The Prince Warriors and the Swords of Rhema

by Priscilla Shirer

  “They are in the enemy’s fortress.”

  “So he rebuilt it?” said Evan. “The fortress we destroyed with the Olethron?”

  “Yes. He builds new strongholds all the time.”

  “Is Viktor there too?” Xavier asked.

  Ruwach offered only a nod. Levi sensed there was a lot Ruwach was not telling them.

  “So we have to find this new fortress and bust the girls out of prison without getting pulverized by Forgers?” Evan asked, warming to the idea of another adventure.

  “You must also retrieve the books,” said Ruwach. “The books that contain the swords.”

  “I thought Viktor just took Manuel’s book,” said Levi.

  “He also took Brianna’s and Ivy’s. And he has one other as well.”

  “Seems like we could use a little more help here,” said Xavier, his voice laced with uncertainty. “Can’t you send for Rook? And Finn?”

  “You have everything you need,” said Ruwach. Then he stretched out one long arm, summoning The Book. The golden object came in from one of the far tunnels, speeding toward them then stopping suddenly and floating gently on its pedestal. The pages began to flip, the musical notes they produced dancing in the air. When the pages stopped, letters floated up and rearranged themselves until an instruction appeared:

  Your enemy is under your feet.

  “That’s helpful,” said Xavier, shaking his head.

  Ruwach pulled the words from the air and flung them into the orbs on each of their breastplates. They churned around in the glowing orbs a moment before dissolving.

  “Okay, so, how are we going to get to the fortress? Last time we had to cross a bridge that wasn’t there and all that stuff,” said Evan.

  “Follow the Sparks to the Cave entrance. Your transportation is awaiting you.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Under Foot

  Sparks led the Prince Warriors to the entrance of the Cave, which the boys had never seen before. The Water had always brought them to the Centrum, right smack-dab in the center of the Cave.

  “I never knew there was a way out of the Cave,” Evan said. He raced ahead as soon as he saw daylight at the end of the tunnel. He peered out into the bright sunlight and gave a yelp of delight at what he saw.

  “Tannyn!” he shouted, throwing his arms around the big green dragon’s neck. “How did you . . . what did . . . where have you . . . ?” He tried to get the words out, but he was too excited. “You’re okay!”

  “Gorp.” Tannyn sounded like he had a severe sore throat. An ugly scar on his neck and several more at the base of his tail where the thorns had pierced him told the story. But he opened his mouth in a wide Tannyn-smile and drooled happily. Xavier, Levi, and Mr. J. Ar came up to greet him as well, patting his head as if he were a big dog.

  “Can’t tell you how glad we are to see you,” said Xavier.

  “Yeah. Wait till we tell the girls,” said Levi. Then he frowned a little, wondering if he would ever see them again. The journey they were about to embark upon would not be easy or safe.

  As Evan climbed up on Tannyn’s back, Xavier began to ask a string of questions. “How do we know if the girls are in the fortress? What if they are somewhere else? How are we going to find them? And what about the books—how can we get to them without Ponéros or Viktor knowing we’re there? Assuming that’s where Viktor went—”

  “All these questions,” said Mr. J. Ar. “Don’t you trust Ruwach anymore? Or your armor? Or the instruction from The Book?”

  “Of course I do. I mean, I’m not sure. So much has happened. I thought Viktor was a good guy, you know? I actually liked him. I wanted to be like him. How could I be so wrong?”

  “What do you know about the enemy you face?” asked Mr. J. Ar.

  “That he’s a liar. A deceiver.”

  “Right. And what do you know about Ruwach? And the Source?”

  “That they are true and right,” Xavier said slowly, thinking over the words as he spoke. “But if Viktor was working for the enemy and he could fool me, then how will I ever know who I can trust and who I can’t?”

  Mr. J. Ar shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. But I know someone who can. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “Every single time.” Mr. J. Ar smiled.

  “C’mon, guys!” Evan shouted, kicking his legs against Tannyn’s scaly back. “Let’s go already!” Tannyn echoed his enthusiasm with a garbled squawk.

