by Casey Knight
Once he got his heart back inside his chest, he moved over to where the demon had disappeared. I gave it a few minutes and followed the two since no one else had arrived, and at least I knew there was nothing lethal here. Besides, the fae looked motivated to kick demon ass, and if I had to guess, the demon should cover his ass. Since we all knew the saying about, “watching whose toes you step on today because they will surely be connected to the foot that kicks your ass tomorrow.” It looked like the fae was ready to bring some whoop ass to the demon. As long as he played by the rules, it should be entertaining, and if he didn’t, I had the answer.
I turned my bracelet up a little to get a better view of where I was going. It looked like another hidden hallway, and I listened to see if either competitor was nearby. Then I sent out my magic, probing, but got nothing. I moved cautiously down the deserted hall. As I took my next step, I heard a click just before the floor dropped out from under me. I’d kill that design team when this was over. I fell, landing in an undignified heap on a large mat similar to the type used in track meets. I rolled over and regained my feet, if not my dignity. I was in a small domed room, no doubt one of the twenty-two domes in this church. The room was empty of art and furniture. I crossed the room and tried the door. The knob turned, and I peered carefully out into the hallway. I heard movement to my left and cautiously followed the sound. It led me to a landing and stairs going up and down.
I was torn on which way to go, when a feeling of impending doom washed over me. It sent a chill down my spine and I shivered involuntarily, dread creeping over me, blanketing me, saturating, smothering, and steeping me in fear. I fought the impulse to run because I recognized the vile magic from the oasis. The wave of evil came from somewhere above. My survival instincts wanted me to move in the opposite direction, but it was my job to protect the contestants, so I headed up the stairs as carefully as I could. There was another landing with stairs that continued upward. I assumed I was approaching another of the many domes in this church. The door to the room was closed. The closer I got to it, the greater the dread. The evil seemed to be concentrated directly behind the door. It pulsed maliciously. This was a good time to redeploy my holographic image. I called forth my holographic double and directed it toward the door. While I doubled my shields, I backed farther down the hall because I didn’t want to be too close if my image caused an explosion. I had my bracelet on high and a ball bearing in my hand. My hologram approached the door and hesitated before it gripped the doorknob. I hesitated while I extended my magic until it stretched to cover the area behind the door.
I found the demon alive, and suspected he’d been knocked senseless. His body stood against the far wall, where I assume it had landed and then slid down the wall onto the floor behind the bed. The church obviously used some of these domed chambers for bedrooms. At least the demon wasn’t in the line of fire. There was serious dark magic coming from the corner to the right of the door. Anyone entering the room would’ve been squarely in the line of fire, proving once again that it sucked to be me, even if it was only my image. Since I knew where the magic’s wielder was, I positioned myself to the left of the door. I’d be right behind my hologram, coming in with guns blazing.
I watched as my hologram pushed the door open and dove to the left away from the magic’s source. A thunderous roar sounded and the dome shook, the shock waves knocking me on my ass. I scrambled to regain my footing, staggered, and nearly fell. My ears rang, and balance was unsteady. I steadied myself by holding on to the doorjamb, using the wall to inch cautiously toward the source of the blast. I was already too late, because the dark magic was rapidly receding. Whoever fired on my hologram was long gone. They would leave a trail of trace evidence and I would get this bastard sooner than later. I entered the room and checked the demon to make sure he was still alive. He was, but done for these games. I called it in and while I waited for him to be transported, I looked to see what had happened in the room.
From the lump on the back of the demon’s head, it looked like he had been knocked unconscious as he searched for clues. There was nothing but a crater where my hologram had been. This guy wasn’t taking any chances. He had used enough concentrated energy to stop a freight train. I went to the place where I’d sensed his presence earlier, using my second sight to scour the area for clues. Whoever this was, their magic was wicked, ancient, almost mythological in proportions. As far as I knew, I hadn’t pissed off any ancient dead gods. That’s when I saw a second magical signature and knew we were in deep shit. There was an even larger and viler supernatural signature across from where my hologram was obliterated. There’d been two entities here. If I was correct, the one on the right had sent a shock wave of fear or dread into my hologram. If it had really been me, I would have fled in the face of it, which would have sent me running right into the waiting arms of the assassin. Whoever the slayer was, he’d used a flamethrower when a blowtorch would have sufficed.
