by Hanna Peach
He was about to call out to Alyx, but he looked up just in time to see her disappear into the black. He raced after her.
These symbols meant something, but what? He had a sneaking suspicion that they would have to work it out sooner rather than later.
Chapter 27
Alyx stepped through the doorway and almost slipped on the smooth surface. Was it ice? No, it wasn’t cold. It was glass. She was in a huge cavernous space made entirely of glass.
Her eyes widened as she took in her surroundings. It was a cave made of glass… Silvery icicles dropped from the tall ceiling like frozen tears, and knobby fingers reached up from the ground. The only things that appeared not to be made of glass were the six silver pipes that dropped from the ceiling.
As majestically beautiful as this place was, she felt a presence in it. She felt…like she was being watched. She shivered but not from the cold. Who – or what – lived here?
A hand grabbed her arm. She was relieved to find it was only Jordan.
“Alyx, the flute that was in the box Argyll gave us. Look at the symbols,” he said, holding out the flute in his hands. “Three of them are the same as the symbols above the doorways.”
Alyx stared at the six symbols carved into the flute and etched with gold. He was right.
“This means something,” he was saying.
But she stopped listening as a flash of movement beyond caught her eye. The thing rippled behind a series of walls, distorted by the undulating glass. She grabbed Jordan and pointed.
“What the hell?”
The thing moved slickly and silently as if it belonged to this world, as if it were part of it. Then it moved into full view, and Alyx couldn’t help the curse that dropped from her lips.
The thing was a beast, equally stunning in its beauty and horror. It had a face like a lizard with two long whiskers like a catfish. Its scales, large and thick across its body, shone iridescent and wet. Two clawed wings extended from its back. Its tail, with spikes pale blue like shards of ice, whipped like an excited panther about to be fed. Silver claws gleamed as if they had been polished.
Polished by bones. This thought made her shudder.
It swept one of its wings down to strike. Alyx leapt out of the way, falling behind a finger of glass. A quick glance showed her that Jordan was buzzing up around its head. It gave her a moment’s distraction. And one that she would use. Alyx ran for the dragon’s ankles, drawing her sword.
The dragon’s tail was suddenly in her view, sweeping across the glass towards her. Too late to move aside. She jumped with everything she had, aiming for the space between the spikes that started at the tip of his tail and along the length of the beast to its head. Her foot connected with the moving tail and she pushed off. She arched up and over, arms slightly windmilling as a reaction of falling without her gift of flight.
With no flight to cushion her fall, Alyx landed hard on the glass. She let out a cry of pain as her knee felt as if it were on fire. But she didn’t waste a second. She hurled herself forward on her feet and slashed her blade across the back of the beast's heel, trying to sever the tendons that gave his foot stability. But his skin was so thick that her blade barely made a mark.
The beast roared, a harsh, hair-splitting screech like a tangled crush of metal. It kicked out, sending Alyx flying into one of the glass stalagmites rising from the ground. One of his claws left a slash across her torso. She felt herself crumple to the ground, and she lost all sensation in her limbs. Her vision, flickering behind heavy eyelids, was foggy, but she could sense the large mass thundering towards her. There was a dull throb at the back of her head.
Only her warrior training kept her conscious. She was taken back to her training sessions at Michaelea when she was knocked down. Symon’s voice yelled at her to stay awake, as clear as if he were standing beside her.
The blurred mass before her took up her whole vision now as she shook her head, trying to clear it. Then Symon’s voice demanded that she, Move. Now.
She threw herself to her right, ignoring the burning across her body. Behind her she heard a crack of glass breaking. Her vision clearing, Alyx rolled up to her feet and started to run toward more stalagmites grouped in a cluster. Glancing behind her, she could see that the beast kept coming for her. She wasn’t going to make it to cover.
She felt a sudden explosion of energy and heat from behind her. The beast cried out. Alyx kept running, diving behind the glass cluster.
Alyx tumbled to a stop and peered around the corner. Jordan had distracted the beast with a huge hit of DreamWalker, saving her life. But now the beast, head swaying slightly and blinking heavily, had turned to him. She watched in helpless horror as Jordan was thrown against one of the pipes that hung from the wall. It swung against his momentum and clanged like a church bell.
Alyx froze. For a second everything seemed to stand still. Jordan bounced off the pipe and fell in slow motion. The six silver tubes hanging from the cavern ceiling weren’t pipes. They were bells. The noise reverberated around the room like a pulsating, living thing. The beast rose up on its haunches and screeched at the noise, seemingly in reaction against it. Alyx swore she could see cracks starting to appear across his body.
Bells. Six bells. Six flute notes. The flute. The symbols. The bells. They were connected.
Alyx began to scream at Jordan, forgetting in her excitement that he couldn’t hear her. Jordan had managed to stir himself from the shock of his hit and had caught himself before he hit the ground.
The bell sound began to fade and the beast came out of its temporary withdrawal. Both his silver eyes were pinned to Jordan. The beast was cocking back his neck like a viper about to strike.
