by Scott King
"Get out of here," Doug said. "You three have done nothing but cause trouble."
"Doug!" Alex said.
"Think about it." Doug leveled a finger at the Sisters. "We already know they manipulated us into traveling here. I left the dragon clans because of them. Carter changed me into a dragon, and they helped you sneak away from home. Where would we be if they hadn't gotten us involved?"
"If Carter hadn't turned you into a human,” Alex said. "Kane would have killed you."
"And who pissed off Kane in the first place to make her so vengeful and angry?" Doug growled, showing teeth.
The Sisters turned to each other and shared a knowing look.
Atropos took a deep breath as if to calm herself. "We understand that you and Kane are linked now, and your opinion may be biased, but we assure you the actions we have taken have only been for the good. Kane has never been open-minded enough to see that."
"I don't see it," Alex said. "Think about what Doug said. None of us would be here on this island if it weren't for you three. Even Medrayt's actions and what he is doing can be traced back to you."
"Medrayt was meant to be a savior." Clothu crossed her hands as if praying.
"But you screwed up," Doug said. "You pushed him too far, like you did with Kane. Instead of serving your needs, they retaliated against you."
"Doug is right," Alex said. "All of this is your fault. If you hadn't messed with Kane or Medrayt, my father, Gideon, and Elene wouldn't be in danger. You created this situation."
Atropos laughed. "We see what you cannot."
"We see all paths," Clothu said. "And we–"
"You see what you want to see," Alex said. "You manipulate lives with no care for how your actions hurt or affect people."
"We also do not like to be interrupted," Lachesis said.
"What are you going to do about it?" Doug waved his arms through Lachesis' non-corporeal body.
"We are powerful beings." Atropos motioned a hand toward her sisters.
"Born in a time before this world existed." Lachesis tilted her head sideways. "Before many worlds existed."
"We will still be here after your deaths," Clothu said.
"You are will-o'-the-wisps," Alex said. "Unable to exist anywhere outside of your abode in Compitum."
"We have caused genocide. We have destroyed worlds. We have saved races from extinction. Few hold the power we have."
"What has your power gotten you?" Alex asked. "You stand here belittling a dragon stuck in human form and badger two teenagers. If you are so powerful, then why are we all in this situation? You created this mess and you are powerless to stop it."
"We are not escape goats for your sins," Lachesis said.
"We have manipulated things." Clothu made a pretend coughing sound. "But we have left free will to you."
"The only people you have to blame for being here are yourselves." Atropos said.
"Ollip pratter," Alex said.
"They are right." Carter shuffled past Alex to stand beside the Sisters. "You chose to run away from your daddy and your kingdom. They may have helped you, but it was all you. Just like I was the one who chose to attack Doug. That is on me and no one else."
"Wait a bleeding minute!" Alex shoved him in the shoulder. "You don't get to act like you are all grown up and have learned the error of your ways. You are as immature as that day I saw you standing on a table in the Square Boulder."
"Who are you to judge?" Carter raised the pitch of his voice, making it sound three times more feminine. "You act all better than me because you are older and more worldly, but when push comes to shove, who does asinine things like refuse help from Bova, who sincerely wanted to help us, or gets in a sword fight with her own guards?"
"You hid that your magic is gone." Alex felt her cheeks flush with anger. If Carter wanted to fight with words, she was going to win.
"I burned it out saving our lives!" Carter yelled.
"Not telling us about it being gone almost got us killed," Alex said. "You are a child playing at adult things."
"You are lucky I can't do my magic or–"
"Or what?" Alex slammed her chest into his knocking him backwards. "You'd use the one of two spells that you know?"
"Enough!" Doug stepped between Alex and Carter. He placed a hand on each of their shoulders and pinched the pressure points at the base of their necks.
Alex squirmed, but Doug's grip held.
"You both are brats," Doug said. "Cut out the fighting. We got more important stuff to deal with, like stopping an army of mind-controlled dragons from destroying your home."
