She faced me. “You may have aged again by the time that happens. What is the message?”
“Look,” I said sternly, “At any moment we could turn this entire prison into shambles and be free as rodents—but, we have chosen to respect the ways of your tribe. To be frank, we’re hard pressed for time and diplomacy has only cost us hours of this foul stench. We must speak with Shenkii.” It was a risky statement, but the passing hours made me edgy. Agnas tilted her head with a callous gaze. “We have no interest in using force or sly. Our time spent in here should attest to that.” This time, she wore a face of emotion I couldn’t pinpoint. She sighed.
“I’ve told him this,” she said. “For what it’s worth, human, I argued in favor of your release. I can smell deceit as if it were an onion in a flowerbed. In you, there is none, which is peculiar. Even in the noblest kind of creature, there is at least one strand of immorality. Yet, your honesty is sound.”
Agnas... An ally? I would never have guessed it from the way she’d stormed into the Elder’s house to expose us. “My cousin fears you,” she said. “For the tribe mostly, but a little for himself, I think.” Cousins. That I’d known by their similarly colored locks.
“We propose challenging this... Kreshauros that stalks the other side of the cave.”
A finger ran the bridge of her nose. “Is this what I am to tell Shenkii?” I nodded. “We would have to see just how capable your magic is then.” She muttered something under her breath. “I’m not sure he’ll go for it. But, I will try.” She turned away and then back again. “It could work in our favor, I suppose... Should you face Kreshauros and fail, your death will rid us of you anyhow.” Her sarcasm was dismaying.
When she left, I filled the others in on whatever they hadn’t already overheard.
“Hopefully it works,” said Sergio.
Irvina rolled a chakram over the ground. “Aye.”
More hours passed, and nothing changed. The prison still roared with noise. On top of a wool sheet, Irvina lay sleeping. Sergio was amid a growling contest with a troll in the neighboring cage. The demented beast reached its sinewy arm toward our cage as if to grab hold of it. Other rambunctious prisoners cheered it on.
“Come on!” Sergio blared, his arms pulling furiously at the bars of our cage. “Reach! You gonna’ be a wimp all of your life?” I drew a cross on the Amethyst, and it lit where I dragged my finger. Entertained, I drew every shape I could think of until I had done several of them twice. I resorted to lines that lit random symbols, doing this until another visitor neared our cage. It was the boy, Vakuu.
He greeted me merrily, and I beamed at him with a tired smile as I leaned against the bars. “I’m sorry you have to be in there.”
I stood. “It’s never a child’s fault.”
The boy beat his chest and hopped. “How’d you find our cave again? There’re so many tales going around about it.”
I told him the story, starting from when I arrived back in Lucreris and saw it in flames. I spoke in detail, never missing a single moment as I chronicled every event. I recounted the battle with Roth and how the Amethyst had helped me. I hadn’t planned to open up to him so easily at first. When his blotted face disappeared, and I saw Nova standing before me I knew then, I missed her. “We’re traveling to get my sister back.” It was the last thing I told him.
“That’s why you need to get through the cave,” he realized.
“Yeah.”
He asked more about the orb, and I was reluctant to answer him. When a peculiar feeling nudged me, I told him how I’d found it. It glared in his face as I set it before him. “Magic. I’d have to see it believe.”
With a decision of its own, the Amethyst lifted Vakuu as he examined it with a tap. The boy had no knowledge of his enchantment until he hovered backward and noticed his swinging toes didn’t graze the ground. He shouted, falling gently. He hopped and squatted, teeming with jubilance. “Did you do that?”
“It was the orb,” I said, letting my arm hang naturally by my side. By then, the other prisoners had lost interest in us. The magical interaction had gone unnoticed to them.
Flustered, Vakuu said many things, one of which being, Ultima. He spoke of the orb as a gift and magic as a marvelous entity. And then he talked about historical events that I’d known nothing about, bringing me to the realization that he had been much, much older than myself, even as a child. “You could kill Kreshauros,” he said suddenly.
I wrapped my hands around the bars. “We could try. But we’d have to be on the outside of these bones for that.”
