Shadowbound

by Gage Lee

  “What’d you get?” Biz asked when I reached the lift. “It’s all glowy.”

  “A shell,” I said with a shrug, as if the answer to her question were so obvious I couldn’t believe she’d asked it. “From the yaoguai.”

  “And how do you know what that thing was called?” Biz eyed me suspiciously. “Level with me here.”

  “It’s...” I tried to figure out how to explain this all to Biz without sounding like I’d gone around the bend. “It’s like a game. Only, instead of menus and tags over the monsters, I can hear it all in my head.”

  Biz leaned against the wall of the lift room and tucked her thumbs into her front pockets. She eyed me carefully, intently, and for a moment I saw a faint golden gleam in her eyes.

  “Look who’s holding out on whom,” I said and chucked my little sister under the chin. “I saw that.”

  “And I saw the thing inside you,” Biz said carefully. “I wasn’t sure before, but now...yeah, I can definitely see it.”

  “What’s it look like?” When I looked at myself I didn’t see anything different, other than the faint glow of ghostlight from my core.

  “You really can’t see it?” Biz scratched her chin thoughtfully. “It looks like an angel, I guess. Fiery wings, a halo. Only I can’t see its face. It’s kinda hidden inside your head. About this big.”

  Biz held her hands a few inches apart.

  “That’s very weird,” I said. “I definitely don’t feel like I have an angel in my head.”

  “This isn’t getting any less scary,” Biz said. “I can see things, Kai. Your angel. Auras around people. I don’t know what any of it means. It’s freaking me out.”

  “Me, too,” I admitted. All of this was weirder than anything I’d ever read or any games I’d ever played. “We’ll figure it out. We always have.”

  “Can you figure out how to get us out of this basement? I don’t want to be here if another snake spirit shows up.”

  “Let me try.” I cleared my throat and gestured for Biz to move away from the wall. When she was safely standing next to me in the center of the platform, I put an arm around her shoulders. “Elevator, up!”

  >>>Maintenance lift access granted.

  Connection confirmed.

  Ground floor destination.<<<

  The lift carried us up just as quickly as it had taken us down, and we reached the garden in ten seconds flat.

  I was all ready to chew Ylor out when I realized he wasn’t waiting for us at the top of the shaft.

  “Look at this,” Biz said.

  Her skinny finger was pointed at black drops scattered around the edge of the platform.

  “What is that?” I asked my sister. “Oil?”

  “No,” Biz shuddered. “It’s blood.”

  Chapter Seven

  YLOR’S ABSENCE WAS an annoying surprise. The blood scattered across the stones was a worrying one. The edges of the ebony drops had dried to sticky gray scabs, but the centers were still glossy black and liquid. Wherever Ylor had gone, he hadn’t been away from the lift for very long.

  “What do you think happened to him?” Biz asked.

  “Could’ve been anything,” I said honestly. “At least he left clues for us to follow.”

  The droplets led across the platform in the direction of the garden’s exit. They were easy to follow on the stone, but I lost them when they reached the grass. The black weeds hid the trail from me.

  The interface had shown me information before; maybe it could show me something about the blood. I concentrated on the dark spots and willed the voice to tell me what I was seeing.

  >>>The current iteration of the Akashik network interface lacks sufficient sensory acuity to analyze this substance. Please try again after upgrading the interface to iteration two or higher.<<<

  “Better than a trail of breadcrumbs,” Biz chuckled. “It’s so bright we’d have to be blind to miss it.”

  “Doesn’t look bright to me.” I wondered how to upgrade the interface, but there was no response from the voice.

  “Well, it’s glowing,” Biz said. “Check us out. You’ve got an interface, whatever that is, and I make blood light up. We’re regular superheroes.”

  “What’s it look like?” I asked.

  “Like lightning bug tails,” Biz said. “Only more gold and less green. And it doesn’t flash. This way.”

  “This makes everything seem more like a dream,” I said.

  Biz stopped in her tracks and eyeballed me.

