by Lucas Flint
Again without warning, another portal opened behind Bolt and the Avatar leaped out. He slashed his sword at Bolt’s back and the blow connected. Pain tore through Bolt’s body as the Avatar’s sword cut through his back and his costume, sending blood flying out of his back. Bolt yelled and staggered forward until a sharp kick from the Avatar knocked him off his feet.
Before Bolt could get back up, the Avatar stomped his foot on Bolt’s back and made him cry out in pain again. The tip of the Avatar’s sword suddenly appeared at Bolt’s neck, however, making Bolt freeze.
“Don’t move, human,” said the Avatar in a harsh voice. “One wrong move, and it’s off with your head. Keep still, however, and I’ll make sure to have the Dread Priest heal you when I present you to him as a sacrifice for the Dread God.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Beams took a step backward away from the box and the Skyward Stone. He felt the necklace again, vividly remembering just how painfully it had tightened around his neck and nearly choked him to death.
Do I even want to do this anymore? Beams thought. I have two attempts left. If I fail both, the necklace will choke the life out of me. Going through the Gauntlet suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.
Beams shook his head. He needed to stop panicking. It wasn’t like he had any choice. Both Scorius and Guide had made it clear that Beams could not simply quit the Gauntlet and go home like some kind of video game. He’d have to see it through full to the end, whether that ‘end’ was his death or his victory.
Even so, Beams wasn’t eager to try the puzzle box again. He knew he would have to be smart about this. If he was too hasty, he would waste an attempt, and then he would definitely not be able to afford to fail again.
Carefully, like it was a bomb about to go off, Beams picked up the box. It weighed the same as it did before, only now Beams looked at it with a certain trepidation that he had lacked even just a few minutes ago. He couldn’t get the sensation of strangulation out of his mind. He would have thrown off the necklace entirely if he hadn’t been aware of what the Guardians would do if he did.
Speaking of Guardians, I still haven’t seen them, Beams thought, glancing around the empty chamber. I wonder if they really exist or if they were just something made up by Scorius or Guide to scare potential challengers.
But then Beams remembered the sensation of being watched in the corridors and decided to keep the necklace on. Worse comes to worse, he might be able to use his lasers to blast it off his neck. Perhaps that would leave him at the mercy of the Guardians, but he had a suspicion that he would have an easier time surviving the Guardians than strangulation.
Shaking his head, Beams eyed the box in his hands carefully. He wondered how he was supposed to figure out what the proper image was supposed to be without a reference to compare it to.
Perhaps that is part of the challenge, Beams thought, if you really are as smart as Arius, you should be able to figure out what the correct image looks like without needing a reference. Guide did say that this challenge is supposed to be more intellectual than the last one, after all.
Beams didn’t mind intellectual challenges all that much. In fact, he enjoyed them a lot more than he enjoyed physical ones. Nonetheless, the knowledge that his own necklace would strangle him to death if he failed took away quite a bit of the enjoyment he otherwise would have felt.
But I need to keep going, Beams thought. I can’t give up now. I’ll just have to risk it.
Taking a deep breath, Beams began rearranging the pieces on the lid of the box. He figured he had gotten close to the correct image last time but had obviously misplaced a couple of tiles. He figured that the wings for the dragon went on the back. The first time, he had put them where its forelegs should be, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense when he thought about it, because dragons usually had their wings on their backs. It seemed to him that this dragon didn’t have forelegs at all, oddly enough, which made him wonder what kind of dragon it was.
Doesn’t matter, Beams thought. I just need to be calm and collected. Can’t let myself get too distracted by thoughts of failure.
Easier said than done. Beams’ fingers stumbled a couple of times over the tiles and more than once he had to rearrange them in what he thought was the proper order due to letting his nerves control his actions. As a result, he took a few more minutes longer than usual to finish this attempt, and by the time he was done, there was still a niggling voice in the back of his mind telling him that he had gotten it wrong.