The emergency team arrived, and I watched as they removed the demon. I heard voices and turned to see Corbin and Traygen jogging in my direction.
“Lauren, are you okay?” Traygen asked as he hugged me.
“Yes, but I can’t say the same thing for my hologram. They vaporized it.”
“They?” Corbin asked as he raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
Traygen had let go of me and was walking around the area using his acute sense of smell to try to identify the magic users. He stopped by the two spots and scented the air.
“I don’t recognize those signature traces but, I’ll know them if I smell them again. There is something off with them. I mean besides the fact they both ooze evil energy.”
“I know, and I don’t recognize them either. Yet, I feel like maybe I should. I just can’t put my finger on it. It’s almost as though they’re dead, or the shades of the dead. I hope it comes to me before I join them.”
“Lauren, we will get them. In the meantime, we need to get back to watching over the contestants. The all-clear signal should sound any second.”
“Corbin’s right. I’ll find the fae, you two spread out around the complex. We’ve already taken out one familiar, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more. Keep safe out there.”
Traygen and Corbin left and headed back outside. I doubled back to pick up the fae’s trail. He had gone the opposite direction from the demon. I didn’t know if he was karmically blessed or just lucky he hadn’t gone after the demon. I heard the horn signal it was clear to begin again. I came to the landing where the fae had gone in the opposite direction from the demon. I listened and couldn’t detect anything, so sent my senses out to detect any magical energy nearby. A solid ping, followed by a fainter ping, told me someone was close, and someone else was coming my way. I had the fae’s scent and honed in on him. He was in the area, and I think the wizard was somewhere below me.
As I moved along the hall, the fae’s scent grew stronger. I heard a faint thumping sound ahead of me. The pounding grew louder and was rhythmic in nature. I decided not to take any chances, so increased the energy to my bracelet. Finally, I arrived at an area where the hallway split to find another flight of stairs, heading down. Since the noise came from that direction, I followed it. When I got to the bottom floor, I was in the left transept that ended to the left of the altar. It didn’t take long to identify the noise.
The fae had walked up to the central altar and was circling around in front of the icons. Every few feet he stopped and tapped on a section of one of the panels. After consulting his notes, he strode over to the baptistery, which was tucked into the east transept. It was a raised fountain that looked like a fifteen-foot tall chalice or birdbath. A flight of stairs on each side led to the top. For my money, it looked like a giant birdbath. I was going to hell anyway, and could afford to be irreverent. I had never seen such an impressively sculpted structure. It was made of white marble the carved figures from the twelve signs of the zodiac on the bottom. The fae took his time as he walked around examini
ng it. He must have surmised his nearest competitor had been eliminated. When he stopped, he was standing in front of the sign for Aquarius, and he reached out and pushed on it. With a whooshing noise, the baptistery tilted slightly toward the fae and the floor beneath him vanished. As the startled fae fell from sight, the baptistery sloshed several gallons of water on top of him, effectively flushing him from sight. The baptistery righted itself. It was obviously finished impersonating a toilet. I would have loved to see where the fae was flushed to, but a noise from the front of the church announced the arrival of another contestant. I could hardly wait to see what other tricks the baptistery had in store. I was only sorry there were only two remaining contestants, unless the fae returned in time to try again.
The demon’s replacement entered the main nave and walked toward the altar, then turned to walk around the baptistery. He trotted up the stairs on the left and stopped to look down into the baptistery before he jogged down the stairs on the right. Like the fae, he walked around the marble base of the structure, examining the twelve signs of the zodiac. He made a complete circle before stopping in front of Leo, the fifth sign of the zodiac. Hesitating, he considered his options before he pushed on the head of the lion. A few seconds later, a beam of light shot out of the lion’s open mouth and struck the cross atop a cupola near the altar. The cross looked like it absorbed the energy just before it spewed fire at the demon. Unfortunately, the demon was slow to react, and his clothing caught fire. He did a perfect drop and roll, extinguishing most of the flames in the process. Shaken, he staggered over to the sign of Aquarius and pushed on it. It didn’t take long for him to be flushed away. At least it would soothe his burned and chapped skin.
