by Sarah Noffke
That was the only one of the four left, one of them had to listen.
Sophia laughed. “Quiet is the best listener.”
Wilder nodded. “And you, my man Evan, are the worst listener I’ve ever met.”
“Huh?” Evan asked, having gotten distracted looking at his phone. “What did you say?”
“Case and point,” Wilder said, slapping his hands together.
Evan scoffed. “I’m a great listener, I just choose not to.”
“That’s the point,” Sophia explained. “We’ve got to employ the skill we rarely rely on to successfully get our artifacts and location for the spell.”
Pursing his lips, Evan shrugged. “Yeah, fine. How hard can it be to listen? I’ll be waiting for you all out front when you’re done hours after me.”
Wilder shook his head at the other dragonrider. “I’ve known you for a long time, brother, and I fear you’ll be in there a lot longer than you think. If Ainsley is to be believed, in over a hundred years, you haven’t heard a single word she says.”
“Who can understand the rantings of that madwoman?” Evan argued.
“Regardless,” Sophia said, snapping her fingers to get their attention. “We’ve got to face our own challenges, but how do we do that?”
Mahkah pointed to the list and then to a set of four circles on the stone floor. “Look, the circles correspond.”
She immediately saw what he meant. The numbers beside the lists were also on the circles but in roman numerals. “So, we just go and stand on our circle, and then what?”
“Then we find out,” Evan sang, striding over to the second circle marked: II.
Sophia gave the others an uncertain look but decided this was their best option. She reasoned, what was the worst that could happen? It was a solid small stone temple with four walls and not a lot of places to go. She figured the circles portaled them somewhere in a “Beam me up, Scotty,” sort of way.
Feeling a bit more confident, Sophia took her place on her circle. Wilder followed suit.
Mahkah was the last to move into position, pausing just outside his circle. “Are you all ready?”
“Yeah, mate,” Evan cheered. “Let’s get this bore-fest over with. I’ll probably have to listen to a bunch of hens go on about the weather and their Sunday best. So, the quicker we start, the sooner I can be back to ignoring the lot of you.”
Sophia shook her head, deciding to ignore him. She glanced back at Wilder, and he gave her an encouraging nod.
“We’re ready,” she said with confidence to Mahkah.
He took a deliberate step onto his circle, and the four didn’t portal. They weren’t beamed up. Sophia suddenly realized the temple wasn’t tiny. It was just that the majority of it had to be hidden underground.
The circles under their feet dropped out from under them, sending each on a narrow slide. They cascaded through the darkness, snaking their way through what felt like miles of tunnels until they shot out—each of them into a separate, darkened room.
Chapter One Hundred Sixteen
It was true that Mahkah had never been a talker. He had learned early on that a wise man listens more than he speaks. It wasn’t that he thought of Evan as unintelligent. They all had their strengths and their shortcomings. The thing that made Mahkah so strong, his ability to listen, was also connected to his greatest weakness, his inability to speak with great confidence. He just didn’t prefer the attention.
However, as he stood in the dark room and gazed out at the stage set before him, he knew that no matter what, he was going to have to face this fear. Resting at the front of the stage was a single microphone, and it seemed to call to him, although he had never spoken into one before. He’d only seen microphones recently at press conferences he’d attended for the Dragon Elite.
The rustling of the audience was the first indication that Mahkah wasn’t alone, followed by a spotlight that swiveled around the stage until it settled upon him, casting him in a warm glow.
The brightness of the light made it hard to see the sea of faces staring back at him, but Mahkah knew they were there. He could spy the perimeter of the auditorium he had entered. It was vast, with thousands of seats and a balcony up top. By the sounds of it, the place was packed with people.
But why?
What was he supposed to say from the stage?
What did they want to hear?
Mahkah stood there wondering what to do as restless muttering broke out from around the room.
“He’s nervous,” he heard someone say.
“He doesn’t know what to say,” someone else echoed.
“He’s going to look like a fool,” another chimed.
Mahkah’s palms began to sweat, and he was suddenly short of breath. It wasn’t lost on him he’d been riding a dragon for hundreds of years high up in the skies, but standing before a full audience made him want to cower in fear. This just wasn’t his strong suit. Even if it were, what was he supposed to say to the crowd?
“I don’t think he can do this,” someone stated from the crowd.
“The longer it goes on, the less interested I am,” another said.
Sweat ran down Mahkah’s neck, making his long braid wet. He wanted to run more than any time he could remember in history. Self-preservation was on the far side of the stage behind the curtain. But Mahkah couldn’t let down his team. He had to face his fears. He had to do the one thing he’d never been good at. And he had to do it for all he was worth.
Mahkah stepped up to the microphone and cleared his throat. “Thank you for joining me here today,” he said in a clear and loud voice.
Chapter One Hundred Seventeen
The auditorium where Evan found himself standing was mostly dark, save for the lights that ran along the steps to illuminate the path to the front. He stood uncertainly in the center aisle, trying to decide where he was supposed to go.
