“Oh, Angela. She’s great,” Rich said with a smirk. “She’s always been nice to me and might even be smarter than you, if that’s possible. Don’t make her angry, though. She’s got some pretty crazy demon eyes when’s she angry.”
Aaron tried to smile, but it didn’t quite work. “Ah, um, good. I’ll check on them and give you a full report.”
Rich watched Aaron scamper off and looked around for someone to talk to, preferably not one of the dark knights. The thought of what Mallory and the rest of them must have done to Nadia to make her act like this made him want break something. He let his eyes wander until he saw his father, standing alone, staring down the one of the paths.
As Rich neared him, he could see his father’s pained expression and noticed that he was mouthing words, but making no sound. “Uh, Dad, are you okay?”
Phillip’s head snapped around, his worried face replaced by a less-than-convincing smile. “Uh, yes. Yes, I’m fine. I just don’t like being back in this place, if you know what I mean. It’s different, sure, but a lot of it still feels the same.”
Reaching his father’s side, Rich also stared down the path, which only looked like more jungle. “That was weird, that thing with Takka. Must have been hard to see.”
Phillip nodded and bowed his head. “I’d do anything to save him, but I don’t know how much I should hope for that. There’s only so much we can do. In my military days, we all promised each other that we wouldn’t leave anyone behind. It feels like I’m betraying him. I mean, my whole reason for entering the maze in the first place was to get him out.”
Placing a hand on his father’s arm, Rich used a quick empathy flash, and was suddenly full of guilt and shame. His father carried a crushing burden on his shoulders. Rich didn’t see many images, but at the very end of the vision, he caught the briefest glance of a woman’s face.
He withdrew his hand. “I know how you feel,” he said now that it was true. “I promise, once we finish this mission, I’ll help you free Takka. I don’t want that to hang over you for the rest of your life.”
Phillip turned, his expression soft and kind. “Thank you, son. I truly wish you had been around to help me try the first time. Things would have been much different.”
The rest of the knights started setting up a camp, complete with a fire, thanks to the dark knights’ powers. They formed a ring around the fire, making piles of foliage to rest on as the light from above dimmed, just as it might have at the end of the day in an actual jungle.
Rich hunkered down in a free spot as far away from Mallory as possible and waited for Aaron to return. When his friend did make it back, he looked like he had just slain a dragon.
“Yes, Angela is quite a remarkable person. She could identify all the flowers, trees, and animals in sight, using their Latin names. Honestly, I don’t know half of those. And—”
“Aaron, are they okay? How’s Nadia holding up?”
This visibly lessened Aaron’s excitement. “I’m not sure that she is. She looks like she got three months of detention. .Has she talked to you about it?”
Rich slumped down on his makeshift bed, suddenly feeling all the mental and physical exhaustion of the day settling onto him. “No, but I don’t want to push it. I wonder if it’s like people who come back from war. They call it PTSD when they aren’t themselves after they get home because of something that happened. I mean, I want to help, but I don’t know how.”
Aaron yawned, settling onto his spot as though it were a five-star-hotel mattress. “Have you tried using your empathy powers? That might help.”
“Yeah, I thought about that. But she doesn’t look me in the eyes anymore, and she doesn’t want to be touched. It doesn’t feel right to force that, either.”
“Quite right, quite right...” Aaron said, drifting off even as he spoke.
Rich didn’t know if he was going to be able to sleep, but in the end, he couldn’t fight the exhaustion.
He almost wished Arlenen would come to help him sort things out a bit, but instead, another voice awakened him. He felt himself being shaken roughly, his mother’s voice coming into clarity as he woke up.
“Rich, wake up. Your father...he’s gone!”
CHAPTER 10: RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE
Nadia woke up to loud shouts and was on her feet in an instant. Her father would sometimes wake up screaming in the night, and she’d always been ready to pop right out of bed to help her mother calm him down. Now she knew what those nightmares must have been about.
At first, she thought they might be under attack, but quickly looked around and didn’t see anything but the fire and the other members of their group. She ran over to the closest person, the knight they called St. George. “What’s going on?”