By now, I was eagerly awaiting the next competitor. This baptistery was the most entertaining challenge so far. I now knew which two buttons not to push, but had no clue which button was correct. Running footsteps announced the baptistery’s next victim. It was the lycan bringing up the rear, and since that team was already down two members, they could ill afford another disabling injury. So far, the baptistery hadn’t seriously maimed or killed anyone, unless of course they’d been flushed into the sewers. Then they might wish they were dead. I had more experience than I shuddered to think about on vampiric sewers.
The lycan followed the same pattern as his predecessors, circling the baptistery and studying the signs of the zodiac. Just when I feared he would follow the ship of fools who were flushed, he pushed the Pisces sign. It didn’t take long for the structure to respond. The baptistery slowly sank into the floor with a grinding noise like stone on stone. It continued sliding until it disappeared, revealing a set of stairs. The lycan ran over and headed down the stairs and out of sight. I didn’t hesitate before I jogged over and followed him down the steps. I was standing in a dimly lit room at the base of the stairs. As I walked through the only door leading out of the room, the baptistery slid back into place. I found myself in a narrow underground cavern or tunnel. There was no way to tell for sure. I followed it for some time as the ground beneath me rose and a light faded. That is when I spotted the torches spaced irregularly along both sides of the wall. Then I recognized what the area depicted.
This was an underground cemetery beneath the city, a necropolis, or literally a city of the dead. I was standing in a narrow passage looking like it was dug by hand. Three tiers of shelves piled high with bones stood on either side of the tunnel. It all made sense now. The church was built on ice, and the tunnels went under the ice and back through an underground cavern.
As I followed the lycan’s retreating footsteps down the tunnel, I saw mounds of skulls, bones, relics, and ornately carved boxes covered in cobwebs and layers of dust. It didn’t look like anyone had been down here in centuries, although I knew the design team had been. They had taken great pains not to disturb anything. Rats scurried before me and I tried to ignore their presence. It sounded like the lycan had slowed down and I stopped to listen. A snort followed by a guttural growl told me the lycan had changed into his wolf form. Considering the fact one of his teammates lost toes to piranhas, while another took arrows to his backside, I considered this a prudent move. As a wolf, his night vision and his sense of smell were superior to his human senses. He would also make a smaller target, since he wasn’t walking upright. I didn’t want to give my presence away, so I stayed well back and watched. The lycan crouched and moved cautiously forward, stopping at each hallway, sniffing and sometimes moving a few paces down a side tunnel. Then he returned to where he’d stopped and continued along the main aisle. I wondered if this guy was lost. His behavior reminding me of the old saying, which suggests if you don’t know where you are going, any path will do. Fortunately, I had nowhere else to be, and at least this guy hadn’t gotten himself flushed.
As I cautiously moved forward, the floor sloped upward. This buoyed my little claustrophobic heart, causing it to leap for joy, and as I picked up my pace, felt the air getting subtly cooler. I turned a corner and entered a small grotto covered from floor to ceiling in human bones and skulls. It was a miniature replica of the Capela dos Ossos, or Chapel of Bones. The original was built in Portugal around the sixteenth century. This just solidified my belief that those Franciscan monks were a little bit twisted. If they were trying to convey that life is transitory or fleeting, this was overkill. Two compete skeletons hung from the ceiling. This place looked more like an ad for Torturers R Us. If the inscription over the door didn’t scare you, it should, or you couldn’t read Latin. It states, “Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos.” This translates roughly as, “We, the bones are here, await yours." I wasn’t certain how this challenge would end, but knew my bones wouldn’t be added to the tally.
