that we would never have been able to do this without you. I believe that even more strongly now.”

  “I don’t know why, but I don’t feel like arguing about it,” I said.

  “Are you okay?” he said, eyes narrowing as if he was scrutinizing my expression. “You were…intense there for a little while.”

  “Enraged is probably a better word,” I said. “It’s true, what Tyler said. If it was any one of us besides Rick, all of us may have been killed, one at a time, as the shadowling picked us off.”

  “Us maybe, but not you. But yes, Rick really saved us all. He seemed like a really nice guy.”

  Unexpectedly, I started to cry again. I had taken my sadness and pushed it down deep, covering over it with my anger, stomping down on it, and nailing a tarp over it. Jacob’s kind words ripped that covering to shreds, and grief washed over me. I started sobbing, gasping for breath, trying to get air into my lungs.

  He put his arms around me and hugged me to him. He stroked my hair with one of his hands, rocking me gently back and forth.

  “Good,” he said. “Let it out. It’ll help.”

  I did. I sobbed like a child for several minutes, fighting for breath, sniffling through my runny nose. All the while, he held me and soothed me.

  Finally, my breathing returned to normal and my tears slowed. They still leaked out, but not in torrents as before. I looked up at him, our eyes meeting. It was the most comfortable I had been meeting someone’s eyes in more than two years.

  “Better?” he said.

  Then my situation occurred to me. I dropped my eyes and my face turned to fire instantly. I fidgeted and he loosened his arm. I wriggled away from him.

  “Um, yes,” I said. “Sorry. I…it’s been a rough day.”

  “Don’t apologize, Dani. You’ve been through a lot. More than the rest of us. You can keep that anger if it’ll help to get the captured people back, but don’t let it overwhelm you.”

  “I won’t.” I looked over at Madison, who was glaring at me. She wouldn’t say anything, of course. I was a psychotic killer. Still, it made me feel bad. Jacob was her boyfriend, after all. “Thank you. For, you know, just being here.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” he said, his smile something that should have been in a museum for everyone to enjoy. “Are you ready to finish this?”

  I wiped my cheek, picked up Rick’s sword, and stood up. “I am. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 26

  I raised up my hand as I stopped. Everyone behind me shuffled to a halt. We had only been moving again for maybe half an hour after our last break.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  “Hear what?” Sam said.

  I looked around at the others. They were all looking at me as if they didn’t know what I was talking about. Zach went so far as to tilt his head like a dog.

  There it was again.

  “Stay here for a minute,” I said.

  I took a breath and switched off my headlamp. Surprisingly, the terror that usually threatened to overwhelm me at the thought of being in the dark didn’t attack me. I looked down the tunnel. The lights from the others’ headlamps still made it possible for me to see well enough to pick out the lumps and other obstructions on the floor.

  I continued on for fifty feet or so, following the slight left turn in the tunnel. I stopped when I heard more clearly what I wasn’t able to make out before. It was the sound of voices. They were arguing. I still couldn’t quite get what they were saying, though.

  I moved a little closer, just a handful of steps, and stopped. Still, the voices made no sense, like I was only hearing half of what they were saying. Like a bad connection on a cell phone. I took a few more steps, telling myself that was as far as I would go before turning back. The sounds were as loud as someone in front of me talking directly to me, but I still didn’t understand.

  Then it occurred to me that I was hearing the screeches and shrieks of the shadowling, not voices at all. Not human voices, anyway. Standing calm, not in the middle of a battle, I could hear the modulation in the sounds, pick out the different speakers. I could even tell when one of them was asking a question. The overriding sense of the conversation, though, was antagonism. Two shadowling were arguing.

  I dared not go any farther. If I could hear the creatures, they could hear me, and their eyesight was much better in the dark. There may have been one watching me right then. I silently turned and walked as carefully as I could back toward the others.

  As I did, though, I realized I had moved far enough around the turn that their lights were not visible. I still saw a glow from around the corner, but the beams of light themselves didn’t penetrate into the section of tunnel I was in. Strange. I had thought the beams still reached me. Shrugging, I went back to my group.

  “There are more of them up ahead,” I told them. “They’re arguing. I wasn’t able to see because they don’t seem to need lights, but I think we’ll have to go through them. There are no other side passages up to where I stopped.”

  “Are you sure we have to go through them?” Zach’s dad asked. “I mean, can’t we backtrack and take one of the other side passages back there?”

  “We can wander around these caves forever,” Sam answered for me. “The chances of finding the captives are better if we go where there are shadowling.”

  “Yeah, what she said,” I said.

  “Let’s go, then,” Jacob said, getting a glare from Madison for some reason. “We need to find them soon. We’ve been down here a long time.”

  The others agreed, Tyler mumbling something about aliens in an underground lair. My mother had been quiet since our argument.

