by Gage Lee
I jumped off the dragon’s head and motioned for the others to follow me to the wall.
“Niddhogg,” I said, “get Hagar. Tell her to hurry.”
“How did you figure that out?” Clem asked. “We didn’t find anything useful in the library.”
“Eric put me on the right path.” I threw an arm around my friend’s neck. “He found a bunch of good stuff about the first Gauntlet. When the dragons didn’t like the results of that challenge, they went to war. The Flame ended the fight by forcing them to exchange blood bonds. I thought that’s why the king was blind and the dragon couldn’t talk. But that’s not what happened. The king lost his eyes in the war, and the dragon lost its tongue in the same way. The Flame told them they had to work together. The dragon saw for the king, and the king spoke for the dragon.”
“Genius,” Abi said. “You think the other teams figured it out?”
“Yeah,” I said soberly. “I think they’ve already started the challenge.”
“What’s going on?” Hagar asked as she dropped from a second-story window into the courtyard. “This dragon won’t tell me anything.”
“It’s time for the third challenge,” I said.
“You’re kidding me?” Hagar snapped. “I’d just started on my dinner.”
She wiped the corner of her mouth absentmindedly, and I saw a red smear across the back of her hand. Once again, I was glad that I didn’t share Hagar’s dietary requirements.
“Sorry,” I said. “But we’re out of time.”
“I can always eat,” she said. “I don’t get the chance to save all of humanity from dragon tyrants very often.”
I took the key from the prize box and walked to the small hole in the wall. The orichalcum treasure fit perfectly into its housing. I twisted it to the right.
The wall split evenly down the middle. The light from the dragon shone on a path that led into the darkness beyond.
“Let’s do this,” Eric said excitedly. “I am so ready to show these dragons we can’t be beat.”
He punched the air, and fire blazed from his hands.
My team all waited for me to step onto the path first, then followed me. The orichalcum ribbon rolled out ahead of me, one step at a time. It gave me the eerie feeling of walking off the edge of a cliff again and again.
When Abi, the last of our number to enter, crossed the threshold, the wall closed behind us with a thunderous clang.
“The final team has entered the challenge.” The voice from before was quieter now, almost a whisper in my ear. “Choose your allies. Choose your enemies. Unlock the heart of fire.”
The final challenge had begun, and we were already behind.
I hoped we weren’t too late.
The Third
WITH EVERY STEP I TOOK along the orichalcum path, more lights appeared in the distance. Their orange and red flames revealed patches of smooth and polished stone engraved with intricate shapes that reminded me of the battle scenes Eric had pulled from the web. They were so vast, and so far away, though, that it was hard to be sure what they represented.
The path was so narrow we had to walk single file, and the dead silence from my friends told me their nerves were getting the best of them. Even Eric, who’d been so excited to begin this challenge, hadn’t made a peep since we’d passed through the arch.
“Stay with me, guys,” I called out. “This is all for show. Don’t let it get in your head.”
“We’re so high up.” Eric’s voice was uncharacteristically thin. “I can’t even see the bottom of this pit.”
“We’re just walking.” I raised my voice and forced a chuckle for their benefit. The truth was, it did seem that our path was hundreds of feet over a gaping chasm’s floor. “The path’s plenty wide. Keep one foot in front of the other, and you’ll be fine.”
“Thanks, man,” Eric said, and his voice seemed stronger, more confident.
“And I’m right behind you, Eric,” Hagar said. “I’ll snatch you with my webs if you trip over those big feet of yours.”
“You’re hilarious,” Eric said.
Good. I had no idea how long we had to walk, and I needed my team to keep their heads on straight. Panicking out here in the middle of literal nowhere wouldn’t help anyone.
More lights appeared in the darkness ahead of us, just a few yards away from either side of the orichalcum path. The flames revealed statues, humans on the right, dragons on the left. Each pair stared at their opposites with expressions that started as admiration and grew into angry glares the further we moved down the pathway.
After long minutes of walking between statues, I noticed their styles had changed. They were cruder now, more primitive, and so much angrier than they had been before. The dragons reared up, and stone tongues of flame burst from their mouths. The humans wielded spears and swords and axes, or held bows drawn to fire at the statues across from them. It was as if we were walking back through centuries of an uneasy alliance to the first battle between humans and dragons.
“It makes you wonder,” Clem said. “Why would the Empyrean Flame make two creatures so proud? It had to know they’d compete for dominance.”
“A wise ruler never lets his generals know which is his favorite.” Abi’s words sounded like they’d come from some memory of a lesson he’d heard long ago.
“So they never get complacent?” Eric asked.
“No.” Abi’s voice grew solemn. “Uncertain men spend their time competing with each other, and don’t try to become rulers themselves.”
That killed our conversation for a while as we all considered Abi’s wise words. It made sense that the Flame wouldn’t want either men or dragons to get too complacent. If they were at one another’s throats, they’d be too busy to wonder if they shouldn’t set their sights a little higher.
That line of thought gave me some questions to ask the Flame when I won this thing.
“Look, we’re almost there!” I pointed ahead of us.
