Into the Dark (The Conjurors)

by Kristen Pham

  “This part of the journey is yours to take alone. It can be dangerous to be too close to the launch chamber when you take off, so Thai needs to stay out here.” Cyrus said. “And I need to be mentally back on the Globe during your journey.”

  “Wait!” Valerie said, feeling panicky. “What if this thing accidentally launches me to the wrong place? I don’t want to wind up floating around in space for eternity, all alone.”

  Cyrus laughed. “It doesn’t work like that – it’s not a rocket! It creates a kind of bubble around you that moves super fast. And you steer it with your thoughts. All you have to do is concentrate on me and in minutes you’ll be by my side, standing on the Globe. Don’t worry – it will all make sense when you’re there.”

  “Okay,” she said, somewhat reassured. Then she turned to Thai. “I guess this is goodbye,” she said, and hugged him tightly, memorizing the way his arms felt around her. He pulled back slightly and looked down at her with an intensity that made her breath catch. For one crazy second she thought he was going to kiss her.

  Cyrus cleared his throat loudly. “We don’t have all day.”

  Thai released her. “Be safe, Valerie,” he whispered. Then he turned to Cyrus. “You’ll project back here to tell me she’s safe?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll stay right here until I see you take off, and then I’ll find Chisisi,” Thai said. He turned to Cyrus. “I will see her leave, right?”

  “I think so. Look for a blue light that’s moving fast. In less than a second, she’ll look like a shooting star. And then she’ll disappear.”

  Valerie felt her heart race. This was really it. “See you soon,” she said to Cyrus with a smile, and his face lit up. With one last glance at Thai, she disappeared into the tunnel with the flashlight.

  Valerie lowered herself into the tunnel, her heart thumping wildly inside of her. As she dropped a few feet to the ground, her night vision goggles fell beside her with a crunch. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t see anything! She panicked for a second, and then remembered the flashlight in her pocket, which she turned on as quickly as possible, scanning the room.

  It was completely empty, and the walls were lined with rough stones. After walking for a few feet, she reached what appeared to be a dead end in the tunnel. An instinct told her to push on one of the stones as hard as she could. It swiveled easily, turning sideways to let her through, like the stone on the top of the paw. She stepped into the passage, and the stone swiveled closed behind her with an echoing slam.

  The sound of the stone crashing shut caused panic to swirl inside of Valerie, and she forced herself to breathe slowly, fighting for control over her fear. The air inside the tunnel smelled stale, as if it had been stagnating in here for years – which it probably had, she realized. The tunnel was only a few inches taller than she was, and so narrow that she could touch both sides of it without extending her arms completely.

  She felt as if she was being squeezed by the close space, and she struggled to keep her breathing steady so that she wouldn’t hyperventilate from her fear. It took all of her strength not to turn around and race back outside to safety with Thai. But she considered the life that was waiting for her back out there – the sickness that was sucking her strength away and the emptiness inside her that made her heart ache. At least if she moved forward, she had a chance of a fresh start.

  So Valerie forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, and she felt her body obey even as her mind was tortured by thoughts of what was lurking in the tunnel ahead. Without her flashlight, she would be in complete darkness. She wondered what could be hiding in the darkness beyond the circle of light.

  Her panic swelled inside of her, and she began to run, faster and faster, hoping that the tunnel would finally widen. It felt as if the tunnel would never end, and her flashlight only reflected the rough stones lining the side of the tunnel. Abruptly, the tunnel narrowed so that she had to crouch in order to move forward. Her breathing came in gasps, and she scraped her hands against the sides of the walls as she tried to propel herself forward. The lack of oxygen made her dizzy.

  She knew that now from the map in her mind that she was directly under the Great Pyramid, and the vibrating of the magic rattled her to the bone. She felt as if the entire weight of the massive monument was upon her shoulders, bearing down on her. The tunnel curved sideways and angled upward. Between gasps for air and lightheadedness, she wondered if the tunnel would ever end.

