by Evelyn Skye
But then the second bomb went off, and the vibrations from its explosion shook her back into focus.
The top hinge was blasted apart completely. The bottom hinge was only mangled, though, and the trap door itself remained stubbornly in place. Also, the impact of both explosions had knocked most of the air out of Sora’s lungs.
Nines! Panic burned at the back of her throat again.
She commanded the emerald particles to her aid, using one of the very first spells she’d learned as a ryuu. The magic formed an enormous hand and seized the ring on the door.
Now pull.
The sparkling hand tugged. The ring strained against the door.
Harder!
The intact bottom hinge groaned.
Sora’s lungs screamed at her. She was nearly out of oxygen, and part of her was tempted to flee back to the surface.
But she was so close to success. . . . If Sora could at least get through the trap door to look at what was inside, she could go back to the surface, swallow another lungful of air, and return again.
One more pull!
The hand jerked hard, and the trap door flew out of its frame completely.
There was a dim room with bare dirt floors on the other side. It could be another trap, but she didn’t have time to hesitate.
With her lungs aching, Sora grabbed the door frame and propelled herself into what she hoped was Zomuri’s secret vault.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Broomstick watched Spirit dive into the lake. She swam slowly, as if movement were harder underwater, but she didn’t freeze up or seem bothered by the corpses suspended around her. He cheered her on from shore: “You’ve got this!” Maybe they’d finally caught a lucky break.
Suddenly, Spirit stopped swimming. She floated in the middle of the lake, nowhere near the bottom, and planted her feet as if she were standing on the ground. Broomstick ran to the edge of the water. “Spirit, no! Whatever you’re seeing in your head, it’s not real! You have to fight it off and keep going.”
She didn’t move. At the same time, the cave around Broomstick shuddered. The icicles hanging off the rock walls rattled, like a million chandeliers about to break. The walls of the cavern groaned.
Was it the monster? Or something else?
He unsheathed a sword and took several steps back from the water’s edge. Whatever was coming, he couldn’t afford to get knocked off his feet and into the lake.
The cave shook again. This time, the walls couldn’t hold on to the icicles. But the icy spears didn’t fall straight down either. Instead, they flew across the colossal cavern and began to come together just a hundred feet from where Broomstick stood. The icicles hovered in the air, assembling themselves into something.
First an icy heart.
Then a barreled chest around it, the icicles still loosely linked together like chain mail so Broomstick could see through the holes between them.
Arms. Legs. And last of all, a head with icelike swords as its teeth. The monster roared, letting out a breath as rank as thawing corpses, while its components jangled against one another, sounding much more dangerous now than collapsing chandeliers.
Broomstick recoiled. But then he saw the lake out of the corner of his eye, and he remembered his promise to Spirit that he would stay alive, in case they needed a second chance at the vault.
He brandished his sword and looked straight into the monster’s crystalline eyes. “Hello, Snowy. What brings you to these parts this fine day?”
The icicle creature roared again, then charged.
“So much for pleasantries.” Broomstick sprinted straight for the monster.
As soon as it got close enough, he leaped. Broomstick landed on the creature’s knee and scrambled up to find purchase. The monster swiped at him with icicle claws and tried to shake him off.
Broomstick raised his sword and plunged it into the creature’s thigh.
It didn’t react.
“For Luna’s sake,” Broomstick muttered.
He started hacking at the knee. Icicles broke off, and the monster took in a raspy inhale as his leg sagged for a moment. It didn’t give out, but it was a revelation for Broomstick—each shard of ice seemed to contribute to the creature’s power.
Broomstick hit the butt of his sword against more icicles. A few broke off, and the monster’s leg twitched. But now it was really angry, and it clawed at Broomstick with both hands.
An icicle stabbed his shoulder. He let out a cry and grabbed the wound.
The claws came again. Broomstick, bleeding steadily, still managed to avoid the blow by slipping around to the back of the monster’s knee.
