by WB McKay
I didn't wait for the selkie or Tattered Vest to catch up. I spun out of my crouched position and freed Epic from his sheath. Art casually stood, hands loose at his sides. He nodded to the pirates as if to say, Hey there. How you doing?
The pirates slid back a step. The selkie hissed and roared; Tattered Vest was silent. I kept my eyes on her, sure that Art would be watching the selkie.
I ran scenarios through my head. I could pretend our meeting there was a coincidence. I could pretend The Boss sent me. I could pretend to be a rival pirate. Ultimately, I didn't have time for any of those plans to play out. Out of nowhere, a wispy humanoid form appeared between us. They had a vaguely ghostly look about them, but I knew from my experiences with Ava that they weren't a ghost. Actually, scratch that--they weren't any kind of ghost I was familiar with. I'd have to consult Ava before I concluded anything. No assumptions. Be thorough.
The wispy form spoke loud and clear: "The two opposing teams have made themselves known. The trial for the Golden Fleece has begun."
"Hold on, what the hell does that mean?" I asked, but my words were swallowed by the cracking of the ground under the speaker's feet. A hole three feet in diameter led down further than I could see. It was still dark, first light had yet to arrive, but the open cavern sounded deep when rocks clattered down over the freshly broken edge.
The announcer gestured to the hole I presumed he had opened and said, "May the competition prove someone worthy." And then he was gone, leaving nothing but the hole and a stronger, saltier ocean taste to hint at his magic.
I didn't want to give the pirates any hints or tips by testing the depth or asking Art anything out loud. I looked at him, raised my eyes to the sky and dropped them dramatically. All of this was to say: I suspect it's a long drop. I looked at him expectantly, attempting to ask: Do you think you can make it that far?
He jerked his chin forward, saying: You first. Shift.
So rude and impatient--jumping right into telling me what to do without pausing to answer my question first--I must have been rubbing off on him. Under the circumstances, it was also the best approach. I sheathed Epic, dropped my jacket, and pulled my shirt and bra free enough to shift. I was in crow form and diving into the inky blackness before the pirates had a chance to form a plan.
A blast of selkie water hit me hard, turning me sideways. I lost my sense of where the ground should be. My wings flapped helplessly. Against all sense of good judgment, I stopped moving my wings, letting myself fall. Okay, that way is down. I pushed myself free of the blast and grabbed a wall with my talons. It was imperative that I move quickly in case I was attacked again, but there was no rushing my stunned senses. When they caught up, I found myself a great deal further down than I was comfortable thinking about. Letting myself free fall when I didn't know how far the ground was had been a… Don't do that again.
The cavern had opened up after the tight opening up top. That was good. I wasn't a fan of small spaces.
More water shot down, hitting the opposite wall at a sharp angle. Art dropped through the hole in the ceiling, shooting more blasts of water as he went in an attempt to slow his descent. It was working, but he was still picking up speed. When he was only fifteen feet from the ground he doubled his efforts with the water and aimed them straight down. He hit the ground with a splash instead of the cracking of bones. He looked relaxed, almost like he'd known that would work, but I knew better. He liked to pretend I was the daredevil of our partnership, but Art took just as many risks as I did.
I flew down to where he held out my clothes for me and shifted back. I was already mostly dressed when a few small rocks dropped down from the opening at the top. The stars were briefly blocked from view, and I heard a skittering over the rocky walls. A quarter of the way down, my eyes spotted a spider-like human form crawling headfirst down the walls with rapid, jerky movements. Knee-high striped socks gave the image an interesting blend between creepy spider in a cave, and circus act. I nodded appreciatively at Tattered Vest's means for descending the cave walls. It was gutsy to crawl headfirst down that wall, even with an additional two sets of arms for gripping the wall. It turned out her tattered vest wasn't only some grungy, pirate fashion statement. The holes were openings for her arms, one pair from her ribs and another from her hips.
Interesting, but made much more so when I took a second look at the sword strapped to her back. Sword fighting with six arms… now that would be interesting.