What’s the point in being told I ‘got it wrong’ when I don’t even know what the correct image looks like? Beams thought, taking his finger off the box and looking at the image critically to make sure he hadn’t misplaced any tiles. Besides, I’ve got one more attempt, but I have a feeling I won’t need it after this.
Satisfied with the design, Beams placed the box back on the metal tray. Like before, the metal tray went back into Skyward Stone and there was a brief moment of silence in which Beams found himself wondering if he had managed to get it right.
But then the Skyward Stone glowed red again and the necklace constricted around Beams’ neck. Beams gasped and fell to his knees again. Despite having anticipated this, he still found himself shocked by how tightly the necklace strangled him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t move. Darkness was gathering at the edges of his eyes and in the back of his mind, he thought he heard a dark voice laughing at him as if the necklace itself was amused by his coming death.
Then, without warning, the Skyward Stone stopped glowing and the necklace abruptly loosened, allow Beams to breathe again. Beams gasped in relief as the metal tray popped out again, with the pieces on the box scrambled once more.
Damn it, Beams thought as he slowly but surely rose to his feet, this time using the extended metal tray for support. He rubbed his neck. I thought I got it that time. I really did. Damn it.
Now Beams had only one attempt left. One attempt left to figure out how to get the right image. If he failed, the necklace would kill him and his challenge would end here and now. He found himself wondering again how Bolt and the others’ quest to find the Starborn was going.
At this rate, I have to hope that it is going better than my own because it’s starting to look like we may have to count on the success of that mission if we’re going to have any hope of defeating the Dread God, Beams thought.
There had to be another way around this. Maybe Beams could use his eye vision to blow open the exit. It was just an ordinary stone door, after all. Beams’ lasers were strong enough to shatter even the toughest rock. Maybe that was part of the challenge. You had to realize that there was no ‘correct’ image and that if you wanted to move on to the next challenge, you needed to find a way to break the exit open.
Beams walked around the Skyward Stone toward the exit. Stopping in front of the exit, Beams put his hand on the side of his head and unleashed a powerful blast of laser energy at the door. His energy blast struck the door head on, but when the smoke cleared, the door was still standing, completely unscathed.
“Damn it,” said Beams under his breath. “Should have figured that wouldn’t work.”
Beams turned around and walked back to the Skyward Stone. It was obvious that he was going to have to do the puzzle again now, but he didn’t want to. If he couldn’t get it right the first two times, he had a hard time imagining how he was supposed to get it right this time.
Third time’s the charm, Beams thought as he stepped onto the platform again, though he didn’t walk around to the front of the Stone to get the box. Or so the old saying goes, anyway.
But Beams really didn’t want to even touch the box again. He just stood there, wondering if he was overlooking anything, perhaps a way for him to get out of here alive. He even found himself wondering if the Gauntlet was completable at all. What if this whole thing was just a trap set by the Ariopolitans to get rid of annoying outsiders like himself? It would explain the massiv
e failure rate of the Gauntlet. It was intentionally designed to kill challengers, to be impossible to win.
No, Beams, Beams thought, shaking his head. Stop being paranoid. If the Ariopolitans wanted you dead, they would have killed you outright back in the city. They’re not a very complicated or subtle people. You just need to figure this challenge out.
That was when Beams’ eyes landed on the Skyward Stone itself. The Stone was covered in all kinds of intricate and detailed carvings. They were works of art in themselves, carved long ago by a forgotten hand, much better than most of that modern art crap Beams saw online. He found himself admiring the workmanship of them for a moment, his own worries forgotten, but then he noticed something strange about one of the carvings.
No … Beams thought. It can’t be. Can it?
Beams walked up to the Skyward Stone and squatted in front of it. His eyes locked on a particular carving near the bottom, nearly hidden underneath what appeared to be an elaborate carving of the sun. It was a small dragon, its wings spread wide on either side, its mouth open as it spewed flames down on an enemy who was not part of the carving. Like the other carvings on the Stone, it was very detailed and well-done, even lifelike, though dragons didn’t exist.