A light blossomed in the void. A door framed by a statue of a human and a dragon locked in mortal combat lay at the end of our path. The human’s hands were wrapped around the dragon’s throat. The dragon’s claws were buried in the human’s stomach. The statue was so lifelike I expected to see blood run from those wounds.
And then, it did.
We were just yards from the doorway when brilliant colors flowed into the statues. Vivid scarlet splashes marred the stone below the man’s feet, and the dragon’s wings changed from pale gray to deepest black. The sculptures moved, the details of their combat so exquisite they burned themselves into my thoughts. Battle cries rang in my ears, and I knew that this wasn’t just a fight between one man and one dragon. I watched a representation of the cataclysmic war that had shaken Earth to its foundations. When the most powerful creatures in existence vied for supremacy, they threatened to destroy everything their creator had wanted for them.
The message wasn’t lost on me. The bad old days were coming back, in more ways than one. Heretics gnawed at the roots of Empyreal society. The dragons yearned to be ascendant once again. And the humans in charge of the Flame’s message were so corrupt they’d plotted to sell us all out in a vain effort to cling to their pathetic power.
The path widened and the orichalcum door beyond the statues yawned wide, revealing a swirling crimson mist.
For one painful moment, I considered turning back and leaving the challenge. The way ahead was so dangerous, not just for me but for my friends, that I wondered if it was worth it. We had no allies here. No matter what we did, someone would be angry with us. Even if we won the Gauntlet, the Inquisition would still be in charge of the Grand Design. They’d use their power to punish me.
And, most likely, my friends.
Everyone had gathered around me and we stared at the door together. I sensed their nerves, their anger, and their support.
“We can’t let them get away with this,” Clem insisted.
Hagar glanced quizzically from Clem to me.
“There’s something I should know?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “About that.”
We filled Hagar in on the situation, and her eyes darkened with every word. By the time I’d finished my little story, her arms were crossed over her chest, and daggers shot from her eyes.
“And you didn’t tell me?” she said.
“I just did.” I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Hagar, we don’t know who’s who in this mess. If you’d told the elders, they’d have fed this to their agents. What if there was a leak?”
Hagar wanted to argue with me, I knew that. But her eyes softened, and she let out a disgusted sigh.
“I don’t want to admit it, but you’re right. I’ve been doing the spy thing long enough to know you can’t trust anyone for long.” She nodded slowly and stiffened her spine. “All right. It’s the five of us against the world, then. What are we waiting for?”
“You heard the lady,” Eric said. “Let’s kick some dragon tail.”
We all looked at Abi, and he shuffled his feet uncomfortably. He clenched his fists, then relaxed his hands until his fingers dangled loose at his sides. His dark eyes burned with an inner light, and he focused them on me.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m with you.”
I led my team through the archway and into the red mist. My senses went haywire when my foot crossed the threshold, and I threw my hands out in front of me to brace myself for a fall. The time between one step and the next stretched out into a chaotic swirl of sound and color that dragged my stomach up into my throat. If I hadn’t skipped dinner, that meal would have ended up all over the floor.
Abi brought up the tail end of our team, and I’d already given the small room we’d arrived in a once-over by the time his boots touched the stone floor. Our prison was a silo, twenty feet across and many times that high. A blazing golden fire rained light down on the smooth and featureless walls. There were no exits that I could see, and no way to climb those walls.
“Now what?” Eric paced a circle around the silo. “Looks like a dead end.”
“There has to be some way out of this room.” Abi pushed his fingers against the wall.
“The challenges are tied to swords, auras, and serpents,” Hagar said. “We’ve done swords and auras, so this has to be solved with our serpents.”
“You’re right.” Clem shook out her arms and drew in a deep breath. “And since there’s only one thing in this silo, we should touch it with our serpents.”
Clem’s serpents burst from her aura and soared into the flames overhead.
Nothing happened.
“You’re not dead, so that’s good,” Hagar said. “Maybe we all need to touch it.”
“Then let’s do it.” I started slow, cycling breaths to fill my aura with aspects. There wasn’t much to draw on in the cold, sterile environment. I considered activating the Beggar’s Core vessel to speed things along, then rejected that idea. If there weren’t any rats or other creatures in the area, the technique would be wasted. Better to take my time and absorb the light and stone aspects slowly.
A jagged ripple of pain radiated from the center of my core. That was all right. This was the final challenge. I could survive the pain long enough to finish. Then the Flame would heal my core and this whole ordeal would be over.
By the time I’d gathered enough aspects to fuel my serpents, beads of sweat dripped from my forehead, and my friends looked at me with real concern in their eyes.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Let’s get through this, okay?”
I sent my serpents to join the rest of the team’s in the flames. The fire sent a pulse of warmth back to me, and the pain in my center eased. Faint smiles touched the lips of the rest of my team, as if they’d been touched by something pleasant, too.
The fire broke apart into five sets of seven small circles that drifted down to us. One set hovered in front of each of us. The smaller circles were marked with distinct icons: a black feather, a shimmering sphere surrounded by a red circle, a trident, an enormous double-headed ax, a wolf’s head, a coiled serpent, and a fiery scale.