  Finally, Valerie crashed into a barrier and collapsed to the ground. Her head was spinning as her lungs ached to breathe something other than the musty air of the tunnel. Her flashlight had shut off when she fell, and she frantically, blindly felt around the ground until her hand closed around the handle.

  She turned the flashlight on and said a silent prayer of thanks that it hadn’t broken from her fall. She shone it on the barrier and realized that it was the door that marked the entrance to the launch room. At last.

  The door was covered in symbols and numbers that made up hundreds of complex equations. She recognized some of the symbols from her algebra class, though most of it appeared to be in a language that she couldn’t understand. She realized that some of the symbols were the same as the ones embroidered on Chisisi’s sash, and she felt her anxiety for him, which had been driven out of her mind by her harrowing journey through the tunnel, return.

  Valerie rested her flashlight on the ground and wiped the sweat off her forehead. Then she pressed both of her hands against the door. She watched in wonder as light poured out of her fingers and traveled through the entire door, illuminating the equations with a translucent, neon blue light. Slowly the stone door disappeared, leaving only the glowing equations like a veil between the tunnel and the room behind it.

  She stepped through the veil and into the chamber. As soon as she entered, the room lit up brightly, temporarily blinding her. She realized that more equations covered the walls, floor and ceiling of the room, and they were all glowing brightly. She stretched, relieved to finally have room to breathe.

  Then something caught Valerie’s eye that she wasn’t expecting. In the center of the room, a long, silver sword appeared to be thrust into the stone floor. The handle was gold, and the blade shone in the light of the room. She was immediately reminded of her favorite story since she was a little girl, the tale of King Arthur, who had pulled his magical sword from a stone to prove he was king. That legend had always fascinated her, and she had read every book on King Arthur and Camelot that she could find. She couldn’t help walking over to the sword and gently grasping the hilt.

  Hesitantly, she pulled, and the sword slid out of the floor easily. She looked at it in wonder, feeling as if she had stepped inside of her favorite tale. Winding around the blade was elaborate script. She had only read the first word – Pathos – when her nose picked up a familiar foul smell and the blade reflected someone entering the room.

  Venu must have managed to sneak past Thai and follow her into the tunnel. She felt rage rise up inside of her with a ferocity that she had never known. Rage for attacking her, rage for almost killing Thai at Stonehenge, and most of all, rage for what he had done to Chisisi. Seeing the look of pure hatred on his face, she knew that he shared her loathing. Sanguina stood behind him, a nasty grin spread across her face. But the usual freezing paralysis that she felt at the sight of Sanguina melted in the inferno of her anger.

  Without wasting a moment, Venu lunged at her. But Valerie’s reflexes kicked in before he reached her. She dodged him, and he slammed against the wall from the force of his own stride. Venu shouted something in another language that sounded like a curse, and pulled a long dagger from his belt.

  “Leave here now and Venu will never come near you again,” Sanguina said. Valerie knew that she was trying to distract her. “I promise you, even if you escape him, I will be waiting for you on the other side.”

  But Valerie’s rage focused her, giving her an anchor to keep her from
getting lost in her fear of Sanguina. She held the sword in front of her, and somehow her body knew the correct stance to assume. As Venu thrust at her with his dagger, she was able to parry with him, not letting his blade get anywhere near her body.

  “You will obey me, you worthless brat!” Sanguina shrieked in frustration, and it was a terrible sound. She put her face right in front of Valerie, blocking her view of Venu. “In the end, you know you’ll lose. Run now while you can,” she said, her voice sounding like fingernails against a chalkboard.

  But Valerie refused to let Sanguina’s words distract her. She knew that her life depended on being able to focus. So she said nothing, and concentrated every cell of her being on the fight for her life.

  She saw Venu’s blade less than a second before it came speeding toward her, ready to plunge into her stomach. She stopped it in time, but the tip of the dagger nicked her skin, and blood trickled out of the wound. For a split second, her mind registered the pain. But just as her rage had swallowed her fear, it also obliterated her pain. Nothing existed except for calculating her next move.

