by Shae Hutto
“It works in reverse, too. We were following it backward.”
“Then why the hell did we just charge in to the center of the maze, like idiots?”
“We were being chased by a dragon.”
“Oh, right,” murmured Amanda in resignation.
“Sorry,” rumbled the dragon from the top of the wall, where he was draped over it like a giant lizard rug hung out to dry after a vigorous cleaning. Steaming drool drizzled from his fang-studded maw. He seemed even worse off than the humans. The Minotaur burst out in loud laughter, lifting his bovine face to the starry sky and howling with mirth in the candlelight. Amanda reached back into her bag and felt her hand brush against the Eye. She placed her palm against the smooth, warm orb and pushed at it with her thoughts. Time slowed and she could feel her consciousness being pulled into the Eye, like it had last time.
“Connix!” she shouted with her mind into the dark and living void. “Can you hear me?” There was a long pause.
“Speak, little one,” replied the voice of the dragon from the darkness. “I will hear.”
“I want to give this thing back to you, I swear,” she shouted at the nothing. “I didn’t take it from you and we don’t want it. It’s yours.”
“Even if I believed you,” replied the dragon, “what good does this information do us now, when we are in the grip of this demon?”
“Because I have a plan,” she shouted happily. “But it won’t do us any good if you roast us the moment you’re free.”
“Tell me this plan, mädchen. If it is a good one, then perhaps I will promise to hunt you no longer.”
“I need more than that, dude. Once we mangle this creep together, you will help us take down the Queen in return for your Eye. What do you say?”
“This is a poor bargain, I think,” said the dragon warily.
“It’s a great bargain,” she replied. “I think you’ll die from dancing before we do. All we have to do is outlast you and then take him down. That seems safer to me. The only reason I’m offering to cut you in is to get your help.” There was only silence and Amanda thought she was not going to get an agreement out of the great beast, but then from the darkness came one word.
“Deal.”
Amanda’s hand came out of the bag and the Minotaur stopped laughing and looked hard at her hand as it emerged holding a half circlet of silvery metal. He watched as she slowly placed it on her head and pushed it into her hair.
“I look cute in a tiara, don’t you think?” she asked the Minotaur in her best attempt at a teasing, seductive voice. She was sure she failed miserably.
“Good enough to eat,” snarled the Minotaur as he brought up his sax. “Let’s get our groove on!”
The music poured out of the Minotaur’s horn like sweet poison, brassy, then mellow, haunting but imperative. It commanded that those who heard it must dance. Those that heard it did dance, had no other choice but to dance, even though their tired fibers called out for rest and their bodies knew that prolonged dancing meant death. Amanda did not dance. All she could hear was Disturbed’s David Draiman singing his version of the old Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence. Her iPhone was pumping her playlist via Bluetooth to the exclusion field circlet on her head. As compelling as that song is, it did not command Amanda to dance. At first the Minotaur didn’t notice that Amanda wasn’t dancing. Instead of wildly gyrating, she was walking to the wall where Connix lurched with reptilian abandon. When the bull-headed saxophonist finally noticed that Amanda wasn’t getting jiggy with his tune, he overcame his astonishment and upped the volume and tempo. Sweetly cloying smoke began to leak from every hole in the sax, creating a small, thin cloud near the Minotaur. Everyone but Amanda began to dance faster and, if possible, with more effort. Amanda turned and looked at the Minotaur and pulled the flashlight out of her bag. She held it up and behind his shades, the Minotaur closed his eyes in preparation for the blinding light that was sure to follow.
She had intended to blind him. Instead, she threw the flashlight at him. If her aim had been true, she would have bounced it off his face, which probably wouldn’t have stopped the playing. Fortunately, her aim wasn’t all that great and she hit the neck of the sax, twisting the reed out of his mouth. The musical sorcery screeched to a halt with a deafening howl. It only took the Minotaur a couple of seconds to have the reed back in his lips and the music flowing again, but by then Connix had lowered his head down to Amanda and the dampening field of focused sound, set to max, had encompassed his ears, as well. Amanda climbed onto his neck and placed her head tiredly against the back of the dragon’s. By the time the sax was weaving its deadly spell again, Connix was rocking out to Disturbed along with Amanda and was completely immune to the musical sorcery.
