by Justin Sloan
“We’re here,” Nora said. “The words say ‘Beware the Lost City.’“
“How could the lost city of Vilcabamba be underground?” Rohan asked.
“It beats me, too,” Nora said, shaking her head. “They say it was once one of the largest cities in South America. The only thing that can explain it is the supernatural.”
“And why does that surprise me?” Rohan asked, sighing.
They descended into the stairs, careful with each step. At first it smelled only of freshly stirred dirt and ground rock, but as they descended deeper a familiar scent found Rohan’s nostrils—sulfur. The smell of death.
“There’s something down here,” he said, warning Nora. “I don’t like it.”
“I sense it too,” she said with a nervous glance his way. “If you’re scared, we can turn back.”
“I’ve seen worse. If you’re scared, you can stay behind and leave the world-saving to me.”
“And let you have all the fun? No way.”
Rohan felt her body closer to him as they pushed further down the path.
At first the walkway was like any underground passage. Stone walls that crumbled apart in places to simply reveal dirt and vines behind them. But as they descended, the walkway widened, and then it opened up into a room that opened up in two directions, one to the left and back, and one to the right. The stone floor was missing stones here and there, and vines hanging from the ceiling gave the area a creepy feel, like a scene from an action-adventure movie.
Nora found a torch on the wall and she lit it with her lighter. Suddenly, the entire area went aglow, and all the torches on the walls bloomed in blue fire.
“This is getting weird,” Nora said.
“Either we’re making progress or we’re walking toward our tomb,” Rohan said, shaking his head.
Nora elbowed him. “I thought you’ve been through ‘harder’ stuff in Russia.”
“Jury’s still out on that,” Rohan said.
They looked at each other and nodded as they walked forward.
“Which way?” Nora asked as they stopped at the fork in the path.
“Always left,” Rohan said.
“I say always right,” Nora said.
“Sure, but you were the one running away last time. We go left.”
She stood for a moment, debating, then followed. After a few minutes they came to a point where it looked like the two paths converged. They reached a large stone door with an emblem of a jaguar on it.
Together, they pushed on the great door and it moved open.
As they stepped through, their mouths were agape as they took in what lay before them.
An entire stone city, stretching for miles. Taken right out of the history books. Houses made from stone and adobe. Stone retaining walls. Terraced fields that were fallow but clearly looked as if they had once been covered in grass and quinoa.
Though the city was underground, it was hilly, and there were mountains in the distance. Above, the earthy ceiling was covered by a thin veil of silver light.
“So we made it,” Nora said, smiling. “The lost city of Vilcabamba.”
Chapter 11
“I was right,” Nora said. “It’s all supernatural.”
“This is officially the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“So above, so below,” Nora said.
“What?”
“The ancient hermetic philosophy. The city has been transplanted. But it’s exactly as it was when it was aboveground. The only thing that has claimed it is erosion. The question is—”
“Who transplanted it….” Rohan pursed his lips. “And who would’ve had such magic back then.”
“That’s a strange question,” she said. “If anything, magic, if that’s what you want to call it, or our connection to the spirit realm, has grown weaker over the years.”
Rohan just nodded along, impressed with her cute nerdiness, but much more focused on the sight before them at the moment.
They were atop a large temple. More stone steps led down to a grassy area that looked like a gathering ground.
The silver glow from above was replaced by a red one here—wisps, like a red, glowing fog. And as the two descended deeper into the city, dark shapes began to form in the red mist, shapes of people—spirits.
The spirits reminded him of the ones he’d seen in Nora’s house. They were not friendly, and they did not want to see them. As Rohan and Nora passed, the spirits glowered at them.
“There should be another temple here,” Nora said. “In the center of the city.” She pointed to a shadowed shape in the distance. “That’s our best bet to find the orb.”
Rohan nodded, his attention on the surrounding spirits. They were hovering wordlessly around he and Nora. He tried to focus on them, but doing so felt like reaching for rain—he felt them in his mind like little spots of pressure, but as soon as he’d touch one, it’d be gone.
“I can’t get a feel on them,” he said.
“Me neither,” Nora said, a discouraged look on her face. “But hey, you’re the necromancer.”
They kept going, but a pressure began to grow around them, pushing, like a strong wind but more solid than that. A roaring came from deep within the city, and Rohan was yelling, trying to tell Nora to fight it, to push on, but no sound was coming from his mouth.
And then it was gone—the noise, the pressure, all of it.
“Wha—what happened?” he asked, holding his hands out for balance, because he felt like the room was swaying even though he knew it wasn’t.
“On the floor,” Nora said, pointing.
Rohan cleared his mind and stood next to her to see that they’d passed a sort of pattern carved into the floor. There were sharp edges to it, and places that looked like no pattern at all, but more like scratch marks.
Nora knelt and traced the marks with her fingers. “What could have done this?”
On cue, a vibration went through the floor.
“I think we’re about to find out,” Rohan said, watching as the red mist began to come together in the air above them, swirling until it formed a demonic being, the mist its shroud.
