by R. A. Rock
Finn had a twisted ankle, and Tessa’s hand felt like someone had shoved a red-hot poker straight through it. She had heard that broken bones in the hand were the most painful of all breaks, and she could now say from experience that that assessment was correct. And they had to get out of there without being attacked by the monster because neither of them could fight with their injuries.
“Right,” she said. Fear churned in her stomach, but she pushed it ruthlessly away. She needed a clear head, and being afraid never helped. “Put your arm around my shoulders and lean on me. Let’s go.”
Finn’s warm, strong arm around her shoulders made her feel a tiny bit better as they moved towards the dim light. They crept as quietly as they could, with Finn limping. They went around the odd boulders that were sprinkled all over the enormous cave.
“This place is huge,” Finn whispered in Tessa’s ear, making her shiver. “Why would a monster need a lair this big?”
Tessa didn’t know and didn’t care. All she wanted was to get out of there. Now. The place reeked of monster stink, and she felt like throwing up every other minute, but she headed toward the light with single-minded determination.
“Tess,” Finn said, and she recognized pain in his voice. “I can’t walk that fast.”
She clenched her jaw at the delay but slowed down. “Sorry.”
After what seemed like an endless time, they reached the edge of the enormous cave. Finn had knocked his hurt foot against one of the boulders, which clearly made his pain worse—though he wasn’t complaining. But Tessa had to slow down even more, which both worried her and—though she didn’t want to admit it—scared her, as well.
They moved right up to the light.
“It’s not the entrance to the lair,” Tessa whispered, despair and terror finally getting the better of her. “It’s just a luminescence orb. What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”
“Shh, shh, calm down,” Finn said, his deep voice quiet and a bit rough as he squeezed her shoulder, soothing her ragged nerves. He leaned in a bit and pressed his forehead against hers, staring into her eyes. “Shh. It’s going to be all right.”
“I’m okay,” she said, drawing a shaky breath and trying to control her fear. She reined in her emotions, making herself strong again. “I’m fine.”
Tessa wanted to slap herself for such a show of weakness, but with Finn, it never seemed as though he were judging her. He never seemed to find Tessa’s occasional lapses in strength a problem. In fact, he seemed to enjoy being strong for her when she couldn’t be.
Tessa had never experienced anything like it, and she enjoyed it, but it also made her feel a little odd. Nobody had ever really taken care of her. Sure, she had had servants in the Light Court, but they hadn’t cared about her. And she had never been more than a two-dimensional image to her parents. Her sister had loved her but had never been very demonstrative.
This? What Finn did? It was nice.
But that was the last thing she ought to be thinking about right then. She could only assume her mind was trying to distract itself with these thoughts about Finn in order to avoid thinking about the enormous problem facing them.
How in the name of Severance were they going to get out of here without being devoured by the monster?
Tessa opened her mouth to ask again what he thought they should do when she noticed that he was looking at the light. It was a luminescence orb—a ball of light created by a spell. It was the kind you could pick up.
“Why’s there a luminescence orb in a monster lair?” he asked, pondering.
“Why do you think, Finn?” Tessa asked, wondering that he could be that dense.
He glanced up at her in shock. “This is where the Dark Mages are making the monsters for the queen?” he asked, clearly panicking.
“They have a few places along the border. I don’t know much about it. Or what the deal is that she has with them. Only that it’s ancient and, of course, her getting the monsters is what caused the fight between the King and the Dark Queen that led to the Severance in the first place.”
Finn wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing around the room as if assessing it.
“I have a little spell in this stone that strengthens other spells,” Finn muttered, pulling a purple crystal out of his satchel, where she had noticed that he always seemed to have magical objects.
“You always have a little spell,” Tessa said with a laugh.
“That, I do,” Finn said. “This whole satchel is full of stones with useful spells. The satchel itself also protects the objects from water and Dark Magic. My grandfather taught me to always be prepared.”
“Lucky for us.”
“So what if I used it on this luminescence orb?”
“That’s brilliant, Finn,” Tessa said with relief, glad that at least someone’s mind was working. “Maybe then we can see the way out of this place.”
Finn picked up the orb. He said some words under his breath, and the light ball brightened until Tessa had to look away.
“Climb up on the rock and hold it so we can see the whole cave.”
She took the light ball from Finn and tucked it in her pocket, making it suddenly intensely dark. But she didn’t need to see in order to be able to climb up a boulder.
Holding her broken hand close to her chest, she awkwardly scrambled up the rock until she stood on top. Then she pulled the luminescence orb from her pocket and held it aloft. The brightly glowing ball lit up the cavern as light as if it were day.
Tessa stood perfectly still, her body motionless in dread as she gazed at her worst nightmare come true.
“Tess?” Finn whispered.
Tessa didn’t move. Didn’t speak. She couldn’t. Her brain had shut down. Terror filled every cell in her body.
“Tessa?”
She realized she had to shush him. Had to stop him from waking them. She got down as quietly as she could but ended up sliding the last few feet and landing with a jolt that hurt her hand.
“Shh,” she said, stepping in close to Finn and holding the light ball close, trying to cover its beams. She moved away from the rock she had just been standing on.
