In front of you are doors five
Pick your poison, stay alive
Each is tailored to your mind
Just three fates a door will bind
By the time I finished speaking, Regina had summoned the Leather Book and was skimming a page of it. “Okay, here it is,” she announced just a few seconds later.
“What did you find?” Lena asked.
“Essentially, each door is a trial of character,” Regina explained. “Three people at most can go through each door at a time. They experience a trial together and can help each other stay alive. Whatever they experience depends on who they are as people. If at least one of you survives the trial, a door opens on the other side and you get back on course.” She paused, then added, “I don’t know if any of the dead people would stay dead if the trial was survived by at least one team member, but I’m assuming they probably do.”
“Do we really have a choice?” Mallum asked grimly. “As much as I’d like to turn around, the navigation stone Lori has led us here. I doubt it will give us another path.”
“You’re right,” I responded. “We don’t have a choice. We have to keep going. Let’s team up into groups of twos and threes and try not to die.”
Everyone looked around, some exchanging glances, but nobody was moving. I sighed.
“Okay, I guess that means I’m supposed to go first,” I said. “Hey, Lori, I’ll be your partner, if that’s okay with you.”
Yeah, Lori wasn’t my favorite person, but she hadn’t given us any trouble since joining us on our adventure. I was willing to give her another chance. I could only hope that I wouldn’t regret it.
To my surprise, Lori only hesitated a moment before shrugging and saying, “Fine by me, I guess.”
She accepted my invitation a lot more nonchalantly than I thought she would. I was almost sure she’d flat out decline it.
Soon enough, everyone else had teamed up: Comrade with Mallum and Lena, Selene with Tom, Felix with David, and Steven with Regina. Each team selected a door.
“See you on the other side,” I announced, opening the door that Lori and I had chosen and walking through it.
Once the door had closed and locked behind us, the darkness lifted, revealing our surroundings. Lori gasped.
“Connor?”
Chapter 15
We were in the Shapeshifter Shack, surrounded by dingvars. Directly in front of us, Connor stood with eyes narrowed and arms crossed.
“Lori,” he greeted coldly.
“Connor, what’s going on?”
“Why don’t you look around you and see for yourself?” he suggested bitterly. “We’re becoming darkness. Mother went dark yesterday, Kayla this morning, and now look at me.” He lifted the hand that had been concealed when he crossed his arms. It was blackening, and the darkness that had overtaken it was spreading up his arm. “I’ll be gone by lunch. You failed us.” He paused for a moment, just glaring at her, then added, “You failed me.”
“I did my best!” Lori protested. “I navigated as accurately as I could! I thought...I thought I was doing it right.” Her voice cracked a little at the end. “I thought we had more time…”
"Well, your best clearly wasn't good enough," Connor spat.
The dingvars around us chorused their agreement.
“Umarek is victorious,” Connor continued, “and we aren’t going dark without you.”
He lunged toward us, grabbing Lori’s wrist with his blackened hand and mine with his normal hand.
“The Magenta’s mind has been chosen,” he stated. “Let the trial begin.”
The change was so sudden I barely processed it.
I was back in the Darkness, unable to see anything. Months had passed since I was here last. It was simultaneously strange and familiar to me.
We meet again, Magenta Valida, an all-too-familiar voice greeted me.
“Umarek,” I greeted with a cold cordiality.
Miss me?
“Not at all.”
“Where are we?” Lori asked.
“This is the Darkness,” I answered. “What do you want, Umarek?”
To give you further instructions. You’re on your way to the Zemayta Stone, aren’t you?
“Yeah, we are,” I confirmed. “What further instructions are there?”
When you get the Zemayta Stone, bring it to Fate’s Clearing, he instructed.
“You already told us that,” I informed him.
Come alone.
“What?” Lori demanded, cutting into the conversation. “You want her to face you alone? No way! There’s no way the Legendary Keepers are going to let her! Even I won’t!”
Umarek ignored her and continued to direct his words toward me. You wouldn’t want me to kill your dear friends, would you? They would all lay down their lives for you, but would you want them to?
“Stay away from the Legendary Keepers!” I ordered. “Gabrielle already traded her mind for our safety. You can’t do anything to us without breaking the deal.”
Actually, I can’t turn any of the Legendary Keepers dark or take over Mallum without breaking the deal. There wasn’t anything in the deal about killing them. Perhaps it would help if I showed you.
I was thrown into a horrible scene. Instead of being in the Darkness with Umarek and Lori, I was in Fate’s Clearing with the Legendary Keepers. Every one of them was on the ground, unmoving.
Bring them with you, and I’ll be sure to make this a reality.
Felix was the closest to me, so I ran to his side first. I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Wake up! Come on, Potato Brain, do something! Blink, talk, say something stupid, anything!” He was limp and unresponsive. I felt for a pulse and couldn’t feel one. He wasn’t breathing. Dead. I looked around at the others, panic rising in my chest. None of them looked alive. I turned back to Felix. He looked more beat up now than when Tom had gone into a rage after Regina’s supposed death. I knew he’d fought to the end.
Do you understand now, Magenta Valida? Umarek asked.