  “I know this came at us pretty fast,” she said, “but does it matter if we’re hallucinating? If it is a dream, we might as well play it out, and if it’s not, we’d be idiots for not enjoying it while we can. I can breathe, bro.”

  “When you put it that way, let’s go find this guy.” I couldn’t help but grin at how crazy all this was, and my smile only widened when I accepted Biz’s point of view. It didn’t matter, at all, whether this was real or not. For us, for now, it was all the reality we had. Doubting everything I saw or heard wouldn’t help us even a little.

  “That’s the spirit,” Biz said. “Before whoever took him snatches one of us.”

  My sister’s comment didn’t ease my paranoia over Ylor’s disappearance. I kept looking back over my shoulder for threats as we left the garden. I didn’t really like the eldwyr, or any of the other Tribunal members, if I was honest, but I liked the idea of being alone in this strange place even less.

  The trail of blood droplets guided us back to the great hall. It looped around the table there, then zigzagged toward an archway near the hall’s end. The drops of blood had gotten farther apart, but even I could see the black splatters on the gray stone floor. A few of them were smeared, as if the hem of Ylor’s robes had brushed through them, and that made them even easier to spot. Biz and I followed the grisly path through the archway. The last droplet was at the foot of a spiral staircase that wound up to the Academy’s upper floors.

  “You see any drops here?” I asked Biz. “He had to have come this way, but the stairs look clean to me.”

  My sister took the first step, leaned over the rail, and craned her neck to look up into the tower. She squinted her eyes for a moment, brushed her hair back over her ears, and shrugged.

  “Maybe,” she said. “There’s definitely something glowing on the handrail a couple of flights up. I’m not sure what it is, though. Could be blood, I guess.”

  “Up it is, then.”

  Biz climbed the steps with her right hand on the inside rail, and I kept pace with her on the left. The steps were weirdly short but wide and deep. I had to constantly double-check my footing because I either stepped way too high, or missed the step entirely and stubbed my toes on the edge. Biz had less trouble, though she took two steps for every one of mine. Whoever had designed this staircase clearly had a much different stride than either of us.

  We found a single door on the right side of the second-floor landing, and nothing else. Biz still couldn’t be positive that there was blood farther up, so I made an executive decision and tried to open the door.

  The handle, a big faceted crystal in a brass housing, jiggled but wouldn’t turn. I didn’t see a keyhole, so somebody must’ve locked it from the inside.

  >>>Access to this chamber is currently denied. Complete bonded tasks with the Band of the Shadow Fist to gain entry. The required faction rating is unknown.<<<

  “They like their privacy here,” Biz said. “You think someone will answer if I start yelling?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “That’ll definitely give us away to whoever kidnapped Ylor, though.”

  “He’s probably not even kidnapped,” Biz snorted as we continued our climb. “I bet he picked his boogers too hard and had to run off to find a bathroom before we came up and caught him in the act.”

  “Gross,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “If he tried to pick his nose with those fingernails he’d probably poke himself in the brain.”

  “That’s where the blood came from.”r />
  We both laughed at the mental image of Ylor with his index finger buried up to the first knuckle in his nostril. Once we got going, it was hard to stop the laughter. The combination of anxiety and all the weirdness around had us both on the edge of hysterics. The next freaky thing that happened might shove us over.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, catching my breath. “Keep it down. We don’t know what’s up ahead of us.”

  “Sure,” Biz said, sighing and rubbing the arches of her ribs as if they ached. “Laughed myself half sick, anyway.”

  It was good to see my sister let loose like that. Just a few hours before, a laugh attack would have put her in the hospital. I wasn’t sure if I really cared whether any of this was real or merely a pretty show put on by my misfiring brain cells. What mattered was that Biz was happy and healthy.

  I’d do just about anything to keep her that way.

  “There.” Biz crouched down near the landing on the fourth floor. “The glow’s almost gone, but he definitely came this way.”

