“Yes, Dad.” Aeryn lunged forward, but Ian threw out his arms to block her.
“Wait.”
“But he’s in there, Ian. We have to rescue him.”
“Hunter said it might be a trick. We should wait for him.”
Through the trees, a small rustle began.
“What’s that smell?” Aeryn recoiled at the odor. “It’s like mucky, wet dog.”
The rustle turned into a crash. There stood Morgan.
“Dad!” Aeryn’s voice neared a frantic level. “I’m coming.”
“Hurry,” Morgan plead. “Something’s after me.”
“HAAAAAA!”
Aeryn and Ian jumped at the sound behind them. Hunter leapt from the darkened storage closet. Stripped down to his under shorts, giant mask on his head, he was painted like an Indian warrior. Wooden sticks protruded from his head like the antlers of a deer. “Don’t move,” he ordered. “Danger is near.” Hunter stepped back in front of the door, in front of the other two.
“Hunter,” Morgan called. “I can see you, son. You’re the only one who can save me from the predator.”
Hunter eyed the surroundings, spotting areas that were rustling.
“Hunter. I need you. Come now.”
Moving leaves parted and three rabid-looking deer emerged. Lips snarling, saliva foaming, and nostrils flaring, they all circled Morgan in the woods.
“Hunter!”
Ian wrapped his arms around Aeryn, holding her tight. Hunter raised his clenched fist, and waited.
The predators circled. Morgan shook, spinning around, trying to keep an eye on them, never letting one get behind him. His eyes teared, and a sob escaped.
Hunter remained stone-like, arm poised, senses sharp.
Morgan turned again, pleading red eyes boring into Hunter’s soul.
The arm swung, releasing the stone. It whistled through the air, hitting its mark with deadly accuracy. Striking right between the eyes, Morgan fell to the ground with a blood-curdling scream.
“Daddy!” Aeryn tried to wrench herself from Ian’s grip, but he held tight.
The human heap slumped on the ground giggled. It shook with laughter, dissolving into the ground. The room went dark.
“Well done, young Hunter,” the puppet master’s voice boomed from the darkness behind them. “Perhaps this was not the right choice for you.”
Scraping and scratching sounds surrounded them. “Where’re your clothes, man?” Ian asked.
“In the storeroom.”
“Well, put ‘em back on, dude. This is a little weird.”
“Ok, as soon as I can see again.”
SCCCRRREEEEECCCHHHH
Another waft of sulfur, and a second match lit, followed by a second open door.
Cheers and jeers escaped from the second door and bellowed out into the great room outside. Ian was the first to the door jamb. There, inside the room was a half circle of cheering, jeering men, egging on a fight in the middle. Two men slugged it out, pummeling each other to a bloody pulp for the entertainment of the crowd. The half circle surrounding them threw down money, placing bets on who would win, or even survive the match.
They were on what appeared to be a ship. Water separated the three in the doorway from the men on the ship’s deck. One fighter was obviously winning, and one losing. The losing man was on his knees, back to the door. He tried, over and over again, to rise to his feet, but time and time again he was pummeled back down. The crowd refused to help, cheering instead for his opponent.
“I’ll give 500-to-1 odds that Morgan Welch will battle back and win! Who’s a taker here?”
Another blow spun the man on the ground around to face the door. There the kids all looked into the black and blue, bloodied face of Morgan Welch.
“Dad!” Hunter dove for the door, but stopped when he saw the water separating them from the ship’s deck.
“No!” Ian jumped in. “It’s a trick.”
“They’re beating him up,” Aeryn sobbed. “We have to do something.”
“Help him!” Hunter screamed
“No!” Ian still blocked the door.
“You’re a coward!” Hunter shoved Ian toward the door. Ian grasped the door jamb and held on tight.
“That’s not your dad! It’s a trick!” he screamed back. “It’s a trick.” The slight pause in Hunter’s anger was all Ian needed. “This is not a battle we can win. They’re trying to divide us. The only way we can get your dad out is if we all stick together. We have to stay calm and keep a level head. Don’t let your anger get the best of you. We should only fight the battles we can win. Please, Hunter,” Ian pleaded.
