by Eric Vall
“Wait, are the letters N, G, and V?” Naomi asked suddenly.
“Um,” I hummed as I looked over the circles. “Yeah, that’s what it looks like.”
“Great!” she chirped.
“What does it mean, my lady?” Ravi wondered. “Have you figured it out?”
“Perhaps,” she replied, and I could feel her energy start to rise. “Are these the numbers?”
As she listed off nine numbers, we checked them against the figures carved into the circle.
“Yeah, that’s what it has here,” I confirmed. “How did you--?”
“Just line them up,” she cut me off. “The N should go with the two, ten, and twenty-five, then put the G with six, twelve, and forty-one. The V goes with the seven, thirteen, and thirty-eight.”
Naomi gave us the list of letters and numbers, and we turned the circles according to her pattern. As the last circle clicked into place, we heard a loud sucking sound and then a click. I reached down and twisted the knob, and the door opened easily in my hand so our parties were joined once more.
“That was it!” Ravi cheered. “My lady, how did you know?”
“Lord Nikolaus pointed out the time this door could have been used by my parents, so I just thought of what was important to them,” Naomi explained as we stepped back into the cavern. “The initials are from each of us children and our dates of birth. Once I realized it, the pattern was simple.”
Well, I felt less clueless now. Naomi and Vallen were probably the only ones who could have figured out the pattern.
“Ahhh, very clever,” Nike conceded with a nod. “Good thinking, milady.”
“Wait, so you and Vallen,” I said as I narrowed my eyes. “But who is the G?”
“No one to worry about,” the lizard mage replied and waved a dismissive hand. Then she unconsciously traced the scar on her face as she stared out across the cavern, and she seemed lost in her own thoughts.
“Did he do that to you?” I growled as I gently touched the hand that grazed her face.
“He won’t do it ever again,” she hissed as she dropped her hand and stormed over to the debris pile.
I was already pissed at the thought of someone doing that to her, but the idea that it was her own brother was enough to make my face burn with anger. I needed to know who this guy was.
“Is he dead?” I rumbled as I stormed after her. “If he’s not, I’ll make sure he gets there.”
“He’s not dead,” Naomi mumbled. “He just wishes he was.”
“Tell me what happened, milady,” I said with a softer approach. “I only want to ensure you’re safe. That’s all.”
“He… He was the oldest,” she began slowly, but she wouldn’t meet my eye. “He thought he would automatically take over the role of the lord when my father died. It was tradition for the eldest to assume the lord position, but the law says the lord must choose before his death who will take his place.”
“Why didn’t your brother take over?” I prodded when she paused.
“He was cruel and hateful,” the lizard Demi-Human scoffed. “He wasn’t just a teasing big brother. He was mean and a bully who criticized and belittled Vallen and me every day. He would take my books and pretend to throw them into the fire until I cried so hard I could barely breathe.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“I don’t know.” Naomi shrugged. “None of the people respected him, and my father knew it. When my mother told us our father had decreed that Vallen take his place, Gabriel lost his mind. He tried to attack our mother, then Vallen. You can see Vallen isn’t a fighter, so I jumped on Gabriel’s back and tried to pull him off. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
“You were protecting your family,” I argued. “You did the right thing.”
“Well, he didn’t think so.” Naomi frowned. “He pulled a dagger from his robes and swiped at me. Blood poured into my eye, and I thought I’d gone blind.”
“He tried to kill you?” I balled my hands into fists.
What kind of piece of shit does that to his own sister? I had a hard time containing my anger, and my inner dragon was ready to tear out Gabriel’s eyes and shove them down his throat. Let’s see who felt blind after I was done with the rotten bastard.
“Tried, yes,” she confirmed. “But he obviously failed. At the time, I was just starting to get control of my magic, so I lashed out with a spell I barely knew. The next thing I remember is my mother crying over his limp body. He was breathing, but he couldn’t move. And he hasn’t moved since. He lays in a bed all day every day.”
“Good,” I said. “He’s paralyzed?”
“I suppose,” she replied thoughtfully. “He breathes and eats when someone puts food into his mouth, but I’ve never tried that spell again. I’d like to say he learned from the experience, but he’s still hateful when I try to go visit. He truly thinks he did nothing to deserve what happened, and after he screamed his hatred for me over and over, I finally stopped going last year.”
As I cracked through Naomi’s tough outer shell, I realized why she put up such a wall between herself and everyone else. She was a warrior. I imagined the young lizard Demi-Human as she fought through the family battle, and then I pictured her oldest brother burnt to a crisp. The second image was much more pleasing, and I wondered if I could heal him from her paralyzing spell, just so I could finish the job myself. Gabriel deserved nothing less than death for the treatment of his family.
“Lord Evan!” Alyona’s voice pierced through my mental ramblings and the debris pile. “You made it through the door?”
“Yeah, Naomi figured out the code,” I replied. “Did you get the spell to work?”
“Well, we were able to strengthen the walls, but I’m afraid the physical structure of the area requires we leave the debris pile where it is,” she replied. “Otherwise, we risk bringing an entire section of the city down into the catacombs. It will stay where it is with my spell, but we can’t move anything else.”