I stood and nodded, feeling panic rising in my chest. “I understand. I’ll...I’ll come alone when I get the Zemayta Stone. Just...don’t hurt them.” I looked back at the dead forms of my friends. I couldn’t let this happen to them. “Don’t make this a reality.”
Before anything else could be said, I was back in the Darkness, laying on the ground. Lori was shaking me and pleading with me to wake up.
“I’m back,” I said. I stood and massaged my temples. I had a splitting headache.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again!” she told me. “I thought I was stuck here alone!”
Consider your trial passed, Umarek stated. Remember my instructions, Magenta Valida.
The Darkness lifted just enough for me to make out a silhouette of a door. I grabbed her by the wrist and bolted for it, throwing it open upon our arrival and dashing out. The door slammed behind me.
We were in a large, empty, stone room. Lori yanked her wrist from my grip and demanded, “You can’t possibly be considering it!”
The image of Felix’s lifeless face flashed across my mind. “He didn’t give me a choice.”
“But—”
“Lori, he’ll kill them!” I told her. “I have no choice!” I took a deep breath and brought my voice down. “Please don’t say anything to them. They have enough to deal with without having to worry about that.”
“Worry about what?” Comrade asked. I turned just in time to see him come through a door with Mallum and Lena. Mallum was leaning on Lena for support and looked dazed.
“Nothing,” I responded quickly. “Mallum, are you okay?”
“His mind was chosen,” Comrade explained. “It...didn’t go very well, to be honest. We barely got out alive.” He stole a worried glance at Mallum. “He’s been through a lot more than I ever gave him credit for.”
Eventually, all the Legendary Keepers made it out of their trials, but everyone was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. I
checked my wristwatch. It was getting late.
“Any objections to stopping for the night?” I asked.
No one spoke up.
“Then it’s settled. Everyone knows when they’re taking watch tonight?”
No one said otherwise, so I took that as a yes.
“Okay.”
“Don’t forget to eat some dinner,” Lena added. “We’re all going to need our strength.”
Once the sleeping areas were set up and everyone was eating dinner, I slipped away from the group and laid down in my sleeping back. I had second watch tonight with Lori, and I was going to need some sleep. Besides, I felt too sick to my stomach after what I’d seen in my trial of character to eat anything for dinner. Even though I could see him joking and laughing with the others, I couldn’t get the image of Felix’s lifeless form out of my head.
Eventually, I drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Chapter 16
I woke a few hours later to Lori shaking my shoulders. “Time for our watch,” she told me when my eyes fluttered open.
I nodded and got up, even though I felt like I could have slept for another week.
After a moment of sitting in silence at the designated spot for keeping watch, Lori asked, “Are you really planning on facing him alone?”
Like I had done the previous night, I was playing with a tiny flame I’d conjured up in my hand. Even with its warmth, a chill ran down my spine as I thought about facing Umarek alone. In response to her question, I said, “Yeah. I don’t have much of a choice in the matter.” I glared at the flame in my palm, then extinguished it entirely. “I won’t let anyone else die if I can help it.”
“I’m all for the ‘not dying’ idea,” Lori said with her arms crossed, “but if you die, the Dimensions will be left without a Magenta.”
“The Dimensions will have the Legendary Keepers,” I pointed out. “But if anyone has to die, I’d rather it be me.”
“Why?” Lori asked. Her tone was more curious than demanding, which I was thankful for. I was feeling too drained to deal with confrontation.
I remembered Lena, who was willing to die to save my life and the lives of those in Emparadroy, all those years ago. Margaret Tavello, giving her life to save her mother’s, brother’s, and mine. All those people in the Battle of Saviena, whose names I didn’t even know, who gave their lives so I could face Mallum in an official challenge.
“It’s about time I did my duty as the Magenta,” I answered somberly, “and put my life on the line for everyone in the Dimensions that shouldn’t have had to put theirs on the line for mine. I’m supposed to protect them, not the other way around.”
“That’s a nice sentiment, but your life represents hope,” Lori said. “I was there, Valida, in Nightmare County, waiting for news on whether the great Magenta had succeeded or not. The fact that someone as powerful as the Magenta was standing up to the Attackers gave everyone hope. Before you returned to the Dimensions, we didn’t bother fighting back. None of us could stop the Attackers from taking over some of the Dimensions—some of the more courageous dingvars had already died trying—so we tried to enjoy our freedom while it lasted. Still, we had no hope for our future until word spread that the Magenta was alive and back to save us.”
I hadn’t known about that. Still, the image of my friends, dead on the ground of Fate’s Clearing, flashed across my mind. I couldn’t lose them. “There’s a chance I could survive the encounter with Umarek,” I said, hoping I sounded a lot more certain than I was.
“We both know that’s a really slim chance,” Lori countered. “I don’t know why he wants you to go alone, but I don’t feel right about letting you do anything he wants you to. I don’t like that we’re going after the Zemayta Stone, even if it’s to save the Dimensions. I hate that you’re planning on going to deliver it to him alone. Above all, I can’t stand the fact that we don’t have much of a choice about any of it!”
