Cave of Nightmares

by V. St. Clair

  “Uhh…I hate to be the one to say it, but I don’t see any instructions from the Masters here.” Zane was still kneeling on the ground near a puddle of sick, his face chalk-white.

  Hayden’s stomach turned to lead when he realized his friend was right. There were no envelopes waiting for them here.

  “We must be in the wrong arena…that’s all,” Tess tried and failed to sound confident, her soft voice squeaking.

  “No, if we were in an arena there would be instructions…even a mastery-level one,” Tucker said in a low voice, directing his wand light all around to get a more complete view of their surroundings. “I think we’d better just wait right here until someone comes to get us.”

  “Do you think the Masters will know something’s gone wrong?” Hayden asked quietly, praying they were alone in the cave but keeping his voice down just in case they weren’t.

  “They’ll have to when they’re waiting in the arena and we don’t show up. The mastery students are bound to rush off and tell them what happened, so they’ll be along to get us soon,” Tucker said with growing confidence.

  “What if they don’t know where they sent us?” Tess whispered.

  “They’re smart, they’ll find us.” Tucker didn’t sound entirely sure this time.

  Still, they didn’t have a better plan for escaping, since they didn’t even know where they were. For all Hayden could tell, they weren’t even in Junir anymore.

  They stood there in silence for maybe two more minutes, wet and shaking while they waited for rescue. Then they heard a low growl.

  “What was that?” Tess’s voice was so squeaky that soon only dogs would be able to hear it.

  “Probably just…bad weather or something…” Tucker took a step backwards, holding his wand aloft.

  “Yeah, um…do you think we should put the light out, just in case?” Zane suggested weakly.

  “Oh sure, it’ll be much better facing a wild animal in the dark,” Tucker mumbled sarcastically, abandoning his “bad weather” theory immediately.

  “Maybe it’s something okay…like a dog…” Hayden put in hopefully.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a dog that loped into view from the upwards-leading path. It was a warg.

  Hayden had heard stories about them as a child, but he had never seen a warg in real life before. The closest thing it could be likened to was a wolf: a huge wolf, ten feet long and taller than any of them, with evil red eyes and fangs that extended past its jawline. In Sudir they believed that wargs could rip out your soul with those fangs.

  “Oh hell…” Zane’s voice wavered as the warg took a calculated step towards them. “Um, Hayden…now would be a really great time to smite that thing with your prism.”

  Hayden’s brain jogged into action, and he pulled the eyepiece down over his eye and turned towards the light of Tucker’s wand so he could look for a promising array. He saw dozens of them immediately, but there was something unsettling about each of the arrays, though at first glance they looked correct.

  Frowning he said, “Tucker, bring that light closer.”

  The warg took another step towards them.

  “Faster would be better than slower…” Zane trilled as Tucker took a measured step closer to Hayden, not wanting to provoke an attack with any sudden movements.

  With the light properly in front of him Hayden looked into the prism again. Something about it made him uneasy, though he had absolutely no idea why. He twisted it slowly in the eyepiece, the metallic clicks jarringly loud in the echoing cave.

  “Seriously, Hayden…do something…” Zane’s voice was pleading, and Hayden felt all the blood drain from his face as he lifted the eyepiece and faced the others.

  “Something’s wrong with my prism.”

  “What do you mean?” Zane nearly shouted, and the warg charged.

  “RUN!” Tucker tore off on the only path available to them, the one headed downwards. The rest of them raced after him single-file due to the narrowness of the passage, with Hayden bringing up the rear. He could hear the warg’s thundering footsteps behind him as it slid around a corner, and bile rose in his throat.

  I’m going to die, I’m going to die, it’s going to eat me…

  Tucker waved his wand without looking back and the tunnel behind Hayden exploded, caving in and pelting his back with bits of hard dirt and rock as he barely avoided the avalanche.

  “Did I get it?” Tucker called back without slowing down, and Hayden twisted back to look.

