Fire Games: A Young Adult Fantasy (Arcturus Academy Book 3)

by A. L. Knorr

  It had been set to stand freely in a shelf of stone and beside it was a rectangular box, much taller than it was wide. I picked up the box and inspected it. The bottom of the box was open, and the inside was hollow and full of zigzags of light. A tiny hole in one side let in light that reflected back and forth inside the box. It had to be lined with mirrors.

  Frowning, I put the box down, standing it on end. It was a little taller and a little wider than the spindle. I picked up the box again and slid it over the top of the spindle. It covered it completely.

  Moving back to the center of the room, I gave it another going over. Aside from the covered stone blocks, the shimmery bullseye, the untouchable chest in the wall, and the spindle and mirrored box, there was nothing else in the room.

  Walking over to the nearest angled block, I touched the canvas to see if I could take it off. It lifted easily away with a digital sound, then vanished, revealing that the top of the angled part of the block had been fixed with a mirror.

  I moved to the next block and took that canvas off. It too, had a mirror fastened to its angled top. My pulse sped up as I glanced at the shimmery bullseye. I thought I understood.

  Circling the room at a fast walk, I yanked the canvas coverings away one after the other. Giving one a test push, I discovered the blocks slid along the floor easily with a satisfying whooshing sound. They even went a short distance on their own, like tall curling stones.

  I rubbed my hands together and stoked up my fire as I returned to the quenching spindle. It could give heat, but it could also receive heat, and that’s what was needed here. Putting my hands on it, I poured heat into it until the metal began to glow a dim red. I increased the temperature until it was glowing a bright, supernova yellow.

  Moving quickly, because the moment I let go the light would begin to fade, I put the mirrored box over the spindle. A beam of light as fine as a laser shot from the hole in the box. It hit the stone wall and a black circle began to expand upon contact, accompanied by a sizzling sound.

  Kicking the nearest block into the path of the beam, I spun it so the beam hit the mirror. The laser snapped to a right angle and began to burn a hole in another wall.

  Soon I was sweating as I ran around the room trying and discarding the mirrored blocks as they shot the laser around at crazy angles. Ordering the blocks to send the laser into the bullseye was the goal, but it became apparent that there was only one order that would work. I lost track of time as I rotated each block through the light, analyzing the direction it sent laser in. I had to return to the spindle when the light became too pale, take off the box, heat it up to brighten the light, replace the box exactly the way it had been placed, and go back to work.

  When the light beam finally struck the shimmery bullseye, I held my breath. A crack reverberated through the room as a spiderweb fracture appeared in front of the chest. The virtual glass crumbled and I reached in and grabbed the decorative box.

  Flipping it open, I discovered a chime, the sort found dangling from the wind chimes on millions of porches throughout the world. It dangled on a thin chain connected to a screw. This must be one of the broken parts of Kanvar’s toy, then. It was meant to screw into the stick. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  Did I return to Kanvar? Did I pocket it? I drew the chime toward my pocket and it blinked out of my hand, but appeared in the top right hand corner of my vision, hovering there and slowly rotating.

  When nothing further happened I turned my attention back to the box and found a little slip of ribbon jammed into a seam. I tugged on it and a false bottom lifted away.

  Holographic shapes drifted into the sky before my face, transparent and rotating slowly, just like the chime. They were symbols, but crude ones, and not any that I recognized. They consisted of right angles only, like the letter H or E, but they didn’t make letters.

  I reached up to see if I could grab one, but it zipped up into the left hand corner of my vision. I guessed they’d be important later. They settled into a string of five icons in the corner of my vision and triggered the next step. A stone-on-stone grinding noise drew my attention to the wall, where cracks had formed. The fissures started slowly and began low, at floor level. Then the fractures sped up, sending chunks of broken rock skittering across the smooth floor and revealing a narrow passageway.

  Approaching the entrance, I ducked inside.