The dragon, with Amanda riding high on his neck, leapt to the ground, shaking the stones with his massive bulk, his razor-sharp talons digging huge furrows in the parquetry. Once again, the music ended with a discordant honk and the Minotaur was running for the nearest entrance to the maze in the usual blind panic created by a pursuing angry dragon. A black dagger spun through the air, reflecting the candle light at odd angles as it twirled with seeming malevolence. It buried itself to the hilt in the Minotaur’s musclebound neck. The Minotaur lurched to a stop, bellowing in pain. He plucked the dagger from his neck and spun around, throwing the dagger at the dragon as he did so. The dagger vanished as soon as it left his hand and reappeared in the hand that it called home. The Minotaur turned to resume his headlong flight but didn’t get very far before a ball of Dalmatian rage attached itself tiredly but tenaciously to his ankle. Nick drew his hand back tiredly to throw his dagger again but before he could, Connix struck at the Minotaur like a snake. The great fangs were too large to bury themselves in the Minotaur’s body. Instead they sliced him in half. With one crunching, bone breaking, chewing motion, Connix gulped down the Minotaur’s upper half. The sax spun through the air and landed on one of the cocktail tables. The sunglasses landed next to it. What was left of the Minotaur tumbled wetly on top of Weenie, who was too tired to do anything about it; or to care. Amanda’s blaster pistol fell out of the Minotaur’s suddenly slack waistband and clattered to the floor.
“Spicy,” Connix mumbled contentedly before collapsing in a scaly heap of exhausted dragonflesh. Snarling, smoky snores were sawing their way out of his throat before his head had splintered the flooring. Amanda climbed down and turned off her music field. Connix wasn’t the only one who felt a nap was in order. Both Nick and Weenie were out of it. Amanda retrieved her blaster pistol and the sax. She made a little bed by the stage out of the old smelly sweatshirt from her bag and lay down. She dreamed of dragons.
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A battered and stained shuttlecraft limped across the leaden sky. Tensions inside were growing. The harsh atmosphere of the dragon planet was playing merry hell with the little ship’s systems, which is saying something. That little shuttle was made to last for a century of space exploration. A mere twenty hours of this world had nearly destroyed it. Oppressive heat, flaming meteors, acidic and sulfurous clouds, hurricane strength winds and the need to remain hidden from Connix had come close to canceling the vessel’s ticket. It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad as it was if the need for sleep had not forced the crew of three to put down on the surface. They wouldn’t make that mistake again. In the sky, there was at least the ability to dodge things that fell from above in boiling balls of superheated fire. There was also a much lower chance of a volcanic vent opening directly underneath them.
A gong like sound resonated through the hull, signaling the departure of Connix for worlds unknown and the end of this particularly dreadful leg of the journey. The sweaty, smelly people on the flight deck breathed a collective sigh of relief. The pilot wiped sweat off his face; the twins ignored the smaller amounts of perspiration that accumulated on their skin. The temperature control system onboard the shuttle had been damaged hours ago and the compartment was well
over 100 degrees.
“Follow him,” snapped the male twin as he slapped the kidnapped pilot in the back of the head. The pilot made no protest, he was used to it by now. He enthusiastically banked the ship toward where the dragon had vanished from their tactical plot and dove at the ground. The twins worked their magic, allowing the ship to follow the dragon through this world and into another one. They piggybacked on his ability to transcend reality and popped through the tortured landscape and into a cloudless twilight sky. They were far lower than they anticipated when they entered this world and the twins held their breath as the pilot cursed emphatically and pulled back on the yoke in a frantic attempt to not create a smoking crater in the gently rolling terrain. With a deafening roar that echoed from the distant mountains to the West, the shuttle leveled out a mere ten feet over the roof of a little stone hovel and banked left toward the radar return of a large object to the East. They climbed up and breathed a little easier when they weren’t so near the ground that they could count the stalks of grass bending to the wind of their passage.