Alyx watched the panic flash across Jordan’s face. The beast lashed forward. Jordan swung around the back of the bell, using it like a shield just in time to prevent himself from being crushed in that beaked and fanged mouth. The beast struck the bell this time. And again it reared back in what appeared to be pain.
Jordan glanced around him, no doubt looking for somewhere else to hide. Please, thought Alyx. Stay behind there. The beast hates the bell.
But she could tell from his movements that it was a matter of time before he made a break for it. She had to do something. But what? Alyx cursed her inability to fly to him.
Come on, Alyx. You are more than your flight. Think.
She glanced around, looking for inspiration. She saw the glistening ends of hanging glass icicles dropping down from the ceiling like giant blades. Yes! Now…how to get it to fall?
Her mind went to a partial bloodink mark on her ribs. Surely if Jordan’s DreamWalker worked in here, her EarthSifter bloodink should work, too.
She pointed her palms out towards a glass icicle hanging over the beast and pulsed. The magic that flowed from her palms was thick and green and moist like the earth. It hit the icicle in a concentrated burst. The thing cracked. Then it groaned and split off from the ceiling and began to fall.
Alyx mentally urged it on as it fell. The beast noticed the noise and turned its head in time to see the glass weapon falling for it. It moved, but not fast enough. It let out a roar of pain as the falling glass weapon pierced through its tail, skewering it to the ground. Jordan forgotten, the beast tugged at its tail and let out a tender cry.
Jordan flew around the tethered beast to land next to Alyx. Alyx grabbed his arm as soon as he landed. She pointed at the flute in his belt to indicate that she wanted it. He detached it and gave it to her, his brows furrowed in a question.
She brought the flute to her lips and began to blow into each reed. Each note played clearly. Alyx played them all again, this time closing her eyes and trying to shut out the racket of the dragon. This one, she realized as she blew into a reed, this note was the exact same one as the note of the bell.
Each note had a symbol. There were three symbols above the doorways as they left each arena. Argyll’s words came back to her.
“…a valuable object that may
help you overcome the last obstacle… Perhaps when you get to the end of this, you will realize that you had won more than you thought in each arena.”
What if…what if the three symbols above each doorway were a “prize” as well? A prize that would help them defeat this beast? Three symbols. Three notes played together.
She felt a surge of hope and she opened her eyes. Jordan had obviously seen the look of realization flash across her face because he gripped her hand. “What? You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”
* * *
Jordan watched, hope rising in him as Alyx nodded furiously. She had worked out the flute riddle. A swell of pride rose in him. Of course she did. His beautiful warrior. This thought gave him pause. Since when had he started thinking of her as his?
He watched as Alyx mimed blowing each reed, then she pointed to each one, mouthing out, “One, two, three…” until she had counted the six.
Okay, so six reeds.
Then she pointed straight up at the bell that Jordan had been using as a shield, then cupped her ear, then blew on the reed. But she didn’t have to finish, he had already pieced it together. Six reeds, six bells. Those bells must make a noise that he couldn’t hear in his deaf state, and each bell must correspond with a reed which had its own symbol.
They needed to play the three bells, the notes of which belonged to the three symbols that were on top of the three doorways. But first they had to figure out which symbol related to which note. And the flute was the way to do this. Jordan gazed up at the bells. They needed to play all six bells to figure out which bell sounded like which note on the flute.
“I’ll have to hit the bells because you can’t fly,” he said. “But you’ll have to piece the notes and the symbols together because I can’t hear. Okay?”
She nodded.
Jordan eyed the dragon, still tearing at his tail. He didn’t feel safe leaving Alyx down here with that beast. There had to be a safer place to put her.
He spotted a series of tall glass structures high above in a section of the cavern. It looked like a series of valleys that had been hung upside down from the ceiling. He could see that there were some nooks where she could perch. He grabbed Alyx around the waist. “Hold on. I’m taking you somewhere safer.”
Jordan rocketed them both up and slipped into the ceiling’s inverted canyon. He moved farther into the recesses of this odd labyrinth where the space between the glass became narrower. He spotted a ledge and flew for it.
Slowly he let part of their weight down on the glass shelf, then more, then all of it. It held. Only then did he let her down gently. She would be safe here.
He forced himself to pull his arms away from her. “You stay here with the flute,” he said, brushing her hair from her face, an excuse to keep touching her. He couldn’t help himself. Fool. “I’m going to go ring the six bells in order. Then I’ll be back.”
She clutched at his arm as he was about to jump off the ledge. She looked like she wanted to say something, but instead she pulled him back to her. He felt her lips move against his ear, sending lightning down through his neck. He felt her sweet breath against his skin. She pulled back.
Jordan pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’ll be careful,” he said, guessing at what she had said. “I promise.”
With the smell of her hair in his nose, a light fresh scent that reminded him of spring, he flew along the glass valley towards the bells.
* * *
For a moment, Jordan’s lips lingered on her forehead. As soft as butterfly wings. Then he was gone.
Alyx felt her heart flutter and sink into her heels, like a necklace falling into an ocean. She was a coward. Hiding behind his loss of hearing.