  The nearly dried droplet was so small I’d have never spotted it on my own. Even when I knelt down next to Biz for a closer look, it looked like part of the wood grain as much as a splash of Ylor’s blood. I scraped it with a fingernail, and the faded scab crumbled to dust.

  “Looks like you were right,” I said. “Good eye.”

  “You’re a long way from Ylor’s basement.” Biz and I both jumped up to our feet in surprise at the sound of Baylo’s voice. “Finished your task already?”

  “We need to speak to Ylor.” I stood up tall and tried to match the confidence in the green woman’s voice.

  “Well, he’s certainly not up here.” Baylo leaned against the landing’s wall, her shoulder next to a shuttered window. I could just make out slivers of purple sky through the wooden slats. “None of the Silent Council would dare to poke their noses into Band territory.”

  “He did come this way,” Biz corrected the fighter. “We’ve been following a trail of his blood.”

  Baylo pushed off the wall and walked over to the staircase. She stared down at Biz and me, one hand resting on the knife slung from her belt and the other stroking her jaw.

  “Lying to me will not end well for you.” Her sharp incisors flashed with the threat’s every syllable. “If Ylor was hurt, he’d go down into the basement to patch himself up. How much blood are we talking about?”

  “Drops.” I shrugged. I hadn’t expected to find Baylo here, but maybe I could turn the chance encounter to my favor. “Not a lot for someone like you, but quite a bit for a scrawny eldwyr.”

  Baylo chuckled at that and blew the hair out of her eyes.

  “Maybe you’re not so bad, boy,” Baylo said. “What was your message for Ylor? I might be inclined to pass along a message for him if we cross paths.”

  I weighed my next words carefully. I wanted to win the emerald woman over to my cause, but I didn’t want to tell her something that would push Ylor away.

  “That if he ever leaves my sister and me down in a hole without a way back up, I’ll wring his neck.” I pantomimed the act and was pleased when Baylo laughed and slapped her hands on her thighs.

  “I’ll be sure to let him know. For now, though, the two of you need to head back the way you came.” Baylo shooed us away with a wave of her hand. “This is no place for kids who’ve thrown in their lot with the gravelickers.”

  “You’re not worried that he came up these steps?” Biz asked. “Or why he was bleeding?”

  Baylo shrugged and looked down at us with indifference.

  “We all bleed here,” she said. “That’s why we put out the call for an engineer. It’s a shame Narsk couldn’t make it.”

  She looked almost wistful when she said the engineer’s name, and I wished that I’d talked to the man when I’d had the chance. Things might have gone very differently.

  “I don’t understand.” I frowned and glanced up at the window on the landing. “If it was so important to get Narsk here, why weren’t you more careful with the gate? Anyone could have beaten him to it, thanks to the contest.”

  “Yeah, well.” Baylo shrugged. “That wasn’t my call. Gates from a splinter into the many worlds aren’t as straightforward as you’d think. We set up the circumstances for Narsk to arrive, did everything we could to tilt the odds in favor of that happening, and then dumped a bunch of ghostlight into the tank and crossed our fingers and toes that it worked. Unfortunately...”

  “Why don’t you want us up here?” Biz asked suddenly. “Ylor came this way. He could be hurt.”

  Baylo crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow at Biz.

  “Because this is the home of the Band of the Shadow Fist, and little girls shouldn’t be wandering around and asking annoying questions here.” The warrior leaned down to pinch Biz’s cheek.

  At the same instant, something blue and furry launched itself from the floor above us. The little creature landed on the step next to Baylo, then bounded up to her hip. It looked like a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel, with big, floppy ears, a long, fuzzy tail, powerful legs, and dexterous hands. The little guy couldn’t have been more than two feet tall, though his ears gave him an extra foot of height.

  Before any of us could react, the blue fuzzball snatched the dagger off Baylo’s hip and tossed the weapon into the satchel that hung over his shoulder.

  “I thought we’d killed all these disgusting things,” Baylo growled. She slapped at her hip, narrowly missing the furry little guy.

