by Sara Snow
I pulled the smoke stone from my pocket and uttered the secret word, the heavy iron torch I’d been holding over my head just moments ago falling to the ground with a resounding clatter that thundered through the hallway. As I lingered in my smoke form, surveying the scene, it looked fairly realistic. Even if Paimon became suspicious, there wasn’t any shred of evidence based on this scene that would give him anything to prove we were there. Just an old, rusted piece of iron finally giving in to its age with some blazing consequences.
As predicted, the guard ran up the stairs, the frantic clattering of his shoes against the stairs alerting Georgia to hide again, ducking down behind the statue. The look on the guard’s demonic face was priceless when he saw the flames, looking left and right, searching for a way to extinguish them. He ran toward them, and as I moved past him obscured by the real smoke coming off the curtain, Georgia and I took our opportunity to dash down the stairs. I slipped through the small iron-barred window that was cut out near the top of the door and shifted back into my physical form, undoing the bolt locks.
As quietly as I could, I opened the door just enough for Georgia to slip through and we finally breathed a sigh of relief. That feeling didn’t last long, though. The air in the crypt was frigid and the smell struck me as horrifyingly familiar. It was dank and dirty, covered with dust and spider webs across every imaginable surface. Bones littered the floor, some looking even older than me. The one thing that did seem new in the room was a chair sitting just in the middle of the room just inside the door, fresh chains and shackles draped across it, spilling over onto the floor. The sight sent my stomach lurching. They were covered in blood—the chair, the chains, the floor. It was mine. The fact that any piece of myself existed as a permanent fixture within the demon palace made me sick.
Georgia took my hand. “Don’t look at it,” she said softly.
With her free hand on the small of my back, she gently maneuvered me around the chair toward a long, dark hallway lined with coffins and long-dead bodies wrapped and stored in deep carved shelves along the wall.
“We’re looking for a scroll,” she said. “Someone called it the Scroll of The Huntress. It apparently talks about some prophesied huntress who would decide the fate of both humans and demons. She asked if I was the one the scroll was written about.”
“Do you think you are?”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure… Either way, she said it was buried in the crypt beneath the bodies of Paimon’s enemies, so I’m sure it’s down here somewhere. I’m just not sure where.”
“Guess we’d better start looking,” I said.
The torchlight was dim through the seemingly endless hallway, and shivers continuously ran up my spine the deeper we got into the dark relic of decay. Georgia seemed to be feeling similarly, her grip on my hand shifting to her hanging onto my arm.
As horrible as the place was, we had to peruse each and every catacomb-like shelf compartment as we went, looking for any old scrolls. The compartments were filled with trophies, likely things Paimon had taken from the people kept there as if their bodies alone weren’t acceptable prizes. Occasionally, we’d find a dusty tome hiding under a skeleton’s hand or spot one tucked at the head of an open coffin, but none of them fit the bill.
“We need to be looking smarter, not harder, Georgia,” I said. “We could be down here for hours if we look through every little shelf.”
“What do you suggest?”
I had to think about it for a moment. “The scroll is supposed to contain prophecy, right? Paimon wouldn’t just leave something so important laying around.”
“The person who told me about it did make it seem like it was worth protecting,” Georgia agreed.
“I say we beeline for the end of this hall. It’s not just gonna be in any old crypt cell, it’s going to be somewhere special.”
Georgia agreed and we made our way down the row of resting places where we came to a spiral staircase that plunged even further into the depths of the palace.
“She did say that it was beneath the bodies of Paimon’s enemies,” Georgia said.
We exchanged a hesitant glance before seeming to decide simultaneously that that was exactly where we needed to go.
The thick scent of death only grew stronger as we descended the stairs, the torchlight seeming even dimmer and more sparse along the way than the chamber above. When finally we reached the bottom, our feet were greeted with the most filthy, bone-scattered atrium I had ever seen in my life. The chamber was enormous, seeming so much larger than it should have been. It was encircled by the same catacomb-like shelf, but these went much higher in the huge open room than they had upstairs. I couldn’t actually see the point at which they stopped. I couldn’t see the ceiling either, as a matter of fact.