Her face was one of fiery frustration, one of the very things I could feel boiling inside me as well. I hated it all too. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want my friends to die. I didn’t want to give the Stone to Umarek. I didn’t want people I didn’t even know to get hurt because I tried to be a hero. I didn’t want to lose control of the situation and watch others bear the consequences.
“I hear you,” I acknowledged, dread weighing down my heart, “but there isn’t an alternate path that doesn’t involve everyone and everything going dark. It’s bad enough that Equestralan went dark without me being able to do anything about it, but what about Destiny Forest? Or Nightmare County? Or Sibolana? I don’t want them to go dark too.”
I buried my face in my hands. My head hurt from trying to figure out another way. Umarek would turn everyone dark if I didn’t cooperate. No negotiation, no more warnings...there was no changing that. I couldn’t double-cross him. He was too powerful and I didn’t have any experience in that sort of trickery. I was, what, fourteen years old? Compared to Umarek’s hundreds—if not thousands—of years of experience, I was practically an infant.
Well, that’s an encouraging thought, I thought sarcastically.
“Our best bet is to hope I can survive delivering the Zemayta Stone to Umarek alone,” I said dejectedly.
Lori bit her lip. “I don’t like it, but I don’t see a better alternative,” she finally yielded.
Neither of us could think of anything else to say for the rest of our shift. It was a relief to wake the next pair and go to sleep.
Still, I was awake in my sleeping bag for most of Selene’s shift with Regina. I tossed and turned, unable to find a comfortable position with so much stress hanging over my head.
Four days left.
Chapter 17
Morning came too soon. I hadn’t slept well, especially not after the conversation I'd had with Lori last night. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and yawned.
Lori held a small sack of beef jerky out to me. “Eat up, Valida. You’re going to need all the strength you can get.”
Groggy and still processing what was going on, I stared at her and the sack blankly.
She rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers just two inches from the tip of my nose. I jumped a bit, but regained a bit more of my mental clarity. “Sorry,” I apologized. “I’m still waking up.”
“I know,” Lori said, “but we’re running out of time.” She tossed the sack onto my lap. “Pack up and let’s get going. You can eat on the way.” She started walking back toward the others.
I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond, so I went with a simple, “Thanks.”
She paused for a second, then turned back around to say, “You’re welcome. Just...take care of yourself, okay?”
I nodded, then looked down at the small sack in my hands. I didn’t feel much like eating it, but Lori was right. I’d already skipped dinner last night and would probably feel a lot worse if I didn’t eat now. I opened the sack and forced myself to take a bite out of a piece. It was some of the best beef jerky I’d ever tasted, but I still didn’t have much of an appetite for it. I made myself finish the piece I’d started, then put the sack in my travel bag. Hopefully, I’d have more of an appetite for it later.
We packed up pretty quickly, all things considered, and got back to following Lori through the winding corridors of the Labyrinth in no time.
◆◆◆
It wasn’t even lunchtime when one of the doors we passed through shut and locked behind us. All of the walls around us were mirrors. Directly in front of us is what appeared to be an unclear path lined with mirrors. It reminded me of a mirror maze attraction I’d seen once at a carnival.
We were greeted by a woman’s echoing voice, haunting yet beautiful, reciting a poem.
Retrieve the whistle of old times past
Reach the end, no clones at last
Follow path short, follow path stout
Or you’ll never discover the only way out
“Um, all the paths look like...well, definitely not paths,” F
elix remarked, prodding a mirror with his finger. “Actually, they look a lot more like mirrors to me than paths.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thank you for that, Potato Brain, but I’m pretty sure the Labyrinth Lady meant that the mirrors were on the sides of the paths.”
Lori groaned. “The navigation stone isn’t giving me any path to follow through this one. I think we’re on our own.”
Remembering a trick I’d used in the mirror maze attraction at the carnival, I looked around at the stone floor, specifically around the edges of the square-shaped stone tile I stood on. Just as there had been at the carnival, there was dust lining the bottom edges of the mirrors around us—a telltale sign that they were mirrors and not paths to take. To the left of where I stood, I could tell there wasn’t a mirror because there was no dust to tell me otherwise.
“This way,” I said, motioning for the Legendary Keepers to follow me.
I was right. It was a path. I smiled, pleased with myself. It would be smooth sailing from here on out.
The mirror maze decided otherwise.
It didn't even take two minutes to come across two possible paths we could take. I stopped. Both paths had distorting mirrors that made all of us look weird. The puzzle wasn't just finding the paths—we had to figure out the right path. I groaned.
"What's the holdup?" David asked, joining me at the front of our group.
"There are two possible paths," I explained. "I don't know which one we're supposed to take."
“Check this out, Miss Magenta!” Felix said, posing in front of one of the mirrors to our left. “I’m like a mountain! Or a giant stick!”
“Or a French fry,” I added.
“I don’t know what that is,” Felix said, still looking at himself in the mirror and posing ridiculously, “but cool.”
Tom crossed his arms and glared at Felix. “This is no time for—”
The Stone of Power (The Legendary Keepers Book 2) Page 7