But that wasn’t what caught Beams’ attention. What caught his attention was the fact that this dragon looked exactly like the dragon on top of the box.
If that’s true, then this might be …
Beams hurried over to the front of the Skyward Stone, snatched the box without even looking, and then returned to the back of the Stone and squatted before it. Keeping his eyes on the dragon carving, he began rearranging the tiles again, this time trying to make the dragon image on the box an exact replica of the carving on the Stone. It took him a few minutes, not helped by the fact that in his haste to get it done, he messed up a couple of times, but soon he finished and compared the two images.
They look exactly alike, Beams thought with a satisfied smile. Like the one on the box is a printed version of the one of the Stone. Maybe I will survive this challenge after all.
Rising to his full height, Beams walked back in front of the Skyward Stone and stopped. He hesitated for a split second before putting the box with the completed picture back in the metal tray. As before, the metal tray retracted back into the Skyward Stone.
Beams stopped breathing as he waited for the Skyward Stone to respond. Half of him was hopeful that he had gotten the image right and that he would be allowed to go onto the third challenge. The other half of him, however, was convinced that he had failed and that he was going to die.
Then, before Beams’ startled eyes, the Skyward Stone glowed blue. The exit on the other side of the room slid open, revealing the same empty blackness of the tunnel on the other side. The necklace did not tighten or constrict around his neck.
“Congratulations, young outsider,” said a voice behind him. “You solved the puzzle, a task few challengers have ever completed.”
Beams turned around to see Guide sitting on the other side of the chamber again like he had never left his spot. A smile of satisfaction had crossed Guide’s features, though there seemed to be a mocking quality about it as well, as though Guide was amused by Beams’ solution to the problem.
“Math problems are easy to solve when you have the teacher’s guide,” said Beams, gesturing over his shoulder at the Skyward Stone. “Or a reference photo, in this case.”
“But that is exactly how you are supposed to solve the challenge,” said Guide. “In order to prove your ancestry, you must show that you can think outside of the box. Very few of the challengers ever figured out that the Skyward Stone itself is part of the puzzle. They become so fixated on the box that they miss all of the clues available to them, but you did not.”
“Like I said, it was easy,” said Beams. “Maybe next time, give me something a little bit more challenging.”
Amusement sparkled in Guide’s eyes. “The next challenge, which is also the final one, will indeed be even more challenging than this one. After all, no one has ever completed it. But assuming you can—assuming you are indeed a son of Arius—then the God Slayer will be yours. Are you ready for it?”
Beams nodded. “Yeah, I am.”
“Good,” said Guide. “Then go into that doorway. The third and final challenge isn’t far off now. I will see you there.”
When Beams blinked again, Guide was once again missing, but this time his disappearance didn’t bother Beams. Instead, Beams turned around and walked past the Skyward Stone to the open doorway. He stopped in front of the doorway briefly, his eyes focused on the intense wall of darkness before him.
Then Beams took a deep breath and stepped inside into a whole new world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Before the Avatar could do anything more, a sonic blast struck him in the side. The Avatar staggered off of Bolt, while Captain Galaxy rushed over to Bolt and knelt down beside him, a look of concern and annoyance on her face.
“Bolt, are you okay?” said Captain Galaxy. She looked at his back and grimaced. “Your back …”
“Nah, I’ll be fine,” said Bolt, though his voice was somewhat strained due to the pain from his back wound. “Just let me get back to my feet so I can sock the Avatar in the face for being a jerk.”
“No, you need to stay down,” Captain Galaxy said. “You’re hurt and you’ll only make your back worse if you try to fight.”
“You’re not my mom,” said Bolt as he pushed himself up on his hands, but paused and winced at the pain flaring up in his back. “I’ll be fine. I’ve experienced worse.”
