by Noah Layton
‘Hi…’ She laughed.
I wanted to be mad, but all I could do was laugh as I pushed off from the ground, releasing Evelina’s legs in the process who had become intertwined with us in the crash landing. I pushed up against the nearby wall, collapsing against it and collecting myself.
‘If we’re gonna do something like that next time,’ I started. ‘I’d appreciate a little forewarning. Just a little hint, you know? Kit, we’re gonna dive into the tunnel of death now, are you ready? See, it’s not that difficult.’
‘We’re here,’ Evelina said. ‘That’s what matters.’
‘Where exactly is here?’ Ariadne asked.
‘Good question.’ I took the role of torch-bearer again, picking it up from the ground and looking about the sub-chamber.
It was much bigger than the one that we had entered previously; shaped in a square, it was perhaps twenty yards on each side. The interior was even more dank and untouched than the last one.
‘Good lord…’ Evelina said, staring into the centre of the room. ‘It’s here…’
I turned, looking in the direction that she was staring, and saw it.
While the first Harpy Core that I had touched back on Earth had been deep red, this was a swirling, aquamarine blue. It stood on a stone column a few feet high, totally exposed. It’s light stopped just before the doorway – there was no way we could have known it was down here from the top of the passage.
‘So…’ I started. ‘What do we do?’
‘Get over there and grab it,’ Ariadne said resolutely. ‘Then we can get out of here.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I said, scoffing at them both. ‘I’m not rubbing it in your faces or anything, but that hallway just tried to murder all three of us, and now you’re expecting me to just wander over there and take a legendary, super-rare item from a podium and walk out of here like its nothing? Look at this place. Any one of these panels in the floor could fall through. Spikes could come flying out of the ground, and God knows what else…’
‘There are bodies,’ Ariadne broke in, pointing to the floor nearby. I held the light up, and sure enough, there they were. There were several scattered about in the room, but something was off about them.
I turned to the closest, pulling it over by its armour, the leather material of which had held together reasonably well. The body itself felt beyond flimsy.
Examining the remains, I realised that there weren’t any.
‘Where… Where the hell did he go?’ I asked openly, searching the clothes. Reaching into one of the sleeves, I fished out a few grey and white stones, some as small as pebbles, some of it even having been ground into dust. ‘What is this stuff?’
‘Chippings from the walls, maybe?’ Evelina suggested. ‘But I don’t understand… If the floor fell apart like a trapdoor then the clothes wouldn’t be here… And if anything came out of the floor to slaughter them, there would at least be some bones left behind…’
I raised the torch again and looked about the room.
‘Let’s take a closer look.’
A little improvisation later and we had created two further torches by wrapping longer pieces of bone that we had thrown within the leather from our bodiless friend upon the floor… If he or she could even be called a person.
I couldn’t figure it out, and it was starting to bug me. How had the rocks ended up in there? And where was the body?
We skirted the edges of the chamber, examining the walls. While the sections either side of the chamber entrance were bare, the walls to the left and right contained slotted indentations. Inside were stone coffins, there exteriors bearing a myriad cracks and chips in their exteriors.
Evelina kept watch at the passage in the doorway while Ariadne and I examined the stone coffins on either side of the room.
‘Who do you think’s inside these things?’ I asked, running a hand over the rough, dusty surface.
‘Could be anybody…’ Evelina said from the doorway. ‘It could be… Wait, wait, what’s happening?!’
A rumbling suddenly coursed through the walls, shaking the room and sending dust falling from the ceiling like rain.
I spun fast, looking over at the girls – Ariadne was safe, staying backed against the wall on the other side of the room, but torrents of dust were coming down over Evelina.
She moved back from the archway, being careful not to step on the panels that led to the Harpy Core in the centre of the room.
Then, with a rumbling louder than any that had struck so far, a gigantic stone slab came slamming down from the ceiling.
Our only exit out of the chamber was blocked.
Silence returned to the chamber as we looked about frantically at each other.
‘Great,’ Evelina muttered.
‘Well, now we’re fucked,’ Ariadne said. ‘Why didn’t you make a run for it?’
‘I’m not leaving you in here,’ she replied resolutely. ‘Splitting up is the last thing we should do.’
‘There’s gotta be a way out of here,’ I said. ‘There has to be…’
‘If not, at least we all get to die together,’ Ariadne said casually.
Evelina and I shot her a look.
‘What? I’m just looking on the bright side.’
‘Because that’s the bright side.’
‘It might be.’
Evelina knelt by the closest pile of dusty clothing once again and examined it.
‘What is it?’ I called over.
‘There’s something off about this…’ She said.
‘Apart from the fact that we’re sealed in a chamber fifty yards beneath the surface of the earth?’ Ariadne said.
‘No, the remains… These rocks… Wait…’
Crack.
This time it had come from the wall right in front of me.
‘What the hell was that?’ Ariadne asked.
CRACK.
This one was much louder, coming from Ariadne’s side.
‘These aren’t rocks…’ Evelina called over to us, standing with a handful of the white and grey objects and tipping them out of her hand to the floor. ‘These are bones…’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I said, backing across the room to Evelina while Ariadne did the same. The cracking became more prominent, a series of the sounds coursing through the walls on either side of the room.