The ship and water both disappeared in an angry flash. The room was again doused in darkness.
SCCCRRREEEEECCCCHHHHH
The room flared into bright light again and the third door was already open.
“Aeryn? Hunter? Ian? Where are you? I came to take you home.” It was a soft, sweet, woman’s voice this time. A familiar voice.
“Mom?” Aeryn’s feathers ruffled. She half-ran, half-flew to the last open door. Inside, was the smiling image of her mother, just the way Aeryn had remembered her these long nights here in this strange underworld. She was wearing Aeryn’s favorite red dress, and had her hair pulled back into a pony tail, like she always did on the days she worked around the house. Tears sprang to Aeryn’s eyes, and she choked back a sob. Until this very minute, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed her mother since this whole ordeal had begun.
A loving maternal hand reached toward the children. “Come. I will help you find your dad. Then we can all go home together.”
“I can’t do that, Momma.”
“Yes, you can, sweetheart.”
“No, I can’t.” She was openly weeping now.
“Why ever not, my sweet baby? Don’t you trust your own mother?”
“Yes, absolutely I do.” Her resolve strengthened now. Swallowing hard and wiping the tears away from her eyes, Aeryn looked back into the room. “But you’re not her.”
The picture of love took on a ghostly appearance. The face scrunched up into an angry snarl. “Come here right now!” it barked, echoing off the cave walls. “I mean it. Don’t make me come over there, or you’ll all be sorry!”
Aeryn turned to the two boys, all standing with their mouths open. “This is not the right room. We can’t trust her. She’s not our mom.”
“NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!” The ear-piercing scream shattered the darkness. The three threw their hands up and covered their ears. The walls shook and the floor rumbled beneath their feet. Boulders shifted and pebbles shot from one end of the room to the other. The darkness flashed with bolts of brilliance, and the puppet master dropped back into the middle of the dimly-lit room.
Around them, the puppet-like humans hung from the walls, holding their burning matchsticks.
“You - must - choose - one,” he said pointedly, enunciating each and every word, trying to contain his rising anger.
“No,” Hunter said. “That was never the rule. You said we must choose wisely.” He swallowed hard. “We choose none.”
Rage glared from the puppet master’s painted wooden eyes. His anger bored into them and seared on their minds. “Then you shall pay the price for your indecision.” The wooden arms clattered, flinging wide. “Seize them!” he commanded.
Chapter 43: Temptation
temp·ta·tion [temp-tey-shuhn] noun; the act of tempting; enticement or allurement; the fact or state of being tempted, especially to evil
“Where are my manners?” the puppet master gloated. “Release them.”
Hunter, Ian, and Aeryn were thrown unceremoniously to the ground. Three puppet guards clacked around them and stood at attention, back against the rock wall at the outskirts of the room.
“Perhaps violence isn’t really necessary. We’re all intelligent souls, right?” He ambled around the well in the center of the room, to the side where the three were sprawled on the hard volcanic floor. He
squatted, peering into their eyes. “You’re scared. That’s good.” Seating himself next to them, he smiled. “I can teach you.”
“Teach us what?” Hunter asked.
“Everything!” He doodled on the ground with his wooden finger. “I can teach you how to do magic.”
“Magic?” Hunter asked.
The puppet nodded. “You see, I know you had help getting here. I know each one of you failed on your own.” He looked at Hunter, Ian, and Aeryn, one by one, and went on. “How would you like to never have to depend on anyone ever again? You could be as great as me. You don’t need anybody or anything. Why, just think of it! The possibilities are endless!” He laughed that shrill laugh again. “No parents telling you what to do. No ‘helpers’ making you go through endless tests. Oh, yes,” his wooden eyes glistened. “I know all about those weaklings. They didn’t help you at all did they? Noooo. But I can.”
“How?” Ian scooted a little closer.
“Simple.” The word came out as a simple whisper. “Just promise the rest of your life to me.”
“What?” Hunter leapt to his feet.
