The Hero's Peril (The Sorcerer's Saga Book 5)

by Rain Oxford

  “Sorry.”

  She laughed. “You do not need to apologize for feeling awkward about families. I had an estranged one as well.”

  “Do you still see them?”

  “No, they’re all dead.” We stopped at a wall. “Unfortunately, the gate was open when Zuras came through, or we would have been able to capture him.”

  “What are you---” I cut myself off with a shout of surprise. The entire wall flickered away, like a ward collapsing. Outside and… down… were massive trees. “You do have magic!”

  “Not magic, no. You see, we were once simple and happy people. Unfortunately, our world could not sustain us. Dragons tried to save us, but our resources could not be maintained for long, even with their magic. Although they left, one of them contacted someone who could help us; a man named Kiro. He was the most powerful wizard we had ever known.”

  “He saved your world when dragons couldn’t?” I asked.

  “No. He brought us here, to Soenus. He took everyone who was willing to leave to the only free world he knew that could accommodate us. We had a lot of adapting to do, but we were grateful. We have rebuilt our society better. For everything we take, we give. If we cut a tree, we plant a new one. We use the energy the world provides, like water, wind, and the suns, instead of---”

  “I’m sorry, did you just say ‘suns’? As in two?”

  She laughed. “Of course not. There are three suns.”

  I choked. Not on anything, I just choked.

  “We are still constantly struggling to live, though, as we were not the first to inhabit Soenus.”

  “You aren’t? What else could live on a world with three suns?” She pointed to something in the distance. I had to squint to see a dark smudge. Obviously, these people had better eyes than me. “If there are three suns, why isn’t it brighter out there?”

  “You’re still looking through a screen, which is shading us from view and protecting us from the suns. Besides, the three suns are never in the same sky at the same time.”

  By then, the smudge was close enough to tell that it was moving… or advancing. I started to get a bad feeling about it.

  “We introduced a gas into the air that is harmless to everyone; animal, person, and plant. For certain times of the day, it is not safe for us to be exposed. When this occurs, the vegetation turns blue.”

  “Doesn’t the vegetation die if the suns are that harmful?”

  “Evolution is a beautiful thing. The suns protect the animals and plants from danger and the animals instinctively know how to survive its harm. We are intruders here; it is up to us to adapt, not the world. If we get killed, it is our fault, not the fault of the suns or animals. Soenus is a gift.”

  “Couldn’t Kiro have taken you somewhere safer?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Every world has its advantages and disadvantages. Your world has magic, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How well would you survive without it?”

  “I get your point. We almost lost it six months ago.”

  “We had better technology on our old world, but that was why we ran out of resources in the first place. Besides, we are innovative people. Our society now runs on renewable energy. Aside from solar power, which we have an endless supply of, we maintain our machines mostly with steam. We have sky ships, trains, and cars to travel between the cities.”

  “So this isn’t the only group of you?”

  “No. There are many of us in cities all over Soenus. The desert lands are the most dangerous.”

  Before I could say anything else, the creature finally flew close enough to identify it… only, it was not like anything I had ever seen or heard of.

  It had massive, thin, medium brown wings, a long neck, a light brown beak on its head, and a pinkish feature on top of its head. “Is that some kind of dragon?” I asked.

  “No. They have no magic; they are simply animals, looking for food like every animal does. It would eat you without a single regret. We call the native creatures of this world gobrin.”

  “It looks similar to a quetzalcoatlus northropi,” Merlin said.

  “Um…” I said wisely.

  “A twenty-foot-tall pterosaur. There are some discrepancies, however. I have only read about creatures of this type from books.”

  I was picking up mixed feelings from him, and that had never happened before. “Are you afraid?”

  “I would be a fool not to be. At the same time, I am amazed. I have seen numerous wonderful things in my life, and it was always when I was alone. After a while, beautiful phenomena and even the mysteries of life lose their allure. This… this is a new one. I never thought I would experience something like this, especially after losing my immortality.”

  I was glad to be there with him. I couldn’t understand what it was like to experience new things alone because I met Merlin just a few days after I left home. Since then, everything I experienced was with my best friend at my side. “Can it eat us through this… ward thing?”

  “No, we’re safe until we step outside.”

  “Which we’re going to have to do to find Zuras.”

  “Like I said; I doubt he made it.”

  Chapter 7

  Yuri woke and we were all given food… well, I was told it was food. It was white and clumpy, similar to porridge, except it had bits of meat in it, and it tasted like transformation clay.

  “This is kind of gross,” Yuri said.

  “Then don’t eat it. More for the rest of us,” I said, trying not to gag. We were in the same room we had woken up in and the residents had left us alone to decide on what to do. Still, I didn’t want to insult them when I was pretty sure food was hard to come by with monsters running around outside.

  “You can’t possibly like it.”

  “Not all of us grew up in a castle with anything we could want to eat.”

  Merlin finished his bowl and kept his opinion on it to himself. I suspected he’d had to eat far worse things in his life.

  Yuri scowled and scarfed down the rest of his food to prove a point. “We should go after Zuras.”

  “I agree. I just don’t want to die doing it. We need to be prepared. We also need help from those who know how to survive out there.”