‘I’m telling you, these are bones. Something crushed them into smaller pieces.’
‘What can crush bone?’ Ariadne asked slowly, looking about the room.
The answer was right in front of us. The coffins continued to crack, their stone surfaces splitting open suddenly.
‘Oh, shit…’
I said it, but we were all thinking it.
The coffins began to shift and twist in their openings, spilling out onto the ground in pieces before reuniting and sliding together. They paired up, the twelve husks of heavy rock becoming five shapes that formed into figures, seven feet tall.
‘Golems…’ Evelina said quietly as they continued to form. ‘We need a plan, now.’
‘Golems?’ I exclaimed. ‘The ones made of clay.’
‘Yep,’ Ariadne corrected. ‘They’re supposed to be extinct.’
‘Evidently not,’ Evelina said.
‘We haven’t got time to talk,’ I cut in as we backed against the stone slab that blocked our only way out. ‘Wait… Why don’t I just…?’
I hurried forwards as the golems finished their formation, staring into the blue, swirling light of the Harpy Core that we had been sent to retrieve. I mentally and physical prepared myself as quickly as I could for the inevitable surge of energy that would run through me, and picked it up with both hands.
But nothing happened.
What the fuck…?
I turned back to the girls, frowning, forgetting for the briefest of moments about the golems.
‘Why didn’t it-?’
‘Kit, look out!’
BOOM.
The po
dium behind me where the Harpy Core had been standing smashed into a hundred pieces as one of the golems made a jump for me.
I turned and hurried back to the girls, torch in one hand and Core in the other.
‘Why didn’t it work?’
‘I don’t know,’ Evelina said frantically, ‘but we don’t have time to talk.’
‘Aim for the gaps in the clay,’ Ariadne replied. ‘Our best bet is to cut them apart at the seams… Or hope that you can control the Warrior’s Rage. We need light.’
We placed the torches down and drew our weapons.
The golems bore the shape of humans, but their hulking bodies lumbered around slowly, grey and unstable, dragging themselves towards us with their huge stone arms. They were faceless, featureless, slow to move but brutal in the strength of their attacks.
And they were about to start closing in on us.
Suddenly I realised how the bones of the bodies had been crushed. Trapped in the doorway and overwhelmed before being stomped into nothing.
But we were three.
‘Plan?’ Ariadne asked quickly, holding her spear at the ready alongside Evelina as I tightened my grasp on my sword and shield.
‘Split up and don’t get killed,’ I said.
I set the Core down in one of our packs, ensuring it was safe. Before either of them had a chance to make a sarcastic response I dashed into the room, staying as far away from the golems as possible. The first that I passed on the right made a crunching jab in my direction which I barely missed before sliding past another and reaching the other side of the room.
Hitting the back wall and looking into the chamber, I saw all five of the golems facing me. It was beyond terrifying, but the girls quickly alleviated that.
Both let out incredible war cries that echoed through the chamber. Their wings propelled them forward as they both attacked a golem each, Ariadne on the left and Evelina on the right.
The attack sent the two golems flailing back, but they quickly returned with grasping hands of their own that the girls rapidly batted away. The two other golems began staggering towards them, but the one at my end of the chamber still had its full attention on me.
‘Uhh… Shit…’ I said, readying my weapon. ‘Any advice on dealing with these guys?’
‘They look tough,’ Ariadne grunted, pulling her spear free from one of the golems and kicking it back, ‘but they’re just clay. Aim for the weak points and slice them up!’
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
‘Why would I be joking right now?’
Before I had a chance to answer I backed up against the wall, unable to go anywhere else. The golems had initially been slow-moving, but in their desire to kill us they had taken on a greater speed; my attacker closed in, closing one of its huge hands into a fist and drawing it back.
I dodged sharply to the left a fraction of a second before the fist slammed into the wall. A dusty thud resonated – that could have been my own skull and my brain leaking out onto the ground if I had moved any slower.
Its clay hand was still embedded into the wall – now was my chance.
I swung my sword hard against the golem’s arm. The blade slice through the clay and took it off completely from its body.
I laughed nervously with the success of my attack, expecting the golem to start screaming like the snatcher by the boat.
Instead it just paused and looked at its severed arm in a confused fashion. Then its head turned back to me, and my smile quickly vanished.
‘Shit.’
It made for me again, this time bending its gigantic clay legs and leaping at me.
In a panicked move I dropped down, diving forwards and landing roughly on my front as the golem flew over my head. One of its huge feet was inches away from taking my face off in the process.
My sword flew from my hand, but I quickly pushed up and grabbed hold of it again.
Turning to face the golem for another round, I found it lurched forward on the ground. It was trying to push itself back up.
It had put all of its energy into the jump, thinking it would take me down.
Instead of questioning my luck, I held my sword tightly and ran forward with it readied over my shoulder. There was a weak point at the waist where I could cleave it in half – if I had enough power.
I saw red clouding my vision again. The adrenaline pumped through me as I felt the power of the Warrior’s Rage take hold.