Eventually, I realized I shouldn't have been able to see any of this. It was still night, and I'd jumped into a dark hole in the ground. The floor of the cave was paved with swirling orange lights I hadn't seen from above, possibly because they were too dim to be seen from such a distance, but more likely they were enchanted. The cavern was tall, and though it widened from the narrow opening at the top, I still would have preferred an open field right about then. It smelled damp and old and though I can't explain it, like loneliness. There was nowhere to go but two tunnels side by side, both of them low enough they had to be crawled through.
I steadied my heartbeat, rejecting the panic. No time for fear, I told myself. Definitely no time for panic. "Which one?" I asked Art.
He gave me a sympathetic smile and I glared at him. He knew I found his pity unhelpful. It only made me regret ever telling him I had a problem at all. It had been a moment of weakness; I thought he'd have a tip for making it go away. After I'd been trapped in a barrier of air and nearly crushed to death by a wind worker named Leandra, I'd developed a hint of claustrophobia. It was fine.
Art squatted in front of the holes and tossed some rocks each way. "One hole for each team," he suggested.
"That's what I was thinking, too," I said. Both of our gut instincts were in agreement; that was good enough for me. Tattered Vest had hit the ground behind us and the selkie was on her way down. "We take the right?" I asked him. He nodded back at me with more pity in his eyes and crawled forward on his hands and knees.
I closed my eyes and gave myself ten seconds to pack up the fear. I knew I'd be smaller as a crow and that should have been the more appealing choice, but it wasn't enough space to fly, and that realization always made it worse. There was no way through it but to do it. You can't ever be brave without being afraid. You want to be brave, right, Sophie? Make lemonade!
Right. Yeah. Clichés are totally going to get you through this, Sophie.
Jagged rocks bit into my knees and palms. The pain helped me stay present instead of retreating to the fear in my mind. I was grateful for the swirls of orange light illuminating the cramped space. It's bigger than it looks, I thought. The ceiling scuffed the shoulder of my leather jacket and my heart missed a few beats. It's bigger than it looks, I repeated to myself.
My throat constricted. I kept moving my body at an even pace, following the noise of Art shuffling forward in front of me. I pulled air in through my nose, blew it out through my mouth. Though the rocks were cool to my touch, their magic smelled faintly of campfires. The smell was soothing, as long as I didn't allow my brain to think things like smoke in a cave and this air is no good and how many feet of rock are between you and the world above?
The tunnel was getting smaller. At first I thought it was in my head, but then I felt the need to get on my belly to move forward, and when I looked up at Art I saw he'd already done the same. It was real, not in my head. The tunnel was getting smaller.
That was fine. I still fit. I still fit. I stopped for a moment and rolled on my side, took deeper breaths. I needed to pull the zipper up on my jacket to protect my belly from the jagged rocks. Once I was done, I pulled my knees up to my chest and stretched my arms out straight in front of me, palms touching the opposite wall. Plenty of space. I took three breaths, told myself that was all the break I was going to get, and stretched my legs back down, rolled onto my stomach, and army crawled my way forward, slow and steady. There was no point in rushing; I could only go as fast as the person in front of me.
This. Is. Fine.
"...something...a...ike...dirk…" Art's garbled words trailed back to me.
I couldn't trust my voice not to break, or shout at him in a strangled rage, so I had to choose not to ask him what he'd said at all, despite the fact that not knowing had only thrown one more overdose of emotion into my pot.
My breaths came quicker. There was nothing I could do about it. I looked up to see that the tunnel came to a right angle turn in front of me and Art had disappeared from view. I couldn't hear anything over the blood pounding in my ears.
Fucking calm. Calm. Be. Calm. Calm.
I shoved my palms against the walls at my sides and dragged my body frantically over the rough ground, kicking with my legs and scraping the hell out of my knees. Out. Out. Get out. Out. Out. Out.
I reached the curve in the tunnel and found Art's face peering in at me from three feet out. I pushed even harder to get there and rolled out of the cave. I swatted his hands away and swung my arms out around me, convincing my brain I had the ability to do so.
Space. Space. I had space.
"You're okay," said Art.