Captain Galaxy scowled. “You’re even more pigheaded than Space if that’s even possible. We need to run. Now.”
Bolt opened his mouth to argue, but then he heard a growl to the side and looked over to see that the Avatar had recovered from Captain Galaxy’s attack. He did not look injured, but he did look annoyed and he held his sword like he was getting ready to charge at them like a bull.
“The IEA,” said the Avatar with a sneer. “I should have expected you to come after me after our spy failed to destroy your group from within. Nonetheless, you are in no position to defeat me. I’ve killed far stronger opponents than a fragile human woman like you. You will go down quite easily.”
Captain Galaxy aimed her sound blaster at the Avatar, but before she could pull the trigger, a bright light suddenly shone through the darkness. The light was almost as bright as the sun, chasing away the shadows like a wave crashing down on a campfire. The light rapidly revealed that only a dozen or so Darzen soldiers still stood, while the ground was littered with the corpses of their comrades, although the killer of the Darzens was still nowhere to be seen.
Bolt’s first thought was that the light was from the Darzens, that they had managed to repair their light barrier generator and were using it on him and Captain Galaxy again. But then he noticed that the light barrier generator still lay in pieces on the ground, meaning that this light was coming from somewhere else.
“Light …?” said the Avatar in disbelief. “Oh no …”
Bolt didn’t understand why the Avatar said that until he noticed six beings floating down from the top of the Fist. They were tall and thin, wearing long robes that obscured their feet and hoods which hid their faces, though their long, claw-like fingers extended out from the sleeves of their robes like knives. Power radiated from them like heat from a volcano, yet even their robes were silent as they descended toward the assembled group of people below.
Bolt almost stopped breathing. He knew who those beings were, even if he had not seen them in a long time. They were the Starborn, the original creators of the superhuman race, as well as some of the most powerful beings in the multiverse. And now they were here, in the flesh, as majestic as ever.
And unless Bolt’s eyes were playing tricks on him, he thought they looked pissed.
The Avatar must have realized who they were as well. He immediately shouted at the surviving Darzens, “Ret
reat! The Starborn are here! We have orders not to engage the Starborn. Return to Jinkopa!”
A portal opened up behind the Avatar, which he quickly ran into and closed behind him. Another dozen portals opened all around the battlefield as the remaining Darzens—now visibly afraid—retreated as quickly as they could. Soon, all of the Darzens were gone, save for the empty suits of armor which had once been their comrades in arms.
“Whew,” said Captain Galaxy, wiping the sweat off her brow. “That was lucky. I thought we were goners there for a second.”
“I’ll say,” said Bolt. “Now, help me to my feet. I need to talk to the Starborn now, while they’re still here.”
But even as Bolt said those words, the Starborn gestured at him and his back suddenly healed. But before Bolt could thank them, the Starborn disappeared in a flash of light just as quickly as they came, leaving him and Captain Galaxy alone in the darkness of the Shadowlands.
A light suddenly came on. It came from Captain Galaxy’s touchscreen, which was now glowing a brilliant white light. It revealed Captain Galaxy’s puzzled and frustrated face as she looked around the area.
“Where did they go?” said Captain Galaxy. “They were here just a few seconds ago, weren’t they? Why did they just heal you and leave?”
“Galaxy! Bolt!” came a voice out of the shadows. Hypno and Aster suddenly stepped out of the darkness, Aster wielding a sound blaster. Hypno was the one who had spoken. “Are you guys all right? What were those … those beings we just saw?”
“Starborn,” Bolt said with a gasp. He rubbed his healed back, which no longer hurt or bled. “That was them. They appeared and scared off the Avatar and his soldiers, but then they disappeared again, though not before healing my back.”
“What?” said Hypno. “Those were the legendary Starborn I’ve heard so much about? They didn’t look quite like how I would imagine they would.”
“Doesn’t matter how they look,” said Aster. He glanced up at the spot in the sky where the Starborn had previously been. “Where did they go? And why did they just leave?”