"Finally, a sensible thing to say!" Atropos clapped.
"Is it though?" Clothu asked. "His perspective is marred by his own selfishness."
"True." Lachesis nodded her head.
"What about my magic?" Carter asked. The heat in his voice diminished, replaced with a weariness. "Is there a way for me to get it back?"
"Bad question." Atropos crossed her arms.
"Stick to Doug's topic," Lachesis said.
"It was much more on point." Clothu floated forward till she hovered above Carter.
"Please?" Carter clasped his hands, begging. "I need it."
"You don't," Clothu said. "We are not fortune tellers here at your whim. We tell you only what we need to tell you, and we only came to say one thing..."
Lachesis coughed into her fist, clearing her throat. "Never get in a l—”
"Lachesis!" Atropos clapped a hand across her sister's mouth.
"Sorry," Lachesis said. "I thought we shifted from intimidation back to humor."
"What my sister meant," Clothu said. "Is that the dragons did not scorch this island to hinder you or to destroy the Dragon Lotus. Medrayt knows of the power in the blossoms and he would never risk losing access to that power. In the heart of Kalendor, in the ruins below, you will find what you seek."
"Why did Medrayt burn the island then?" Alex asked.
Diverting the dragons here and having them use fire could have been a test run for his attack on Elene, but there were other places not so far out of the way that would have been more suitable options.
"He did it to slow down the shoel," Atropos said.
"What is a shull?" Doug asked.
"Shoel," Clothu said. "You will find out."
Without speaking another word, the three ghostly beings vanished.
Alex took the lead as they made their way into the valley. Neither Carter nor Doug acted as if they wished to speak about the encounter with the Sisters. Alex for sure had no desire to rehash the fight with Carter. Her feelings hadn't changed, and she didn't expect them to.
The three walked in silence.
The deeper they went, the more the smoke and ash faded, giving their watering eyes a reprieve. Erosion had left few standing structures of whatever had once existed in this place. They followed a dry creek bed that had been baked into hard dirt by the dragon fire. The creek had flowed into a lake that still had a mark or two of standing water, and in its center was a bent steeple.
These ruins were the largest around, and the only ones that looked like they could be entered, but Alex saw no doors or windows, other than a balcony thirty or so parses off the ground. The entire structure appeared to be made of a dark metal though not a single speck of rust appeared on it.
Carter placed a hand on the wall of the structure. A moment passed, and he whisked it to the right. There was a grating sound and then a rounded section popped open that was barely big enough for Doug.
"Your magic is back?" She didn't mean for it to come off as hopeful as it did.
"Etriä." Carter's fingers ran across worn symbols that she didn't recognize. "It had instructions for opening a door."
Alex pulled out her small agyl orb and held it out to see inside the opening. Inside the structure, she found metal ribs running along the walls and a ladder that dropped down to an unknown depth. The air was funky, like stale water, and the instant she climbed in, the humidi
ty increased.
"Let me go first," Doug said.
"I got it," she said.
"Maybe." Doug scooted passed her. "But if I slip, do you want me to fall and land on you?"
Alex wanted to argue for the sake of arguing. She had hoped their trek into the valley would calm her nerves, but she felt more angry and feisty.
Doug disappeared into the hatch and Alex followed.
The rungs of the ladder were covered with some sort of black goo. It clung to Alex's fingers and was not quite skin temperature. She wiped her hands on her cloak and slowed her pace. Twice she lost her grip, but luckily neither Doug nor Carter noticed.
The shaft ended in a room shaped like an oval with hallways branching to both left and right. The walls were mostly smooth and with patches that appeared to have been painted with a dusty, rough coating. In some places roots had burrowed through the walls, and webbed outwards, blocking some of the doorways.
"Not a flashy place, is it?" Carter said.
"What did you expect? Alex said. "Gold lace curtains?"