  “Oh, sure,” Xavier said in a melancholy mumble. “Let’s go fly into enemy territory and fight some Forgers and a creepy kid. Sounds like fun.” He climbed up onto the dragon’s back and sat in front of Evan between two spikes. Levi went up next, then Mr. J. Ar, who sat in front of him.

  “I’m worried,” Levi said to his dad. “About Bean—what if . . . what if . . .”

  “Let’s not go there,” said Mr. J. Ar. “If I know Brianna, she’s smart enough to evade the bad guys until we can find her.”

  “And Ivy? How are we going to get her out?”

  “What was the message you brought to Rook when you freed him from prison?”

  “Once freed, always free.”

  Mr. J. Ar nodded. “Do you believe it?”

  “I guess so. Yes.”

  Mr. J. Ar nodded. “Then let’s go get them.”

  Tannyn took that as his cue to take off but not before he opened his mouth and let out a blast of fire.

  “Keep your arms and legs inside the dragon at all times!” shouted Evan as he laughed at his own joke.

  Tannyn spread his enormous wings and launched straight up into the gold-swept sky.

  * * *

  They traveled swiftly, Tannyn gliding on updrafts and dodging skypods, until the sky changed to a splotchy red/black and the ground beneath them disappeared into a sea of dark mist. Strange, angular formations jutted from the mist now and then, making Levi think of bones in an animal graveyard. He looked left and right, fearful of seeing one of those deadly black dragons tracking them, or a swarm of Ents about to attack. But the sky, other than the skypods, was empty. Levi wondered about this. He wondered if Ponéros wanted them to come; if this apparent peacefulness wasn’t a lure into his trap, just like Viktor had been.

  Tannyn suddenly ducked his head and began to swoop lower. Levi looked over the side and saw the jagged outline of a new fortress breaking through the thick fog. It looked different from the old fortress, which had appeared more like a twisted maze of steel girders. This one seemed to be made of sharpened gray stone, with tall pointy towers reaching through the clouds.

  “I see it!” Levi called out. The others looked to where he pointed.

  Then Levi noticed they were headed dangerously close to the big, ugly skypod that hovered directly above the new fortress.

  “Hey, Dad,” Levi said, tapping his father’s shoulder. “Where’s he going? He’s gonna crash into that skypod—”

  Just then Tannyn flattened his wings and went into a full dive. Levi scrambled to grab onto the spike with both hands.

  “Whoa!” cried Evan.

  “I think we’re landing!” yelled Mr. J. Ar.

  Levi braced himself for one of Tannyn’s usually bumpy landings. But at the last second Tannyn pulled up, dropping his tail and reversing his wings. He landed almost gently—for him—on the top of the big, ugly skypod.

  “Wait, why did we land here?” Xavier asked. “The fortress is below.”

  “Maybe we’ll have to rappel our way to the fortress,” said Evan, sounding eager to try it.

  “No way,” said Levi.

  The sky overhead was nearly black, making it hard to see very far beyond the glow of their breastplates. Levi could make out rocky plateaus and deep craters—like the surface of the moon. He was overcome with a sense of utter desolation and stifled a wa
ve of fear. This was about the loneliest place he had ever encountered.

  Tannyn folded his wings and settled down on his belly. He bent his neck around and looked expectantly at his passengers, as if to say: “Well? What are you waiting for?” Except it came out as a soft, raspy, “Gorp.”

  Mr. J. Ar slid from the dragon’s back. The boys followed. They stood together on the skypod, looking around.

  “There’s nothing here,” said Xavier in a whisper. “We need to get to the fortress.”

  “Tannyn brought us here,” said Mr. J. Ar. “He knows Skot’os better than any of us. He was a slave here once, remember?”

  “So you’re saying that we have to go through this skypod to get there?” asked Levi. “But it’s huge. It’s at least five times as big as any of the other ones.”

  “I still think rappelling is our best bet,” said Evan. “Or maybe a zip line?”