  I looked at each of them, made brief eye contact. My heart fluttered when I met Jacob’s brown eyes. Madison had nothing but a cold look for me. Zach looked to his dad, a half smile on his face, and then faced me and nodded. Emily looked to Zach, then turned to me and forced a smile also. Zach’s dad, his friend Dan next to him, nodded and hefted his ax handle. Tyler hummed something and lifted his chin in greeting. Sam set her jaw and nodded, her serious brown eyes unblinking. My mother wouldn’t meet my eyes. This was all we had, the ten of us. It would have to be enough.

  “Let’s turn off all the lights but one,” I said, “and keep that one on red light mode facing down. Everyone grab the shoulder or arm of the person in front of you. Try not to make too much noise or trip over anything. The closer we get before we turn the lights on, the better off we’ll be. If we can flood the tunnel with light suddenly, we’ll have a better chance of surprising them.”

  I flipped my headlamp to red light mode and pointed it toward the ground in front of me. I remembered the route, and it was relatively free from big obstacles, so with the help of the red lamp, I should be able to lead them up to where I was before. That would have to be enough.

  I gripped the sword in both hands, my right on the hilt and my left on the scab
bard. I set off for what I hoped wouldn’t be a disaster. If we could take advantage of the internal strife, we might just finish off the group of shadowling without another death in our party. Depending on how big the group was, and how serious the argument. Nothing brings two arguing factions together like a common enemy.

  It seemed to take hours, each step excruciating as I strained my ears to hear any change in the argument still progressing up ahead. Every scuff of a shoe, every harsh breath behind me made me wince. We were making so much noise that if the voices stopped for even a moment, we would be heard. We might, anyway. Still, I went on, and those behind me followed.

  I put my hand over my lamp and scanned up ahead. I thought I saw something up there, as if someone else was using a red lamp. I blinked twice and shook my head, but it didn’t go away. It didn’t get any brighter, either. To be honest, it looked like a ghost. A kind of red blob of a ghost, but definitely humanoid.

  I allowed my red lamp to illuminate the ground again and moved forward some more. Another few steps, and something told me we had gone far enough. I stopped and turned my head back toward the others. They looked like movie monsters, illuminated by the red light like that. I swallowed. Too much thinking about imaginary creatures and not enough about what we were doing. I forced myself to focus.

  I realized then that I had screwed up. I had come up with a plan in my head, even mentioned it to them, but we didn’t get into details. Without saying anything, how would we coordinate turning our lights on? I mentally kicked myself, trying to think of how I’d get it across to them. If we didn’t all act at the same time, the entire plan could fall apart, as much of a plan as we had.

  I took my headlamp off and pointed it toward myself, motioning them to get as close to me as they could. Then, I pointed toward the lamp switch and held up my other hand, squeezing the sword between my knees so I could free up both my hands. I held up my hand, fingers splayed. Then, I dropped the fingers one at a time, counting down. When I dropped the last one, I motioned to the headlamp switch and then mimicked like I was throwing a ball, starting with a fist and throwing my hand out, fingers spreading wide. To make sure I was understood, I then squinted my eyes and held the hand up as if to shield myself from bright light.

  I looked at each of them for confirmation they understood. Each nodded. Well, almost all of them. When Madison looked to me, then to Jacob, then to Tyler, I knew she was confused. She opened her mouth to ask, but I gestured emphatically, putting my finger to my lips and then drawing it across my throat. Even in the red light, I could see her pale. She got the idea.

  Jacob looked at me, nodded, then started gesturing to Madison. After a minute, she finally got what I was trying to say. I hoped that everyone else really understood what I wanted and weren’t just thinking they did.

  There was nothing else to do. We’d have to go with it.

  I nodded at them, making sure they all were looking right at me. I breathed in, filling my lungs up all the way down into my abdomen, then, in the red glow of my headlamp, I held up my hand, fingers wide. I pulled my thumb in, counting to myself as I did so. Five.

  I switched the light off, moving the switch over to the white light setting.

  Four.

  I put the headlamp back on my head and grabbed the sword from between my knees.

  Three.

  I turned to face where the shadowling argument was building. Maybe they would come to blows before we attacked.

  Two.

  I twisted my hand around the hilt of Rick’s sword and gripped it tightly.

  One.

  I turned my headlamp on and ran toward the voices, hoping I was not alone.

  Chapter 27

  Lights flashed behind me, Sam’s super flashlight brightest of all. Its beam cut through the darkness like a shark’s fin in the ocean, the shadow seeming to split before it. When it fell on the creatures, I gasped. There had to be more than forty of them in the large chamber.

  A chamber filled with cages like the ones we had been in. Cages with people in them. But forty shadowling? How were we going to survive this?

  Two of the shadowling were standing very close to each other. Their postures told me that they were the ones that had been arguing. One of them was the leader we had seen. Both of them looked at us, putting their hands up to shade their eyes from Sam’s light.