“Paimon needs to send a cleaning crew down here,” Georgia said, disgust heavy in her voice.
She seemed to be taking in the impressive room as well, her eyes drawn to a huge figure in the middle of the room. In the darkness, I had assumed it to be a statue, but as we moved closer and our eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see that it was actually a giant skeleton.
It was inhumanly large, towering over Georgia and me and seated upright on a large stone throne that sat atop a tiered circular platform. If I had to guess, whoever this was was one of Paimon’s oldest and greatest defeats. It almost seemed as if the rest of the crypt was buried around the bony giant. There were etchings in the platform, old and worn down, and I could only assume they depicted whatever vicious battle this behemoth had lost to end up here. It seemed impossibly old, predating anything we’d seen in the crypt so far.
In its hands, it held what looked to be a metal box, seeming a bit out of place there. I gestured toward it.
“I’d guess that’s probably our prophecy scroll in there. What do you think?” I asked.
“I say let’s stop guessing and find out,” she joked.
She turned her attention to the box, and with a jolt, it began to move in the titan’s grasp.
“Careful, Georgia, don’t break it. Paimon will never forgive us if we destroy his biggest trophy in this place,” I jabbed.
She waved me off. “If you break my focus, I just might!”
The skeleton’s hands were large, but the gleaming box held between them seemed no bigger than a milk crate. Carefully, so as not to disturb the remains, she telekinetically slid the box out from between its hands, giant metacarpals and phalanges collapsing together once she’d fished the box out.
It floated down and dropped in front of us, crunching atop the remains littering the floor. I lifted it up and gave it a gentle shake, hearing something solid slide around inside. It had some weight to it, a bit heftier than I’d expected. I worked the clasps on the side, the rusted metal unwilling to open without a bit of convincing. Eventually, I was able to force it open, and as soon as I took the lid off, I knew we’d found exactly what we were looking for.
The scroll inside was emerald green, embellished with gold foil and embroidery along the edges. It was a thick scroll and I realized as I turned it over in my hands that the weight hadn’t been from its metal container, but from the scroll itself. I hoped that was an indication of the amount of information we’d find, because if its weight was proportional to its knowledge, we would be golden.
I noticed, though, that there was something else in the box laid across the bottom. I picked it up, realizing that the rest of the weight must have come from this. I ran my finger along the side of what appeared to be an incredibly sharp obsidian blade, like a long dagger, etched with intricate designs all along the blade and handle. There were two jagged bits jutting out from either side of the blade, rough and jagged. It seemed like something had been broken off from those pieces. Georgia’s eye was caught.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“No idea,” I said, holding it out to her. “Dagger maybe? Does it ring any bells for you? Did the person who told you about the scroll say anything about this?
”
She took the thing in her hands and immediately, a piercing blue glow radiated from it, causing her to drop it in surprise. The moment it left her hands, the glow disappeared and its black surface was plain once again as it clattered amongst the bones at our feet.
We looked at each other, surprised.
“So that’s new,” she said.
“What do you think it is?”
“The girl I was with, she said something about a blade that the kings had hidden,” she said, picking it up, that blue glow emanating from it again. “She told me about a weapon that was supposed to be able to kill the three demon kings.”
“Well that sounds pretty major,” I remarked, a bit wondrously.
“I’m not sure if it’s the same blade or not, but something tells me if it does this when I touch it, we should take it with us.”
“We don’t have long before that guard gets a handle on the fire situation upstairs. You think we can get back to your room with these?” I asked.
“I don’t think we have many other options,” she answered.
That was the truth. There was no light in here and our distraction would only be good for so long. We hurried back the way we came, saying goodbye to our new gigantic friend with the scroll tucked safely under my arm. Rushing past all the bones, stirring up dust under our feet as we ran, all I could think of was hoping like hell our guard was still trying to figure out how to control the fire situation.