“Shit,” I grumbled.
“On a more positive side, now we only have one entry we have to ensure is safely covered,” Laika pointed out from the tunnel. “The door will be the only way in without collapsing the city.”
“Yeah, but if it gets locked with someone in here, they have no way out,” I replied. “That door can’t be unlocked from the inside. I don’t like it, but it will have to work for now. This isn’t the permanent solution for hiding the Bow, so we’ll have to take our chances with the structural issue.”
“Good point,” Nike agreed. “But no one should be coming down here to visit it anyway.”
“Especially not alone,” Miraya added with a quirked eyebrow.
“For sure,” I said as I dipped my head.
Even now, the Bow’s power tried to pull me closer to the case just to take it out for a moment. I couldn’t hear its voice anymore, but I felt waves of emotion in its power. At the moment, the Bow longed to be free from the cage we’d built, though it also wanted to be used and kill its prey. I understood the feeling all too well, and the similarities further confirmed that I didn’t need to be near it. My inner dragon seemed confused at my determination to stay away from the weapon, as though I should respect my natural instincts to take any advantage I could. I wasn’t sure how much of my dragon instincts had been overruled by my human morals, but I wouldn’t become some kind of barbaric predator.
It reminded me of early conversations with Valerra, who couldn’t understand my desire to help the people of Hatra. She was perfectly content with scaring people away and hurting anyone who didn’t listen, though she protected what she had thought was the last egg of our kind. She’d calmed a little with our conversations, as well as our own new egg, but she still didn’t have much fondness for anyone else. It was ironic that I’d come from my Earth life where I trained as an EMT to save people and became a dragon in a place where my species was known for being ruthless and dangerous.
I clenched my jaw and continued to ignore the Bow as I lo
oked around the cavern. The largest entry was sealed by the rubble, and the door would be impossible for anyone who didn’t know Lord Vallen’s siblings and their history to unlock. It would work for now.
“Lord Evan?” Aaliyah placed a clawed hand on my arm. “Should we go back now? We still have the other riddle to solve.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I replied and shook my head. “We can put our guard in place as well. That will make it more secure anyway.”
Abel’s head snapped in my direction, and he looked concerned at the mention of a guard here at the cavern.
“Not you,” I assured him with a chuckle. “We have someone else in mind. Alyona, you all can head for the stairs. We’ll meet you over there shortly.”
“Okay, we’ll wait for you at the steps,” the princess called out through the debris.
“My lord, who is your new guard?” the lizard guard asked as the frills of his neck swelled. “Who else could you trust with such a duty? I have been loyal to this city for my entire life. There is no one else who could take on such a role.”
“Come on, I’ll show you,” I said, and I grinned as I led him and the others back down the tunnel to the petrified drovian.
The mother bird and her babies hadn’t moved, of course, and Abel and Naomi stared at the array with shocked expressions.
“Drovians?” Naomi gasped. “This is a small flock.”
“This is your guard?” Abel raised an eyebrow. “Do you have the power to bring creatures back from the dead?”
“They aren’t dead,” I laughed. “I can see why you’d think that, but they’re just petrified.”
“You can petrify your enemies?” Abel asked with wide eyes. “That is typically a skill used by a basilisk. You didn’t use that in the arena.”
“Of course not,” I chuckled. “I only wanted to put on a show for Lord Vallen and the people. It wouldn’t be any fun if you couldn’t move.”
“True,” he replied and nodded. “I also appreciate not being petrified. It doesn’t look very appealing.”
“Where did you get them?” Naomi asked as she walked around the stiff body of the mother. “You couldn’t have left the catacombs in the time it took for you to reach the other side of the cavern. Not only that, but we don’t ever see these creatures inside the city walls.”
“They were already here in the tunnel.” I shrugged, and she looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t know much about the wildlife here. All I know is we stumbled across the babies, and the mother attacked. I petrified her, and now we’re going to move the babies by the door, so if anyone gets close to it, she attacks them, too. She won’t let anyone close to it without a fight.”
“Quite an ingenious plan,” Abel commented as he rubbed at his chin. “Drovians function based on their natural desires, one of which is to protect their young for future generations. It’s a survival technique.”
“It was Lord Nikolaus’ idea,” I said. “He is our strategic specialist.”
A blush crept up the noble’s face, and I grinned at his embarrassed expression. He didn’t get enough credit for what he did for us, so I had to call him out a little bit, especially since he would never have taken credit for the plan on his own.
“Thank you, my lord,” Nike rumbled and dipped his head.
“Nike and I will handle moving the birds around,” I decided. “The rest of you can meet the others over by the stairs, and we’ll join you after we get them ready by the door. Once we have them set up, I’m going to heal them, so the fewer people we have, the less likely she sees one of us and attacks again. I don’t know if a creature can be petrified and healed more than once.”
Naomi, Aaliyah, Miraya, Ravi, and Abel agreed and headed up the tunnel toward the entrance to the catacombs.
