by Jade Alters
“Does that mean… you guys?” Helena wonders aloud.
She wanders a few steps forward into the spacious chamber. Unlike the Totem Tower, this ancient structure appears to be completely open. Enormous pillars hold up the high ceiling, which we can see all the way to the top of. Grassy patches poke up between the enormous stones that make up its floor. Coats of moss have grown over the lower portions of most pillars and walls. Gentle beams of light cross to the far side of the room, where a single door marks the way deeper in. It’s all a bit too obvious. But then, so was the Totem Tower, until a few floors revealed the true trial, fatigue to the point of delirium. I wonder how far this place will try to stretch Helena. My question is answered when she takes one step too close to the doorway we all have our eyes on.
Water rushes into the room from every side. A hundred gaps between the floor and every wall spouts a flood.They converge in a sheet on the floor that has our shoes covered in seconds. All of us make an instinctual dash for the door, before it can be submerged.
“I think it means everything,” Emery realizes of the City’s cryptic message. Our sprints quickly turn to trudges as we kick through the mounting water. When we’re about halfway to the door, a stone jaw converges over it from either side. It’s sealed off completely.
“Whether or not I’m willing to give it up… the City can’t have it!” Helena declares for whatever sinister tester is watching.
She flings an open hand out before her. A deep crack jumps across the stony barrier that’s doomed us to drown. But, before the rock can dislodge, the crack seals itself right back up. Helena freezes, brain churning at what best to handle first. The chill water that laps her shins gives her a nudge in the right direction. She puts one hand down at the floor. The other opens palm-first at the sealed doorway. Both arms shake with the surge of magical power from inside of her.
“It’s just two traps at once,” Emery encourages. Her hand comes down firm on Helena’s shoulder. While the others fan out, attempting to hide how frantically they’re searching for another way out, Emery holds tight to her friend. “You, of all people, can handle this.”
“I’m the only one who can handle this,” Helena realizes. Her eyes flit to me for half a second - the other Blood of the Origas to face a trial like this and live. I don’t even have time to smile or nod in encouragement before she falls to the submerged ground.
Helena swings her arms out in wide waves beneath the water, palms flat on the soaked, mossy floor. A ripple quakes the rising tide of frigid liquid. All eyes turn to the most powerful Witch in recent history when they feel the current shift. Water rushes out towards the walls from a central point - Helena’s hands on the ground. The stone around her hands goes bare first. The very flood that threatened to swallow us, now floods back out the way it came, through the gaps between the floor and walls. Helena keeps both trembling arms on the floor until all but an inch of water is gone. Only then does she dare try and wobble upright on her feet. She maintains her spell over the flood with one violently shaking hand. When we see how unstable she is, Emery and I rush in to help her the rest of the way up.
She throws her free hand out at the stone over the door again. The slow crush of her fingers into a fist sends cracks flying across the stone in every direction. They heal almost as fast as she can split them, at least on the surface. Helena clenches her eyes tight to split it deeper within, tunneling secret insecurities deep in the earthen blockade.
The heat comes out of nowhere. In seconds flat, walls of flame jump up through seams in the floor. The City is divided into tiny, infernal sections by the seemingly controlled inferno. It separates Emery, Helena, and me with its scalding blades. All that stops her from buckling right over is locking her knees. Helena’s hands shake at the floor and the door while the fire closes in. While sweat pours down to sizzle on the stone floor around her.
“Ferres! Keep the fires down!” Helena cries. Under any other circumstances, I’d have savored every second of his struggle. The proud son of a Core Line family, reduced to a frightened child right before our eyes. Ferres turns in nonsensical circles, shaking hands jumping from one wall of flame to the next. He can hardly staunch one before another jumps up, twice as hot. “Keep them away from me!” Helena orders.
“I’m trying! I can’t… there’s too much!” Ferres is forced to admit. At least it’s not for a lack of effort, as shown by the vein throbbing in his forehead. He spins three more aimless times before he realizes just how far beyond his ability this fire is to crush. Then Ferres wheels around to do the one thing that even hints to me he has an ounce of remorse. He thrusts both hands forward to unleash a tempest over Helena. It swirls through the flame to dispel it, at least from directly around her. It gives us all a second to breathe. To think.