  “There’s no zip line to the fortress from here,” said Xavier. He walked around the harsh “floor” of the skypod, thinking. He stopped, looking down at the ground. At his boots. Then he recalled the instruction.

  The enemy is under your feet.

  What had that meant? It sounded quite ridiculous.

  Under your feet.

  Xavier thought about that phrase over and over. Then all at once the answer struck him like a bolt of lightning.

  “Under our feet!” he exclaimed, stomping on the skypod surface. “The enemy is here! In the skypod! Under our feet.”

  “You mean Ponéros is in this skypod?” asked Evan. “Right now? And the girls too?”

  “Then the prison is here,” said Levi. “Maybe Ponéros moved it here when the original fortress was destroyed.”

  “He was probably scared we’d destroy the next one too, right?” Evan said, puffing out his chest a little.

  “But how do we get inside?” asked Xavier. “Do you see a door anywhere?”

  “There must be a way in,” said Mr. J. Ar. He gazed around. “That mound there.” He pointed. “There are several of them. They all look the same. Why don’t you go take a look?”

  The three boys scrambled up the mound and stood on the flat top.

  “Don’t see a door,” said Xavier.

  “Hold on,” said Levi. He stomped hard in the center of the mound, as if he were stomping on a spider. Immediately the surface dropped away, revealing a metal spiral staircase that glowed faintly green in the darkness below.

  “Whoa,” said Evan.

  “How did you know?” said Xavier.

  “Saw it in a movie once,” said Levi with a grin.

  “Good work,” said Mr. J. Ar. He turned to Tannyn, who looked as though he’d fallen asleep. “Better go now, old friend. Stay close and keep an eye out for us. We are likely to be in a hurry when we come back.”

  Tannyn raised his head and nodded enthusiastically, crouched down and then jumped straight up, fumbling a bit before getting his wings in working order. The boys watched him disappear behind one of the more ordinary skypods strewn about the sky.

  “If we come back,” Xavier murmured.

  “So, who wants to go first?” asked Evan, looking around at the others.

  “I will,” said Xavier with a sigh. He stepped down on the first step of the staircase. Levi followed him, wincing at the ghoulish green glow of the steps. It reminded him of the green light bulbs that had dangled from the ceiling of the prison in the fortress when they had gone to rescue Rook. There was something very unnatural and unsettling about the color. The staircase had no railing, nothing to hang onto. All around them was utter darkness. If I fell off, Levi thought, how far would I fall? Forever?

  The staircase wound around in an unending spiral, until Levi became dizzy. He tried to concentrate on the dim outline of Xavier’s back, glowing in the light of his own breastplate.

  “This is making me dizzy,” Evan said.

  “Take it slow,” said Mr. J. Ar, who went last.

  The space around them seemed to get smaller as they descended; the giant echoes of their boots diminishing the farther down they went. Like going down a funnel, Levi thought. He kept a tight hold of his sword with his free hand, fearing with every step to see an angry dragon or evil Ent appear. But there was nothing to see except eerie, endless darkness.

  Finally, a bluish light appeared below them, a welcome change from that awful green. An opening. A doorway. Levi felt hopeful that this descent would soon end. Xavier stepped down from the last step and entered the glowing portal.

  Levi followed, then stopped in his tracks, completely baffled.

  For the room they had entered looked exactly like the Cave.

  Waves of stalactites, glowing blue from within, dripped from the ceiling, while more glowing stalagmites formed small mountain ranges all around the perimeter. Darkened tunnels led off in various directions.

  “The Cave? How did we get back here?” Levi asked.

  “I’m confused,” said Xavier.

  “Look again,” said Mr. J. Ar, coming into the room behind Evan. “Do you see anything unusual?”

  “No Sparks.” Evan was the first to notice this.

  “And no Ruwach,” said Levi.

  “But look, there’s The Book,” said Xavier. He pointed to where The Book lay open on a fancy pedestal in the center of the cave.

  “That can’t be the real Book,” Levi said. He went over to check.