We crouched next to the baby drovians and began to dig their petrified bodies out from the sand piles. As I pushed sand away from one tiny form, I could see the same light sandy feathers as the mother, but they only covered their little wings. The rest of their bodies were still pink, which was probably why they stayed in the sand. They needed the warmth until their feathers and scales grew in.
The baby birds were light, and we carried them down the tunnel to the intricately carved door. I pushed eight small piles of sand together, and we gently set the birds in them and scooted the sand back up to their necks. Then we went back for the mother. She was heavier than I’d imagined, so I grabbed her large body while Nike picked up her legs. Then we brought her down the tunnel and laid her next to the baby drovians.
I stood back to assess our work, and besides the whole petrified thing, it looked pretty close to the way their old nests were arranged.
Then I remembered the flat area, presumably where the mother laid when she returned to the nest, so I walked to the middle of the sand hills and stomped around in the sand to flatten it out.
“What are you doing?” Nike chuckled.
“I’m making sure the mother feels right at home,” I laughed. “I just figured it should look the same as the other one.”
“If you say so.” The noble stifled another laugh as he watched me stomp around like an idiot for a few more seconds.
Once I was done, I crept through the sand hills to the door and pulled it shut. Then I spun the wheels out of order, and a thud echoed through the tunnel as the lock mechanism slammed back into place. I tested the knob, and it refused to budge. The door was successfully locked, and the drovian guard was in place. The bandits wouldn’t get close to the Bow without a lot of firepower, and I doubted they had as much as I did.
Then we walked around the curve of the tunnel out of sight of the birds. Once we were a safe distance away, I opened my maw and blew a wave of healing magic down the tunnel and onto the drovians. As we peeked around the edge, we could see the mother drovian shake her body as she stood up, and her feathers quivered while she looked around her and tried to regain her bearings. The baby drovians squeaked and cooed at their mother, and as she diverted her attention to her younglings, it was as though she’d already forgotten about our battle.
I wondered if the petrification was like being frozen in time for the beasts I used it on or if they realized what was happening around them. It was weird to think about the mother drovian being able to see as we had carried her rigid body to her new nest. I couldn’t exactly ask her, so I shook my head to clear the thought and looked over at Nike.
We nodded at each other and made our way around the tunnel to the main path back to the stairs. It seemed the tunnels all intersected in some way, so it was relatively easy to find our way back. We hiked along the sandy trail until we reached the end of the tunnel, and the rest of our group waited at the bottom of the steps expectantly.
“Well?” Naomi asked. “Did it work?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “The mother drovian is focused on her younglings again, and we moved their nest in front of the door. No one will get to it easily, especially if they trip over a sand pile like I did. Those drovian babies are a better alert system than the bats were.”
“They did squeak a lot,” Aaliyah agreed with a grin.
“I bet they were so cute!” Marina squealed.
“Did they have their feathers yet?” Trina asked.
“Or their scales?” Polina questioned.
“Only wing feathers,” Ravi answered as she clasped her hands under her chin. “They were adorable!”
I chuckled as the women cooed over the young drovians, and I was just glad none of them tried to bring one back with us.
“So, what’s next?” Lord Vallen asked as he wrung his hands together nervously. “What if they come for the Bow, too?”
“We have to deal with one problem at a time, Vallen,” I replied before I turned to Alyona. “What about that disorienting spell you mentioned? Can you put it in place before we go back upstairs?”
“Oh, of course,” she said with a smile. “I can activate it here, so if anyone starts to head down the stairs, he or she will be confused by the
time they reach the bottom. At the very least, they won’t know where they’re going, and it can even make someone forget what they came here for. It just depends on the person, their mental strength, and their magical abilities.”
“Perfect.” I nodded. “Let’s do it.”
“Can I help?” Naomi asked Alyona. “I’d love to learn a new spell. I think disorientation would go well with my mirage defenses.”
“That would be lovely,” the princess answered. “The stronger the spell is, the more likely it could disorient multiple people, even if they have magic. Since the bandits seem to be in little groups, it would be helpful if the spell affected as many of them as possible.”
“Okay, I’ll follow your lead,” the lizard mage conceded.
The rest of us climbed a few steps up to stay out of their way. Also, I didn’t feel like testing their disorientation spell by being on the other side of it, but my curiosity was definitely piqued, so I couldn’t help pausing and glancing over my shoulder.
The two women joined hands at the bottom of the stairs, and Alyona began to murmur the words of the spell while Naomi repeated them. They chanted the words over and over until Naomi seemed to remember the spell, and then they began to chant in unison. A moment later, the air in front of us started to waver as though a transparent curtain was drawn from the ceiling to the floor. It reminded me of the mirage magic, but it was slightly different. The colors of the sand behind the curtain seemed to shift darker and then lighter in ripples. It was kind of like watching waves flow over the sand on a beach, and I thought back to my spiritual sea and the soul bridges that had begun to form over the water.
Then I snapped back to the moment as the ripples slowed until the scene before us was still again. I could barely see the magical curtain that separated us from the catacombs, but I doubted anyone who wasn’t looking for it would see it.
“There,” Alyona concluded. “Now, the tunnels will confuse anyone who tries to enter without one of us.”