“Please, come back to me,” she had said. “I need you.”
It was the most that she had allowed herself to admit aloud of her growing feelings for him. In the moment that he took his arms from around her and his warming presence left her space, and the cold air and the hollowness rushed back in, she realized she was falling for him. He was the sun that warmed these deepest spaces in her soul, her empty Sahara. This desert had been cold before him and would be cold without him.
Please, come back to me. She watched him slip from the cover of this ceiling canyon and out into the open. I need you.
She viewed her ledge – her aerial prison – with some disdain. What she wouldn’t give for the use of her flight again. She peered over the edge. She was so high up that she could see most of the cavern from up here, including the bells. The beast continued to roar.
The sound of a bell rang out. Alyx’s heart gave a little clench. He made it to the first bell. The beast screeched against the unwanted reverberation. Alyx clutched the flute to her lips and blew across the top of the reeds until she found the one that matched the sound. She glanced at the symbol. Not one of the ones above the doorway.
The second bell rang. Again, not one of the ones they needed.
Moments later she heard the third bell ring. Yes! It was one of the three notes that they needed. Three more bells and two more notes to confirm.
She heard a screech and a tear. She looked down to find that the beast had torn its tail away like a lizard would. The stump of his tail was raw and covered in silver blood, but even from here Alyx could tell that it was already starting to heal over. The discarded tail lay twitching, still skewered by the glass spike. The beast roared, infuriated by the noise of the bell and the loss of its tail. It began to beat its wings, aiming for the bells.
Jordan had his back to the beast. He couldn’t hear that it was loose.
The fourth bell rang. Somewhere in the back of her mind Alyx recognized it as corresponding to one of the three symbols. She began to run along the ledge towards the bells, screaming for Jordan to turn around, despite that her voice wouldn’t reach his deaf ears.
The ledge along this glass overhang wasn’t continuous but broken into sections. She leapt across the missing sections and had to jump up to grab and pull herself up onto higher sections. As she moved forward she could see the rest of the cavern. Her mind went over the remainder of her bloodink…partial Animale and partial WaterBearer. But she could think of no way to use them that would stop the beast.
Through the glass she could make out the blurred figure of the beast coming up behind Jordan. Jordan struck the fifth bell with the end of his sword handle and the sound rang out. This was the last note for the last symbol.
The beast flinched for a second before opening his mouth and lurching forward. Perhaps he saw the shadow, or perhaps he felt he air move behind him, but Jordan turned. But it was too late. The beast closed his jaws around him.
Alyx heard screaming. Then she realized it was coming from within her. Every fiber of her fury and desperation was reverberating through the cavern. She reached the end of the ledge. She leapt off towards the beast, falling.
She landed on its back with a thud. The beast reared up and she began to slip over the side of its back. The ground was so far below her and the scales were too slippery to hang on to. She snatched out her dagger and slammed her blade into its ribs, hanging onto the handle, catching herself before she fell completely. Her feet dangled in the air.
The beast lashed around in a fury, trying to throw her off. She held on so hard she thought her fingers might break off. For a second the beast stopped thrashing. Alyx pulled out another dagger and slammed it higher on its side. She pulled out the first dagger and slammed it in even higher, using her blades to climb up his back.
The beast reared again in pain and began to beat its large wings, causing the wind to whip around her. He began to rise in the air. But she wouldn’t be stopped. She kept working her way up his back, avoiding his wings. Her eyes were burning a target on the beast’s neck. She was going to slit its throat for taking Jordan from her.
She was so close, his neck only meters away. So close. But she was so focused on her revenge, she didn’t see that the beast had flown up towards the glass ceiling. Alyx heard th
e scratch and cracking as the beast began to rub its head then neck along a protruding shelf of glass in order to knock her off.
She only had time to lift up her forearm to protect her face. The glass slammed into her, knocking her off the beast.
She began to fall.
The next moments felt like forever. She was falling, falling like she had never fallen before. There was nothing she could do. She gave in to it, an effortless, breathless surrender.
Across the ceiling she saw the glass twinkling like stars. Jordan loved the stars.
I failed. I’m sorry.
She twisted in the air and saw the ground coming up. She couldn’t bear to watch her death coming for her. She turned her head. The light glinted off the six silver bells. Something in her hardened. Never give up. Never ever give up.
In quick succession, Alyx pulled three knives from her boots and threw them. Time seemed to slow as she watched the blades cut a blur through the air. The first bell was struck. Above her the beast cried out. Then the second bell was struck. Finally, the third... All three notes rang out throughout the cavern in a melody. A chord.
The beast roared. Then it shattered in a cloud of silver and blue splinters.
As Alyx hit the ground, everything went white.
Chapter 28
Lukas gazed upon his wife’s vacant face, and his heart broke all over again. He hadn’t seen the spark of life behind those brown eyes since – his throat squeezed tight – since their son died. Ky. Their little miracle.
“Ana, my starlight,” he said again.
Like it had been since Ky was killed, she didn’t respond. From over his shoulder, he looked at Tobias and Vix. Both their faces pinched with worry.