  No matter how quickly she moved, Sanguina stayed close to her, blocking her view of Venu. In frustration, Valerie struck out blindly, but her sword met nothing but air. This wasn’t a strategy that would enable her to make it out of this fight alive. She forced herself to take a deep breath, despite having Sanguina’s eyes boring into her own. She shut her eyes and allowed her other senses to guide her. She heard the sound of Venu’s heavy breathing, and smelled the poison on his hands.

  Letting instinct lead her, she quickly thrust her sword and felt it clash with Venu’s dagger. She flicked her wrist, and felt her sword nick his flesh. Venu grunted in pain and his dagger skittered across the floor. She took advantage of his distraction, picturing in her mind where he must be standing. Without over-thinking her next move, she kicked and felt her foot connect with what must be his stomach. She heard his heavy body fall to the ground, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that Sanguina had moved over to Venu. “Are you going to let this little girl defeat you? Are you a man? Get up!”

  He looked up at Sanguina with fear, and Valerie didn’t hesitate. She hit Venu on the head with the flat of her sword, and he slumped to the ground, unconscious for the second time in three days. She felt a vindictive joy at seeing her enemy defeated.

  As Valerie dragged Venu out of the launch chamber, she was surprised to find how energized she felt from taking him down. As her rage drained away, she felt something strange take its place that felt even better – pride in her triumph over Venu, Sanguina, and her fear. Venu wasn’t moving at all, but he was still breathing. It took every ounce of Valerie’s strength to drag him into the tunnel so that he wouldn’t be near her when she was launched into space.

  “It will be much, much worse for you on the Globe, I promise you. I will find out who you are, and I will destroy you,” Sanguina said when Valerie finally dropped Venu with a grunt. She heard the desperation in Sanguina’s voice and deliberately turned to look at her.

  “You know what I think? For all your threats, you’re afraid of me. That’s why you don’t want me on your world. And you should be afraid. Because I will fight you, and I will crush you.”

  Something in the look on Valerie’s face silenced Sanguina, and she left the chamber to kneel beside Venu. “Wake up, you useless toad!”

  Valerie took a deep breath and knew that it was time to take off, before Venu could attack again. She had never felt so powerful in her life. She was ready to be on the Globe, to embrace her magic fully, to take on whatever evil came her way.

  “Goodbye, Earth,” Valerie said, and she touched the center triangle on the north wall that would launch her into space.

  Chapter Seven

  A burst of energy exploded in the chamber, searing through Valerie like a shock wave. The symbols covering the walls of the launch chamber pulsated, glowing brighter. Then the air shimmered and the symbols seemed to peel off the stones, cascading closer and closer to her, surrounding her in a blue bubble of light. She felt herself float a few feet off the floor in the exact center of the room. For a moment, bathed in the blue light and effortlessly hovering in the air, she felt completely at peace, ready to be reborn.

  But unexpectedly, the vibrating power of the magic that filled the room caused the ancient stones, now weakened without the magic of the symbols to reinforce them, to tremble. The whole room began to shake violently. One of the stones in the ceiling crashed to the floor and shattered into pieces. The last thing that Valerie saw before she was launched into space were dozens of rocks jarring loose as the room collapsed into itself.

  Thai told her later that he saw a flash of blue light shoot out of one of the airshafts that exited the Great Pyramid. But all she knew was that one moment she saw the crumbling walls of the launch chamber, and the next she was so far away that she felt like an astronaut seeing Earth from space.

  Valerie stared in amazement at the brilliant blue, green, and brown planet that had been her home. From here, it looked so peaceful and serene, hiding every hint of the teeming life on its surface. No picture of Earth in a science textbook could compare to this. After a moment, she realized that Earth wasn’t getting any smaller. “What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you move?” she yelled at the bubble. Her heart sped up in panic. “Cyrus! Where are you? You promised that it wasn’t possible for me to get lost in space!”

