The Call of Ancient Light

by Ben Wolf

  “Then we have to risk cutting off the tentacles to kill it.” Axel whacked Magnus’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “You go right, I’ll go left. Lilly, stay in the middle and wait for your shot. Calum and Nicolai, don’t let it get Lilly. Divide its attention. Whoever has a chance to hit it, do it.”

  Magnus, Nicolai, and Calum nodded, and they took their positions. Tentacles zipped toward them and smacked Calum’s armor, but he fended them off without having to cut any more of them. Axel’s plan was working.

  “Do you have the shot?” Axel called.

  “Not yet,” Lilly replied. She took to the air and shifted her position to try to get a better angle, but shook her head. “No shot.”

  The tentacle Calum had cut a moment earlier glowed bright green and split, just like the original eight had. One of them launched back toward Calum, but the other snaked around behind the Gronyx’s right torso. Calum batted the tentacle away with his left forearm and craned his head to see where the other one went.

  It curled around the arrow lodged in the left head and ripped it out. Green goo splattered on the dirt, and bright green light flared from the head. Then it began to move—

  Toward Axel.

  “Axel!” Calum yelled “Watch out!”

  Too late.

  The Gronyx’s body swiveled and the left torso rose up, its tentacles flailing. Six of them latched onto Axel’s limbs, torso, and neck, and reeled him toward the left torso’s mouth at the base of its body. He screamed and strained against the tentacles.

  Do you got any idea what a Gronyx does with its victims? Jidon had asked Calum after the incident at the Gronyx’s pit. It rips its food apart before it feeds.

  No. Calum couldn’t let that happen. Not to Axel.

  His legs pumped harder than they ever had. He yelled to Nicolai, “Take the right side!”

  Axel’s sword dropped from his hand, and despite his strong body, the tentacles stretched his limbs to their extremes. His cries reverberated off the tunnel walls, mixing with the Gronyx’s wails in a cacophony of horror.

  Calum leaped toward the tunnel wall, sprang off of it with his left foot, and soared toward the Gronyx’s left torso with his sword cocked over his shoulder. Two tentacles caught Calum by his waist and his leg in midair, but they couldn’t stop his momentum.

  He swung his red-bladed sword with all of his might and severed the tentacles from Axel’s body. Green fluid spurted all over Calum’s face, arms, and chest, temporarily blinding him.

  Something heavy batted him away from the left torso. His feet hit the ground first, then his body smacked against the tunnel wall. He dropped to the dirt, stunned, but somehow still gripping his sword.

  A set of hands yanked him to his feet.

  Axel smiled at him. “Wake up, brother. We’re not done yet.”

  Calum wiped green goo from his face and blinked, and his vision sharpened back to normal. He spat more of it out of his mouth, disgusted by its bitter, putrid taste, then he re-gripped his sword and followed Axel to rejoin Magnus, Nicolai, and Lilly, who dodged and smacked tentacles away from themselves.

  “We must find a way to kill it,” Magnus urged. “We will not last much longer down here.”

  “It’s your turn to try something stupid.” Calum sucked in several deep breaths and wiped more green stuff off his face. “I’m taking a break.”

  “I’m on it.” Nicolai raised his sword and started forward.

  The tunnel shook with violence again, and the Gronyx stopped its attack. Calum’s eyes fixed on the Gronyx, but the rumbling seemed to originate from behind him. Then a chorus of yells sounded from the soldiers.

  Calum whirled around. A large gray boulder broke through the ground beneath some of the soldiers, and those who didn’t drop into the sinkholes around it scrambled to get away from it.

  Commander Anigo dropped halfway into one of the sinkholes, but he clawed his way out and rolled away from the boulder before it opened and began to separate as the first boulder had.

  Familiar green light now emanated from both sides of the tunnel.

  Shrieks flooded the cavern, not just from the first Gronyx, but also from the second one that now prevented them, Commander Anigo, and his ten remaining soldiers from escaping in either direction.

  They were all trapped.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Terror threatened to overwhelm Commander Anigo as he realized the futility of his situation. With the arrival of the second Gronyx, there was no hope of escape for either him or his soldiers.