  The fuzzball launched himself into the air, sailed over Biz’s head, and landed on the rail. It chittered angrily at Baylo, brandished one three-fingered fist, and thrashed its tail above its head.

  “Out of my way,” Baylo barked.

  “No.” I put myself between Baylo and the fuzzball. It shouldn’t have taken her dagger, but that didn’t warrant a death sentence.

  “Shadow take you,” Baylo snapped and tried to bull past me.

  The warrior was a good foot taller than I was and had a solid fifty-pound advantage over me. Her sudden move made me take a step back, but I shifted my balance and caught myself on the rail just in front of the little blue dude before I could fall down the stairs.

  I grabbed the fuzzball and held it tight against my chest.

  “Stop!” I shouted at Baylo. The warrior was on the step between Biz and me. “You’re not going to kill this little thing. I’ll give you the dagger.”

  To show I was serious, I reached into the satchel to retrieve the weapon.

  And the instant I took my eyes off Baylo, she lunged at me with murder in her eyes.

  “Biz!” I flung the blue fuzzball over the charging warrior.

  My sister grabbed the creature in one hand and took off up the stairs at a dead run. Her feet hammered out a staccato rhythm on the steps as she raced out of sight.

  “Fell Lord’s shriveled sack,” Baylo growled. “Don’t move.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said with a completely fake smile.

  The warrior thundered after Biz, her feet hammering against the stairs so hard I thought she might break the boards. When she’d vanished around the next turn in the spiral staircase, I climbed up to the landing and tried the door on its right side. It was locked, of course. The shutters on the window next to it, though, were partly open. I peered through them and immediately felt the ghostly hand of a premonition stroke the back of my neck with its frigid fingers. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my eyes opened so wide I felt like they’d pop right out of their sockets.

  City blocks of stone buildings stretched out from the Ghostlight Academy in a ruined city for as far as I could see. As near as I could tell, the city was much larger than Anaheim. Maybe even bigger than Los Angeles. Towers rose from the centers of those blocks while smaller structures crowded around their bases like mushrooms in the shadows of massive oaks. They were impressive buildings, but even from this distance it was clear they were even more dilapidated than the Academy. A
s impressive as it was, though, the massive city wasn’t what had frozen my breath in my throat.

  That honor went to the ragged edge that surrounded the city. It was as if someone had scooped the ruined town out of the ground and left it floating in midair. The sight made my stomach do a flip-flop. There was nothing beyond the city but endless purple sky and the strange things that floated through it.

  One of those floating objects was very different from the others. It soared with purpose, threading through the debris-laden sky. It was too far away for me to make out any details, but I caught the distinctive flap of leathery wings. It could have been an enormous bat.

  Or a dragon.

  I sank to the floor and put my head in my hands. It was impossible to process the madness I’d just seen.

  None of this could be real.

  “You’ll never catch me!” Biz shouted gleefully from a few flights up.

  “Hold still!” Baylo responded, then unleashed a string of harsh syllables that sounded an awful lot like curses.

  I wasn’t worried that Baylo would hurt Biz. The warrior was strong and skilled enough to kill either of us if she wanted to, but was obviously taking pains not to injure my sister. I decided to take advantage of the distraction the fuzzball and my sister had given to me to search for Ylor.

  I headed up to the fifth floor to search for them, and, maybe, find Ylor. There was no sign of any of them on that landing, but there were two doors. One on the right side and another on the left. I checked the right one first. It didn’t even jiggle. The one on the left, though, was a very different story. The handle twisted with a faint click.

  >>>Engineering override engaged. Access granted.

  This is a restricted area. Proceed with caution.<<<

  I opened the door, very slowly and carefully, mindful of the warning. The voice might have meant I wasn’t supposed to be here. It might also mean that there was something horrible, like a weird snake spirit, waiting to rip my head off as soon as I poked a hair into its lair.

  When nothing lunged out of the open door to kill me, I stepped inside.