  “Yeah, it’s on the other side of the tunnel.” He slowed to a jog and the others did the same.

  “Now we can’t get out that way,” Tess whispered, her whole body shaking with cold and fear.

  “Well, there’s a soul-eating monster that way, so we’ll just have to look for another exit.” Tucker was panting from exertion, though his face blanched when they heard the sounds of scraping from the other side of the collapsed dirt.

  “Oh no, I think it’s trying to dig through…” Zane muttered.

  “We’d better keep moving and try to lose it.” Hayden jogged forward, and the others followed without hesitation.

  The path split off in three different directions ahead of them, each looking as dark and fathomless as the others.

  “Um, left,” Hayden chose at random, continuing on the path, grimacing when he got a face full of spider webs.

  “You mind telling me why you can’t use your prism?” Zane was right behind him, gagging and spitting out spider webs of his own as they took another sharp left. Hayden had no idea how anyone was supposed to find them in this maze, but they had no choice but to move forward and pray for an exit. If they could just get out of here, they could walk until they came across a town and send word to Mizzenwald.

  “I don’t know, something’s wrong with it…”

  “What’s wrong with it? You don’t think it’ll work?” Tucker tripped over a protruding rock and nearly lost his footing entirely, cursing and jog-limping behind them with the elder wand still lit.

  “No, I think it will still work, there’s just something off about it…” Hayden had absolutely no idea how to explain the problem to anyone else. He wasn’t even sure what was wrong with it himself.

  “Well if it still works then use it!” Tucker chided him as they entered a wide-spot in the cave. It was a high-ceilinged area formed in almost a perfect circle, about thirty feet in diameter. It took almost no time to realize that it was a dead-end.

  “No, I can’t use it—I don’t know…” Hayden pulled the eyepiece down and looked through the prism once more. Just like last time, he couldn’t pick out any specific thing that was wrong with it, and yet his stomach knotted unpleasantly just looking at it. “I think it’s broken.”

  “What do you mean, broken? How the heck did you break a brand new prism?!” Tucker was on the edge of panic, hurrying around the room, desperate to find a hidden escape.

  “I don’t mean I broke it. I think it’s an imperfect prism.” Hayden’s words were met with a horrible silence. Even Tucker stopped running around the wide space and looked at him in horror.

  “But…but you got that prism brand new, from the store at school. You don’t think the jeweler made a mistake, do you?” Tess asked softly.

  “No, it was fine when I bought it; I always check my prisms before I leave the store.” He frowned. “After that I left it in my room all day…”

  “You think someone swapped it out for a broken one?” Zane sounded aghast at the very thought. “Who in the world would be stupid enough to give you an imperfect prism right before your final arena challenge, knowing whose son you are?”

  He seemed to arrive at the answer at the same time Hayden did.

  Oliver or Jasper.

  Zane paled. “They can’t have expected you to really use it…not even they would be that malicious, would they?”

  Hayden frowned. “I don’t know. They should know that a natural prism user can tell when there’s something wrong, so maybe they jus
t expected me to not be able to use it at all during the final arena…which would be fine if we were actually in an arena…”

  “Lord, but if you did use it…” Zane shuddered at the thought. “It would be worse than expulsion for them; it would be prison!”

  “Um, guys, I hate to say this, but I’m the only one who’s used magic thus far and my wand is about half-spent. If Hayden’s useless then one of you two better get to work on something,” he nodded to Tess and Zane. “Or else we’re going to be feeling our way out of a monster-infested cave in the dark.”

  “Let’s go back the way we came and try another path…there’s got to be a way out of this place.”

  They hadn’t even made it halfway up the passage before they heard the sounds of growling and thumping headed towards them. Without saying a word, they turned back in unison and sprinted back into the dead-end room, which at least gave them space to fight in.