The little troll concurred with a big nod. The room went dark. The dungeon keeper extinguished the torches, and the flames of the rocking dragon-head. Vakuu became a silhouette of shadow, his features vaguely grayed. “It’s time for the village to sleep. I must go.” He ran, making it several feet before turning around. “On the outside of the bones?”
“Right.”
He dashed away. The darkening chamber woke Irvina with sudden movement. She sat up and hunched forward on bent legs with a yawn. Sergio was leaning against the cage; his head lowered as he snored. His yelling opponent slouched against its own cage, its upper lip quivering from grumbling breaths.
But Sergio wasn’t asleep. He’d had no need for it. Our orbs hadn’t allowed us. I called his name. He didn’t answer. “I know you’re not sleeping, flea-brain. I do have an orb of my own.”
He growled, keeping his head downcast. “Shut up. I’m trying to concentrate.” It wasn’t a bad idea. The ferocity of the detained olive-colored brutes had finally faltered, the ruckus dying to mumble and snoring. In the darkness of the bone prison, the three of us waited sleeplessly.
Nixie’s Domain
Hours had gone by before the torches lit again. The dungeon keeper set the dragon skull ablaze with a torch affixed to a long wood pole. Whatever he lit to create such a healthy flame was a mystery hidden above a sheet of wool. “I wonder if it’s daylight outside, too,” Sergio pondered aloud. There was no way of knowing. Just minutes after the chamber brightened the trolls were back to their usual ruckus.
An hour later, there was unsettling clamor elsewhere, roaring from the open archway of the prison. The village had been in an uproar it seemed. “Something’s amiss,” said Irvina beside me.
I wonder what’s going on, too.
Sergio sparred with the air, practicing various punches and kicks, rolling, and moving his arms, wrestling an imaginary opponent. “With the Emerald, all I need are these hands now,” he said. “A weapon’s just gonna’ slow me down.” The Emerald glowed through his vest, a stripe of iridescent lime along its center. Each arm from the forearm down transformed into beastly gauntlets, his fingers into elongated red ones with black claws. Metal pads lined the backside of his forearms, dagger-sharp protrusions grown from his elbows.
He leaped with a shout, his excitement surging. High and far he went, clumsily crashing into the bars, splintering them before he went rolling across the ground outside the cage. On his haunches he shook, his arms reverting to normal. He gathered himself, avoiding the shambles of his blundering mistake. “...I meant to do that.”
I found him with a mad gaze swelling with rage and anxiety. “Sergio, get back in here, now.” Irvina had already hopped out behind him, chakram twirling in her hands lackadaisically.
“What for?” Sergio barked. “The dungeon keeper’s already on his way.” I saw the tribal-adorned giant fall from the high ledge. I jumped out. The commotion riled the caged trolls. Many tried breaking their bulbous prisons, though to no avail. The dungeon keeper was rounding a cage two behind us.
“Go,” I belted, shoving Sergio by the arm.
“I’m going,” he said, quickly trailing third after Irvina and I. We bolted.
Near the village’s dwelling quarters, trolls stomped about relentlessly, combing past every structure, entranced by their mad fixation. “Find him,” we heard a Basher order. “Prince Vakuu is somewhere in this cave. He couldn’t ‘v
e gotten far!” Bashers barged past those in their way and broke every obstruction. No one had yet noticed our escape. It was an adverse trait of the trolls: tunnel vision. Once fixed upon something, nothing could undo their exclusive focus. It was a luxury that saw us to Shenkii’s center stalagmite before our sole hunters found us. The dungeon keeper and three Bashers tracked us like hounds.
The dungeon keeper crouched into attack mode, his scepter low.
Shenkii stood between us and our pursuers, Shaaka next to him with a livid stare and a thick mid-length falchion at her side. She paced about, thrashing the Elder with curses and foul mutterings. “Calm yourself,” Shenkii said with a waving arm.
“This is your fault,” she growled. The dungeon keeper gathered their attention and pointed his scepter in warning. Shenkii faced us with a disturbed expression and intense eyes. “You!” Shaaka blurted, her piercing gaze locking on me. “What did you do with him?” She stomped across the ground, slicing the distance between us. Her sword hand shook.