“Helena, just focus on the door! Let the water in!” Emery calls out.
“But the water… everything I’ve been holding back will come flooding in at once!” Helena screams back.
“It’s alright,” Fey Deller soothes her panic. “I can help with the water.” She cups her hands to grow a small, organic comb-like device. I’ve seen something similar only once before, at the Point Arena facility. It’s some kind of filter. “We can breathe with these.” Helena’s wild eyes shoot down to the device, then to her semi-voluntary underling.
“Ferres! Open a path for Fey Deller. Make sure everyone gets one of those. When I let the water in, we might not have a chance to put them on,” Helena orders. Ferres concentrates all the might of his magical bloodline into thrusts of his palm. He blasts temporary gaps through the walls of flame, where Fey Deller can sprint from one of us to the other. We all have a water-breath comb fixed over our mouths in a minute, flat. “Alright… remember where the door is. We’re going to have to swim!” Helena calls out. Each of us braces our legs to lunge.
But, when Helena lets off the water, we don’t have a chance. She hardly has a chance to throw both hands at the rocks over the door. I hear her scream for a split second. I hear the barrier before us explode into a million ricocheting pebbles. Then the freezing tide crashes into me from every direction. My chest and legs flip over one another in the cold darkness. Even when the water levels out, the rip current of force beneath tosses me back and forth.
I force my eyelids apart. It takes a few seconds for me to identify the other shadows floating around me as my friends. A few seconds more, and I’ve figured out which way is up. I orient myself there and kick. I grab two shadows by the arm along the way, unsure of who they are. All three of us are gripped with the same grim horror when our heads thunk against the ceiling. There’s no room left to swim up. Only down. I point my nose back towards the door through the rising surge of heat bubbles left over from the flames. I point to it with rapid taps on whoever it is at my sides. It looks, through blurry eyes, like they both nod. We kick down towards it, only to be shaken by a shockwave through the fluid around us. Even submerged, the voice of the City rings out frighteningly clear.
“The Magic of other Realms is not welcome here!” it declares. Suddenly, my lips burn white hot. I see the figures in my periphery tearing their own breathers off just a second before I realize what hurts so much. Instincts of self-preservation do confused backflips within me as I reach up to tear my own mouthpiece free. I at least think to suck down the deepest breath I can before I do. That buys me a minute, maybe two. I have no idea if the others are so lucky.
Two thoughts scream through the panic in my brain. We’re all going to drown. I’m the only one who can do anything about it. I tuck my arms back against my body, which has a sudden rubbery feel to it. They become fins as gills slit themselves in the side of my throat. I don’t wait for my dorsal fin to fully form before I pulse off for the nearest shadow I can find, in the form of a shark. I slide in next to one body, which flinches at first, then grabs onto my fin.
“Rock?” I hear Hoster’s voice in my head. He sounds in pain, likely from retaliation of the City’s no outside magic rule
. I slap a fin to his back as an answer. For once, just the voice I wanted to hear. He can tell the others. I zip from Hoster to the others as fast as I can. “Grab on!” Hoster shouts across his bridge between consciousnesses, despite the agony it causes him. Five… six, I count in my head. That’s everyone. I can tell from some of the loosening grasps that we don’t have long. They’re all running out of air. I shoot straight for the open doorway deep underwater.
I kick us down a single, twisting, serpentine hallway. I zip down the path as fast as I can without shaking anyone loose. Hands grow weak. I hear a few exasperated coughs, the body’s last attempt to keep water from replacing air inside them. I turn my nose up at the conclusion of the hall and surge upwards. The very second my head breaches the surface, I feel bodies fall off of me left and right. The last of their strength spent, they gasp for air, too weak to kick. I float beneath them for another minute or so, nudging anyone’s feet who sinks back up. I circle in the cold beneath until the very last of my friends’ legs pulls itself up into whatever room awaits us above. Only then do I shed my rubbery skin for my human frame. I burst from the water last. Had I an hour, I still might not have been able to digest what I see topside. As it is now, I don’t have a chance. I’m paralyzed.