  Zane dropped to the floor at the far end of the room and began drawing a circle on the ground, about a meter in diameter. Hayden had absolutely no idea what he was planning to summon, but anything was better than waiting to die.

  It’d be great if he could summon an entire box of prisms from the store at school—or better yet, Master Asher.

  “Hayden,” Tucker grabbed his arm, pulling him against the wall beside him so that their backs were to it. Tess was standing somewhere between them and Zane, looking terrified but resolved. “If push comes to shove…if we’re going to die here…you have to use that prism to save us.”

  Hayden’s heart skipped a few beats and he nearly passed out from the drop in blood pressure.

  “You know I can’t do that. For me more than anyone, I can’t use it. I can’t be like my father…” His voice was shaking horribly. It sounded foreign, even to him.

  “If the alternative is all of us dying a violent death…”

  “I’d rather die than become him. I promised Asher I wouldn’t use an imperfect prism, no matter what,” his voice grew stronger, though the sounds of thumping footsteps headed towards them was testing his resolve on that whole “I’d rather die” argument.

  “That’s very brave and noble, but the rest of us really don’t want to be eaten by a warg,” Tucker pleaded.

  Hayden said nothing, his palms sweating profusely as he contemplated their options. This would be a really good time for us to have more than one weapon apiece, he thought ruefully.

  Zane finished drawing his conjuring circle just as the warg bounded into sight, covered in dirt but clearly hungrier than ever. Tess and Tucker let out identical moans of terror as it sprinted towards them.

  The former raised his half-spent wand as though about to cast, but his mouth just hung open soundlessly; he apparently couldn’t think of what to use against the charging warg. Hayden dove out of the way and rolled across the hard ground, his ribs aching from the impact. The wand was knocked out of Tucker’s hand and rolled towards the center of the space with the tip still lit.

  Tess must have dived out of the way as well, because she was struggling back to her feet from Zane’s left. Tucker was bleeding from a long scratch on his arm but seemed otherwise unhurt.

  The warg rounded on them for a second pass, looking quickly between the four of them before choosing its victim. It sprinted towards Hayden.

  Of course.

  Hayden didn’t even have time to consider using his prism. Everything was moving too fast. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zane slam his hand against the ground in his conjury circle and scream, “HELP!”

  For some bizarre reason, the only thought he had as the warg knocked him to the ground with crushing force was that Zane should know better than to use vague commands in summoning circles because they rarely worked, and that Master Reede would definitely be docking points from him because of it.

  He heard his ribs crack as he hit the ground and rolled, the warg pacing steadily towards him to finish him off. Hayden barely had the strength to roll onto his back, but when he did he saw what was sitting in the middle of Zane’s vanished summoning circle, looking like he just woke up from a nap.

  It was Bonk.

  “Bonk?” Hayden asked weakly, coughing and then wincing as pain shot through his chest. The warg was looming over him now, drool leaking from its mouth and onto his shirt as the little dragon took flight.

  He’s too little, there’s no way he can fight this thing off.

  The warg’s jaws opened and it leaned down to tear at Hayden’s face. He brought up his arms reflexively and cried out as sharp teeth pierced his skin.

  “BONK!” Tess’s voice this time, though he couldn’t see what was happening anymore. For all he knew, the dragon had curled up on the floor for another nap and Tess was trying to wake him up.

  A massive shadow flew over the warg just as it was preparing to tear Hayden’s arms off. It looked vaguely familiar, and Hayden’s first delirious thought was, Oh great! That monstrous dragon we thought we killed during the summer has come back to help eat me!

  The warg must have sensed something amiss, because it raised its head and looked up just as a pair of massive claws clamped around its middle and threw it across the room. Hayden was left staring up at an impossible sight in the semi-darkness, too tired and injured to sit up and consider it properly.

  A twenty-foot dragon was flapping its wings overhead, the wind buffeting Hayden as it turned to face the warg again. The room might be poorly lit, and the dragon might be nineteen-feet too big, but Hayden would recognize his familiar anywhere.