I looked down when the Amethyst burned and formed Rahginor from light. A gleam ran the elongated blade. Shaaka lunged violently. Just in time—with two hands—I pushed Rahginor forward crossways. With a spark, her falchion slid against my blade, locking at its hooked guard. The gleaming tip of the short sword halted inches before my abdomen.
The Amethyst’s magic knocked her backward, plowing across the stone floor. The ten-foot troll’s evil stare would’ve burned like searing coals if they could’ve. A deadly bond had forged between us now, her blade forever yearning to best me.
“Shaaka!” roared Shenkii. His echoing voice wafted across Dugan Cavern, ebbing down the streets.
“What?” The quick retort matched the potency of the Elder’s blaring call.
“You are out of order! Stay your blade.”
She growled. “You may be the Elder of this Tribe, but you do not command me.” She kept her eyes on me. “Your magic means nothing to me, conjurer. Where is my son? He was last spotted leaving the dungeon. I know you’ve used your powers against him.”
I was suddenly winded. The Amethyst lit steadily, and I left from where I was. A vision came to me. I could see a path slithering into the distant darkness, and I heard something growling, an animal, though certainly not one of flesh and blood. Small, mole-grown feet pattered across the coarse ground. I could hear loud, frightful breathing. Vakuu. When the vision ended, Sergio was holding me by the arm. I looked at him and nodded. “Good, Winn?”
He knew that I’d gone somewhere, somewhere else, and back again. Another troll approached us, calling upon Shenkii before the Elder could address us. “Elder! The seal is open. For how long, we do not know.” Shenkii’s eyes bulged with great anger and concern. He squeezed his staff with both hands until they trembled.
“Were you the one guarding it?” he interrogated.
“No, Elder.”
“Then what does the one who was, have to say of this? And, where is he?”
“There was no one guarding it.”
The news seemed as if it had calmed Shenkii as he twirled the staff in front of him with a breath. But it was a far deadlier expression than anger.
“Shenkii,” I said. “Vakuu opened it. He went into the deep of the cave. Kreshauros hunts him as we speak.”
There was a pause. Shenkii dismissed the dungeon keeper and faced us. “And you know this how?” All the trolls around us were listening and observing.
“I’ve seen it, in a vision.” The Amethyst lifted my arm. From it came a ray of lights that formed a blurry reverie of what it had shown me moments before. Vakuu halted at a fork in the cave, looking frantically and unsurely in either direction. When a roar and a large shadow stalked not far behind him, he ran to his left, disappearing out of the floating vision. The flickering projection vanished.
The trolls resounded in surprise. Shenkii snapped his fingers. “I want twenty Bashers beyond the seal now,” he ordered. The informant started away. We heard something stomping behind us. Voreg, the Basher, grew larger by the second, bound for Irvina. She drew her chakram as he came within threatening proximity. The reach of his pole-arms surprised her, and she failed to evade before his hands clamped her throat and yanked her into the air with dislocating might.
With a finger, she reeled a chakram into the air, catching a foot between the forking center handles. Using Voreg’s arms as support, she stretched as long and rigid as she could, scissoring the chakram’s protruding blades against the Basher’s throat. One wrong move and Voreg’s head would tumble from his mountainous shoulders, down between his own outstretched arms.
At Shenkii’s third order, the stubborn Basher put her down. Sergio and I went to her as she grasped at her neck with low gasps. “I’m fine.”
Sergio warned Voreg to take heed to his Elder. “Touch her again, mop-head, and you’ll have to deal with someone your own size.” The Emerald twinkled, reinforcing the threat. Voreg snorted and growled.
When I touched the bruises across her neck, Irvina lowered my hands with disdain. “I don’t need your empathy,” she snapped. I turned back to Shenkii, telling him that the three of us could find his nephew and battle Kreshauros. The Elder winced at the suggestion. Agnas came beside him from his stalagmite and set a hand on his shoulder.
“Why not let them, Shenkii? Their trio has done nothing worth imprisonment. In fact, their behavior has been the most civilized of all the Ruling Races we’ve come across,” said the master tracker.