“Now, now. It’s not as bad as it sounds, Master Hunter.” Puppet scooted over nose-to-nose with him. “The only catch is— and it’s so minor it’s hardly worth mentioning— but when I call upon you, you must respond. That’s all. The rest of your time in all eternity belongs to you. You can do whatever you want, to whomever you want. There are no more rules.” Clacking wooden arms spread wide. “You will share all of the same powers that I do. You can ‘lead’ your own band of misfits and miscreants. You have the brains to do it, too. You three are the smartest pris—, ah, guests I’ve had in a long, long time. Whaddya say?”
“We say no!” Aeryn was on her feet now. “We didn’t have to promise anything to anybody out there, and the Commander helped me, just because He loves me. All I had to do was call out to Him. No strings attached. He did it all. You are a liar, and a cheat. You are not to be trusted and we won’t promise anything to you!”
Hunter and Ian joined her, toe-to-toe with the wooden creature.
A nod was his only response. They were seized again from behind by the puppet guards. Forced to the ground for a second time, they were again powerless.
“Now I’ve got you.” The giant puppet’s voice echoed from the dark walls of the oubliette and laughed. “You have not chosen wisely.”
“You can’t win,” Hunter snapped, his anger rising once again.
“Oh, I can’t win?” The puppet laughed a haunting shrill that chilled the three to their very core. “I can’t win?” he said again. A disjointed puppet arm flew from its body, striking Hunter squarely across the face and knocking him to the ground. Aeryn screamed and stepped back, only to be thrust forward and over the top of her brother piled on the floor, skinning her hands. She began to cry. Ian, grabbed by the hair, was dragged across the room and forced to his knees in front of the open well, head dangling dangerously over the side, teetering on the edge of the dark abyss.
“I CAN win!” the puppet screamed, contorted face changing into the head of the snarling deer that had pursued Hunter in his journey. “And I WILL win!” this time twisting into the face of a sea serpent. “Because I NEVER lose!” screamed the giant Spatz. Laughter again settled the puppet back to his jointed wooden being. “You see, I have been with you every single step of the way. I know what you have. I know what you know. And, most importantly, I know what you don’t know.” The puppet sauntered over to the children cowering on the floor, pausing at Ian’s side. He calmed slightly. “Okay, let’s be honest here. Yes, this great Commander, or Great Spirit— whatever you want to call Him— has great powers, even rivaling that of my own.” A snarl forced its way onto his crudely painted lips. “And I guess you could say that He loves you, in His own way. Ways that you and I will never understand. But why yoke yourself to another for all eternity? I mean, if He wants you to call on Him in order to be saved from yourself, what fun is that? Here I am giving you all the power for yourself. No middle man! Just think of it, young friends. Every ounce of power coming from within you, whenever you need it, and to do whatever you want. Pure magic. Whaddya say?”
The three remained silent.
“Nothing?” Red eyes glared at Ian. “You can be great, like me.”
“You don’t have a chance,” Ian ground out from between gritted teeth.
“And what you don’t know,” the puppet snapped back, “is that you cannot possibly win against me.” He laughed again. “Oh, it’s not your fault. I’m just too—,” he hesitated a second admiring his reflection in the water of the well, “—great. Do you believe me, boy?” He winked at his reflection in the water and then smiled at himself. The reflection smiling back was that of a red diamond head, horned, with razor-sharp teeth.
“No.” The second the words left Hunter’s mouth, a giant wooden foot slammed into his midsection.
“You will!” the puppet screeched with the shrill of the Spatz. “YOU WILL!”
Hunter was in agony, rolling on the floor holding his stomach, coughing and retching. Aeryn tried to wrap her arms around him to try to protect him, but she couldn’t reach. The wooden foot recoiled to strike again. Before it could hit its mark, a huge hairy brown flash from behind knocked the giant puppet guard to the floor. It realigned its appendages and stood, turning to face an angry Bigfoot, snarling and growling with a ferocity that stunned the room. A single blinding blow sent Mikey hurtling into the cold stone walls, landing with an ear-piercing yelp and thud. He slid down the wall leaving a trail of blood behind his head, landing in a motionless heap on the floor. The puppet again rounded on its prey, one step closer to the children, but then froze.