What he needed was an ax to hack off the leg. But all he had was a sword. Broomstick wrapped his own legs tightly around the creature’s, held his left side with his arm, and started to saw at the ice with his sword hand.
The ice monster bellowed. It kicked out its leg and sent Broomstick flying off. He landed with a thud, and he skidded on the slick ground toward the lake.
No!
Broomstick dug his sword into the frozen ground to stop his momentum. He slid right into the blade, just inches from the water. The sword cut into his flesh, and even more blood dribbled out of him, two streams of red trickling into the lake.
Small waves began to form on the surface, and the water lapped farther up the shore, as if it were hungry for another body and mind to consume.
He clambered backward and yanked his sword from the ground.
Behind him, the heavy footsteps of the ice monster advanced, bouncing the cave floor with each stomp. It wouldn’t take much this time for the creature to knock Broomstick into the water. Just a flick of its gargantuan finger, and Broomstick would be done for.
He scrambled to where his and Sora’s bags were. The monster blew its rotten breath, and frost coalesced around Broomstick, beginning to surround him in a fence of ice. If he didn’t figure out something fast, he’d be set adrift on an iceberg into the lake and left to die.
What can I do, though? Owls he could handle, but this? It wasn’t as simple as setting up a bomb in the ceiling to block off a single tunnel.
But while Sora hadn’t wanted to hurt the owls, Broomstick had no such reservations about this icicle abomination.
Instead of blowing up a tunnel, he could try to blow up the monster itself.
The fence around him was now up to his chest. If he was going to have a chance, he had to take it fast. Broomstick riffled through the bags for bombs. Sora had taken a bunch of them and he’d used a handful earlier, but surely those weren’t all they had? He thought he’d packed a lot more.
The first bag was full of fish jerky and canteens of water. He ransacked a second one and found his small chest made of reinforced steel. He unlatched and opened it carefully.
Inside, cradled neatly inside padded compartments, were dozens of bombs of various shapes, sizes, and potency. “Hello, you beautiful things.” He weighed a few in his hands and picked one with a good amount of heft.
The monster ripped an icicle the size of a stalactite off the roof of the cavern and hurled it at Broomstick. It landed with a sharp rasp and embedded itself just six inches to his left. A second later, another giant icicle flew toward him. This one landed right next to the first.
“I know you’re trying to kill me,” Broomstick said, “but this is actually helpful. Thank you.” He grabbed hold of the ice post and hauled himself up, gritting his teeth as the wound in his shoulder and arm throbbed. The blood hadn’t stopped; the snow beneath him was splattered with crimson. But he kept going through the excruciating pain until he pulled himself up to the top of the ice barrier.
Then Broomstick tossed the bomb in the air and hit it with his sword as if they were a ball and bat.
The bomb collided with the monster’s chest and exploded on impact, ripping the ice heart apart like glacial shrapnel.
Unfortunately, the force of the blast also blew Broomstick backward.
Nines!
&
nbsp; He splashed into the shallow part of the water near shore. The sharp ice that formed the lake bottom scraped his knees as Broomstick tried to crawl out.
But the frigid water already had a taste of his blood, and the lake pulled at him greedily, lapping against him and rocking him away from its shore. Broomstick took a last breath before the milky white clouded his vision, and then he gave in to the water’s embrace.
Chapter Thirty
Sora tumbled through the trap door. She’d meant to swim, but the water stopped abruptly at the threshold, as if held back by an invisible barrier. She scraped her hands and knees on the gravel floor, and she filled her lungs with warm, humid air almost too thick to breathe.
When her lungs had stopped aching from being so close to oxygenless, Sora took in her new surroundings. The tiny room was made of solid mud walls that led nowhere. A dead end.
Sora chewed on her lip. Had Liga been wrong? What if this wasn’t where Zomuri kept his treasure?
But it had to be. The Lake of Nightmares hadn’t been created for no reason.