It didn’t take them long to realize something was wrong. No matter how fast they flew toward the huge object the radar claimed was off in the distance, it didn’t get any closer. They climbed up to see what it was and could see from an altitude of several thousand feet that it was a series of huge stone walls that stretched miles in every direction, but it still didn’t get any closer. The female twin was the one who noticed the hovel as they flew over it again. And again. At their speed, as soon as they passed over it, it appeared on the horizon in front of them, like they were on a massive loop or a cosmic treadmill. She pointed it out mutely. The twins shared a look.
“Land,” commanded the male.
“What?” asked the kidnapped pilot who was still wary of putting the craft on the ground because of all that they had suffered on the dragon world. He ducked his head in anticipation of being slapped on the back of it. The slap came, its force slightly lessened by his attempts to avoid it, but still painful.
“Land,” repeated the male in a harsh but unemotional voice. “There, by that stone building.” He pointed at the hovel as they flew over it and again as it appeared on the horizon.
“Well, that’s nauseating,” said the pilot as he slowed the craft and began a descent to land next to the hovel. They forced the pilot to debark with them so that he couldn’t take off and abandon them, although if they had thought about it, where would he go? He couldn’t fly away without returning to this spot and he couldn’t exit this world without their help. Actually, at the moment, they couldn’t exit it either. The dragon was nowhere near for them to follow. He was in this world, but not stuck in the same loop as they were. It was a concern.
They didn’t waste time because they didn’t know how much time they had to waste. The female was casting a spell to reveal enchantments even before she was completely out of the shuttle hatch. The spell was designed to make magical enchantments glow a bright blue and they were dismayed to find a bright cerulean haze blanketing the landscape with an eerie glow. It looked as though the entire world was enchanted. The male stared around in passive consternation, while the female gave vent to her frustration with a slight exhalation and vigorous teeth grinding.
“Trippy,” said the pilot. They ignored him and began to walk around in an effort to spot some clue. “What’s that say?” asked the pilot pointing at the words on the wall of the hovel, shining brightly in blue letters. They shoved him to the side in an effort to get to the words quickly. Both twins squatted on their haunches and studied the cheesy little rhyme.
From Berg to Gate, shines the way.
Light when it’s late, follow the ray.
Simultaneously the twins turned and looked at the sun where it sat perched above them in an early afternoon position. Their eyes tracked west to the distant mountain range and they looked at each other once and nodded.
“We wait,” they said together and sat in what little shade the stone hut provided.
“Great,” muttered the pilot. He went and laid down under the shuttle and fell asleep almost instantly. He was kicked awake several hours later as the sun was just casting its golden pathway between the mountains. The shuttle was parked in the middle of the ray that lead to the horizon in the East.
“Get up,” said the female who had kicked him. “We go now,” she said by way of elaboration and climbed into the shuttle hatch. The pilot hurried after them, only too aware of what they would do to him if he made them angry by dawdling.
The shuttle pulled into a hover and then crept forward at a snail’s pace, or about twice what a car would do. They arrived at the maze in just a couple of minutes and climbed over the walls, heading directly East to where they presumed the middle of the maze was located. The stone walls of the maze flashed by beneath them as they scanned the horizon for any obvious change that would signal their destination. Both twins could feel the presence of the dragon and despite themselves, began to show small signs of excitement. The female’s breathing quickened slightly. The male began to tap his finger on the back of the pilot’s chair. They looked at each other more often as they got closer and the sky got darker.
“There!” said the male in a voice laced with the slightest hint of human emotion. “Slow down,” he said to the pilot as he pointed off to the right about ten degrees and the pilot made the shuttle follow his finger and slow down as directed.
“The Eye,” hissed the female twin. “It’s here, I can feel it.” The male just nodded.
As they got closer to the opening in the maze, it was obvious that the dragon was down there. His massive scaly hide reflected light from a thousand candles and a trickle of smoke rose to the starry heavens from his nostrils.