There was no one in the audience, but there were several speakers on the stage, all of them looking at him with expectant stares.
Did they expect him to take a seat, he wondered?
He took a step forward and paused, waiting for a reaction from the multiple people on the stage. They all sat in chairs with microphones angled in front of their mouths.
“When everyone has taken their seats, then the lecture will begin,” the man in the center of the stage said.
Lecture, Evan thought. That sounded incredibly boring.
“Afterward, the exam will start immediately,” the man continued.
Exam! Evan hadn’t taken an exam in…well, he couldn’t remember when. And lectures were reserved for goody-two-shoes like Sophia, who liked to listen to know things. Evan hadn’t ever really needed to since he relied on his charm and good looks.
He glanced around at the empty audience, wondering if he was early for this so-called lecture.
Thinking that it was best to slip into the last row at the back, he started to take the first seat there.
“If we could have everyone move to the front,” the man on the stage continued, “that would be best. We’ll fill in the seats as others arrive.”
Others, Evan thought, looking behind him at the dark entrance. There didn’t appear to be others. If he was the only one that would be incredibly boring. Who would he stare at while this uptight speaker went on about whatever?
What was this lecture about anyway, Evan thought? Maybe it would be something cool like modern video games or how to use cell phones. He could use a lesson on that. He might even welcome it, although he wasn’t certain he could devote all of his attention to it.
But the exam… He would have to pass that if he was going to get the artifact and location for the spell. He was going to do that because the Dragon Elite wasn’t going to fail because of him. Evan McIntosh was many things, but someone who let their team down wasn’t one of them.
Desperately hoping that this lecture was on something entertaining and relevant, Evan made his way down to the front row—not a place he’d ever voluntarily sit.<
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Sliding into the first seat, he slid down, waiting for others to join him.
Almost immediately, the man in the center nodded and began speaking. “Let us begin today’s discussion on how new trends in nuclear experiments are giving rise to the destruction of biodiversity on Earth on a global scale.”
Chapter One Hundred Eighteen
Pitch blackness surrounded Wilder. Pausing, he relied on his other senses to tell him about his environment. He had never minded the dark. It didn’t make him fearful because he always knew that whatever lurked in the shadows wasn’t stronger than him.
However, to complete this task, he had to rely on strategy. He had to think his way out of things.
How hard could that be, he wondered to himself.
Sure Wilder was used to using his strength in a battle. As a weapons expert who could sense the entire history a weapon had experienced, how couldn’t he be? That always gave him so many advantages. He had the advantage of seeing how a weapon had been used most effectively. Furthermore, he knew its weaknesses and shortcomings. Most importantly, he was highly attuned to weapons, feeling them as though they were an extension of himself.
He’d been in battles enough with Sophia to see the way she approached them from a strategic standpoint, not going straight to the act of combat. She thought through a situation, looking for ways to outmaneuver her enemy without raising her sword or throwing a punch. If he was honest with himself, it was a very foreign idea.
Why lure the orc into a trap instead of just clashing swords with it, gaining the upper hand and stabbing the monster using strength, agility, and skill?
That was apparently why he was there, but cloaked in darkness, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.
Then Wilder heard the scuttling.
Lifting his hand, he tried to create a light orb to illuminate the space. It didn’t work. That shouldn’t have surprised him. Part of his task had to be to face whatever was in front of him blindly. Wilder really wished he could pull his sword as the scuttling neared.
He tensed and blinked in the pitch darkness, then let out a slow breath.
A hiss radiated a few feet from him.
Wilder took a blind step backward, finding a ledge. He halted.
On one leg he knelt, finding the ledge and feeling downward. At first, he thought it was a step, and he was positioned at the top of a set of stairs. However, from what he could discern in the utter blackness, it was a steep drop from there.
Removing one of the many weapons he had on his belt, he held out a small knife and dropped it. When it finally clattered against something, several seconds had passed. The drop from here was long. Probably deadly, even for him, a dragonrider.
The hissing reminded him of the mysterious beasts that lurked in front of him. There was no way to tell exactly what it was, but the scuttling noise from various places told him it had several feet.
Wilder concluded that it was one beast, instead of a few smaller ones as he sensed the heat radiating from just in front of him. It reminded him of when he stood in front of Simi and could feel her body heat.
Something swung just in front of his face, nearly hitting him and sending wind across his cheeks.
The monster smelled rancid. It clicked as he’d heard some bugs do.
His heart trembling, Wilder wanted to dive at the monster and wrestle it to the ground. Stab it until it was dead. He was certain he could do that in the dark but defeating it with pure strategy…that was a thought experiment that would take some time, although he didn’t think he had much.
Something sharp cut across Wilder’s shins, making him cry out as he jumped to the side and met a thin leg covered in bristly hairs. It reminded Wilder of a spider…a really, really large one.
Darting to the other side, he found more legs.
Sensing the beast rearing back its head, Wilder stepped back until his heels were protruding just over the lip of the ledge.