I float with my arms and chest up on the stony floor of a small chamber. In the back of it is an altar, not unlike the one from the Totem Tower. Above it hovers the last piece of Origas knowledge we need, suspended in something like a scarlet crystal ball. The key difference in the altars, the deep well set in the surface of this one. Helena’s arm hangs over it, in the control of Ferres Haruman. When my newly human eyes focus on it, they widen on the steady drip of crimson from her wrist. Each drip of it slaps against the small puddle of blood she’s already shed into it. The rest of our group lies splayed out on the rocky ground, coughing up mouthfuls of water. Ferres’ eyes bear down on them with a ferocity that can be only one thing. A spell. The entire lower half of his face is scalded red and blistered from the burn of Fey Deller’s water-breath comb.
“You… kept it on?” I sputter as I drag myself from the water. “What… the fuck… are you…” At the flick of Ferres’ eyes, I feel a swell of liquid in my own throat. I cough out a mouthful of it. My knees hit the stone. Still, I drag myself, even if all I can do is crawl. With each scrape of my kneecap, I vomit a clear waterfall.
“As long as I could stand,” Ferres hisses. “I needed the extra breath.” The sharp word acts as a sort of cue. Every spot of my lungs that wasn’t filled with water is now. I double over to let out an endless faucet of the stuff. My vision tingles with the lack of oxygen. “To answer your previous question… I’m completing the trial. You see, the Forgotten City isn’t as easy to solve as your Totem Tower. Our ancestors wanted to be sure…” Ferres wrestles against Helena to hold her bleeding wrist out straight. To keep filling the well. “That whoever coveted the forbidden knowledge wouldn’t be the one to get it. It takes a blood sacrifice. All of the blood, of the person who seeks it. So determined to make sure one another made it this far… you all played the part perfectly.”
“You…” I gargle, but more water than speech bubbles out. I go down on my elbow, even as I drag myself inches at a time. My muscles start to uncoil. My hazy vision glides over the others, most of whom are now purple. We’ll all drown in seconds. Helena might bleed out faster… I have to shift, weak as I am. I have to. I let my agonized head plunk against the ground. Something that doesn’t need air… but something that can get to Helena and… everything starts to fade long before I can think of an animal. But… I have to…
Emery,
Everything brightens. The gate to the next world opens to take me through, consuming the sight of everything that matters. Helena, bleeding out. Darius and the others coughing up more water than their bodies can hold. My nose flattens against the ground. To be sent, like this… at the hands of Ferres Haruman. I never imagined my last thoughts would be in hate, but I swear to Whatever’s listening I’ll haunt the Haruman line through whatever comes next. The last thing I see is Rock. At this point, it’s probably a hallucination, but I see him try to rise up, pushing his head down against the floor. His back swells through his shirt. Then… nothing.
“Not yet. It’s way too soon for you,” Hoster’s voice comes to me in the white.
“Are… we…” I murmur. Then I realize, I feel the words. I feel my throat! It’s drier than I could possibly have expected after all the water, but I’m alive. The light fades as I struggle to turn my head. Hoster helps me up on my knee while Darius holds the limp Helena aloft. Against the back wall, a creature I’ve never seen anything quite like pins Ferres against the wall. It has the body structure of a gorilla, but with far less hair. It’s tan muscles bulge while it slams Ferres against the stone again and again.
Just when it looks like he’s down for the count, the Core Line bastard unleashes a fiery shockwave from his hand. It knocks the creature subduing him clear across the chamber. The beast tumbles over itself twice before reverting back to its true form, Rock. I hardly have time to shake that off before Ferres lets fly a second shockwave, flinging Darius away from Helena. His head bucks back into the wall. I poise my fingers to snap. Hoster, I just barely have time to think.
It’s too late. A wicked dagger from Ferres’ back pocket slices the opening in Helena’s wrist even wider. Liquid ruby flows from inside her. Her head drapes low, a curtain call for her spectacular potential. For her life spent in attempting to overcome so many obstacles… only to end here. Ferres’ eyes widen at the rising pool of blood in the altar. Almost full. And Helena won’t fight anymore.