“You’ve argued in their favor plenty, Agnas. My ears have burned enough. Please, no more. I haven’t yet decided if I’m entirely convinced.”
Agnas shrugged her shoulders. “I fail to see how their proposal could do us any harm.” Voreg and Shaaka had taken the latter side, hounding the Elder with rage that filled him with consternation. Stroking his goatee, Shenkii would repeat something that Agnas had muttered during her visit to the dungeon. “We must come to understand the full extent of their powers.”
Shaaka snapped her head at him. “Surely you’re not considering the human’s request. How can we trust this magic? Magical beings are fickle things. What if it the human’s vision is a mere plot to bring us into chaos and aid them in their escape?”
“Agnas is right,” Shenkii insisted. “Darwin and the others have done nothing for us to distrust them. Even in their imprisonment, they caused no trouble. I must return the hospitality if we expect anything to change between their kind and ours.”
Voreg stormed toward Shenkii, and both he and Shaaka conversed amongst themselves. Agnas chimed in sharply when Shaaka said something that offended her. They had talked for a long moment before the Tracker winked at us. Voreg grunted with folded arms and Shaaka slammed her falchion into its sheath.
“We must take you to see her.” The way Shenkii said it brought a menacing feeling like ominous overcast.
“Who?” I questioned.
“Nixie,” Agnas answered. “An old sprite. Her powers will tell us what you are and the extent of your magic. She resides in an isolated part of the cavern, where the sprites illuminate the air like firebugs.”
“The opportunity to uphold your end of the bargain will be yours, but only once the sprite’s judgment favors you,” said Shenkii.
We had no other choice. We obliged. Sergio spat a distasteful grunt at the lack of options.
“I will accompany you,” said Shaaka with leering eyes. “Should you do anything I deem untrustworthy, I will be there to ensure you never again free another breath within this cave.”
“As will I, naiad,” Voreg added.
We agreed to the conditions. We had nothing to hide and no ulterior motive. Shenkii hand chose the Bashers that would go with us. Amused, Voreg picked two of his own. There were eight trolls in all. With a nod, Shenkii consented to our departure.
The seal was a metal plate at the top of a winding rock path. It was open only slightly—enough for a troll child to shimmy beyond its small gap. But how could he have moved it? The plate
looks like it weighs several tons, and proved so as it had taken two of the largest Bashers with us to roll it aside.
“How did Vakuu move this?” I said aloud, to no one.
“Even the youngest trolls carry the strength of a hundred men—and the prince is very strong conjurer,” said one of the Bashers.
Shaaka came beside me. “The seals are forged of the Elder bloodline—the same blood that courses my son’s veins—it was nothing for Vakuu to move it aside.”
The limestone tunnels beyond the seal were long, and torch lit. Tubular passages formed chaotic networks with many meandering canyons separating them. Within the canyons, the trolls halted each time, sniffing the air to find their direction. For an hour, we traveled in one direction. It was in a large cavity that we stopped the longest—a profound chamber with thousands of stalactites and stalagmites hung and grown as if it had been the mouth of an evil beast.
“Nixie’s domain is just beyond there,” said one of the Bashers. He pointed to a gaping hole above a beaked ledge.
Shaaka started along a different path. “I go to find my son. Do with those three what you will.” Five trolls followed her.
“You’ll die without the help of our orbs,” said Sergio. He was going behind them until Voreg stopped him with an arm, and looked at him with the snarl of a wolf. “To the sprite, we go, satyr.”
Sergio slapped Voreg’s arm away. “Hands off, dung face, or you won’t have much of an arm left to take with you.” The Basher’s comrade came beside him, and the half-satyr stuck out his chest. “Easy there, I’m not going to do anything to him.”
Beyond the opening above the ledge was the darkest tunnel. Sergio opened his vest, and the Emerald burned a ray of light before us, lighting the path. The trolls whispered amongst themselves along the way. We stopped at another large plate that Voreg ordered his henchmen to remove. After Irvina and I had stepped through, the trolls shoved Sergio. “Good luck getting out of there with your minds in one peace.” Voreg’s twisted expression was the last thing we had seen before the plate closed with a heavy, echoing thump.
Enigma: Awakening Page 19