  The second that she thought of Cyrus, the bubble began to move again, hurtling her toward the dark patch in the sky that hid the Globe. She breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that the bubble hadn’t been moving because she hadn’t been steering it with her thoughts. Concentrating, she pictured Cyrus’ face in her mind and the bubble moved even faster. The glowing equations moved rapidly in circles around her, spinning more quickly the faster that she traveled.

  Because of the sheer speed at which she was traveling, the stars streaked past her, appearing as lines of light rather than individual stars. Line after line zoomed by, and Valerie wondered if she was moving faster than anything else in the universe right now.

  In the distance, she saw a cluster of stars swirling around a dark hole, as if their light was being pulled into the eye of a hurricane. She realized that she was headed directly for that dark spot, which grew bigger with every passing second.

  Logically, she knew that the Globe was hidden inside that void, but the closer she got, the faster her heart beat. As hard as she strained her eyes, she could see nothing in that hole but a fathomless, empty blackness. “Cyrus!” she screamed. She forced herself to keep breathing. She would make it through this, like she had made it through every obstacle on this trip. The hole grew larger. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut as she was drawn down, down into the fathomless darkness.

  When Valerie finally dared to open her eyes, the darkness had disappeared. Through the blue equations of her bubble, she could see a planet that was more colorful than she had ever imagined. The royal blue and turquoise water met land that was many colors, from purple mountains to golden deserts to red canyons. “Cool,” she gasped in amazement.

  “Cyrus, Cyrus,” she chanted to herself as her bubble sped toward the Globe, worried that she might wind up in the middle of nowhere on this strange new planet. Valerie could see that she was coming closer and closer to a light green patch of land, but she couldn’t make out specifics of the landscape as the colors blurred together from the tremendous speed at which she was traveling. Her pulse started to speed up again at the thought that she was going to crash into the Globe at a million miles an hour and be blasted into smithereens, but as if in response to her worry the bubble immediately slowed, approaching the ground at a less alarming pace.

  Seconds later she felt her feet gently touch land. The bubble around her vanished and she stared straight into Cyrus’ shining blue eyes. She realized that she was still clutching the sword she had found in the launch chamber, and she immediately dropped it and threw her arms around
him. He lifted her off the ground and twirled her around in a circle.

  “Took you long enough!”

  Valerie laughed in joy and relief. It felt so good to finally hug Cyrus and to have her feet firmly planted on solid ground. Up close, she realized that he was a good five inches taller than she was. In person, he seemed older, less like the kid that she had pictured playing with when he was her imaginary friend years ago. Somehow it hadn’t hit her that he had grown up, like she had, until she saw him in person.

  Cyrus finally released her from his warm, tight hug, and she stepped back.

  “You’re bleeding!”

  Valerie looked down and saw that the slash Venu had given her with his knife. “I’m fine. It’s nothing, just a shallow cut. The bleeding has already stopped.”

  “What could have happened in the 45 minutes since I saw you last?”

  Before she could respond, a unicorn, pure white with a silver horn, stepped out from the trees. The unicorn met her gaze and nodded.

  Cyrus followed her gaze. “Valerie, meet Azra. She’s the only one other than me who knows you’re here. Azra is one of the founders of this place, and she’s been around longer than anyone. And now she’s sort of like, um, what you would think of as the Globe’s president.”

  Valerie’s eyes widened, and she felt nervous. What was the proper way to show a unicorn respect? Especially a unicorn who was president of a magical world? Azra’s eyes twinkled kindly, and Valerie felt, rather than heard, her lyrical voice in her mind. Welcome to the Globe, Valerie. I’m so happy to finally meet you.

  Valerie sent a pleading glance toward Cyrus, silently asking him to help her to say the right thing. Cyrus burst out laughing. “Relax, Val! She’s cool.”

  “It’s a, um, pleasure to meet you, Azra.”

  If it’s my title that’s worrying you, I’m nothing like a president, really. I’m an advisor of sorts. And I do hope you’ll think of me as a friend.