  The sound of crackling fire reached my ears before the visual reached my eyes. Emerging from the short, narrow passageway into the next room, I immediately recognized it as an old-fashioned forge. It was cute and fantastical, with an asymmetrical brick arch over flickering, banked coals. The fire danced and crackled, hovering over the coals but not touching, as if levitated by magic. A large red bellows with fine black trim gleamed from a peg on the wall. Overhead hung unfinished pieces of armor, weapons, handles, horseshoes, even what looked like wrought-iron bed posts. A half-built suit of armor graced one of the corners, while opposite it was a matching set of armor for a horse, majestic in its size.

  Along the wall to the left of the fire was a bank full of drawers. Instead of handles, each face had a blank rectangle depressed into its surface. Beyond the drawers was a thick-barred gated door, the kind you’d expect in a medieval jail. Crossing to it, I gave it a tug. It didn’t budge but there was a keyhole.

  I explored the room further, charmed by the off-kilter design, but feeling urgency growing in my gut. The task was not yet clear.

  I went to the wall of drawers, discovering a small black shape imprinted on the top right hand corner of each drawer. They were silhouettes. One outlined like a blade, another a throwing star, another a scythe. Every shape was a weapon except for one. One was a simple line, stamped onto the wood at a slight angle. Squinting at it, I could make out the thin chain with the tiny screw on one end. It was a chime.

  When I touched the drawer, the blank rectangular recess flipped over to reveal glowing words: What is it that when given one, you’ll have either two or none?

  A riddle.

  I tried the next drawer. Its panel flipped over as well, reading: It cannot be seen, it cannot be felt, it can’t be heard, nor can it be smelt. It lies behind stars, it lies beneath hills, it ends life, and laughter kills.

  I flipped a few more panels. Each of them had a unique riddle. I couldn’t find a place to input an answer. Fingering the edges of the drawers, I felt for buttons, notches, grooves or tiny levers, but there was nothing but smooth faces and the flippy panels with the backlit letters. Perhaps I only needed to speak the answer.

  Returning to the drawer with the chime stamp on it, I reread the riddle. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to solve all these riddles, because that might take days. I wasn’t particularly good at riddles, but I’d had a teacher in elementary school who had loved them enough to spend a whole week trying to teach us the kind of out-of-box thinking required to solve them.

  I read the riddle aloud, which was the first step the teacher had assigned us. She’d said there was often something in the phrasing itself, a collection of words which would sound familiar, especially when spoken, that might trigger the answer.

  “What is it that when given one, you’ll have either two or none?”

  My mind shuffled through possibilities and rejected them just as quickly. It couldn’t be something tangible, it had to be something metaphorical or abstract. A concept.

  I gnawed at my lip. My armpits felt damp. An answer seemed so far away. If I didn’t get this riddle, then I wouldn’t get that chime.

  I closed my eyes and read the riddle aloud again. The words ‘when given one’ were close enough to another familiar phrase: when given a choice.

  “A choice,” I said aloud.

  The chime’s drawer popped open and I grinned, some of my anxiety diminishing. Progress felt good.

  Pulling out the drawer, I found it removed from the wall completely. Carrying it over to the anvil on the workbench in the middle of the room, I set it down and opened i
t. There was a chime tucked inside. I picked it up and brought it close to my pocket. It flew to join its rotating fellow in the top right corner of my vision.

  I examined the box for a false bottom or secret compartment, but there was nothing else inside. Putting it back into place, I looked around the room to see if anything had changed. At first it seemed like nothing had changed, then I noticed another set of drawers beneath the forge itself that hadn’t been obvious before. These drawers each had an icon as well. They were lit up with a blue glow, and the shapes were familiar. A glance to the top left side of my vision confirmed these shapes were from the same alphabet as the holograms I’d taken from the first room.

  There were five symbols in the top left hand corner of my vision, but many more drawers and symbols available to choose from. So the ones I’d been given told me which drawers to open.

  I found a drawer that had a matching symbol and opened it. It slid open smoothly to reveal a mold. The depressed cavity matched the symbol on the outside of the drawer. Glancing between the top left hand corner of my vision and the bank of drawers, I pulled out all five.