  “Why don’t you use your magic?” a man asked, entering the room. It took me a moment to realize he was the same person who had taken his goggles off in front of me and scared me half to death. Merlin didn’t bother to hide his smirk.

  “For one thing, it’s really hard to focus our minds when something is trying to eat our faces. When we do magic as a reaction instead of thinking it out, it can be dangerous.”

  “If you’re not going to use it to save yourself, what good’s it for?”

  “You don’t like magic, do you?” Yuri asked.

  “No, I don’t. Wizards are lazy and get out of work by having everything magically done for them. Then they go and think they’re better than everyone else ‘cause of it. They think they’re smarter.”

  “Magic isn’t the easy way to do something, it’s a different way,” I said. “It takes a lot of work. I have met some brilliant magic users and some foolish ones. There are some people on our world without magic, some who have too little magic to survive on, and some who refuse to use their magic because they see a better future without it. No one thinks any less of them.”

  Merlin and I had spent a lot of time discussing it, and from what I heard, magic was difficult on every world.

  The man grabbed a couple of the bottles on the shelf and shook his head. “Just stay out of the engine room.” He left.

  “I don’t know where or what the engine room is, but it sounds dangerous,” I said.

  Yuri grinned. “I bet it’s something amazing. We should go find it.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  Merlin groaned.

  “Can you hear the voices?” I asked.

  Yuri nodded. “They’re quiet, though.”

  “Do you
know what they are?”

  “No. They started when I got my immortality, and they stop when I’m not anywhere near the egg, so I know they have something to do with it, but I don’t know what.”

  “Maybe he’s hearing the dragon that hasn’t hatched yet,” I suggested in Merlin’s mind.

  “That is hard to believe even coming from your world. I would like to know what caused him to be immortal. I have several ideas, but no answers as of yet.”

  “Do you understand what any of the voices are saying?”

  “No. I’m not sure they’re saying anything. I don’t hear words. How is it you and Merlin can talk to each other silently?”

  “I released him from a magic box and it… sort of happened. We never really found out why.”

  “And why was he in a magic box?”

  “Because an old friend of his cursed him and tried to kill him.”

  “There’s a lot you haven’t told me, isn’t there?”

  “More than you need to know right now.”

  “I’m a prince; I need to know everything.”

  “Ignorance is bliss,” Merlin said, “unless you are aware of your ignorance. Then it is a---”

  “If we’re going to go, now is the best time of day,” Adel said, entering the cavern. She had shed her sleeves and was strapping on brown leather gloves that covered her skin up to her shoulders. Crawling up the gloves like vines were metal strips and gears.

  “Do those protect you from the sun?”

  “Among other things,” she answered. She made a fist with her left hand and pressed a circular piece of metal on her left wrist with her right hand. I heard something metallic release and four curved blades extended from the knuckles of her fist. “We never take a life unless we must, but I will not be hunted down like an animal. Before anything else, we are survivors.”

  She grabbed two pairs of goggles from the shelf and tried to hand them to Yuri and me. “No, thank you,” I said.

  Yuri, not knowing what they were, didn’t reach for them either.

  Adel sighed. “They will protect your eyes.”

  “I don’t like people doing anything with my eyes,” I said. When my mother had taken my magic, I lost my sight. Even though it only lasted a moment before Baltezore healed whatever she had done, it was something I never wanted to experience or think about again.

  “Fine, but you’ll regret it when you’re outside. Speaking of which, we need to get going.” She put the goggles in the pocket of her skirt.

  “I can lead us to the egg, but it is already far away. I don’t see how we can catch up to the sorcerer let alone defeat him.”

  “Don’t worry about speed. You lead us, and we’ll get you to him before he has time to spit.”

  That is a weird expression, I thought, but was too polite to say.

  “That is a weird expression,” Yuri said, not at all too polite to say.

  We were led out of the room again, through several more tunnels. As I wondered if we were heading to the engine room, a flash lit one of the rooms that we were passing. In it, three people were mercifully interrupted from their meals when Alice appeared. “Hello. Has anyone seen my kitty? He got out of the house and I can’t find him.”

  The three people gaped with eyes so wide I was afraid they would pop out of their sockets.

  “No? Okay.” And she vanished with another flash of light.

  “That is one strange little girl,” I said.

  “Who is?” Yuri asked.

  “Alice.”

  We arrived at a tunnel that was perpendicular to the one we were in, where three wooden crates intercepted us. They were too small to carry large objects in and were without lids. Beneath them were flat, metal bars that disappeared into the dark on either end of the tunnel. “What is this?”

  “You’ll see. Get in.”

  I approached the crates cautiously and saw that each one had a seat and a metal lever in front of the seat.

  “No, thank you,” Merlin said. “I will wait for the bus.”

  “What’s a bus?”

  He groaned and hopped into the crate, which wobbled. “This is going to end in tears and bloodshed. I wish it was a boat.”

  His hesitation scared me outright. Merlin got seasick. I got airsick– although it was only when I was flying a ship or being flown by a dragon. I was perfectly fine with levitating myself. The chance of one of us getting sick from sitting in a box was low, but Merlin was typically a better prophet than me when something was going to go horribly wrong.