"I fucking know I'm okay," I snapped. I stood up before giving my mind the chance to think about things I wanted. The pity party was a short trip away from thoughts like that, and I didn't have time for that shit. "Now what happens?"
"Now we walk down this seemingly harmless hallway," he said. "Would you like to go first?"
I rolled my eyes. "Look at you being all sarcastic to distract me."
"What are you talking about?"
"Do you remember when you used to insist on inflicting me with excessive kindness?"
"It wasn't excessive," he said.
"Yeah, okay," I said. "I find your sarcasm much more heartwarming."
He smiled his ridiculously large smile. His beard always looked so funny when he smiled that wide. "I've warmed Sophie Morrigan's heart."
"Are you going to flood this tunnel with water to set off the traps or are we going to stand here having heartwarming moments until the mountain of rock over our heads collapses down and kills us once and for all?"
He kept smiling and glancing over at me, but he did shoot the first blast of water up the hall, making sure to hit the walls before going for the floor. The hall was more neatly carved than the tunnel we'd crawled through, wide enough to walk side by side for as far as I could see, which wasn't far, since it gradually tilted upward. The water slid back at us, puddling around our feet. Nothing happened with the first three feet he hit, but at four feet the water pressure hit a trigger. A flood of spiders rushed out an opening in the ceiling.
I sneered as he attempted to drown the eight-legged suckers. "So it begins."
CHAPTER FIVE
The spiders kept coming.
He cleared the next stretch beyond them and we decided to run through the spiders to the edge of the next cleared section. Hopscotch for tomb raiders. The pirates were going to love it.
After the tiny tunnel of terror, the spiders weren't so bad. Art, always the gentleman, sprayed me down with water before dousing himself. He didn't have temperature control; the cold might have been worse than the spiders. "Look." I pointed behind us. "Now you can say you've seen the back of a spider waterfall."
He gave me the embarrassed smile deserving of all my best jokes he wrongfully interpreted as bad. It was clearly a cultural misunderstanding.
"You can't trust a selkie's sense of humor," I reminded him. "My jokes are gold."
He started walking forward like we were taking a leisurely stroll through the farmer's market.
"Stop!" I grabbed Art's wrist. I looked at the field again, certain something was off. "There." I let go of him and pointed with Haiku at a crack in the rock a little ways in front of us, right at eye level.
"That might be nothing but aging," he said.
"Or it's going to spew poisonous dust in our eyes before we can move or do anything about it."
"Right," he agreed. "Plan?"
There was a time where I would have ducked down and rolled over the floor in front of us, convinced it would shoot something at eye level. In that scenario, being down low would keep us safe enough. Of course, that tactic wouldn't have worked well on the flood of spiders we'd just gone through. Perhaps my attempts at patience were having some kind of affect on me, making me more cautious, but rolling over the trap didn't seem like the best approach. "I think we should hit it, immediately back up as far as we can, and crouch down."
He turned to me with wide eyes. "Okaaaaaay." He eyed the spiders still trickling out of the previous trap. Many of them were sliding down with their fallen brethren, but some of them were coming our way. "I can't take care of those spiders and keep an eye on the new threat at the same time."
"I'll watch for the new threat and alert you if the spiders become a problem."
"This is both safer and more dangerous at the same time," said Art.
"And?"
"Just pointing that out," he said. "I'm with you." He held up his hand to prepare his next jet of water. "Ready?"
I nodded and Art blasted the area with water. Nothing happened except we got our feet wet. It would be asking too much for the same tactic to work the whole way through. "Looks like I'm going to have to step forward and spring it manually. Probably some sort of magical sensor." I stomped a spider that had made it to us while we inspected the next trap. "You keep on the spiders."
"On it," he said, turning his back to me.
He sprayed down the hall behind us and I crouched and duck walked forward, my eyes pitched at the ground. It was hard not to look up at the ominous crack in the wall above. Bright orange light lit the whole area before the sounds of crackling flames filled the area above me. "Yikes," I said, the understatement of the year. I did my awkward squatting walk back to Art, the heat from the flames warming the top of my head to an uncomfortable degree. At least my head was still there. The trap's architect hadn't planned on that.