“What is it?” Finn asked, bending to put his face close to hers.
“The boulders,” she said, so softly he could scarcely hear her. “So many. Don’t know what kind. Finn, we’re going to die.”
Finn’s expression grew concerned. “Tess, you’re not making any sense. Did you see a way out?”
She shook her head violently.
“What did you see?”
“Monsters,” she said and then swallowed audibly. “Hundreds of them.”
Chapter 21
Finn froze.
“What do you mean monsters? Like plural?”
He shifted his eyes around the monster lair. It was night. No one knew where they were. And no help was coming. They had to get out of this mess on their own.
“The boulders,” she said. “They’re all monsters. There’s hundreds of them. This isn’t just one monster’s lair. Stars above, there’s so many of them, Finn. I can’t think what we should do.”
Tessa seemed the most freaked out that he had ever seen her—and they had been in some pretty stressful situations. Her breath was coming in short gasps. He needed to calm her down. Finn squeezed her shoulder again and gave her a gentle shake.
“Tessa, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
She shook her head so that it practically vibrated. “Not okay. I was in the monster arena once. I survived but…” She trailed off.
He took a guess. “But you were completely traumatized by what had happened, and now you have a terrible fear of monsters?”
Tessa pulled the light ball out of her pocket, and Finn used the stone to turn it back to its original brightness.
“Maybe we can just walk out,” Finn suggested.
Tessa peered at him as if she were trying to decide if he were crazy or not.
“What?” he asked. “We’ve been wal
king around them so far. And you even climbed up on one. They seem to be heavy sleepers.”
She gave him a nasty look, but on the upside, his somewhat ridiculous suggestion seemed to shake her out of her fear.
“Yes, and maybe the stars will fall again,” she said. Her voice was still low but was now filled with sarcasm. “But I won’t wait for such an unlikely event.”
“Tessa, we have to stay positive. We’re going to get out of this alive. We can still fight.”
“Certainly,” Tessa said, the sarcasm never leaving her voice. “And maybe you’d like to try singing down the stars as well, Finn.”
“Tess—”
“I have a broken hand, and you have twisted your ankle. How do you think we’re going to fight?”
“I don’t know, but we can’t just give up, can we?”
“I didn’t say we’d give up, but stop talking nonsense,” she said, berating him. “We’re not going to get out of here with our fighting skills. We need to use our heads.”
“Oh, okay,” he said, contemplating that idea. “Well, what do you suggest?”
“I have no clue, Finn.” Tessa closed her eyes as if she were about to lose it.
“The Unity Blades,” Finn said, feeling reassured. He drew a deep breath and then almost choked from the horrible stench. “Of course. We’ll make a portal. Like when you fell from the geyser.”
Relief flooded Tessa’s face, and Finn felt better. They were going to make it out of there. He balanced himself on his good foot and reached under his arms, releasing the blades from their Otherworld sheath.
Nothing happened.
He frowned and reached again.
No blades.
“What’s going on? Where are your blades?” Her face was worried again.
She gave Finn the orb and reached with her good hand to retrieve her own blades.
Her hand came out empty.
“What’s happening?” Finn asked.
They stared at each other in the faint rays of the once-again dim luminescence orb. The sound of what Finn now realized was the monsters snoring washed over them, a strangely peaceful sound in this frightening situation.
Tessa frowned, staring into space.
“We’re in Tartarus,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“And?”
“And there’s Dark Magic everywhere in this place.”
Finn suddenly realized what she was saying. “Which makes using an Otherworld sheath next to impossible. And that means creating a portal with the blades in order to escape is not an option.”
“Right,” Tessa confirmed.
“Shadows take me,” Finn muttered, desperately hoping they wouldn’t. Then he went on in a firm tone of voice. “I think we should stick to our original plan. Locate the entrance to the cave and walk out. The creatures haven’t stirred so far. Stars and Shadows, you even climbed on one. If we’re quiet, I think we can get out of here that way. Sometimes, the simple ideas are the answer.”
Tessa frowned but didn’t seem to have a better suggestion. “Fine. How do we find the entrance to the cave?”
Finn felt stumped. “Follow the wall?”
Tessa did not look pleased, but she let him lean on her again and moved toward the rock wall of the cave. “This is the worst plan ever.”
“Yes,” Finn said, focusing on walking and not on the agony in his ankle. “Definitely.”
Time dragged by and Tessa lost track of where they were and how many minutes or hours had passed. The only sounds were the snoring of the monsters and the soft crunching of their feet in the sand of the cave.
Her shoulder had been aching for some time as they slowly circumnavigated the enormous cavern. Finn seemed to be getting heavier, or maybe he was just leaning on her more because the pain of his injury was increasing. When they had stopped for a rest, she had caught sight of the swollen ankle, and it did not look good.
Her own hand was so painful, she couldn’t even think. All she could do was put one foot in front of the other because if she stopped, she knew she would fall down and not get back up.
They hadn’t found the entrance, which clearly puzzled Finn. Tessa, herself, didn’t have enough brain power to figure it out.