“Bring us over that opening and stop,” commanded the male. The pilot followed his instructions and the shuttle slowed to a hover over the stage. The enormous sound of its engines woke all the sleepers below and the wind of its downforce blew cocktail napkins and table cloths in every direction in a whirlwind of detritus. All the candles blew out. In the near dark, the black clad twins were nearly invisible as they dropped from the shuttle hatch to land lithely on the darkened stage like cats.
Amanda didn’t see the twins but the shuttle was hard to miss. Two shots from her blaster pistol fired into the starboard engine caused it to cough explosively and begin to whine in a menacing tone. Instantly, the shuttle began to spin and spiraled out of sight into the maze. There was a thunderous crash and the sound of an explosion. The sky was lit from below with incendiary brilliance for a couple of seconds.
Connix roared with rage and irritation and breathed a plume of greenish fire onto the wooden stage which burst into enthusiastic flames. Amanda was forced to dive away from the blast to avoid being roasted.
“Connix!” she shouted as she gathered herself off the ground and tried to make heads or tails of what was going on. At least she could see now. “Stop it with the fire! You’ll kill us all!”
Connix didn’t answer her, but beat his great leathery wings, buffeting everyone so severely that they were knocked from their feet as the massive scaly beast rose into the air. Amanda saw more figures rolling across the ground than she expected. Who were those other two people? Weenie had seen them as well and as soon as Connix perched upon the wall and stopped flapping his wings, the dog went into missile mode and launched himself at the closest of the two figures. He clamped his jaws like a toothed vice on the wrist of the male twin who began to savagely punch the Dalmatian with his free hand. Amanda couldn’t risk a shot at the man for fear of hitting the dog.
“STOP!” screamed the female twin in a voice straight from the depths of Hell, rage and pure menace dripping from the one syllable. The woman stood behind Nick with her knife to his throat. “I will end this boy’s miserable life,” she said with absolute conviction. A tattoo of a black heart was visible on the hand holding the knife. “Give us the Eye and we will let you all live.” Unlike the first statement, Amanda doubted th
e veracity of the second. Activity stopped. Weenie didn’t let go, but he stopped trying to rip off the man’s arm. Amanda froze with her pistol aimed at nothing and even the male twin ceased punching Weenie. Besides the crackling of the merrily burning stage and the harsh breathing of the dragon perched above them, it was quiet.
“That’s better,” said the woman sweetly. “Now, where is the Eye?”
Nick winked at her.
“Lady, you’re about to die,” Amanda tried to warn her. In response, she dug her dagger into the tender flesh of Nick’s neck. Amanda sucked in her breath. Nick exploded into a million fleeting shadows that dispersed into every shaded nook and cranny of the dark maze. The woman was left holding nothing but air. Amanda swung her pistol toward the surprised and confused woman and pressed the firing stud. A blazing bolt of plasma erupted toward her target. The woman, despite being shocked by the recent event of having an adolescent boy turn into insubstantial evil in her arms, held her hand up and a pulsing red glow appeared in front of her and deflected the plasma bolt. The next two shots were also deflected. Amanda slipped the blaster pistol into her makeshift holster and stared fiercely at the woman who taunted her by waving her hand in a ‘come on’ gesture. With absolutely no hesitation, Amanda charged.
The man’s back was too close to the wall for Nick to rematerialize behind him, so he did so right next to him. Unexpectedly, the man seemed to anticipate such a move and as soon as Nick was a solid form again, the man backhanded him across the face. Nick managed to stick his dagger into the man’s arm as he swung at him again, then he dissolved into shadows once more. The man made no sound to acknowledge that he had been wounded, but he did stop punching Weenie with that arm. Instead, he swung the other arm, with the dog attached, at the wall, knocking the breath out of Weenie but failing to dislodge the battered but unbowed Dalmatian. When he brought his arm back to do it again, Nick reappeared and stabbed him in the stomach. Again, the man seemed unsurprised and instead of banging the dog into the wall, he brought Weenie down on Nick’s head like a club. Nick fell to the ground, unconscious, and Weenie spun over a cocktail table, wriggling madly and squealing in pain.