It slowly lifted its head, then looked at them with eyes of pitch black. For a moment, Rohan thought it would speak, but instead it just stared, then lifted its arms until claws shown in the dim light, and it attacked.
The demon charged Rohan first, spinning as it did, and Rohan barely had enough time to leap out of the way.
He was almost back to his feet when he saw the demon come swooping around for him, legs forming from the mist as it did. Claws tore at Rohan’s shoulder and he cursed at the sting of pain.
“Get to the temple!” Nora called as she tried pushed her arms out, straining to pull on the spirits around them. With a grunt, she collapsed, and Rohan was too busy dodging the demon’s sharp claws to catch her.
He scrambled over, lifting her by the head. A quick glance told him the demon had become fully solid now, with legs and all, and was breathing in the red mist, growing in size and likely strength as he did.
Nora coughed as Rohan wiped a small trickle of blood from her nose.
“The orb, if we can get it….”
“You have to get up,” Rohan said, pulling her up with an arm under her shoulder and wrapped around her waist.
They started running, but she was too weak, and behind them came the thud of pursuing footsteps.
A shock went through Rohan as the demon connected with him, flying through the air so that he had Rohan pinned against a stone wall of the old city, red-glowing face inches from his own. The demon now resembled a man, almost, but his eyes were still pure black and his skin red and changing, like the center of a fire.
In his reflection, Rohan saw his own reflection, and then he was in the man’s eyes, no longer separate, tumbling through darkness. The air tossed him like a mighty wind, throwing him about so that he didn’t know if there was an up or down, or what was happening at all for that matter.
“What is this?” Rohna shouted.
“A test,” a voice said, and then a man appeared. He resembled the demon, but was simply a man. He wore nothing but a loincloth, and walked with a walking stick ornamented in feathers and glimmering stones.
“I don’t understand.” Rohan took a step back, hands up as if ready for a fight.
“Not that kind,” the man said. He approached, Rohan, walking around him with a solid stare. “You’re different that the rest, the others that have come before you.”
“Let me guess, these others…. They came for selfish reasons?”
The man laughed. “Do I look like I care about your reasons?” He lifted his hands in the air and fire surged from the ground and encircled him, lifting him into the air so that he hovered a few feet above Rohan. “I am the guardian of the orb, set here to ensure no on, and I mean NO ONE, uses its powers. This is my curse, as I was the last to use it and see its effects.”
“The orb made you into… this?”
“If you happen to pass my test, but use the orb in ways it was not meant for, you will take my place and I will be free.”
“So, what you’re saying is basically you’d want me to pass and take the orb. Because then you’d be free, right?”
The man stared at him, long and hard, then returned to the ground, letting the fire disappear.
“You would think that,” the man said. “Except for the fact that, should you use the orb and never return to take my place, well…. Let’s just say I don’t like that scenario.”
“Then we’d better start this test, because that’s exactly what I plan to do.”
“Indeed.”
The man’s eyes borne into Rohan’s soul, until with a flick of his wrist a wave of flames took them and Rohan was screaming in agony. He saw people in those flames—first his mother, then his father, both long dead. Others he’d known over the years as well, many that he didn’t know whether they were alive or dead. They were all shouting for him, reaching, but he was jerking about as the flames tore into his flesh.
Each movement tore at his charred flesh. It was too much. He couldn’t go on, he couldn’t handle the pain. But then he saw her—the love of his life, long dead, gone from this world, and he knew it remembered it was only a test.
He closed his eyes and sat cross-legged on the floor, letting the waves wash over him like water.
When he opened his eyes again, it was all gone. He was unharmed, but the ground around him was scorched.
“It was real,” the man said. “In case you were wondering. But it you beat it anyway. Well done.”
“So the orb is mine?”
“I don’t have the orb to give you,” the man said. “And I never said the test was over.”
All around Rohan, the dark spirits from above began to appear. Before he knew what was happening, they converged on him, claws tearing at his clothes and flesh.
Only one of them mattered—the man. Rohan leapt up, pushing the spirits away, and charged the man. With both hands he gripped the man’s head, thumbs pressing firm into his temples, and he focused all of his necromantic energy into the man.
The ground beneath them cracked, and then it was like an earthquake. The man was screaming in agony and the dark spirits swarming around Rohan, but with another loud crack it was all gone. The man, now once again a demon, sunk to Rohan’s feet, defeated.
Nora stared at Rohan with shock.
“Don’t ask,” he said. “Let’s just get to that temple.”
He grabbed her by the hand and they ran, as the dark spirits began an echoing wail.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Nora demanded.
They reached a corner where the red glowing light reflected off of gold walls. The temple. Large stones had been laid centuries ago, placed to slant upward and an inward angle, and then covered in sheets of gold. Unless they were solid gold, but Rohan couldn’t believe that to be the case. At the top, carvings of faces stuck out from the wall, staring down at them. One particular face had its mouth open in a scream, which was unsettling to say the least.