“Well, that’s pretty obvious,” Clem said. “Heron Blade Academy, Dojo of Opal Radiance, Battle Hall of Atlantis, the Jinsei Institute of the Jade Kingdom, the Bright Lodge of Frostmir, the School of Swords and Serpents, and the Indomitable Dragons of Light. What are we supposed to do with them?”
I thought back to what the voice had said in the courtyard. Choose your allies. Choose your enemy. Unlock the heart.
“We have to pick a team to serve as our allies,” I said. “Though we already know it doesn’t matter. They’re all against us.”
“That does make things more difficult,” Clem grumbled. “What’s that red circle around the Dojo’s symbol?”
“They were the odd team out,” Hagar said. “If the teams have to pair up, then we can only have six teams in this challenge, total.”
“Then they could have just excluded us from the challenge and we’d never have had a chance,” I said. “I wonder what went wrong with their plan.”
“The Dojo finished last in the second challenge.” Eric shrugged. “That must have been enough to eliminate them from the running. If our team had gotten bounced, everyone would know this was rigged, and the dragons can’t afford that. They need this competition to look legit to the rest of the world. Who do we pick for our ally?”
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d missed something. The only other team leader that had been remotely friendly was Tochi. If he’d held the Jinsei Institute of the Jade Kingdom out of the challenge, that would have made some sort of sense. It would have let him defy the others, retain his honor, and give me a shot at winning this thing.
But the Dojo of Opal Radiance? They weren’t friends of mine.
A chilling memory flashed through my thoughts. The heretics had threatened the Empyrean Gauntlet. Maybe something had happened to the Dojo.
“Jace?” Clem put her hand on my shoulder. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, shaking off the bad thoughts. Eric was right. Whatever had happened to the Dojo didn’t matter. The only important thing was winning this challenge.
A chime sounded, and a green outline appeared around each of the symbols. The feather and trident icons went dark before any of us could react.
“The other teams are picking their allies,” Hagar said. “Quick, who should we choose?”
“Tochi was friendly,” Clem said. “Let’s pick the Institute.”
“No,” I said quickly. “The dragons. If they’re our allies, they won’t be able to attack us, right?”
“Yes!” Abi shouted. “That’s brilliant!”
His serpent lashed out and touched the scale.
The rest of us followed his lead, and a loud gong rang in the silo. The fiery symbol faded away, leaving a simple outline in its place. The silo rumbled and slowly turned clockwise. As it rotated, an arch appeared in the wall.
And the dragons poured through it.
A tall, blue-scaled young man came at Eric first. His claws trailed ribbons of crackling lightning, and he opened his jaws to unleash a blast of forked electricity that should have torn Eric apart.
But my friend had spent an entire summer training with a battle company and worked harder in our martial arts classes than anyone I’d ever met. His training, along with naturally sharp reflexes, saved Eric’s life. He dodged the lightning blast, twisted around the dragon’s claws, and unleashed a flurry of brutal, fire-wreathed punches that left smoking burns across his foe’s face and chest.
The dragons clearly hadn’t gotten the message that we were allies, because the rest of them came at us like a pack of rabid hounds.
A young woman with white scales threw herself at Clem, who somersaulted away from the attack and responded with a sweeping kick. A blast of jinsei ripped through the air in front of Clem and flung her attacker into the far side of the silo.
Abi bore the brunt
of an attack from a black-scaled dragon whose fists leaked green acid. The dragon pounded against Abi’s defensive techniques, splattering the ground around him with sizzling corrosive droplets, but he couldn’t find a way past my friend’s shield.
Hagar didn’t wait for her foe, a dragon with red scales and fire around his fists, to reach her. Her bloodweaver technique sent ropes of blood aspects out to snatch him from the air by the throat. The dragon flailed, but couldn’t free himself from the crimson noose. His eyes bugged as Hagar squeezed.
I, on the other hand, was in a lot more trouble. Trulissinangoth streaked toward me like a golden comet. Her breath washed over me in an avalanche of fire that burned holes in my robes and sent me stumbling backward, half blinded. She followed up with a punch that would have fractured my ribs if it hadn’t slammed into one of my talismans. The defensive scrivenings I’d painstakingly etched into the vessel burst with a flash of light, and the dragon howled in pain and staggered back, cradling her wounded hand.
“Wait!” I shouted. I put the little jinsei still in my core behind the words, and my thunderous voice froze everyone in place. They were all strong fighters, but my core was of a higher level than any of theirs. I had authority here, whether they wanted to accept it or not, and for that moment their attention was mine.
“We’re supposed to be allies in this challenge,” I told Trulissinangoth. “Attacking us won’t help you win.”
“If you’re dead,” the dragons’ leader said with a smirk, “we automatically win. The rest of the humans won’t even try to beat us.”
“Are you so sure about that?” I questioned her. “I don’t know about you, but I find the rules to these challenges pretty obscure. What if killing your allies causes you to automatically lose?”
Trulissinangoth clearly did not like that suggestion. She also, just as clearly, couldn’t be sure I was wrong. She barked a command in a language I didn’t understand and raised one hand in a fist at shoulder height.