  Laying them side-by-side along the top of the workbench, I studied them. Three had grooves which ran right off both sides of the mold. If I were to pour molten metal into them, the liquid would dribble out. But the other two only had grooves on one side. When I lined up the grooves they looked like the teeth of a key.

  I sucked in a breath as it became clear. I had to forge a key to open the gate. I looked for a chunk of metal to use, and grabbed a horseshoe. Heading back to the forge to put it into smelting pot, I paused. Was I supposed to melt the metal for real or as part of the game? There were digital flames here, as well as a bellows, but I was also in the fire-gym. It would have been easy enough for Guzelköy and Davazlar to set up a hafnium basin for the purpose of melting. But if there was a hafnium basin, I couldn’t see it because my vision was obscured by the VR. I decided to ask the game.

  “Am I supposed to make this key for real?”

  In answer, the digital fire flared brightly.

  “Okay, then.”

  I tossed the horseshoe into the smelting pot and set it in the coals. Pulling the bellows off the wall, I set the mouth into the coal and pumped oxygen into the fire. It growled and flared, liquifying the horseshoe much more quickly than I could have done in real life. A satisfying bubbly sound effect came on when the iron turned liquid.

  Carrying the smelting pot to the molds, I poured it slowly into the cavities, watching as it ran through the grooves of one mold to the next until it filled the last mold, the square key-fob. I returned the smelting pot to the forge and came back to watch it cool. I didn’t have to wait long. The key hardened with a little audio accompaniment that sounded like a cartoon bubble bursting.

  Dumping the key into my hand, I went to the gate and put it in the lock. With a click then a grinding sound, the gate hoisted itself upward.

  I walked through, feeling rather proud of myself.

  The sound of wind wailed above my head as I emerged in a very tall, crumbling gothic structure. Sort of like a cathedral but without religious paintings or stained-glass windows, pews or pulpit. There were a lot of dark shadows and cobwebs drifting back and forth in a breeze I couldn’t feel.

  I shivered as my footsteps echoed on a flagstone floor made of octagons. The honeycomb pattern spread before me, huge and broad. Countless pillars stretched high overhead, arranged in a scattered and disorganized way and connecting overhead like the ribs of some huge animal.

  Something caught my attention way up near the ceiling, glinting and sparkling. It was difficult to make out at such a distance, but it couldn’t be anything other than a chime. It was so high that couldn’t reach it, even detonating my hardest. I adjusted my visor, wondering if there was a way I could magnify what I was seeing. Pressing the little button on the side did nothing.

  I’d answered the riddle with my voice, maybe I only had to ask?

  “Magnify view,” I said aloud.

  A hundred thousand tiny red eyes appeared—in every dark shadow, in the narrow darkness between every pillar, and beneath every lopsided curve and arch. I gasped and my hair stood on end.

  Suddenly, the air was filled with flapping, screaming creatures. Sharp little teeth flashed as they dive-bombed my head.

  Bats! Zillions of them.

  I swung at them as they attacked. While I couldn’t feel them, I knew they were hurting me as a life-bar appeared in the bottom left hand corner of my vision, flashing red and diminishing in size.

  Punching out at the bats knocked out very few and only by luck. They were so fast and there were so many of them, I would soon die a digital death at this rate.

  Panting, I ran back to the safety of the forge. As I ducked into the short passageway between the forge and the eerie cathedral built by a drunken architect, I was relieved to see the bats couldn’t follow me. They threw themselves against the invisible wall dividing the forge from the cathedral, screaming and gnashing their horrible little teeth, red eyes glowing. But they soon gave up and flew away, leaving me panting and holding a hand over my pounding heart.

  I’d need a weapon after all. Those drawers and riddles weren’t just there for show. Feeling humbled and sheepish, I returned to the forge to face the riddles.

  Twenty

  Hooded Stranger

  I stood before the drawers, contemplating the options. While I was more knowledgeable about weapons now, thanks to Alfred, I was still no expert. Some were more tools than weapons, like the pick-ax and the sledge-hammer. Others were more obscure, like throwing stars in a variety of shapes, long-handled broad-swords, hunting knives, and axes. Drawn to a medium length Roman-looking sword, I flipped the panel for the riddle, and read: Different lights do make me strange, thus into different sizes will I change. What am I?