  Only about a hundred yards separated the two behemoths from each other, with Commander Anigo, his remaining soldiers, and the fugitives in the middle. Worse yet, the Gronyxes had begun to edge forward, gradually tightening the noose around their collective necks.

  He shouldn’t have even been here in the first place. It wasn’t his job to battle grotesque, wretched monsters underground. He’d been trained to do so much more, to usher in a brighter future for all of Kanarah, but especially Solace.

  It wasn’t fair. He’d done nothing to deserve such a horrific fate. He should’ve been enjoying brunch with his superior officers in the capitol, but instead he was entombed in a dark hellscape aglow with pale green light.

  “Commander?” someone called.

  Commander Anigo whirled around with his spear raised and glared at the young blond man who had called his name.

  “We need to work together on this.” He pointed. “Have your men take that one, and we’ll fight this one.”

  Commander Anigo clenched his teeth. He didn’t need some fugitive kid telling him how to fight this battle, even if his strategy was sound.

  “Commander, look out!” one of his soldiers yelled.

  He turned back in time to see a tentacle lash at his head. Commander Anigo ducked and swung his spear at the tentacle, careful to knock it off its trajectory with the spear’s shaft rather than risk severing it. He’d seen enough of the fugitives’ fight with the first Gronyx to know what not to do.

  But apparently, his soldiers hadn’t been paying attention. Nearby, one of them hacked a tentacle free from his leg.

  “Don’t cut the tentacles!” Commander Anigo shouted. Idiots. “Aim for its bodies! For the torsos!”

  Four of the Gronyx’s tentacles ensnared one of the soldiers, one tentacle on each of his limbs, and raised him in the air. Commander Anigo watched as he struggled at first to cut at one of the tentacles to free himself, but the tentacles pulled his limbs taut.

  Then they tightened.

  The soldier screamed for help and dropped his sword. Another tentacle coiled around the soldier’s neck and ceased his screams, and the Gronyx raised him above Commander Anigo’s head.

  A sickening crack sounded, and red liquid showered down on Commander Anigo. He recoiled with his spear primed to strike, but the Gronyx remained focused on the soldier who now lacked a left arm, which dangled freely in the Gronyx’s tentacle.

  Another crack. A leg this time, but it belonged to another of his soldiers.

  It was ripping them apart.

  He stood there, mouth agape. King’s mercy…

  “Attack its torsos and its heads!” Commander Anigo repeated. It was all he could think to do.

  By the time he’d rallied them, he realized it was a lost cause. The Gronyx had already killed four of his ten remaining soldiers and mortally injured two others.

  Instead of joining the last of his men in the fray, Commander Anigo backed away from the Gronyx with his spear at the ready. He’d come in here to capture or kill the fugitives who’d eluded him for the last few months, but now these tunnels threatened to devour him—literally.

  Captain Fulton’s death—providence? Certainly not anymore.

  Within moments, the Gronyx killed the last of his men, tore his limbs off, and devoured his body in pieces. Commander Anigo’s heart pounded as the Gronyx began to advance toward him.

  Now he was alone.

  Then he bumped into someone, and
he whirled around.

  Calum spun around to find Commander Anigo facing him with desperate eyes and dread written on his bloodstained face. Behind him, the Gronyx advanced, and no soldiers remained to fight it.

  “Don’t give up,” Calum told him. It was a peculiar thing to say to a commander in the King’s army, but what else was Calum supposed to say? The situation was hopeless, but just giving in only meant they’d die quicker.

  He shoved Commander Anigo to face the advancing Gronyx, and he stole a look back at the one his group had engaged, but they hadn’t killed or even significantly wounded it. Calum had meant for his words to inspire Commander Anigo, but they withered away to nothing in the face of the terrible truth.

  They were doomed.

  Unless… One idea pierced Calum’s mind like Lumen’s light shining clear through his body in his dreams. He didn’t even know if it would work, but it was truly their last chance.

  “Magnus!” Calum shouted as he batted another tentacle away. “You need to use your Dragon Emerald!”

  “What?” Magnus stole a furtive glance back at him.

  “You need to become a Sobek now, or we’re all dead!”

  “Yeah, do it!” Axel sucked under an errant tentacle swipe. “We need you!”