We finally made it back to the main room, darting around the damn chair that still sat mockingly covered in my blood in the middle of the room, hurrying over to the door. I handed Georgia the scroll, quickly shifting and floating cautiously up to the barred window to get a better look. The guard hadn’t returned, and when I hurried up the stairs to peek out, he was busy throwing what I could only assume was one of many pitchers of water unsuccessfully over the fire.
I quickly returned and shifted back, reporting my findings to Georgia, satisfied that we were good to go.
“Tuck that blade into your belt under your shirt or something,” I told her. “We can’t let anyone see that glow.”
“Good point,” she said, quickly securing it under her clothes.
We crept up the stairs, hurrying past the hectic guard as he tossed another pitcher over the fire. He picked up the last pot of water and tossed it, and in the same moment, I saw Georgia freeze, her eyes narrowing in the direction of the fire. I went to reach for her arm but stopped when I saw the fire, its biting flames suddenly extinguished as the guard’s final meager pot of water splashed over it. The guard seemed pleased, resting his hands on his hips as he surveyed the damage. He didn’t seem to realize that his tiny sprinkle of water wouldn’t have been enough to do anything more than turn to steam the moment it touched the flames, but we didn’t stick around to see if he figured it out, hurrying off to ensure we’d get away before he returned to his post and potentially spotted us.
“Quick thinking, Georgia,” I whispered. “Very nice.”
She shrugged like it was nothing. “Just didn’t want to attract too much attention over here.”
I quickly transformed again and we proceeded just as we had before through the castle without incident, making it back to her room much more quickly than we’d gotten there. Finally safe in the confines of her room, I shifted back. We couldn’t have gotten back soon enough—this power was so new to me and I felt absolutely drained after using it so many times right off the bat. I trudged over to her bed and sat, letting myself wilt over while she came and sat beside me with the scroll in hand, laying the long obsidian blade on the nightstand, its glow dissipating away from her contact.
I nodded toward it. “Are you going to read me a bedtime story?”
She smiled. “I think we should read it together.”
I turned to get a better look as she began to unroll the scroll, its covering dusty and crackling despite how well-kept it was in its box. As soon as we looked at the writing at the top, a realization dawned on us.
“Well, I can’t read any of that,” Georgia said with a deflated sigh.
I let my head fall back. “I don’t even know what language that is.”
Seems like we could really use your help right about now, huh Kingston?
I took the scroll from her, unravelling it further, trying to see if there was anything usable inside. There were numerous pictures scrawled on the page, and though they were old, they still seemed to be in good enough shape.
“Wait!” Georgia cried out as I unrolled a particular image. She turned the page back to it, pulling it from my hands. “I’ve seen this before.”
The image was a bit difficult to make out, but it appeared to be a crowned man, his arms thrown in the air as he was impaled by a long, black dagger with three blades wielded by a woman. On the ground beside him were two figures lying dead—one with a head resembling a horned animal skull, the other a reptilian face.
“Where have you seen this?” I asked.
“Well, not this image exactly, but when I first found out that Paimon was my dad I researched him, and this same figure came up in a couple images I found online and in Kingston’s books. I think that’s supposed to be him.”
“And that’s Bebal and Abalam,” I said, indicating the more obvious figures on the ground. “But who is she?”
“It has to be the Huntress. She’s the one Rakshasi told me about who’s supposed to decide the fate of humans and demons. That has to be her, right? Who else could defeat the demon kings?”
“And who do you think this Huntress is?”
She paused. I wasn’t sure if Georgia was thinking the same thing I was, but I had a feeling deep down that we both had a pretty good guess at who it could be. It seemed too early to say based solely on pictures, so I moved on after her hesitance to answer seemed to be an answer in itself.
I held up the scroll, studying it. My eyes wandered over the image of the three-pronged dagger, its black blade thrust deeply into Paimon’s chest, his eyes bugged out in surprise or pain or fear. The drawing was a bit crude, but there seemed to be a light radiating from the blade.