“Let’s just say that if the orb’s not in there, we’re screwed,” Rohan said.
“And if it is?” Nora shifted uneasily, glancing back the way they’d come.
“We’d better figure out how to use it, and fast.”
They worked their way around the temple, looking for an entrance. But they found no doors, and no windows aside from small openings too high for them to reach. Nora paused at one corner and motioned him over.
“Tell me you found something,” he said, anxious to escape the dark presence out here.
“Look, there’re patterns,” she said, fingers caressing small shapes—some like crescents, others resembling waves.
Rohan moved to the next block over and saw it now. They could almost be mistaken for ripples in the gold, but now that he saw them, it was clear they weren’t.
“What’s it mean?” he asked. Another glance back the way they’d come. What had been dark was now darker than dark. “And can we hurry?”
“I’m not sure, but—wait!”
She spun, eyes searching the small square and surrounding ruins, then darted over to what could have once been a small hut. Here she said, “Rohan, tell me the shapes you see, in order.”
“We don’t have time for—”
“Do it!”
Whatever she was up to, she had to have figured something out, so he did. But when he’d finished, she cursed.
“You’re sure you didn’t miss any?” she asked.
“What are you up to?” he asked, and ran over to her. He stared in amazement. She’d uncovered a whole in the ground, where the patterns now were, but in what looked like chess pieces. Each one was in a coinciding spot along what looked like a series of gears in the ground. “This… they didn’t have technology like this to—”
“Can you just tell me the order again?” she looked up at him, desperate. “They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t have some significance.”
He glanced back at the patterns again, but then had a revelation.
“Switch them,” he said. “The afterlife, here,” he pointed to the black floor of the ruins they stood in, “and life above, there. Opposites.”
“So opening the pattern in the afterlife….” She looked up at him, skeptical. “To reach the world above? Like, bringing something back to life? Doesn’t that sound a bit… too familiar? Dangerous, even?”
“Do we have a choice?”
She sighed at that, and switched the pieces. Nothing happened. Rohan’s heart sank, and then the rumbling started.
The gears were turning, and when they looked outside, a door was opening among the gold blocks. It couldn’t have been better timing too, because the spirits came into view just at that moment.
“RUN!” Rohan shouted, pulling Nora with him. They darted into the temple and slammed the old door shut behind them as a whoosh of wind brought chills—the kind that could only be felt when spirits were nearby.
Rohan and Nora shared a relieved but almost horrified look and waited to see if the spirits could follow. Apparently not. The spirits were throwing themselves against the temple, so that loud thumps sent vibrations through the building. Outside it was dark light the center of storm clouds.
“Here,” Rohan said.
He approached a wall that showed images—a man with an object that resembled the tablet. A woman with the orb, holding it above the tablet, and a second round object behind them with lines coming from it.
“The sun?” Nora asked, looking at the image.
“It must be. But is this simply a work of art, or does it mean something.”
Rohan looked around, then spotted what he was looking for. At the top of the room, there was a circle carved out of the stone, that led outside.
“In Tullum there’s a place where the sun hits a hole at a
certain time of day, at just the right angle, and it’s how they’d …
[*** NOTE: Put research on Tullum legend here]
“But we don’t have the sun, or sunset,” Nora said. “And with all those sprits, we can’t replicate one.”
“Wait a minute,” Nora said, and for a minute she seemed to be figuring out something on her hand, then looked up at the hole with her lip on her lips, and squinted. “Yes!”
She went to the wall and walked out ten paces, then stopped. She stooped and nudged one of the stones in the floor, and it moved.
“Whoa, you gotta teach me that trick,” Rohan said, genuinely impressed.
“Sure, I’ll go ahead and enroll you in high school science class.” She laughed as she pulled out a long, gold box. “In the meantime, let’s figure this out.”
The box seemed to be sealed, as if it were solid gold. But that wouldn’t make sense—the orb had to be inside. He took it and traced his finger along the edge, feeling where there should be any sort of sign that it would open. He felt the relief of mountains, the carved picture of an old city.
Nora stood over his shoulder and said, “It looks like—”
“Maccu Pichu,” Rohan finished.
“Maybe we have to be there? Maybe that’s the secret to opening it. Like here, with the sun?”
“Wait,” he said, heart thudding in his chest. “I’ve found it.” His thumb picked at a chip in the gold leafing.
And just then, gold leafing and stone from above burst in. All noise stopped and in the silence, nothing moved. Then, with a loud noise like bone grinding on cement and a wailing of one-thousand voices, the dark spirits flew in. They were on Rohan and Nora like a wave, and someone else, not a spirit—Rohan could sense him, the man from before!
A thud sounded and for a moment Rohan’s vision went black, then when it returned he was sprawled out on the floor, the box gone, and Nora at his side, screaming his name. Her voice sounded distant, almost like she wasn’t there at all.
“Where is it?” she said, her voice starting to come in clearer. Then she shook him and all noise returned to normal. “Where’s the box?!”