“I’m sure we’ve been around twice,” he said softly, his breath touching her ear as he turned his head to speak to her. “It doesn’t make sense that we haven’t found the way out.”
Tessa drew a deep breath. “There’s got to be a way out. So maybe we have found it, and we just didn’t know it.”
Finn’s puzzled frown grew deeper as he thought about that.
“What if—” He stopped, thinking hard. “What if that pile of them that we recently passed is actually the entrance to the cave? What if that’s how they prevent anything from attacking them while they sleep?”
“That would be terrible,” Tessa said, swallowing hard. “Because then the only way to get out would be to wake them up.”
Finn wrinkled his nose at the thought. Tessa slowly turned them around, and they hobbled to the place where there had been a lot of them piled up. She sniffed.
“What are you doing?” Finn asked, giving her a confused look.
“Sniffing for fresh air,” she said. “These creatures can’t possibly make a proper seal.”
“Of course not,” Finn said, eyeing the lumpy pile of monsters.
“So if this is the entrance, there must be fresh air getting in through the hole. If we caught the scent of something other than this stuffy, monster-cave smell, then that would confirm that this actually is the entrance.”
“Get us closer to the wall,” Finn said, and they moved toward the wall, walked along it, then in front of the pile of monsters and along the cave wall again. They didn’t smell anything but nasty monster breath.
“Stars and Shadows,” Tessa said, feeling despair invade her. For so long, she had been in control. She hadn’t liked her life, but she had control over it. But ever since they had gone on this quest, everything had been wild and out of control and awful. She couldn’t take it anymore.
“What’s that?” Finn asked as they turned to face the pile of monsters again. He stood up straight on his good foot, lifting his face.
“What’s what?”
He inhaled deeply. “Stars above,” he said, turning to smile down at her. “You were right. Fresh air.”
Tessa sniffed. “I don’t smell anything.”
“That’s because you’re too short,” he said, giving her a grin. “From my height, I’m getting an air current, and it must be coming from outside, from through this pile of monster bodies.”
“So this is the entrance,” Tessa said. “Of course, this presents a new problem.”
Finn met her eyes. “The monsters are blocking the way out.”
“Exactly,” she said. “How do we get out if they’re in the way?”
“We’ll have to wake them,” Finn said, wincing as he spoke the words.
“Wake them?” Tessa asked, her dread and panic ramping up again at the thought. She hadn’t been so scared in a long time. “But we can’t fight. Last time, I fought them, but I’m injured. I can’t fight. No. No. We can’t wake them.”
“We have to,” said Finn. “There’s simply no other way out.”
Tessa stared at the stack of monsters. They slept peacefully, but their rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth did not bode well for her and Finn’s survival if they were woken up. She pulled on Finn, making him sit. They needed to rest for a moment and then determine what they were going to do next.
There was no way she was going along with any plan that involved waking the monsters. She would go out of her mind with fear.
“Finn,” she whispered, leaning her head against his because she found it comforting. “You know how you said that the Dark Magic makes using the Otherworld sheaths next to impossible?”
“Yes,” he said, a question in his tone.
“Well, that means that it’s not impossible. Only almost impossi
ble.”
“Tess…”
“No, hear me out,” Tessa said. “If we wake those monsters, sure the entrance may be clear, but that won’t do us any good if we’re dead.”
“True.”
“So, what’s the deal with the sheaths? If we could draw the blades, we could make a portal to get out. It would be easy.”
Finn sighed, and when Tessa gazed up at him, the glow from the luminescence spell lit him with light and shadows, making the dark circles under his eyes even more pronounced.
“What’s the deal with the sheaths? Well, Dark magic can’t destroy Light magic.” Finn smoothed her hair as he spoke. She knew he was only doing it to calm her down, but she liked it anyway. “It can only push it aside.”
“Everyone knows that, Finn. Get to the point.” She was too exhausted to be polite.
“But,” Finn went on, not acknowledging her interruption. He began to twist one of her curls around his finger. “Light magic does destroy Dark magic. Or no, it doesn’t destroy it. It’s like when you light a candle, the darkness is transmuted into light. That’s what happens when Light magic meets Dark magic. It’s transmuted. Making the wielder of the Light magic even more powerful, if they are strong enough to absorb it, that is.”
“Tales heard at my grandmother’s knee,” Tessa said, feeling restless. She shook her head to make him stop playing with her hair, and he untwisted the curl.
“So what’s happening when we try to use the Otherworld sheaths. The darkness is pushing on the Light Magic just enough that the spell is misaligned and won’t work.”
“Oh,” Tessa said, feeling dejected.
She dropped her head, wanting to cry. They were going to die there. Of all the ways she had almost died, she had never imagined that she would starve to death in a monster cave. Or be eaten by monsters. Tessa’s idea had been to always stay far, far away from Tartarus and its monsters.
So much for that plan.
“But Finn, even if we get the blades out, will they work?” Tessa asked as a sudden thought occurred to her.
“Well, they should,” he said, not sounding very certain. “It’s not a spell. The blades are Light magic. So they should transmute any Dark magic around them. And they ought to work fine.”