  Magnus dug his hand into the pouch attached to his belt and removed the Dragon Emerald, now appearing as little more than a black lump of stone in the green light blanketing them.

  He held it in his left hand and knocked a trio of tentacles away with the sword in his right. “What if it fails to work?”

  “Look.” Calum pointed to Commander Anigo, who stood alone facing the Gronyx behind them as it eased toward them. “The soldiers are all but dead, and so are we if you don’t try it. If it doesn’t work, we’re dead anyway!”

  Magnus nodded. “Stand back. I do not know what’s going to happen.”

  He sheathed his sword and hurriedly pulled off his breastplate and helmet. Then he loosened the straps of his arm, leg, and tail armor and let them fall from his body as well, leaving only the blade strapped to the tip of his tail.

  Within a minute, the Gronyxes would converge on the group’s position.

  “You guys?” Nicolai held his sword higher. “They’re getting closer.”

  “Is one of the requirements that you gotta be totally naked, Scales?” Axel shouted more out of frustration than joking. “We’re running out of time here!”

  Magnus paid him no mind as he worked to shed the rest of his armor from his body.

  “Come over here.” Calum pulled Axel and Lilly along with him toward the Gronyx that killed the King’s soldiers, and Nicolai joined them. They lined up next to Commander Anigo, who eyed them with incredulity. “We’ll hold this one off until Magnus can transform.”

  “That’s if he can transform,” Axel grumbled.

  Nicolai turned toward him. “Are you ever not skeptical?”

  Commander Anigo’s gaze jumped between the two of them and then refocused on the Gronyx. He never lowered his spear, and he never said a word.

  “Guys,” Calum said. “Let’s try to take this one down quickly in case this doesn’t work. Maybe we can find a way to kill it before we have to fight the other one.”

  “How? The only time we even managed to hurt the thing was when Lilly put an arrow in one of its heads.” Axel dodged an approaching tentacle.

  Nicolai nodded. “Then that’s what we do. We go for the heads and torsos and avoid cutting the tentacles if we can.”

  “So it’s the same dumb plan as before?” Axel almost shouted, his eyes wild.

  “It was working until it didn’t,” Calum countered. “Look, we have to do something!”

  “Watch out for its mouths.” Lilly drew back her arrow.

  Calum looked at Axel. “Are you in?”

  “Of course I’m in!” he shouted. “Even if the plan is stupid, do you really think I’d let you die alone? No. We’re all gonna die together, because then it’s fair.”

  Calum wasn’t about to argue Axel’s logic—or lack thereof—so instead, he nudged Commander Anigo, who sharply recoiled and stared at him with shock in his eyes.

  “Easy.” Calum held up his hand and nodded toward Commander Anigo’s spear. “You any good with that thing?”

  Commander Anigo’s eyes narrowed, and his eyebrows arched down. Something had broken him out of his stupor. “Of course I am.”

  “I mean can you throw it and hit what you’re aiming at?”

  Commander Anigo scowled at him. “Yes.”

  “So aim for one of the heads and throw it. Then draw your sword and help us finish it off.”

  Commander Anigo’s jaw tightened, but he turned toward the Gronyx and cocked his spear over his shoulder. “Fine.”

  The first Gronyx shrieked at them and charged, but a brilliant golden light flared from behind them and stopped it short. The light washed away most of the eerie green radiated by the Gronyxes, and Calum and the others all whirled around.

  With both hands, Magnus pressed the Dragon Emerald against his bare chest. Golden light emanated from its center and streamed in every direction, including at Magnus—into Magnus.

  The Dragon Emerald’s light transferred to him, and his entire body began to glow the same golden color. Then the Dragon Emerald darkened to an even deeper green color than before he’d used it. There, before Calum’s eyes, Magnus began to change.

  His fingers and arms lengthened, and so did his legs, his torso, and his tail. His arm and leg muscles swelled to nearly twice their previous size.

  Black spikes pierced through his scales along his spine. They extended down his tail, which had thickened as well. More spikes pierced through the skin on the top of his head, including a small one on the tip of his reptilian snout.

