by Opal Edgar
I scooted forwards in panic. I’d done it: got her so angry that she was going to eat my face! I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder.
The room was absolutely empty.
Alpheus’s shoulders shook in silent laughter. He wiped an imaginary tear from his helmet’s eye grid.
“Wow. And you make jokes, too. Good one. You gave me a heart attack.”
Immediately he straightened. His board flashed: “Tension release.” I wasn’t sure who had needed the joke more. I shook my head as I got to the back door. Grudgingly, I realised I was more relaxed now. The door opened, but the stink knocked us backwards. It was nothing like the damp lab smell of before. It was pungent and coated your mouth like something you could bite into. I gagged. Alpheus took his axe from his back and pushed me out of the way. I sighed. I had smelt something exactly like that before: in the Grim Reaper’s castle.
Chapter 22
The Bartholomew Massacre
Alpheus stomped ahead, his axe before him so as to avoid hitting into walls. I ran after him. The medieval stone was still there, but the blood trail on the floor was new … not fresh mind you, it just hadn’t been there last time. Neither had the power thief capes.
We arrived at a junction. Alpheus pushed straight ahead, hitting the wall between two of the arches with such force that a stone block fell off. Daylight pierced through. When my eyes stopped burning, I lowered my head next to his.
The corn field on the other side of the stone wall was as empty as this dungeon. It didn’t fit Bartholomew’s interior style, though. Nor did the Maya temple in the middle of the field. This had to be the neighbour’s room.
I backed away just in time. Alpheus smacked the wall with his axe. My ears rang. His arm shook with the vibration, but not a chip of stone moved. He tried again as I backed away a little more. I guess he wasn’t in the mood to have a discussion about the meaning of all this. But the wall was done crumbling. Now I thought about it, Alpheus had banged the wall at face level, but the stone had popped off at chest level. That was about the height of Bartholomew’s head. Was it a habit of Bartholomew to spy on the people round him, or …? A horrible seed of an idea came to my mind. Could something have travelled from spirit to spirit, room to room and quietly … What? Ate them? I gulped.
The hole in the wall didn’t get any bigger, but Alpheus was persistent.
“There’s a few other paths we could try before smashing walls down,” I said.
Alpheus looked back and forth between the corn-field hole and me. His slate read: “Bad feeling.” I sure had to agree. The smell of corpses was kind of a big clue. But if a dozen whacks of an axe hadn’t dislodged the smallest rock, I had trouble believing more would do any good. Alpheus finally gave up. There were four corridors to choose from. One would lead us back to the locked front door, and the rest were anyone’s guess, really. I couldn’t even remember which one Bartholomew had walked us through to get to the evaluation tank.
Alpheus shook his slate to get my attention. It said: “Right.” I frowned – that was back to the locked entrance. It’s not like I had any idea about what we were doing, but that seemed rather pointless. Unless there was something he had seen that I had missed. I shrugged, back to the beginning it was! I took the turn. And bang. He hit the back of my head with the slate.
“What’s wrong with you!” I exclaimed.
He shook his slate again. The word hadn’t changed. Except now I felt so stupid. My lips curved up naturally and my dumb face lit up.
“Oh, you meant my other right.” I forced a laugh. Yep, I didn’t know my left from my right.
Blood dripped down the corridor walls. A bloody handprint with six fingers shone on the stone. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what was at the end of this corridor. I hadn’t signed up for that adventure. I was already booked solid. And I was sorry to admit that I was much more willing to disappear into oblivion for Elise than for Bartholomew. Why were we running from one disaster zone to the next? We were chasing a hurricane. Was it like this for everyone, or was disaster specifically targeting me?
More capes littered the floor. Once again power thieves were at the heart of the problem, and I was following their breadcrumb-trail.
“Do you think they reincarnated Bartholomew?” I asked, my voice smaller than I’d wanted.
Alpheus flicked his slate onto his back so I could see the letters imprint themselves as he thought them: “Can’t reincarnate spirit. Can drain power.”
“If they got a spirit, they’re certainly not going to run away when they see us. What are our chances?” I asked.