Maybe this was another defense? It could be another ruse. After the lake, Sora should’ve known better than to believe the first thing she saw.
She walked up to the mud wall opposite the trap door and pushed. It was solid and left a reddish-brown smear on her palms.
“I refuse to believe it,” she said to the room. “You’re just showing me my worst fear, that I’ve come all this way for nothing.”
The walls throbbed, just barely, under her touch.
Aha. This really was more than it first appeared.
She took a few steps back, ran toward the wall, jumped, and kicked.
Her leg smashed through the mud. The facade of the cramped, empty room shriveled away as suddenly as a popped balloon.
Instead, Sora found herself in a vast space where every inch of the walls and ceiling was studded with rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. The ground was over four feet deep in gold coins and other trinkets, like small statues carved of flawless marble, crowns of filigreed platinum, and necklaces spilling out of suede satchels, all of it tossed haphazardly among the gold as if it were inconsequential. Which it probably was to Zomuri. He had enough treasure here to buy the world a million times over, and what did he even need it for? He was a god. He was hoarding for hoarding’s sake.
“How am I supposed to find a single gold pearl in here?” She couldn’t dig through all the treasure in the vault. It would take forever, not to mention the fact that she didn’t have anywhere to put what she’d already sorted through. There were so many riches in here, as soon as she dug a hole, more gold and jewels would cave in to fill the empty space. She wouldn’t be able to separate it to keep it straight.
But surely Zomuri wouldn’t just toss something as important as a soul into the pile, would he?
Sora perked up. “Or if he did, it would be on top.” After all, the golden pearl of Prince Gin’s soul was a very recent addition.
She began crawling on hands and knees over the surface of the treasure, moving slowly so she could examine every inch around her. It was better than trying to search all the treasure, but progress was still almost sloth-like.
Methodically check a three-foot radius around herself.
Shift forward.
Repeat.
Soon, Sora’s neck began to ache, and her eyes were crossing from focusing too hard. She couldn’t keep this up.
What Sora needed was better vision. She had an arsenal of taiga eyesight spells that she could cast in her sleep, but ryuu magic was more powerful. Perhaps she could combine the two, but which spell to choose?
Not a hawkeye spell. Nor a jaguar or lemur. Sora needed something that would be good for identifying things that were ordinarily underwater, like pearls.
“Octopus spell!” she said, surprising even herself. Octopodes had some of the most impressive vision in the sea. They could see colors and textures where other animals couldn’t; that’s how they were able to camouflage themselves so well.
Instead of linking her thumbs together in the taiga mudra and undulating her eight other fingers as if they were tentacles, she conveyed the intent of the spell to the ryuu particles. Sight like an octopus, she thought over and over until the magic understood what she wanted and her vision opened wider and sharpened at the same time.
“Yes,” she gasped.
The room wasn’t just shiny with gold and jewel tones anymore. It was now a kaleidoscope, variations of light and all manner of colors that Sora had never seen before. Each piece of treasure stood out as unique, with different smoothnesses, brighter or darker reflections of the gems next to it, varying degrees of smudges and dust.
That’s how Sora saw what she was looking for. On top of a pile of gold to her right, there was a small ivory jewelry box that was free of any dust at all, as if the lid had recently been opened.
She crawled over and carefully opened the box.
A single gold pearl rested inside, on a pillow of deep green satin. It rolled right off the satin and into Sora’s fingers, as if it had been waiting for her all along.
“Got you,” she whispered.
Sora reached behind her neck and unfastened her necklace, the one Mama had given her during Autumn Festival break when they’d been at Hana’s shrine. It was a traditional Kichonan memory pendant, with a single golden pearl representative of the deceased’s soul. The pearl on Sora’s necklace was only a little smaller than Prince Gin’s actual soul that had been on the satin pillow before her.
She could slip the pendant off the chain and leave it as a decoy.
Could a god be tricked that easily?