  After a minute’s consideration and coming up blank, I stuck my tongue out at the riddle and flipped the panel for a set of brass knuckles.

  Only one color, but not one size, stuck at the bottom, yet easily flies. Present in sun, but not in rain, doing no harm and feeling no pain.

  The phrases ‘stuck at the bottom’ and ‘present in sun but not in rain’ flicked the answer out of my brain like a tiddly-wink.

  “Shadow,” I said aloud.

  A sound effect like a bolt sliding back accompanied the riddle panel flipping over by itself, exposing a handle. I pulled the drawer out of the wall. Inside was not a set of brass knuckles, but the mold to make one.

  I left the mold by the forge to scan the ceiling for a piece of metal. Selecting a gauntlet, I returned to the forge, melted it down in the smelting pot, and poured the liquid into the mold. When the first set was finished, I repeated the process.

  Sliding them over my fingers, the digital knuckles triggered the life-bar to re-appear in the bottom corner of my vision.

  I ducked through the gate, knocking the knuckles together as I emerged in the cathedral. A metal-on-metal clink sent a shower of sparks onto the cathedral floor. A loud clank made me whirl as the gate crashed to the floor. I didn’t have time to be frightened at the prospect of being locked in here because the clank woke up the legion of bats. The red eyes appeared, the screaming began.

  Hands clenched into fists, I brought them up into a fighting stance and glared at the oncoming mass of wings and teeth and sharp little claws. Swinging wildly and with abandon, my vision flashed with red and digital blood splatters. It was a little on the gruesome side, but satisfying all the same. My own blood was up, my heart pumping as I used little internal detonations to speed up my attack. Flying around like a tornado, fists with gleaming brass knuckles glinting in the dim digital light, I sent bat bodies everywhere, splatting against pillars, dropping to the floor, even exploding into shards like the shadow-men in the capture-the-flag game. My own life-bar shrank a little, but the weapon I’d ended up with did the trick.

  When the aerial attack diminished, I swung around, panting and sweating,
looking for more of the hideous little creatures. They’d vanished, even the bodies and blood, but something new emerged in the middle of the room: an octagonal cylinder had risen out of the floor. It stood almost as high as I was tall.

  My vitality bar disappeared, and so did the digital knuckles, as I approached the cylinder. This was a modern gadget, an octagonal tube made of something transparent. Peering through the transparent side, I realized it contained a liquid—that looked a lot like water, and that the container descended far enough below the floor that I couldn’t see any bottom.

  No instructions or hints about the purpose of this cylinder appeared. I examined it for cracks, buttons, panels with riddles, anything I could interact with, but there was nothing.

  I lay a hand on its side, then pulled back with a startled cry. The cylinder wasn’t a graphic, it was real.

  Putting a hand on its side, I drew heat down my arm and sent it into the cylinder, slowly and gently, not pushing too hard. The liquid inside didn’t appear to change, but jets of digital steam shot from the cracks between the octagonal stones in the floor. I yanked my hand back, startled at the outcome. Then I applied heat with fresh vigor. The water inside the cylinder began to bubble.

  Steam hissed from the floor, jets of it sprouting up like a fountain in front of a Vegas hotel. A few of the stones lifted, protruding from the floor. When I withdrew heat, these settled back down to level. When I increased the heat, the stones jutted up further. A staircase was being revealed.

  With renewed heat, I boiled the water and kept the temperature high. Octagonal-shaped steps emerged from the floor, leading to the sparkle near the ceiling. It was the most treacherous and narrow staircase I’d ever seen, tall and without much surface area, but it would be enough.

  Only, when I took my hand away from the cylinder and there was no steam to keep the steps aloft, they began to sink. To succeed would require exceptional speed. If I’d been more skilled with tele-combustion, maybe I could have kept them aloft for longer but I’d have to do the best I had with the skills I’d developed.