"Well, it wasn't poison," he said, pointing out the obvious. "I guess we just try to walk under it?"
I nodded. "Yeah, we should save your magic until we absolutely need it. We can't keep using your water magic the whole way through. Besides, I doubt you could put out those magical flames anyway."
Never one to let macho pride get in the way of being practical, Art nodded. "It would probably take all the magic I have left." But even as he spoke, the flames began to die, turning into a weak dribble down the wall. "That was anticlimactic."
"Maybe the magic was too old and broke down?" I suggested. "Or maybe not." While the flames were no longer shooting out at head height, they weren't stopping either. They were pouring down the wall in a liquid ribbon to pool on the floor. "Lava?"
"We should get going before it covers the floor," said Art.
My legs were already moving. "You don't have to tell me twice." As I walked by, one of the flaming coils lashed out and clamped onto my leg with vicious fangs. I had time to think, Since when does lava have fangs? before the pain hit.
"Fuuuucck!"
I'm really eloquent when lava snakes try to bite my leg off.
Art blasted it with a jet of water, causing the snake to pull back from my leg and hiss in two different ways. I may have been in shock from the pain because I burst out laughing. "The water hissed and the snake hissed!"
The snake lunged at Art and my mind crashed back into sobering reality. I had no idea how to fight a magical snake made of lava. Art dodged out of the way and blasted it in the face with another jet of water. The water evaporated in a puff of steam doing nothing whatsoever.
I pulled Epic from the sheath at my back and Haiku from the sheath at my waist. Magical lava snake or not, it was hard to do damage when it didn't have a head, so that was my focus. I swiped Epic lazily at the creature to see what sort of r
eaction I would get. It darted to the side. "Oh, are you afraid of my blade, Hot Fangs?" I tried to sidestep in order to get a better angle and nearly toppled over when blinding pain raced up my leg. I took several deep breaths and tried to formulate a plan.
The snake turned its attention back to Art, who'd found a rock and pelted it in the back of the head. "I'll keep it distracted. You take its head."
Easier said than done. Every limping step I took drew the creature's attention back to me. It was like it could sense movement. We would have to double team it. "Art, you need to use a sword. Your water isn't bothering it."
"Agreed," said Art. "But how am I going to get a sword? I don't think he's going to let me just walk around to you."
I debated trying to fill Art in on my plan and waiting for him to be ready, but the truth was, there was no way to get ready. Instinct and reflex would serve him best. "Like this," I said, turning Epic blade down. "Catch!" I heaved the sword in the air, careful to keep it from turning. The snake snapped at the flying weapon, but didn't connect.
Art let out a small yelp and snatched the sword out of the air by the hilt. "A little warning would have been nice."
"We don't have time to mess around. This is a race to the end. We can't let those pirates beat us." I feinted a swipe at the snake's tail, turning it back toward me. "You do the same thing, Art."
"I don't really know how to use a sword," he said. If I hadn't known that from years of working with him, it would have been obvious from the awkward way he held the blade.
"That doesn't matter. Swing the pointy end at the snake enough to distract it. I'll take care of the rest." At least, that's how I hoped it would go. The snake's head darted back and forth between us, uncertain of the bigger threat now that we both had swords. I held up Haiku, ready to strike. "Try it now."
Art swung Epic like he was chopping wood, a high attack coming straight down at the snake. If he'd been trying to do any damage, it would have been awful. Any opponent would have seen it coming from a mile away. As a distraction, it worked perfectly. The snake dodged easily aside, but wasn't prepared for my attack. I stepped in and swung Haiku in a horizontal slice aimed at the side of the creature's head. The snake had made plans of its own. With Art wide open after his attack, the snake darted for Art's exposed side while Epic's blade bounced harmlessly off the stone floor. Instead of chopping the snake's head cleanly in half, I only grazed it, leaving a furrow in it's magical lava-like flesh. Thankfully, it was enough to divert it from sinking its fangs into Art. In a surprising show of agility, the snake spun back around, diving right for my face. I didn't have a chance to recover from my half-connected blow. My face was about to be melted off. I only had time to close my eyes.