The lines of the old knight’s face grew deeper in the firelight. “Sir Phillip is missing. We do not know whether it is by the hand of an enemy or of his own volition.”
Though he had a strange way of talking, Nadia thought she got what he meant. Off to the left, Rich and his mother stood talking rapidly to each other. She couldn’t bear to look at Rich for very long. It hurt too much. She had betrayed him. Even now, the other dark knights could be sneaking into the paladin stronghold, taking them down from the inside, and that would be all her fault.
Everyone gathered around Rich and his mother, many trying to talk at once. “We should organize a search party,” Aaron suggested loudly. “He can’t have gone far. When’s the last time someone saw him?”
“Are you crazy?” Bruno replied, talking even louder. “Do you see how many directions he could have gone? There aren’t even enough of us if we each took a path, and who’s to say that the path won’t shut behind us once we pass? We’ve got to stick together or nobody’s getting to the door, much less through it.”
Rich and his mother still tried to reason in favor of a search party, but Nadia saw the logic in what Bruno was saying. There was no way she was going alone down one of those paths, and she didn’t have breadcrumbs to drop along the way. She also wasn’t going to stay silent about this. She pushed her way to the front and held up a hand.
“So, there are two options. Either he left on his own and he doesn’t want to be followed, or he was taken, in which case there’s no way to track him. Either way, there’s not much we can do, right? I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but we really can’t sugarcoat things right now.”
Everyone fell silent, staring at her.
“I fear she speaks the truth,” St. George said. “From what I gather, he volunteered to keep watch and then disappeared, leaving us unguarded. That does not sounds like something he would have done voluntarily.”
Mallory stepped up next to Nadia, putting an arm around her shoulders as though there were old friends. The touch made Nadia sick to her stomach. “It’s a good thing we brought you along, Nadia. A voice of wisdom to all us knights. I say we leave now. Chances are, this place is not safe. Perhaps we will catch up to Phillip, perhaps not.”
The tone of the group shifted, everyone falling in with their travel partners to head out. Jezreel had succeeded in choosing a path. Nadia made her way to Angela’s side, waiting for the rest of them to be ready.
“Are you okay, Nadia?” she asked. “You look pale, and I’ve seen your hands shaking.”
Nadia looked down and saw that it was true. She tried to keep her hands still, but could only do it for a few seconds at a time. Her insides felt unsettled, like she had a bunch of gnats flying around in her stomach. “Yeah, I guess. I feel a little weird. Not used to the jungle.”
Within another minute, they set off back onto the path with Jezreel leading the way. They could see even less than before, and Nadia tripped several times, each time making he
r panic that she would fall off the road and be lost. Darkness seemed to close in around her, but every time, Angela would grab her arm and help her back to the path.
As Nadia walked, she swore she could see moving shapes in the gloom, a tiny bit deeper than the surrounding blackness. She wasn’t sure whether it was her mind playing tricks on her or something stalking them from the shadows.
From ahead, she could hear Rich’s mother softly crying. It was faint when mixed in with the other sounds of the jungle, but definitely there. If Nadia was right, these would be the first tears of many.
After about an hour, they reached another clearing with many paths and called another halt to rest for a moment, but decided that no one should try to sleep again. Nadia kept her eyes on the path behind them, straining to see if something was following. Only faint beams of simulated moonlight broke through the trees, making it absurdly difficult to see. She sat on the ground with Angela, trying to hold it together.
“Angela,” she whispered, “talk about something happy, would you? Where’s your happy place?”
Angela let out a loud breath. “That’s not hard—my art studio. It used to be an old greenhouse in our backyard, but then we found that none of us has a green thumb. So, my dad surprised me for my last birthday by turning it into an art studio, with all these easels and shelves for paint and places to hang things up. I love to go out and paint when it’s raining, staying dry as I watch the water drip down the sides of the building.” She paused for a few minutes. “I’d give anything to be there right now.”