The room was small, approximately 15 meters by 10 meters; the interior illuminated by light coming through horizontal slits in the ceiling. Eight pillars supported the wall of bones and the ceiling. The ceiling had stylized frescos etched into it in scalloped shaped sections. An angel holding a sword in one hand and two keys in the other flanked an altar to the left. A dove perched on the angel’s shoulder. On the opposite side of the altar was a marble ark with an extinguished candle on one side and an hourglass on the other. This place was rife with symbolism. If memory served me, the competitors had to touch the correct symbols in the correct order or they’d pay the piper. I counted four symbols for peace and three for death. The peace symbols were the angel, the dove, the sword of judgment, and the keys to heaven. The memento mori, or reminders of death, were the skulls, the hourglass, and the extinguished candle. However, the competitors would need to touch only four symbols in the correct order to win. I had no idea of the correct order, or the correct symbols.
The lycan took his time studying the ciphers and their placement in the room. If it was me, and thankfully it wasn’t my ass on the line, I knew what I would do. Now it was time to sit back and watch the show. The lycan moved up and tapped the hourglass, which flipped and dribbled sand toward the bottom of the glass. Next, he touched the keys and stood back to see if anything happened. As it turns out, he didn’t have long to wait before the tile he stood on glowed red and slid sideways, seconds before the tile dropped out from under him. He dropped from sight just before I heard movement from behind me. It wasn’t long before the fae burst into the room, his clothes covered in a thick layer of ice, hair frozen to his head. Large chunks of ice cracked, tinkling as they crashed, smashing into dazzlingly beautiful jewels like shards of ice on to the floor.
I had to stifle a laugh because this was a frustrated and irate fae. He looked like someone had pissed in his Wheaties, and he wanted a piece of them. I sure hoped his luck had changed. Realizing he was alone, he pulled out his instructions and reread them. He paced around the room, looking at each symbol from as many different angles as possible. The fae appeared to be understandably gun shy, and I couldn’t blame him. Apparently satisfied with his choices, he marched up and tapped the dove, causing the hourglass to upend and leak sand. The fae loo
ked stumped, and honestly, so was I. He hadn’t touched the hourglass, so it would count as one of his four symbols. As he puzzled it through, the sand kept trickling down. That’s when he touched the keys to heaven. He wasn’t going to heaven. Of this I was sure, because the minute he touched the keys two wraiths floated from the ceiling. They carried scythes and wore hooded robes. These looked like rejects from Harry Potter’s dementor scenes. The fae wasn’t waiting for a kiss. He was running back down the hall in the direction he’d come.
I settled in to see who contestant number three would be. I thought it unlikely the vampire and demon subs would arrive in time, but stranger things had happened. There is an overall time limit for each universe, so if these guys didn’t pick it up there might not be a winner for this stage. As luck would have it, lucky number three lumbered into view, making enough noise to wake the dead, which in this place was not a good sign. The wizard popped into the center of the small grotto and stood transfixed staring at all the bones and skulls, paying particular attention to the two skeletons suspended by chains from the ceiling.
Then he took something from his pocket and traced a circle around where he stood. Chalk. This guy was putting a protective bubble around himself. It was a tad dramatic if you asked me, but all things considered, wasn’t necessarily a bad idea. There was only one problem with his approach. He couldn’t tap the symbols from behind his shields. Instead, he drifted around the room in his bubble like a hamster in an exercise ball. He would roll forward, teeter, stop, study, and rock forward again until he completed the tour of the small chapel. I sure hoped he knew what he was doing, because he made me dizzy. A small popping noise let me know he dropped his shield. Without hesitating, he walked over and touched the sword, which swung down and pointed at the keys. The wizard jogged over and tapped the keys before he moved to stand in front of the dove. Hesitating, he pondered his decision before he touched the dove, sending a shower of bones cascading on top of him. He was buried to his armpits in skulls and bones. Realizing he was pinned, he hit his panic button and the alarms sounded. Again, a crew came in to dig out the wizard, and he was carried out. His team would be assessed a time penalty, and they would have to start again.