by S. M. Boyce
CHAPTER 10
The tunnel went on forever, and Audrey didn’t like it one bit. This place set her nerves on fire and made her want to bolt. Every fiber in her being screamed at her to escape and go somewhere else.
Victoria and Styx may have gaped at the glowing jewels embedded in the rock walls and ceiling, but Audrey kept one hand on her sword hilt. The powerful Atlantean crystals she had been given pressed against her palm, their energy sparking in her body even as she kept it at bay.
This place freaked her out, and she couldn’t say why.
Maybe it was the sensation of going deep underground. Now and then her ears popped, even though the tunnel didn’t seem to slope much, if at all. They walked for what felt like ages, yet her body wasn’t tired. She had no sense of time, no concept of where they were or whether she should be hungry.
“Fyrn, how long have we been walking?” Audrey finally asked.
The old wizard sighed. “Time has no meaning down here, Audrey. You and Victoria will never tire or get hungry. You will have no sense of what time it is or where we are until we get to Lochrose. It’s another charm meant to disrupt and disorient those who shouldn’t be here.”
“You guys have a lot of those nasty little charms down here, huh?”
He nodded. “We’re wizards. There’s a reason you don’t see many of our kind in big cities.”
“We don’t trust easily,” Diesel elaborated, shoulders squared and an uncharacteristic frown on his face.
Shit! If even Diesel was uneasy, this was more serious than Audrey had originally thought. He hadn’t tried to hit on Victoria once since they had entered the cave, and that meant he was alert for trouble.
Audrey huffed, grip tightening on her sword’s hilt for comfort.
They went around a bend and the glowing crystals ended in a pool of blackness, as if the world simply stopped existing at the end of this tunnel. There was no light, no sense of distance, nothing. Only the dark.
Audrey tensed. “Watch out.”
“It’s a cave-in,” Diesel said, patting Audrey’s shoulder.
“You’re certainly wound tight,” Victoria said softly, eyeing Audrey with concern as Diesel quickened his pace to reach the cave-in first.
“This place freaks me out,” Audrey said with a broad gesture to the walls around her.
“It reminds me of a slightly darker Atlantis, actually,” Victoria said with a cheeky smile.
Audrey’s frown deepened. “Our tunnels were pretty, and had life and water. This is just oppressive.”
Victoria’s smile faded a bit, the difference so subtle that it was barely noticeable in the rainbow of light streaming from the crystals around them. “There’s beauty here too, Audrey. You were at home in Atlantis, even in the caves. Diesel and I were not. It’s good to be alert, but you’re going to stress yourself and maybe even burn out if you’re this tense the entire time we’re down here. Try to find a happy place between ‘daydreaming’ and ‘about to blow a hole in the wall,’ okay?”
Audrey nodded, but she didn’t mean it. It was merely a hunch, but she figured only getting the hell out of this place would calm her nerves. The Lochrose tunnels just didn’t sit right with her.
The witches and wizards never liked your kind, the koi said in her mind.
This caught Audrey’s attention. “Wizards don’t like Atlanteans?”
It used to be so. There are wards here just for you, Audrey. Spells your friends will not feel. Wars were fought in centuries past between your peoples. There were times when a wizard would kill an Atlantean without pausing to consider if the Atlantean deserved it. They were locked in a bloody struggle for eons.
Audrey glanced at Fyrn and Diesel, whose respective staffs were raised and glowing as they sifted through the rubble blocking the path. “Good thing times change, huh?”
Indeed, the koi answered.
“What?” Victoria asked from a few paces ahead.
“Nothing. Just muttering to myself,” Audrey said.
Victoria eyed her suspiciously, but Audrey smiled. She didn’t want to further complicate things. If the legends were true, then no wizards or witches still lived here anyway. These were old enchantments. Racist ones, sure, but old and forgotten.
Besides, she had two wizards on her side. What could happen?
Fyrn grumbled, “Audrey, if you could use your crystal to—”
The ground shook and pebbles began to fall from the ceiling, interrupting him. A hollow roar blasted through the cave like a ghost screaming through the veil between worlds. It came from everywhere and nowhere, through the rock and through the floor. It was all Audrey could do to stay on her feet as the mighty sound rattled her bones.
At the end of the hall, the darkness began to morph. Bit by bit, the rocks shifted and piled onto each other as if lifted by invisible hands. Diesel and Fyrn stepped back, staffs raised, and Audrey realized with a sudden rush of panic that neither of them were controlling this.
Not sure what else to do, Audrey drew her sword and charged it with the white energy of the crystal in the tight grip of her free hand. Victoria summoned the gleaming magical blade of her Rhazdon Artifact and aimed it toward the self-piling rocks. Together, they flanked the two wizards and prepared for whatever came next.
At least, Audrey thought she had been prepared.