Alpheus stopped. I really wished I could see his facial expression, but he wasn’t taking his helmet off for friend, god or begging, so I didn’t stand a chance. His slate admitted how desperate we were: “Can’t go out the way we came.”
“Do you think the other spirits were drained too?” I shuddered.
He never stopped as the board flashed: “Maybe,” and, after a thought: “This is power thief war declaration.”
And perhaps it shouldn’t have chilled me the way it did. After all, it wasn’t surprising for a gladiator to only perceive violent answers and violent solutions. Still, his words rang true. Thousands of individuals ganging up on worlds and its administration looked like a political coup.
And somehow, I was involved in all of that, even if it made no sense. Power thieves had killed me before starting their rampage. Obviously, Merlin held some kind of key, but he wasn’t talking right now. It was up to me to fix this. Because who else would? But what could I do? I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t a leader. I had no insight and I hated violence. I was just an apprentice mason. I thought that was a good job ... building ought to always be a good job.
“I don’t know how to fight. I’ll do my best,” I whispered.
Alpheus kept walking. The white chalk almost glowed as it traced letters: “I failed Elise once, but never again. I have hidden talent.”
Under his helmet? As if painting portals and being a pro fighter wasn’t enough. But then again he’d been dead a long time. You can gain all sorts of skills, I guess, in thousands of years. Maybe Kemsit was right and his secret weapon was snakes growing out of his scalp to petrify everyone.
My shoe hit into something squishy. I looked down.
I shouldn’t have.
The whole floor was strewn with eviscerated bodies. Blasted night vision. What could have happened here? I had trouble picturing Bartholomew lifting anything heavier than a book. But the evidence of the bloody battle carpeted the dungeon. But why would the power thieves gang up on Bartholomew? They had stolen the sword from the Styx. What did they need him for? Maybe to get some pointers on how to use it from the master creator himself … or maybe even to steal other magical objects from him. How many had he forged?
“Something’s not right,” appeared on Alpheus’s blackboard.
If I hadn’t been heaving, I might have punched him. Which part exactly was right about this whole place? I wanted to scream. All of this was a nightmare!
Alpheus turned on the spot slowly. He crouched, getting way too close to the gore, and for a moment it looked like he was sniffing the air.
“Do the corpses look ordered to you?” Alpheus’s slate asked me.
What? I recoiled.
Alpheus threw his hands out, travelling over oozing substances, touching the permanently dead. Now my stomach was cramping. I was such a coward. So, I forced myself to look.
After a second, I understood what he meant. This didn’t look like a battle with fallen bodies. The corpses had been dragged to the wall, so that you could still walk through. Further down the corridor, some bodies had been stacked. This was a dumping ground.
I stepped over a power thief to follow the largest blood trail. We entered the lab room, where Bartholomew had dunked me in a vat of slime. The vat was still there, but the potions on the walls had been replaced by chains and clamps. Blood pooled in the middle of the floor.
“You
’re kidding me,” I said, stepping backwards.
Alpheus didn’t stop. His axe wasn’t pointed like a blind stick in front of him anymore. He held it slung over his shoulder, ready to strike down. My heart was beating insanely. He went round the place, knocking on things with the tip of his nails. Glass tinkled, wood thunked, metal rang and slime squelched. Then a scream blasted our ears.
We jumped. It was close. The walls trembled with it. We ran to the source. Whatever was going on, there weren’t that many ways it could end. Either they reincarnated us or we saved the screamer. Surprise was our only ally.
We burst into an alchemist's lair, lined with barrels of concoctions. The dark medieval stone was entirely hidden by colourful liquids bubbling and sliding down inside a giant glass alembic. In the middle of the room, the torso of a man rode on eight hairy spider legs. Just under his human arms protruded a second set, much hairier and shaped like hammers instead of hands, like tarantula's pedipalps. His mouth was covered by two clicking pincers. I pulled on the doorknob to close the door again, but Alpheus stepped in.
The tarantula-man rose high on his legs and screeched, “You’re going to pay!”
Alpheus and I dodged the first hammer strike. He went left and I jumped right ... which was unfortunate. We crashed like two fools, because I was on the left and he on the right! Behind our attacker’s bald head was Bartholomew, wrapped like a Christmas present in thick silk strands.