"I thought it would be prettier. Curved archways, designs sculpted into the walls... The other ruins where we faced the wrent were nicer looking than this. This place is so bland."
Alex ran her hand across the grey wall. It was smooth, and brittle. She thumped it with her palm, and it cracked. Prying a section off with her finger revealed metal beneath it and more of the Etriä scribblings.
"That's what I'm talking about!" Carter cleared away a chunk of the grey substance. "That's classy. It's not rusted a bit."
"The grey stuff looks like a dried liquid," Alex said. "Maybe tree sap?"
"Doesn't smell like tree sap." Doug winced. "I wouldn't touch it if I were you. It smells wrong."
"Wrong like what?" Carter asked.
Doug took a long sniff. "Like sickness. Like an infected cut."
A hard mass struck Alex in the chest and knocked her backward. She smashed against the wall, causing sheets of the grey gunk to shatter and fall to the ground. With both arms, she pushed against the weight on her chest and recoiled upon feeling something moist and slimy.
Doug acted before Carter could. He kicked the thing off her chest, and it bounced down the hallway. With a single hand, he grasped Alex and jerked her to her feet.
"What was it?" Alex waved the agyl lamp over her chest, revealing a dark grey sludge.
"I don't think that stuff on the wall is tree sap." Carter picked up a thin plate of the broken substance and used it to scrape the gunk off Alex's chest.
"Must be a shoel, the thing the Sisters mentioned." Doug said. "Did either of you get a good look at it?"
Alex and Carter shook their heads.
A blur shot past Alex, missing her face by only a single mark. She followed its movements, swinging around to see that it landed on Doug's stomach. The shoel was worm-like, stretching a parse long. Its head was fat, and it had no visible eyes or noticeable features. Its flesh was squishy like a caterpillar's, and yet when Doug wrapped his fist around its tail, it flinched, revealing an under mass of pure muscle.
Doug jerked the thing off his chest. He swung it like a club, and threw it down the hall. It struck the floor, skittered and snagged on dried tree roots before coming to a stop.
"I think you hurt it." Carter stepped toward it.
The shoel scrunched up like an markworm and sprung forward.
A circular mouth, hidden on the creature's belly, cocked open, revealing two rows of angular teeth.
Carter belly flopped. The shoel shot over him and stuck to the wall. It crunched, shrinking down and leapt again.
Doug caught it by the tail and slammed it as hard as he could against the ceiling. A clattering sounded as more sheets of the dried ooze fell then shattered on the floor.
The shoel wrapped its tail around Doug's neck and lashed out, trying to bite Doug in the face.
Doug pounded the shoel with both fists. Again and again he beat it on the left and right side of its purulent body, and still it didn't stop. It acted unaffected, as if it couldn't feel the punches.
"Sword!" Doug said.
Alex tossed the agyl lamp to Carter and jerked out her sword.
She swung, aiming not to slice, but to stab the shoel. She had perfect aim, but instead of sliding into the gunky creature, the blade bounced off its skin.
Alex tried cutting the creature with a side swipe. Nothing. She then raised the sword above her head and brought it down with all her strength. Still the blade couldn't penetrate the shoel's flesh. "It's not working. Any other ideas?"
"Try your sparker," Carter said.
She didn't see why that would work, but didn't know what else to try. She pulled the sparker out of her pouch. She pressed on it, feeling the usual grinding sensation, and then embers shot from its tip and landed on the shoel's back.
Like oil on hot coals, a fire flared.
The shoel let go of Doug. It made a wet farting sound, and thrashed from side to side on the floor.
Fully on fire, the shoel screeched, but Alex didn't hear it through her ears. She heard it directly in her head. "It's yelling in my brain."
"Me too," Doug said. "I think you only made it madder."
The flaming shoel sprung at them. Doug shoved Alex out of the way and backhanded the shoel. It crashed the grey wall. There was a sizzling sound and then the entire wall caught on fire.
The tree roots caught fire, and Alex saw what was about to happen.