The rocks formed the rough shape of a man twice their height, and thick arms hung at its side as more rocks formed a head. The boulders clung together seemingly by sheer will, and Audrey could see the light of the cave behind the creature through gaps in its biceps and thighs where tendon and bone should have been.
“What the fuck is that?” Victoria screamed.
Audrey nodded, shock and disbelief locking her mouth even though she wanted nothing more than to voice a similar sentiment.
“A golem! Get back!” Diesel shouted.
“Damn it all!” Fyrn aimed his staff at the creature and fired just as the head finished forming. Two red eyes popped open and glared at them.
The burst of light from Fyrn’s staff burned a hole through the creature’s forehead, but instead of falling to the ground dead as any normal being would, it merely screamed as though Fyrn had pissed it off.
“Fyrn, how do we kill it?” Victoria yelled.
The monster charged, and all four dodged out of the way. Audrey barely managed to roll out of reach as it grabbed for her. Its massive rocky fist sailed toward her head, and she ducked once more. It roared, the billowing sound shaking her to the bone, but she held her ground when it attacked again.
Victoria jumped between Audrey and the creature, which never took its eyes off Audrey. It seemed to watch her every step, every swing of her sword, every bend of her knees. It was as though only she and the golem were in the cave.
Great, an admirer, she thought.
It screamed again and charged for her. She ducked, rolling out of the way while its hand closed in the space where her head had been only a second prior. They needed a plan, but Audrey had no idea how to destroy this thing.
“Fyrn! Plan?” Victoria shouted.
“Remove its heart!” the old wizard replied, shooting another beam toward the monster’s chest. It burst through the rock, leaving a baseball-sized hole in the monster. A dim red glow radiated from within, made more prominent by the dark cave.
The golem swung a hulking fist at Audrey, but Victoria dove for the creature and took the brunt of the blow. She gritted her teeth, no doubt biting back the pain of absorbing such a strike, and Audrey couldn’t help but be grateful for her friend’s innate healing ability.
With every ounce of her strength, Victoria clung to the beast’s arm. It threw her over its head, and she sailed into the air. Her hair hovered around her face, and she fell as though she were submerged in water. For a moment time seemed to stop.
Audrey couldn’t tell at first what Victoria’s plan was, but as gravity pulled her back to the ground she lifted her sword and swung at the monster’s shoulder. The
golem’s arm was sheered clean off and shattered on the floor.
The creature screamed. Victoria landed on her feet just as the other arm sailed over her head then dropped, rolling until she was out of reach.
“Victoria, be careful!” Diesel shouted.
“Well, the goal is to not die, so duh!” she yelled back.
The golem returned its attention to Audrey and charged her like a one-armed gorilla, which would have been hilarious in almost any other circumstance.
Audrey spun out of the way and lifted her sword to take off the creature’s other arm. Before she could, two brilliant bursts of light tore through the creature’s torso.
Audrey spun on her heel to see the two wizards’ faces set in grim determination while they stared down the beast like a scraggly father and son duo.
Although riddled with holes—none of which were Audrey’s doing—the golem never took its eyes from her. It reached for her with its remaining massive hand, which she was pretty sure would crush her face.
“Enough!” Audrey was done with this monster and its fixation on her. Pissed off and ready to kill, she tightened her grip on the crystal she still held. A bolt of brilliant white light burst from her hand, aimed for the red glow in the golem’s chest.
As it hit, the white light of her Atlantean magic morphed and twisted into something else. The pure white brilliance bled into the dark red glow, and seconds later they heard the fragile crunch of shattering glass. The monster stilled as though it had run out of batteries. The red glow in its eyes faded, and the remaining rocks that had once comprised its body almost deafened them as they clattered to the ground in a heap.
Still on one knee with the other leg braced for balance, Audrey didn’t move. She suspected that thing would move again any moment now, and she wasn’t going to be caught off-guard.
“Audrey,” Victoria said softly from beside her.
Audrey started and fell on her ass, eyes wide with nerves as she stared at her friend. Victoria watched her with concern on her face, but thankfully said nothing further.
Faced with four powerful foes, the golem had focused on Audrey. Even though the rest had tried to kill it, its only intent had been to kill her.
“Any injuries?” Fyrn asked, eyes on Audrey.
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Fyrn nodded, apparently not bothered by the golem’s appearance, and continued down the now-cleared tunnel as though nothing had happened. Audrey pushed herself to her feet, dusting off her pants as she muttered absently to herself.
“Damn wizards.”
CHAPTER 11
In the royal master suite, nestled in the centermost tower of the Fairhaven castle, Luak set his feet on a grand dining table. The collection of rooms and hallways the king had occupied alone comprised over ten thousand square feet and included a waterfall, sauna, a master kitchen, and several bedrooms—all of which now belonged to Luak. The suite had been his for several weeks, and even though he wasn’t officially king, he liked the way a royal could live.