Either he’s going to notice the soul pearl is gone or he isn’t, she realized. Maybe it wasn’t worth leaving this behind. A different pearl in the soul’s place probably wouldn’t make a difference. And irrational as it was, Sora had been a little sad about leaving her pendant here. The necklace had been a tribute to Hana, and it had also been a family jewel for a decade.
If only her sister could see that she was fighting on the wrong side. If only Sora could have another chance to convince her that the Dragon Prince was misguided.
But if she didn’t, she wanted to have something to remember Hana by, to hold on to that memory of when she still looked up to Sora and wanted to be on the same team.
So Sora clasped the necklace back on. She just had to hope Zomuri wouldn’t realize the soul pearl was missing before she could reunite it with Prince Gin.
But when Zomuri did notice, how would he punish her?
She curled into herself for a second, thinking about how gruesome Zomuri’s retribution would be.
I’ll face whatever consequences there are, Sora thought. Taigas were trained to sacrifice everything, if they had to, for their country. She could do this.
Sora took a deep breath. Then she tucked the soul pearl into a secure pocket deep inside her tunic, clung tightly to her gemina bond, and jumped up through the vault door, swimming back into the Lake of Nightmares.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sora kicked upward through the water. Daemon’s presence in their gemina bond was as solid as a mountain, so she knew she’d be able to get to shore without losing herself in the nightmares again.
But there was also something else in their connection. A slight hint of sour, like lemon juice in the back of her throat.
Sour was the taste of fear.
She tried to swallow it, but the fear wouldn’t go away. It didn’t feel like Daemon was worried about his hold on her, so what was it? Were he and Fairy okay?
Then Sora saw it. A short distance away, Broomstick floated aimlessly, his eyes staring straight forward, frozen but terrified. Nines! He was stuck in a vision. Fairy would be able to feel it through her gemina bond with Broomstick; Daemon, who was with Fairy, would know something had gone wrong—hence the sour in Sora’s own bond.
She kicked with everything she had to get to Broomstick’s side.
Sora grabbed his wrist
. His pulse was slower than it should have been.
Alive, yet caught in the grip of the Lake of Nightmares.
She shook Broomstick hard, but his gaze remained fixed on whatever heinous vision the water was showing him. She slapped him across the face. It did nothing to bring him back either.
Her lungs burned, reminding her that her time down here was finite. She hooked her arm through one of Broomstick’s and began to swim upward. He was more than twice her size, and the water had again taken on the thickened quality of jelly. Sora swam as hard as she could.
She lost her hold on Broomstick. His arm flopped uselessly, bleeding. Sora’s chest tightened painfully, desperate for oxygen, furious that she’d subjected it to deprivation again so soon.
She took both of Broomstick’s arms and draped them over her shoulder, hauling him piggyback. She kept kicking, lungs burning air faster because she was using so much strength in carrying him through the gelatinous water.
Her chest constricted just as she burst through the surface of the lake. Sora gasped while jerking Broomstick’s head above water, too. She didn’t know if he’d had time to cast a whale or sailfish spell. He wasn’t supposed to go into the lake. He must have fallen in.
Onshore, Sora straddled him and pressed the heels of her hands against his chest. She had to not only revive him but also get the water out of his lungs. Who knew what damage the lake could do if its effects were allowed to linger inside his body?
She pumped on his chest. Then she pinched his nose, sealed her mouth over his, and forced breaths into him.
Broomstick lay still.
She did it again. Pump pump pump. Breathe, breathe.
“I don’t know what you had to fight while I was underwater,” Sora said, taking in the shoreline and the remnants of what had obviously been an explosion. “But whatever it was, you beat it. And you won’t die now. You’re too good to lose to a bad dream.”
Sora forced a couple more breaths into him.
“Do you hear me, Broomstick? You will not die now.” She pumped harder on his chest.
Pump pump pump. Breathe, breathe. Again and again and again.