  By the time the golden light faded, Magnus stood six inches taller than his previous seven-foot height and must’ve added fifty pounds to his already muscular form—maybe more. When Magnus opened his eyes and faced them, Calum wasn’t sure he was the same Saurian he’d befriended back at the quarry.

  “You take that one. I will handle this one.” Magnus crouched down and tucked the Dragon Emerald back into the pouch on his belt, drew his broadsword from its sheath, which now lay on the ground, and started toward the Gronyx on his side.

  Calum turned on his heels and pointed his sword at the Gronyx coming from the other direction. “Kill it.”

  Commander Anigo cocked his spear for a throw and launched it toward the Gronyx. It lodged in the center of one of the beast’s heads, accompanied by a spurt of green blood, and Commander Anigo brandished his sword.

  Calum grinned. “Nice wor—”

  The tunnel swirled before Calum’s eyes. The ground whacked his shoulder, then his head, and his body skidded along the tunnel floor toward the Gronyx. He swung his sword to sever the Gronyx’s tentacle from his ankle, but he no longer held it. Calum glanced back and saw it lying on the stone floor three feet behind him. Then four feet. Then five.

  Lilly shouted his name first, then Nicolai, then Axel. Four more tentacles curled around his wrists, his other ankle, and his waist, and they lifted him into the air. A fifth reached toward his neck, but an arrow pinned it to the ceiling.

  “I’ve got you, Calum!” Nicolai charged toward him, hopped a tentacle that lashed at his ankles, and flung himself between the two torsos. He somehow found his footing at the base of the torsos and raised his sword.

  Pressure swelled in Calum’s shoulders and hips and quickly spread to his elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles. He pulled back, trying to resist, but the tentacle in his midsection pulled against his spine and arched his back, stealing the strength from his limbs. He fought them nonetheless, pouring every last bit of himself into the effort, but the tentacles were too strong.

  And as usual, he was too weak.

  The Gronyx was going to rip him apart.

  Then Nicolai’s sword cut the tentacles gripping two of Calum’s limbs and his waist. A wave of relief spread
through Calum’s body, and his joints reset as he dangled upside down, suspended by his left leg and his right arm by two other tentacles.

  They continued to pull, but Calum quickly grabbed his own wrist with his free hand and pulled back. With two limbs against one tentacle, he managed a stalemate—at least for the time being.

  Below him, the Gronyx curled two tentacles around Commander Anigo’s spear. Just as Calum shouted for someone to stop it from pulling the spear out, the Gronyx ripped it from its head and dropped it. The spear clanged against the ground, and the torso straightened up.

  Then the rejuvenated torso turned toward Nicolai.

  Horror seized Calum’s chest, and he yelled, “Get off of there, Nicolai!”

  Nicolai spun around and hacked at the torso with his sword, but a wall of tentacles stopped his swing. Another tentacle swept behind his legs, and he dropped to his back.

  “Axel, help him!” Calum strained and thrashed against the tentacles, but without a weapon, he couldn’t get free.

  “I’m trying!” Axel shouted back. He carved his way toward the Gronyx, hindered by its tentacles.

  Arrows from Lilly’s bow peppered the Gronyx but did nothing to stop it from attacking Nicolai.

  Commander Anigo wove through and rolled under tentacles, but he couldn’t reach Nicolai either.

  None of them could.

  “Help!” Nicolai cried as the Gronyx’s tentacles pulled him toward the right torso’s gaping jaws, all while preventing him from swinging his sword.

  It pushed Nicolai into its mouth, and its jagged teeth clamped down on his legs.

  Nicolai screamed.

  All Calum could do was holler. “Nicolai!”

  One of Lilly’s arrows struck the Gronyx’s right torso, and it convulsed. Axel ducked under a flailing tentacle and grabbed Nicolai by his arm, and Commander Anigo met him there. Together, they yanked Nicolai free from the Gronyx’s mouth, onto the tunnel floor, and then dragged him away.

  The lower halves of his legs were gone, and he wasn’t moving.

  An arrow knifed through the tentacle holding Calum’s leg, and he fell upside down toward the hard ground. Before he could hit, the tentacle around his wrist went taught, and his legs swung down underneath him, righting him again. His blood rushed out of his head and back into the rest of his body, leaving him woozy for a second.