He drank from a goblet carved from the same crystals used to make denni, which hummed with power every time his lips touched its rim. It only gave him the smallest boost, but the sips added up quickly. He all but gloated with joy and pride, sitting above the peasants as he reveled in riches and excess.
It was good to be the king.
Someone knocked on his door and interrupted his jubilation, the fist heavy and hard against the wood.
Cautious in these times of changing power, Luak slunk silently to the door and peered through a strategically hidden gap in the stone to the side of the door. He himself had gotten the king to open the magically sealed door on the pretense of a group of soldiers delivering a message, and had dragged him out. The soldiers were all loyal to Luak, of course, and the message had been that the king would be escorted to the dungeons.
Luak wouldn’t fall for the same trick that had ended the previous reign.
Instead of a small army to whisk him away, he saw one of his higher-ranking mercenaries. The Light Elf had his hands on his knees as he gasped for air, but this was a seasoned warrior who wouldn’t be fazed by a trip up the stairs. He had apparently run all this way. Whatever this was about, it was urgent.
Luak opened the door without a word, sword drawn to reinforce the image of an imposing king. These mercenaries needed to respect him, always and forever. No signs of weakness, only unbridled power with a penchant for murder instead of mercy.
They would only respect what they feared, which was just the way he liked it.
“Lord Luak, the Rhazdon host has left the city.”
Luak nearly backhanded the man for letting her out of the city, but waited long enough to get more information first. “How did she escape? Why wasn’t she stopped?”
“I was patrolling the south tunnels with another soldier, sir, since you requested we split our numbers to cover more ground. When I saw them, I sent my patrol partner to tell you while I trailed them to find out where they were going. I found his remains on the way back. Apparently there’s another snarx in the tunnels, sir. It got him before he could get to you.”
As expected, the mercenary didn’t show a shred of emotion at losing a comrade. These elves and ogres were interchangeable, and barely knew each other. They were loyal only to whoever paid them, and they had few, if any, friends.
It was yet another reason Luak enjoyed commanding a mercenary army—they were easy to replace.
Soon he would enlist the citizens of Fairhaven into his army, but that would have to wait until he had more deep-rooted power in the city. When they had no means to defend themselves, he would draft them to fight and die for him whether they wanted to or not.
“Where did she go?” Luak finally asked.
“I was able to listen in on snippets of their conversation, but Fyrn Folly and Diesel Armstrong are powerful. I didn’t dare take them on myself.”
Ah, so that was where Diesel had gone. Disappointing, since Luak had wanted to see if Diesel would join him. The young wizard was powerful and, according to rumors, easily swayed by women. Apparently those rumors were true. Now, the boy would have to die for supporting Victoria instead of Luak.
“I only heard they were going to Sedona,” the mercenary continued.
As much as he hated to admit it, a pang of fear tore through Luak’s chest. Those fools. They would get Victoria killed in the network of tunnels beneath Montezuma’s Well, and Luak would lose his Rhazdon Artifact to the labyrinth. Only a desperate idiot would travel to the remnants of Lochrose.
He paced the expensive suite, hand in his hair as he debated his options. Perhaps it was his fault they had left. He had been too obvious in overthrowing the king, too blatant in the way he had kidnapped, tortured, and killed the senators and generals who needed to either join him or die. That was the downside of moving his plan forward—the subtle nuance of the original timeline was lost.
Still, he had what he wanted. Well, everything except Victoria Brie and her Rhazdon Artifact.
But there was little he could do. There were things even he dared not disturb.
Luak rubbed his temples, mind racing as he tried to adjust. He couldn’t simply forgo the Rhazdon Artifact in Victoria’s arm. He needed it desperately. It was vital to securing Fairhaven and destroying what little courage the citizens of this kemana might have left after he officially declared himself king.
When their precious hero was killed in front of them, no one would dare to voice dissent. With her execution, their hope would die.
“Find her,” Luak said darkly.
“Sir?”
“Go to Sedona. Find Lochrose. Capture her alive. Drug her, knock her out—I don’t care, as long as you drag her back here alive. I will give you and everyone in your party four years’ salary if you succeed.”
This caught the mercenary’s attention and he leaned forward, apparently hanging on Luak’s every word.
Luak paced the entry while he gave his orders
. “Kill the rest if you have to, but I’ll give you another five thousand denni if you bring the other girl back alive as well. I want to kill them both myself.”
“But sir, Lochrose is a myth.”
“It’s quite real, or I wouldn’t order you to go, would I?” Luak’s eyes narrowed as he glared at the brazen mercenary. “Take ten of the best soldiers you have and travel undetected to Sedona. I will draft a map. Track the girl. Bring her back, or don’t return.”
The mercenary’s eyes widened, but he saluted and retreated without another word.
Luak could warn them of the traps and creatures in the caves, but they would probably desert him. They didn’t need to know what was down there waiting to kill them. He merely needed them to drag Victoria Brie to him, begging for her life.