Because Ferres fell for my trick exactly. Helena is across the room, held up by Hoster while Fey Deller makes a viney tunicate for her wrist. Ferres’ eyes bulge from his head when the illusion evaporates and he sees Helena and I have switched places. I’m not too delirious to slam my forehead into his. He loses his grip on my bleeding wrist. Ferres stumbles back a step, right into the grasp of Darius, who zips behind him.
“Let’s see… wants the knowledge? Check. Blood of the Origas? Hm… we’ll find out,” hisses Darius. His lips peel back to reveal four jagged, toothy daggers. He fights through the instant migraine of the City to drive every one of them deep in the side of Ferres’ throat. It takes every fiber of his soul to pull them back out, instead of clamping harder. Ferres screams and kicks until Darius clinks the side of his head against the altar. His neck works as the perfect tap to fill the rest of the altar. “Congratulations, chosen one,” Darius smirks when the crimson orb around the floating tome cracks. Its shards rain down just before the book hits the altar.
The Price
Hoster,
Six Rivers National Forest, Forgotten City
Helena cradles the tome she shed such a vast volume of blood for. Her skin is still almost as pale as Darius’. Emery and Fey Deller hang her in the air from their shoulders. Rock and Darius carry along a second body from our party. The climb back down, once the blood seal was broken and the flood poured back out, was an ordeal rivaling the one that got us to the Origas’ grimoire in the first place. When we finally walk through the unsealed entrance of the Forgotten City, we’re greeted by a frantic cluster of Core Line Witches and Warlocks. It’s a rare day for the ASTF when a job comes along that only I can do, but for once, I take the lead.
“Helena! What happened to you?” Graham Bartos cries when he sees his limp daughter.
“Honey, are you alright?” her mother follows suit. The two of them rush to Helena’s side while Emery and Fey Deller hold her up to smile at them.
“I will be,” Helena murmurs, the extent of the sound she can make right now. “Thanks… to everyone.” I notice, from my spot at the forefront of the crowd, that the only one hanging back is Ferres Haruman’s father.
“Helena retrieved the book… Ferres… what happened?” the man asks. He looks at me as he says it. The rest of the Core Lines shift suddenly uncomfortable weight from leg to leg
. They look to me, then to the Haruman patriarch. That confirms it. They all knew - most of them at least. The price of the Origas’ knowledge. They walked Helena right into the jaws of what they expected to be her demise.
“I was going to sacrifice Helena, the way we all planned,” I answer in Ferres Haruman’s voice. I puppet his lips from inside his body, possessing him with my Astral form. I take a second to continue, to let what I’ve just said sink in. Helena’s parents and a few others startle in genuine shock.
“What?” bellows Graham Bartos.
“But… the ASTF convinced me that we should share the bloodletting to break the seal. That, if we just thought a little outside the box, we could still complete the trial and get the book. Helena, Emery, and I all gave some. Helena gave much more than we did, though,” I go on. Those uninvolved with the Haruman’s scheme put their hands over their mouths. I feel Ferres clawing to get out as I force him to say, “The way she handled everything in there… and forgave me for what we tried to do… she’s a hero. I wish… I was more like her.” That last bit takes all I have to say.
At last, I let go of Ferres. My Astral form shoots back into my physical one, a few feet behind. My head lifts from where I drape over Rock and Darius’ shoulders. I come to just in time to watch Ferres crumble to his knees. I can’t help but smirk at the sound of his well-deserved whimpers. That is, until he sputters,
“I-I’m sorry, father.”
Helena’s parents take a heavy step away from her, Graham conjures a miniature thunderstorm in each hand, while his wife generates a fiery tornado between hers.
“You’re apologizing to the wrong person,” Helena’s mother bites. She widens the space between her hands for the flaming vortex to grow even wider. She prepares, alongside her husband, to release devastation like we’ve yet to see on our betrayers. The ASTF takes a collective step back from Ferres. The Core Lines take one back from his father. It’s an easy shot for Helena’s parents now.