  But the two were not my primary concern. There were nearly a dozen shadowling between them and us. There was no turning back now; they knew we were here. I wasn’t sure if we would survive this, but a slim chance was better than none. If we turned and ran, they would overwhelm us.

  I screamed as I ripped the sword from the scabbard. As I did, I hit the nearest creature on my left with the hardwood of the sword’s case, snapping its head back from the blow, and sliced at one on the other side with the sword, tracing a red slash across its chest. I heard a gunshot.

  I wasn’t strong enough to effectively use a full-sized katana with one hand, so I threw the scabbard at another shadowling in front of me and gripped the sword with both hands, controlling my slashes with the right hand and levering with the left. My opponent raised both its claws to ward off the sheath, leaving its abdomen wide open. I dropped low and sliced at it horizontally. Its organs spilled out from the cut as I moved to the next creature.

  Sam knew enough to stay back. She focused on shining the light in the faces of the monsters, Rick’s short sword in her other hand and staff cradled in her arm with its end on the ground, leaning against her. The others hadn’t been fast enough to keep up with me as I charged. Now they were entering the battle, so I needed to be careful not to cut my allies.

  I had to hand it to Rick. He kept his sword sharp. A shadowling tried to slash me with its claws, and I parried it aside with the side of the sword. A tight circle with the blade, and I removed the claw from the beast at the wrist with a downward, outward slash. I circled it again, over my head, and came down diagonally, cutting halfway through the thing’s neck. I kicked it in the chest as I pulled my blade free, ducking another set of claws and shuffling to the side to get out of range of another of the attacking monsters.

  Jacob was busy with three of the creatures, having a difficult time batting away the strikes coming at him. I lunged, punching my sword through the back of one of his foes. The blade glanced off a rib and exited the monster’s front. I think I hit the heart because the shadowling fell immediately, almost tearing the sword from my hand. I jerked it clear as the body hit the ground. Jacob nodded to me as he struck one of the others in the head, and I raised my sword quickly in salute.

  That was a stupid move, something I probably did because I had read it in a fantasy book or saw it in a movie or something. It almost cost me an eye. I saw the movement just before the claw would have torn off the side of my face. I bent backward at the waist, barely avoiding the claw, and turned my salute into a cut with the blade vertical, moving the whole weapon horizontally directly in front of me. The movement took three of the claws from the attacker’s hand. I followed up with a horizontal slash from left to right, cutting across its chest, and then turned the momentum in another circle to transform the strike into a downward vertical direction, splitting the creature’s skull down to the nose.

  I pulled the blade free while taking a step back. As the sword came clear, I pivoted the weapon in my right hand, dipping the tip in a long arc and reversing its direction. Using my left hand lightly on the hilt, I guided the steel into a reverse thrust, puncturing the abdomen of a shadowling preparing to slash at me from behind. I drew the blade from its body, turned to my left, and slashed horizontally at the wounded creature, taking its head off. The shock of hitting the nerves and cartilage made my hand vibrate until the sharpened steel made its way through, and the sword moved lightly again. I’d never felt anything like it. It made something inside me squirm.

  There was no time for that. I backed away from another set of claws and slavering teeth and ran into something behind me. I brought my sword
up, casting a quick glance over my shoulder. Emily, swinging her walking stick at the shadowling, looked at me and nodded. Zach was on the other side of her. The steady rhythm of gunshots had paused for a moment. My mom was probably reloading. I nodded at Emily and lunged at the creature in front of me.

  As I turned in a circle with two of the monsters, I caught a glimpse of the two shadowling that had been arguing. The one I had seen before was shaking his head. The other one still screeched at him. It almost made sense to me. I could swear there were some real words in there. Something about “us or them.”

  I cut at the leg of one of the shadowling I was fighting and then slashed the arm of the other as it threw its claws at me. The one with the injured leg limped back while the second one came at me again with its other arm. I sidestepped, struck downward to cut its arm off at the elbow, used my own elbow to smash its nose, and then drove my sword through the chest of the limping one, angling the sharp steel up under the breastbone into vital organs. I was able to pull the blade free before the torque of it falling took it from my hands or, even worse, snapped the blade.

  The remaining creature, nose dripping blood and arm spurting it, backed away from me. I used basic movements I’d practiced in sword forms when I had played with bokken—wooden swords—several years ago. Left downward diagonal slash, right downward diagonal slash, left horizontal strike, and finally a straight downward vertical strike. The creature, bleeding from several major wounds, slipped to the ground to die of blood loss.

  I turned just in time to see the leader shadowling turn his back—it seemed male to me—on the other one. They were less than ten feet from me.

  The other arguer pulled back his claw to attack the leader. Something in me was disgusted. I don’t know why I would ever expect honor or fair fighting from these creatures, but it really irritated me that it would try to sucker punch another one of its kind. As it swung its claw, I lunged forward like a fencer, covering the distance in the blink of an eye. And struck.