We clattered back up onto our feet. The hammers took no time to fall again. Alpheus’s axe was at the ready. They clanged together. I slithered away and climbed onto the barrels to reach Bartholomew. The silk was metal-wire solid and gripped my skin like Velcro. It tingled very unpleasantly. I shook my hand and my legs were swiped from under me. I hung on to the silk, but my weight didn’t loosen the web a fraction.
Alpheus, scared of nothing, sprang at the tarantula-man. But no courage could match the spider’s speed. The axe flew out of Alpheus’s hands, slashed a dozen barrels, sprayed colourful liquids all over and lodged itself deep in the wall.
Alpheus still had his hands, and he intended to use them. In a feline bound he landed on the enemy’s shoulders and choked him.
Still dangling on the web I pulled and bounced and threw myself down without making any progress.
Alpheus flew right across the room. Glass exploded, metal crunched. They moved behind me and I lost sight of the fight. Groans resounded, things banged and zipped past. I randomly tried pulling different sections of the thread until one gave some slack. I pulled harder until I finally loosened the threads over Bartholomew’s mouth. Nothing else budged, though.
“Destroy the web!” he panted.
“How?”
“In the chimney, hurry, by Jove! There’s so—” He never finished.
Alpheus’s blackboard hit Bartholomew in the temple and he was out. No more clues. I tried pulling harder on the unravelling thread. The tarantula-man turned, looking in my direction. I slipped down in fear, hanging from Bartholomew. The tarantula-man swiped out with his limbs – he was way too high to hit my head, but he got my arms instead and I dropped down in a clatter of rolling barrels. He was fast enough to redirect his aim if he wanted. But he hadn’t. And even now, eyes on me, he was frozen in deep expectancy. This could only mean one thing: he couldn’t see me.
He couldn’t see in the dark!
Alpheus threw a chunk of wood at the monster’s head. That got his full attention. They tumbled into the back wall.
If he couldn’t see, how had he known to knock me away from Bartholomew? I’d made no noise. I looked at the tarantula-man more carefully. He didn’t fight like Baas, who tilted his head to hear better … Therefore, he was using another sense.
I frowned at the ground. The room was littered with spider silk. Not in a messy way, it was more like a fishnet laid flat. When Alpheus moved he always stepped onto the threads, making them vibrate. That had to be it. And if I was right, as soon as I touched one of the threads, the tarantula-man would be on to me.
Millimetre by millimetre, I slipped out of my shoes.
There was something that resembled a stone fireplace just a few metres away. It was big enough to roast two whole cows, but that was the only thing that remotely fit a chimney description. It was empty and cold, but if Bartholomew had directed me to it I was bound to find something of help. Maybe there was a prodding rack with some cast iron secateurs to free him from his cocoon.
Alpheus, still missing his axe, compensated with a length of rusty chain picked up from the floor … at least I hoped the red glint was rust. I jumped over the silk and dodged the blows carefully, probably taking more time than I could have. Alpheus might have questioned my sanity, but kept up his fighting. I squeezed into the fireplace as fast as I could.
I hit the back wall. To my greatest horror it shifted. Round I went, like in of those cheesy films with medieval secret passages. One moment I was in the dark web, the next I had swivelled to the edge of hell’s fire. I screamed as flames burst into my face. I shuffled with my sunglasses and got them back in place, but burning light spots kept dancing on my retinas. I banged on the charred wall of the fireplace to no avail. It was not turning back.
I faced the fire, blinking too much. Why had Bartholomew sent me to get roasted? I’d been trying to save him! What was wrong with that senile hermit?
That’s when I noticed something that wasn’t more fire in that pit of doom. Because that’s what it was: a medieval roasting pit nightmare, big enough to cook all the inhabitants of a forest with flames sprouting from every surface, top to bottom. But, right in the middle of the room, there was a tiny table reminiscent of my Aunt Maud’s pocket sized stove. And on it bubbled some kind of potion in a cast iron pot.