  “Don’t touch it,” said Mr. J. Ar. “It could be a trap. Nearly everything here is.”

  “Why does it look like the Cave?” Evan asked.

  “Ponéros is a great imitator,” said Mr. J. Ar. “And since he covets what belongs to the Source, naturally he will try to imitate it.”

  “So Ponéros is here? Somewhere?” Evan asked, a new chill in his voice, as if this adventure had suddenly taken a much darker turn than he realized.

  “Yes,” said Mr. J. Ar. “But it is not our mission to seek him out. We’re here only for Brianna and Ivy, and the books.”

  “Let’s hope he’s taking a nap or something,” said Evan.

  “So which way to the prison?” Xavier asked, looking around at each of the tunnels. They all looked the same, just as they did in the real Cave.

  “And where could Brianna be, if she’s hiding?” asked Levi.

  Just then one of the tunnels lit up with purple lights.

  “There!” said Evan. He started to march toward the tunnel. Mr. J. Ar grabbed him and pulled him back.

  “Forgetting something?”

  “The breastplate!” Xavier said. He pointed to Evan’s armor, which was blinking rapidly.

  “Another trap?” asked Evan.

  Mr. J. Ar nodded.

  “The breastplate says to go that way,” said Xavier, pointing to a different tunnel that was still in darkness. The others faced that direction; their breastplates stopped blinking, shining a steady light.

  “Right,” said Mr. J. Ar. “Get your swords ready.”

  The three boys pulled their Krÿsen from their belts and pressed them to their breastplates, extending their swords.

  “Okay,” said Xavier. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Footsteps

  Brianna crouched against a wall, hugging her knees to her chest. She was so tired she could barely move. She’d been running for so long, trying to stay ahead of the Forger on her trail, that she no longer had any idea where she was or how to get back to Ivy again. The hallways all looked exactly the same. Whenever she turned a corner, there it was again, the fake Hall of Armor, but when she called out for Ivy she heard no response. If she stopped to rest, the dreadful footsteps of the Forger began to echo through the tunnel, so that she had to get up and run again. How long could she go on like this? She had no armor, no weapons. She felt lost and helpless and very weary.

  Don’t cry.
She said that over and over to herself, even though crying was all she wanted to do. Viktor. He’d been working for the enemy all the time. Now she was stuck in this horrible place, and her friend was locked behind one of these doors, probably being turned to metal.

  If only I could go back, she thought. To the moment before Viktor rode up on the bike, to when she and Ivy had been playing with Star on the front lawn and everything had been peaceful . . .

  The footsteps reverberated through the hallway, jarring her back to the present. She jumped up, her heart racing, and started to run again. Her lungs ached, and her legs were shaking. But the footsteps got louder, ever nearer. Then Brianna tripped and fell forward, sprawling on the floor. She let out a gasp of pain but lay still. There was no point in running anymore.

  “Bean!”

  Brianna raised her head. She blinked. Levi stood before her, his eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe she was really there.

  “Levi?” She looked at him suspiciously. Hadn’t a Forger made itself look exactly like Levi once, in order to trap him in a dome? How was she to know this was the real Levi?

  “It’s me, honest!” said Levi. “Who else would call you Bean?”

  Xavier and Evan appeared on either side of him, followed by Mr. J. Ar. All of them. Brianna let out a gasp of relief, jumped to her feet, and threw her arms around Levi. Then she hugged Mr. J. Ar and Xavier, who stiffened as if taken off guard. Evan backed away, holding up his hand to ward her off.

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “No hugging.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry,” Brianna said, wiping away a stray tear from her eye. She smiled despite her still hammering heart. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you guys. How did you find me?”

  “The armor led us to you,” said Levi.

  “But what about the Forger?”

  “Forger?”

  Just then a roar like a jet engine rose up behind them. They whirled to see a Forger towering over them, its giant metal hand reaching for Xavier. Mr. J. Ar had his sword out in an instant, slashing at the Forger’s arm, knocking it away. It roared again, grabbing Mr. J. Ar by the neck with its other arm.