The growl started low. From behind, they could hear the snarling once more. The room looked back to see Mikey begin to stand from a bloodied heap on the cold stone floor. The guttural growl now took on an unearthly tone—deep gnarling thunder reverberated off the stone walls and shook the room. Bigfoot slowly stood to a height twice what he previously had been. Elongated snout, fangs bared and sharpened claws out, he hunched over, hair raised down to the tip of his spine. Nerves raw and senses sharp, he opened his mouth and barked with a force that knocked every living thing to the ground. He continued to grow to an unimaginable height, and from behind, a set of shimmering sterling silver wings unfurled and flapped themselves free, releasing a long glistening sword, engraved with a single word. JUSTICE.
“Michael, my old friend,” the puppet said. “Sorry I didn’t recognize you sooner. You’ve changed.”
Another ear shattering bark was the reply, knocking the room to the ground a second time. Michael the Warrior began to circle the room. Deep purple eyes, narrowed and glaring, held a tension so intense the room could feel it.
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” the puppet said, laughing as he tried to untangle his arms and legs to stand again. “At my age, it isn’t always so easy to get up.”
Mikey rounded on him and barked again, blowing back the hair glued to the puppet’s painted wooden head.
“And might you be Raphael?” Puppet looked up at the Iron Ranger now hovering over the heads of the hostages. A nod was his only answer. He grew in both color and size, morphing into a creature both frightening and dazzling at the same time. Covered in shining armor from head to toe, iron wings flapping, he descended to the floor next to Aeryn. Electricity sparked and crackled around him, charging the room. Across his glistening chest he bore a single engraved word. HEALING.
“Ryder?” Aeryn whispered. A nod was her answer.
“And where is my old friend, Gabriel?” the puppet asked, unfazed, looking back at Michael. “I don’t often expect to see one without the other.”
Ian, still dangling precariously over the edge of the well, screamed and jerked back against the force holding his head down. He slid down the outside of the well skinning the side of his face, jerking back when the floor exploded out from under where he had just been. Up through t
he cavernous hole flew Nestor, but not Nestor. Like Michael, he had transformed into a fierce warrior. Towering over Michael and the others, Gabriel’s massive and muscular frame could barely be contained under the ceiling of the dungeonous room. An elongated snout bared the scissor-like teeth of a carnivore, dripping with saliva. His long tail, nine jagged barbs on the tips, whipped around and slammed into the stone wall, ripping down bricks and mortar with the talon-like tips. He, too, hunched over, revealing an equally blazing set of sterling silver wings and glowering royal purple eyes. On his sword as well, a single word; TRUTH. Gabriel circled the room the opposite way from where Michael was, cornering their prey in the dungeon opposite the children. Rearing back, he inhaled so deep he nearly sucked the room into a vacuum with his enormous lung capacity. Extending his neck out flat and head low to the ground, Gabriel let out an earth-shattering roar, unrivaled by that of any dinosaur that had ever walked before. From his mouth blew searing flames, scorching everything in its path. Raphael covered the children with his metal wings.
Puppet, flaming head and hair burned to a crisp, giggled again. “Let the games begin.”
“Run!” Out the last door and up the darkened stairway, Raphael led the children now under his sole protection. Flying overhead, toward the battle raging on behind them, flew a multitude of winged creatures from every species, known and unknown. The floor rumbled and shook beneath their feet, the force causing the walls to disintegrate. Raphael’s iron wings again shot out, protecting his charges from the crumbling walls. Rocks and wooden beams bounced from his solid metal frame.
“Earthquake!” Ian yelled.
“That’s not an earthquake,” Raphael shot back over his shoulder as they ran through the dark, dank stairwell. “It’s a battle for your souls.”
Chapter 44: Destiny
des·ti·ny [des-tuh-nee] noun
something that is to happen or has happened to a particular person or thing; lot or fortune; the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events.
“WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! Everybody just stop!” Ian panted, trying to catch his breath. “What was that?” He paced the landing on the stairwell like a caged animal, his anger boiling over. “What was that? Huh! What? What?” he screamed at Ryder. “That? What! That!”
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