That was the only interesting thing in the room and had to be the answer. The problem was reaching it. Not a single lever was in sight, or button, or crank or mechanism to stop the bursts of flames. Next to me was a bucket of ashes, one apron and a mitt abandoned on the floor. I couldn’t believe I had left my shoes on the other side. I wrapped the apron round one foot and my jacket round the other. Little protection was better than nothing, right? The mitt I kept for my hand. I wasn’t crazy: I had to grab that damn pot and I wasn’t doing it with my bare skin.
The heat radiated through to my soles. The apron had some kind of insulation, but not my jacket. Two steps in and the fabric burst into flames. I ran, eyes shut to stop the sting. Smoke from my jacket swirled in my face, acrid. My skin blistered and my nose hair burned. A broken glass sound rang out. I pried my eyes open and threw a panicked look at the potion. It was intact. I grabbed it quick and watched my trousers catch fire. I batted at the flames with my only free hand, shaking like a madman. Staying in the furnace only made it worse. My shirt ignited.
I leaped out of the flames as fast as I could and dropped the pot. It splashed and spilt, but just a little. I rolled on the ground, kicking my feet. The apron flew off, but my jacket had fused with my skin. It smoked and spat putrid gas. I yelled.
I didn’t so much remember the pail of ash as hit into it. I dumped it on my foot, killing the last sparks. My trousers were seared black. I unravelled the jacket from my toes, careful not to peel the tender skin off too. The pocket bulged out. I poked at the cindered fabric. It flaked off. My finger came in contact with white glass. An orb, as big as my fist, rolled under my touch.
It was an eye.
The sky blue pupil moved up to stare at my face. I screamed again, throwing my jacket to the ground. The globe rolled free from the charred strips of the bag Lil’Mon had given me, and that I had kept in my pocket. The sand was gone.
I was such an idiot.
I’d turned Death’s mirror and Lil’Mon’s gift into glass. There were people’s souls in there! How could I be so thoughtless and forget about them? Had I damaged their chance at freedom?
I scrambled to the glass eye, cupping it in my hands. It reminded me of something. I squinted at it. Of course! I had also carried
the evil Nazar ward in my pocket and all trace of it had vanished too. That’s what I’d heard crack under my heel in the furnace. It had all fused together with the heat: the Nazar amulet, mirror and sand had a baby. The eye rolled in my palm, looking round. I shivered.
What the hell had I created?
The stone wall of the fireplace shook as the fighters crashed into it. Soot snowed down over me. I shoved the eyeball into my trouser pocket. Exit or not, I needed to get back in there!
Chapter 23
The Power It Takes
I pushed the wall to the left and right of the fireplace. I poked my fingers in suspiciously large cracks between the stones, but there was no magic button to swivel me back into the action. What had I done to get here? I almost wished Merlin was still there, voicing his snide opinion, so as to get on with things. As it was, I felt like a real jerk for abandoning Alpheus in a monstrous fight. Sure, he’d tackled gladiators and lions before ... but he’d lost!
Muffled grunts and clashing metal echoed through the stone. I winced and tried retracing my steps. The answer had to be here.
I carefully looked at the floor. Maybe the secret mechanism was a weighted tile? I hopped round just to make sure. I strayed a little from my original path, weighing down on my legs for good measure. Nothing.
The tarantula-man roared. I panicked. That had sounded triumphant! Any thinking neurons blinked out of commission. I grabbed the pot, covered most of its content with my hand and ran at the wall. The impact rattled my teeth. My head rang and my shoulder throbbed, but amazingly the wall shifted. Brute force was certainly not the real answer here, but for now it worked, and I would take it any day over uselessness.
Back in utter darkness, a cold sweat started running down my spine. The eerie silence foreshadowed the worst. I tried to wipe from my mind the image of Alpheus looking like one of those cadavers in the corridor, and the tarantula-man.
It took a second for my eyes to adjust back to the pitch-dark. For the longest, most agonising, seconds of my life, not a sound was heard. Images of a broken gladiator flooded my mind. I wanted to scream out and attack blindly like a berserker, but I must still have been conscious on some level. I mean, if the tarantula-man had won, he was probably couched somewhere ready to pounce at the first vibration.