  The warg growled up at Bonk, who spit a fireball at it in response. The warg let out a wounded shriek as the smell of burning hair filled the cave, and Bonk pounced on it while it was still aflame, biting anything it could reach and shrieking impressively.

  Tess hurried over to Hayden and was tearing at his shirt to tourniquet his bleeding, punctured arms, looking like she was trying to block out the sounds of Bonk chewing noisily on the dead warg.

  “What happened?” he asked, wincing again from the pain in his chest.

  “It was—”

  Hayden knew why Tess didn’t finish her sentence. The room was suddenly lit up like high noon, and more people were pouring into the open space from the path they’d come in on.

  “We found them!” Master Kilgore gripped his Mastery Charm at the same time that Master Asher said, “What in the—”

  Bonk was shrinking rapidly back to his normal size, and gave up his attempt to eat an entire warg in favor of flying over to check on Hayden.

  The source of the light became obvious when the Prism Master jogged over to him, his own clear prism glowing like the sun in his eyepiece, which was currently positioned on top of his head.

  “Are you alright?” He dropped down to his knees beside Hayden, who had never seen the Prism Master’s face so white and scared before, though maybe it was just the halo effect of the prism.

  “I think my ribs are broken…” he choked out, shaky with relief at being saved. “And my arms…”

  He tried to hold them up to show where the blood soaked through Tess’s tourniquets, but Master Asher motioned them back down gently.

  Three more figures in metallic red robes appeared out of nowhere, and even as stunned and injured as Hayden was, he took a moment to appreciate that all five Masters had come after them, even Sark.

  Master Reede knelt down near him and began drawing on the ground, much faster than Zane had earlier. Hayden understood what he was summoning when the drawing vanished and a wooden stretcher appeared in its place.

  “Watch the ribs,” Master Asher said to his colleague as the two of them stood at either end of Hayden and lifted him by the arms and legs, moving him as gently as possible onto the stretcher. He tried not to cry from the pain, or black-out.

  Master Sark was doing the fastest disinfecting and bandaging on Tucker’s arm that Hayden had ever seen, and Willow and Kilgore were checking on Tess and Zane. He wanted to thank his friend for miraculously summoning Bonk t
o them and saving his life, but Asher and Reede translocated him before he could get a word out.

  It was still pouring down rain at Mizzenwald, but Hayden was so relieved to be safe that he wouldn’t have cared if fireballs were falling from the sky at this point. Fortunately the Masters had translocated them near the main entrance, so they didn’t have to walk all the way from the usual site near the cliffs.

  There were an unusual number of people in the foyer and corridors, most of them gasping and pointing as the Masters carried him past.

  I must look pathetic right now.

  He supposed that word had gotten out that they were sent to the wrong place at some point…maybe one of the students responsible for translocating them went and told his friends and it snowballed from there.

  “MOVE!” Masters Asher and Reede barked at the same time, and the crowd parted as though someone had cast Repel on them.

  They brought him to the infirmary, where Mistress Razelle was (blessedly) already waiting for him. She gasped at the sight of him but set to work immediately, removing the strips of t-shirt that Tess had tied tightly around his forearms to stanch the bleeding.

  “What do you need?” Asher asked her, and the Mistress of Healing answered him without pausing or looking up, “Disinfect these cuts and puncture wounds while I work on the bones.”

  She left the Prism Master to tend to his arms, which unfortunately involved a lot of bright pink liquid that foamed and burned like fire being poured into his open wounds. He would have rolled around in agony if his chest didn’t hurt so badly every time he moved.

  “I know it hurts,” Asher glanced up when Hayden hissed through his clenched teeth in pain. “Try and bear through it, it’ll get better soon.”

  Easy for you to say.

  Mistress Razelle was holding her Mastery Charm and staring down at him as though she could suddenly see right through his skin.