“Do you think this could be our mystery blade?” I asked, gesturing toward the obsidian piece on the nightstand.
The blade began to glow blue as Georgia ran her finger over it experimentally.
“I don’t see what else it could be. It’s so plain, though, do you think it could actually kill Paimon?” she asked.
“Maybe when we find the other kings’ pieces, the blade will be powerful enough to do it. Maybe it just needs to be reassembled and wielded by the right person,” I said, nodding indicatively towards her. “We just have to figure out our next steps to finding the pieces.
I had no idea what those steps would be yet, but as I took the scroll and unrolled it as far as I could, skimming the images, I was sure I’d find something that would help. That woman—the Huntress—appeared many times throughout the scroll, obviously. There were several depictions of her sitting over what appeared to be a dead or injured person with her hands on their wounds, and several others of what seemed to be her rising above massive spreads of flame across the land. Some of the pictures were a bit too obscure and cryptic for depiction, but one that caught my eye in particular was toward the end of the scroll, showing what seemed to be the Huntress directing the three kings downward, where they fell into a pit of flames followed by a final image of the Huntress seemingly floating in the air emanating a strong glow. I could only guess what it meant, but it seemed like that could be important to our endgame.
I couldn’t help but notice, though, that there was a bit of the scroll that seemed to be cut off at the bottom. The edge was jagged and feathery, like it had been torn, unlike the much neater edges that surrounded the rest of the scroll, even despite their age. I wondered what must have been written or drawn there, and I could only imagine that it was something important. Something that Paimon couldn’t risk letting anyone else know, even with the scroll already so hard t
o find in the crypt.
I took the blade from the bed and crouched, sliding both it and the scroll as far under her bed as my arms could reach.
“We should get some rest,” I said. “It’s late and there’s not much else we can do right now.”
I sat down on the floor and took off my jacket, balling it up into a pillow and laying down on it. The shaggy rug was soft beneath me and I didn’t think I’d actually mind sleeping on it until Georgia leaned off the bed, peering down at me.
“Are you really going to sleep on the floor?” she asked incredulously.
I’d obviously spent an abundance of time thinking about how nice it’d be to share a bed with Georgia. Even before all of this mess, as soon as we met, I’d thought about it. Even now, I found myself thinking about it, and of course I wanted to. The self-control I would need to exercise would be nearly unbearable, exhausted as I was. And besides, it was the gentlemanly thing to do.
On the other hand, though, the quality of sleep I’d get on the bed would be much higher. And who would want to leave beautiful Georgia cold in her bed all alone?
She broke my train of thought. “The bed is big enough for two, don’t be an idiot,” she said.
And she was right. It was enormous. I could see myself lying in it with her arm draped over me, dreaming of a time when we’d be back home and somewhere safe. But I could also see myself kissing her deeply, our fingers intertwined, tearing the shirt from her torso, kissing every inch of her.
The thought alone was tantalizing agony, and I knew that I needed to ignore the urge.
Pushing myself to behave but craving comfort, I sat up, accepting her invitation, shucking off my shoes. She moved over to make room for me beside her beneath the covers, curling up next to me with her head on my shoulder. She only stayed there for a moment before she looked up at me with those violet eyes and I could see them darting back and forth from my eyes to my lips.
Ignore the urge.
But even her faint invitation was apparently too much for me and before I knew it, I was leaning down, kissing her. She returned the kiss, gentle at first, but quickly growing in fervor. She propped herself up on her elbows to get at me better, her tongue laving at mine as she threw her leg over my hips to straddle me. I threaded my fingers into her hair, pulling her deeper into the kiss with one hand, the other finding its way down to her soft, ample ass, giving her a loving yet firm squeeze. She responded to the touch instantly, grinding her hips down against me and I could feel how ready she was. I was sure she was feeling how ready I was by that point, too.