When the arachnid monster screamed and shot forward, Wilder jumped back, but only an inch and caught the ledge just as the monster attacked. The momentum sent it over the edge, where its many legs brushed against Wilder as it descended to the bottom and landed with a decisive splat.
Chapter One Hundred Nineteen
It wasn’t that Sophia couldn’t fight using her hands and feet or weapons. She’d done just that loads of times. It was more she preferred not to.
For whatever reason, it came naturally for her to outsmart her enemies, using strategy to gain an extra advantage. If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t as strong as the guys and needed to rely on speed, size, and strategy to get away from enemies.
The first problem she noticed when the slide deposited her in a room was she couldn’t see a thing.
A quick attempt at a light orb spell told her that wasn’t going to work. Not seeing her prey would make it worse. She immediately got the impression there was something in the room with her by the sound of scratching against the floor.
The noise came from multiple places, making her think there were many creatures to fight. She considered pulling her sword from her sheath and swinging it willy-nilly through the air. But even if she couldn’t rely on strategy, she wasn’t going to be haphazard.
The darkness was supposed to add to the fear, and that was supposed to make her irrational.
Sophia figured she could remain calm, discern the situation, and then defeat this enemy using a weapon.
Pincers snapped next to her head on the right, making Sophia duck and roll. Something swung on the other side of her. More pinchers.
Whatever she was facing, it had to be one large creature, with lots of legs, and at least two pinchers.
Sophia darted to the side to avoid running into its scuttling legs and ran into a hot torso covered in sharp hairs.
Yes, it was one creature, and it was massive. And smelled horrible.
The thing lashed at her, its pincers clicking. Sophia dropped her body weight, pulling Inexorabilis from her sheath at the same time.
She didn’t know much about arachnid types, but she knew one thing.
As she rolled under the beast, listening to the sounds of its legs, Sophia made certain to stay underneath it, which required her to listen and roll depending on which way it was going.
It was blind too, which worked to her advantage. As she rolled, it was trying to get her out from underneath it where it could strike her. All the while, Sophia was trying to position herself in the perfect place, but that was impossible to see.
It was only when the creature stopped moving that Sophia realized she’d have to do the next part blindly and hope for the best.
Sometimes there was strategy, and sometimes there was blind luck—literally.
Thrusting her sword up with all the strength she possessed, Sophia stabbed the monster in the underbelly, the place she knew to be its weakest spot.
It screamed. Its claws clattered on the floor. Blood and guts burst out onto her, covering her at once in thick mucus, but before the creature fell onto her, Sophia rolled to the side, yanking her sword out and pulling it to her.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty
As soon as Sophia defeated the monster, her vision was blanketed in brightness like she was going through a portal.
She tensed all over, getting the feeling she was being teleported.
Still covered in bug guts, Sophia found herself crouched on stone ground, light all around her.
Lifting her head, she discovered the three guys standing beside her, giving her questioning stares.
“Um, so, no big deal, but you totally stink,” Evan said, holding a strange bone-like object in his hand.
“And you’re covered in something green,” Wilder said, extending his hand to her to help her up.
She wiped her palm on the stone floor. She was back in the first room of the temple.
“Thanks,” she said, taking Wilder’s offered hand.
He picked off a piece of bug guts from her shoulder
with an amused expression. “I’m going to guess this isn’t yours.”
Sophia shook her head, grabbing Inexorabilis from the floor and sheathing it. “No, it’s a souvenir from the spider monster I slew in total darkness.”
His eyes widened as a sideways smile lit up his face. “I had to defeat a spider monster in the dark too!”
She beamed, wanting to rush forward and hug him, but she did smell like the beast. Apparently, he had the same inclination and grabbed her and pulled him into her arms.
“Good work, Soph!” he exclaimed. “You did it!”
“You too,” she said, her heart still pounding from the heat of the moment. She peeled back and looked down at her armor covered in slime. “You see why I prefer to employ strategy over combat. I don’t have to get my hands dirty.”
He laughed. “Or your complete body. It is a good tactic.”
“Yeah, well, while you guys were having fun playing with cool monsters, I had to sit through a two-hour lecture on nuclear energy,” Evan griped.
“But you did it?” Sophia asked, pulling away from Wilder.
He scoffed. “Of course, I did, and I passed the test with a whooping seventy-one percent.”
Wilder grinned. “Don’t brag about that score, man.”
“Hey, just you wait until I can impress Mama Jamba with cool facts about how nuclear energy poses risks to our planet,” Evan bragged. “She’s going to bat her eyes at me when I wax on about how nuclear power plants use large quantities of water, displacing fish and other aquatic life.”
Sophia gave him an impressed look. “That’s pretty cool. Good on you for learning how to be a good listener.”
Evan shook his head. “I’m retiring. I’m not a listener. I’m a talker. Get used to it.”
“I’ve been trying since we met,” Wilder teased.
“And you, Mahkah?” Sophia asked, noticing he was also holding one of the strange bone statues.