I let out another vicious cry and swung my sword hard. It swept through the golem’s body completely – but the creature didn’t move.
It pushed itself up, turning to face me with a look of angry confusion. Then, like a toppling tower, it’s upper body fell from its legs, and it crumpled into a heap.
‘They’re not so tough,’ I laughed breathlessly, returning my attention to the girls, who were still in the throes of their fight. They had both taken down the first of their golems, and were now dealing with the final two.
‘They are…’ Evelina grunted, ‘If you’re fighting all five on your own.’
That explained why every lone adventurer who had come down here had been smashed to pieces – they had become surrounded, overwhelmed and eventually smashed to pieces by the mob of tough, clay fists.
What a horrible way to die.
Shaking my head of the thought, I rushed over to the girls to help them finish off the final golems. Now it was us who outnumbered them.
Ariadne speared the first through its clay stomach, leaving me with enough time to swipe one of its legs off and send it thudding to the ground while flailing madly. They were a terrifying and deadly force when fully composed, but once dismantled even slightly, they suddenly became a little pathetic.
I cleaved the golem’s head from its body with another swipe, leaving the final assailant that Evelina was dealing with. We made short work of it in no time, slicing and dicing together until it was nothing but a heap on the ground.
With the final golem dead, the stone slab that blocked our way rose up into the wall above from where it had come, clearing our path.
We dashed for the exit and sprinted back up the steps. After reaching the original chamber we all scrambled out into the forest.
‘Is the Core safe?’ Evelina asked.
‘Yeah,’ I confirmed, checking its condition in my pack. ‘I just don’t understand why it didn’t work the same way as last time.’
‘I know somewhere that we can check it out before heading back,’ Ariadne said.
A high war cry suddenly sounded all around us, and from the shrubbery appeared six figures. They were clad in dark, battered armour, with dark wings to match, and all clutched either spears or bows and arrows.
The three of us backed up into a small group in the centre, facing towards our ambushers. One stepped forward, a large spear clutched in his hand.
‘Drop your weapons,’ he growled, ‘By order of the drakes.’
So these were the ones who had brought the harpy empire to an end. In their armour they looked similar to the harpies, although the darkened colours they sported gave off a much more oppressive tone.
‘Not exactly the threat I was expecting,’ Ariadne whispered to us. ‘What do we do?’
‘Slight change of plans,’ Evelina said in a hushed whisper. ‘Raktun?’
‘Raktun,’ Ariadne repeated.
‘What the hell does Raktun mean?’ I asked out of the corner of my mouth, looking rapidly between the drakes.
Evelina suddenly grabbed me and spun me around, pressing her lips to mine in a hard, passionate kiss. Our arms were wrapped around each other, hers a little more tightly than my own.
‘What was that for?’ I asked.
‘In case we die.’
Evelina kicked hard against the ground, and suddenly all three of us were flying upwards through the trees.
Not five yards from the ground Evelina released a sharp screech of pain in my ear, but I could do nothing to help her. Her arms were wrapped around me too tightly for m
e to do anything. All I could do was feel the snapping of jutting twigs against my face and the smack of leaves as all three of us emerged just above the upper treeline.
Evelina and Ariadne blasted themselves forward with several hard swipes of their wings, hurtling through the air over the trees and towards the coastline.
The rush was unbelievable; it wasn’t even me doing the flying, but as I looked overhead at the night sky scattered with stars and felt the wings carrying me through space, I suddenly realised what it meant to have the gift of flight.
My moment of joy was cut apart when Evelina jolted her wings hard and tucked them in, sending us roaring ahead in a streamline and spattering something warm against the side of my face.
The screech…
It was blood.
Looking past Evelina’s shoulder from where we had emerged a hundred yards back, I saw the drakes burst above the trees and come flying towards us.
War cries bellowed from their lungs as they pursued us. I leaned my head back, looking into Evelina’s face. Maybe everything she had done up until this point had been a mix of teasing, sarcasm and loyal bravery; now a terrified determination had swept across her face as we spiralled through the air, just a few yards behind Ariadne.
She turned to look back at us, shouting an order back-
‘UP AHEAD!’
We soared past the shoreline and out above open waters, the winds of the land kicking up and whipping past my ears in an instant. Sharper gusts swished past every so often, but they didn’t belong to the wind; they were courtesy of the arrows firing in our direction from the drakes, who were pursuing us madly across the ocean.
The next island was at least half a mile away. There was no way that we were going to make it.
I looked back towards it, still unable to do a thing.
A huge, looming shape suddenly seemed to rise up before us, blocking out the flickering light reflecting from the water.
Raktun. It was an island, but not the one far off. This was much closer. It was miniscule for an island, and its rocky, sharp formations and exterior had almost stopped me from seeing it, but now here it was. It was only perhaps a hundred yards in diameter, innumerable black sharpened spikes jutting from it into the air.
I wondered what the better way to die would be, hit by one of the drake’s arrows and sent plummeting into the sea to drown or bleed to death, or slipping from my harpy’s grip only to be impaled on one of the black spears like a piece of meat at a buffet.