"It's all going to go. We gotta get out of here!" Alex jumped for the ladder, scrambling up as fast as she could. She hoped that Carter and Doug followed.
She hadn't climbed fifteen parses when the screeching in her head shifted to a high-pitched whistle. The noise was so loud that she lost focus. Not wanting to fall, she slumped forward, sitting on a rung. Still the sound ate at her, making it so that the simple act of sitting was too much.
She rolled backward.
"Got ya." Doug caught her, using his chest and stomach to pin her against the ladder.
They hung there for three minutes, and finally the noise in her brain ceased. Wiping water from her cheeks, she looked behind her to see that Carter had been as incapacitated and lay thrown over Doug's shoulder.
"I've seen some strange things these past few months," she said. "But that has to be the strangest."
"At least we know they can be killed." Carter rolled off Doug's shoulder, climbing onto the ladder above Alex.
"Oh dunggrubber." Alex rubbed her temples while looking down into the flaming inferno of the hallway. "Do you think there are more of them or that there was only one?"
"There has to be more," Doug said.
"Maybe not," Carter said. "Medrayt must have had the dragons torch the island to kill those things. This might have been one that he missed."
“Doug is probably right,” Alex said. "This would be too easy if there weren't, and none of this has been easy."
"If we are going back in, we should do it armed," Doug said.
Carter mumbled something under his breath.
"What was that?" Alex asked.
"Just that if one of you knew how to do agyls, all it would take is learning two to make fire."
"I had classes and some of the finest tutors," she said. "But it wasn't my thing, and maybe instead of giving us a hard time 'cause you can't access your magic right now, you can try and be productive?"
There were no trees or anything burnable above ground. The dragons had seen to that. Judging by the fact that the fire was still flickering in the hallway below them, there probably wouldn't be anything flammable below them either.
"We can use my cloak and your sword," Carter said. "At this point I don't need it, and it should burn. It won't burn long, but it's better than nothing."
When the fires finally faded, they climbed back down the ladder. Where a funky humidity had clung to her before, now the air had an itchy smokiness that made her scrunch her nose up in an attempt not to sneeze.
They knott
ed strips of cloth around Alex's sword and then lit it on fire. The Greker fabric burned, but did so slowly, making it a much more practical torch than she would have suspected.
"Which way?" Carter asked.
Doug sniffed, leaning back and forth, and then motioned. "There is burned shoel that way. I don't smell any down the other halls."
"That's good enough for me." Alex led with the torch. The hallway snaked around, descending into the ground, and after several hundred parses, it opened up to a round stadium-like room. Along the way, they didn't see another living shoel, though they passed several clusters of dead bodies.
The room was big, more like a cavern, and the ceiling was high with a narrow shaft at its apex. Light streamed down the shaft. Like spokes on a wheel, other tunnels branched off the main room.
At the center was a dark pit. It was perfectly round like a well and easily twenty parses wide. But what caught their immediate attention was a small platform on the other side of the well. On that platform they saw a patch of dirt, green grass, and purple flowers. Dragon Lotuses.
"There!" Doug broke into a run and just as quickly skidded to a stop.
A black blob rose out of the patch of dirt. At first Alex thought it was an extra large shoel, but then her heart sank. The blob took on the human form of Kane.
"Hello, husband. It took you long enough to get here." She pretended a yawn. "We've been waiting a week."
"Why are you here?" Doug said.
"Doing what I set out to do from the start." She bent over and picked up a thin object. She ran it over the hard surface of the wall, and it sparked a flame. "Funny thing about these flowers, if you dump oil onto them..."
Kane dropped the match. It landed in the patch of Dragon Lotus.
"No!" Doug yelled.
"...they burn." Kane laughed.
The flowers, glistening with oil, burst into flames.
Alex felt the air leave her chest. Her head spun. This was their last chance to save her kingdom, and now it was over. It was all over.
40
The Barrier
Isleday, 25th of Winewen, 1162.111