  I got in the crate behind Merlin. Yuri and Adel got into the other crates. “Push the lever forward to speed up, pull it back to slow down. If we bump each other, it’s going to speed us up, so you need to pull back until we can get all three of the carts under control.”

  “I changed my mind,” Yuri said. “I want to go another way.”

  I suspected the prince was not used to being so nervous and somehow felt partially responsible. Although I was acting like the physical similarity between us didn’t bother me, it did. Maybe my lack of a reaction is worrying him. Did he expect me to act and think like him?

  We were both keeping something from each other, trying to keep some part of ourselves separate. I didn’t want to be like him, which was strange, because there was nothing wrong with him. Nevertheless, his show of fear (which was weakness as far as sorcerers were concerned) made me want to prove I wasn’t afraid.

  I reached over Merlin and pushed the lever forward. We instantly lurched forth into the darkness… and then down.

  As the crate flew downhill, it increased speed. Metal scraped metal, but in the dark tunnel, I couldn’t see anything… at least, not until sparks formed under the crate. Due to their meager illumination, I saw that the bar we were flying on veered to the right, so I held onto the lip, trapping Merlin between my arms. I didn’t expect him to be very good at gripping anything.

  Behind me, I heard Yuri screaming. When we suddenly stopped flying down and started flying up, only to dive back down, I screamed as well, but for an entirely different reason. I loved it. It was faster than a dragon flew and even the rattling of metal was… exciting. For someone who faced death every few months, I should have hated it. After a few more sharp turns that almost sent us flying free of the crate, I stopped thinking about it and trusted the crate to get us somewhere safe.

  At the top of a slope, about to go down, I thought I saw two glowing green eyes staring at me. Only, these eyes were each as large as my head.

  “Slow down when you see the light!” Adel shouted, her voice echoing and being distorted by the wind.

  I actually predicted what would happen and started to warn Yuri, but it was too late, and my voice was lost in the screech of clashing metal and wood. Yuri had heard “slow down” and pulled his lever so hard that Adel, who was behind him, couldn’t stop in time. She hit his crate, increasing the speed of both carts. Their crates gained on mine. I pointed my staff at them, but Merlin was smarter; he pushed our lever forward, propelling us faster and avoiding a worse collision. By the time I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, Adel and Yuri had gained control of their crates. “I’m slowing down fast!” I shouted.

  “I am, too!” Adel shouted.

  Yuri just shouted.

  I pulled the lever back hard, but decelerated slowly. Sparks shot everywhere. The light outside the tunnel was so bright that I had to close my eyes and shield them with my arm, so I didn’t see where the crate would end. I did not expect to hit a soft surface that absorbed whatever impact I made when I stopped. It was gentle. I sat there for a while, not able to uncover my eyes. I heard Yuri and Adel stop as well, and Yuri complained that the sun was too bright.

  When I felt Adel try to move my arm away from my face, I pushed her hand away. “Trust me,” she said.

  I found that a little hard to do when she strapped something around my eyes. “Are you blindfolding me?”

  “No, I’m putting the goggles on you that you insisted you didn’t ne
ed. You can open your eyes now.”

  “No, it’s too bright.” The goggles were extremely tight and I was afraid to see what damage they had done.

  “Open your eyes, Ayden.”

  I did. It was still sunny, but the brightness was reasonable. I tried to touch my eyes and felt metal and glass in the way.

  “Don’t mess with any of the dials or they could switch to a different filter, and you don’t want that.” She took another pair out and put them on Yuri’s eyes.

  We had landed in a shallow pond with unnaturally blue and clear water. Large stones lined the bed and bank. Adel was wearing her own goggles and standing in the pond, which reached the hem of her skirt. The metal bar that supported the crates was barely under the surface of the water. This meant that we weren’t submerged. It also meant that I had a ways to go to get down.

  I pulled off my robe and set it on the seat before climbing over the lip of the crate. There was nothing to brace my boot on, so I plunged feet first into the pond. It was warm, not hot, and not as bad as I had been expecting. Of course, my trousers were going to chafe and my socks were soaked, but it could be worse.

  We had come out of a tunnel, which was in the side of a massive cliff. In every other direction was jungle. The ground growth was taller than I was. There was some color in the thick of it, but mostly, it was every shade of green and most shades of brown. Ideal for getting lost and never found in.

  Part of me wanted to say there was no way Zuras survived in there and call it a loss on the egg, but that wasn’t fair to Yuri or the egg. “Is there anything we need to worry about in there?” I asked, wading to dry land with my robe held above me. It was hot and humid, so I wasn’t in a hurry to put my robe back on.

  “You mean like carnivorous plants, venomous reptiles, monstrous bugs, things like that?”

  “No, I mean vampires, werewolves, and ghosts.”

  “No, just carnivorous plants, venomous reptiles, and monstrous bugs.”

  “Oh, good.”

  I bet there are some giant, hungry snakes in there, waiting to swallow us whole.

  “So, how long do you think before we’re swallowed by a huge snake?” Yuri asked before carefully climbing out of his crate. Merlin hopped out easily. The water reached his chest.