Nadia pictured the place in her mind, and for a moment, she did feel a little better. Then she thought of what Mallory had said about their hometown. Angela’s happy place probably no longer existed. She decided not to ruin the moment by bringing that up.
“What about you?” Angela asked. “Do you have one?”
To her surprise, an image of her and Rich at the gazebo in her backyard was the first thing that came to mind. It had been a peaceful night, just the two of them hanging out. That was before she realized just what kind of crazy life Rich was living. She would give anything to go back there too.
“Well, there is this one place in my—”
A dark shape darted in front of her, and there was no doubt this one was real. Nadia jumped to her feet in time to see another one darting directly at her, growling as it pounced. She screamed and leaped to the side, barely dodging the oncoming attack. In the next second, Rich was suddenly at her side, moving as fast as the strange enemies from the shadows.
Rich pressed a sword into her hand. "Take this. I don't know what's out there, but it doesn't care that you're not a knight.”
She wished she could tell him that he was wrong about her being a knight, but she took the sword anyway. Rich had his own sword out and was talking to it. Even stranger, the sword talked back.
“Any idea what we're up against?" Rich asked.
"Some sort of creature of shadow, from the feel of it," the sword replied. "I don't know how effective I'm going to be against them. The shadows only fear the light, and that's in short supply."
Rich disappeared for a moment and then reappeared at Nadia’s side in time to push her away from another attack. She swung her sword at the creature, but missed.
"Can't you heat up or something?” Rich said to his sword. “If you can’t, could you at least try to glow?”
In response, the sword glowed red like the heating element on a stovetop. In the light of the sword, none of the creatures advanced on them. They now had a little more definition. They looked like enormous jungle cats, like jaguars prowling around the edges of the clearing. He counted nearly a dozen, each one slinking with silent menace.
Then she thought of the dark knights’ abilities, and called loudly so they could hear. "We need more light! You guys want to set some things on fire?"
Jezreel’s entire body burst into flame. "With pleasure!” she cried, her voice crackling like flames. She launched herself into the air, setting much of the canopy above them ablaze. Nadia hoped they wouldn't regret that decision later. That was one of the problems with dark knights—they had some serious self-control issues.
With this, the shadow cats growled and howled, darting around aimlessly for a few seconds. Rich could see that they didn't hold their form for long and only looked solid when they weren't moving.
Without warning, one of them pounced on Aaron, bringing him to the ground. Nadia was closest and jumped out with her sword raised. It met her, its jaws gaping. The cat shape scattered as it impacted on the blade so it became a dark mist that curled around and reformed directly in front of her a second later. This time, it attacked her, and she cried out as its claws raked across her arm. She dropped the sword she was holding and fell down, holding the wound with her other hand.
Flaming debris fell all around her, igniting plants on the ground. Though these creatures were made of shadow, their claws and teeth worked well enough. Trying to think clearly through the pain, she felt around for her sword and settled for a burning branch instead. She lifted this in front of her like a shield, and the shadow cat jumped her again. She waved the branch in front of her, and the cat made contact with the fire and dissipated. This time when it reformed, it appeared much smaller, as though the fire had burned away some of its substance.
The smaller creature pounced again and she swung the branch around, sending sparks dancing through the air. This time, the cat reformed into something no larger than a beetle. Before it a chance to bite her ankles, she raised the branch and smashed it. This time, it did not return.
She could feel blood trickling down her arm and felt a bit lightheaded. The smoke filling the clearing was making it harder to breathe. All around her, the others had figured out how to use the flames against the creatures, but there were just so many of them.
She heard a man call out and saw St. George being attacked by several of the cats at once. She tried a battle cry as she rushed to his aid, but it only came out as a sputtering cough. Using her one good arm, she flailed wildly, beating the creatures back as best as she could. Some turned their attention to her, but most kept attacking the old knight. She got a few of them off, but they swarmed back as smaller and faster versions, and she couldn't keep up with them all. The sight of the dying knight made her even sicker to her stomach.
Feeling even more lightheaded, Nadia fell into the underbrush. The air wasn't quite as toxic down there, and she managed to catch a few breaths. Rich instantly appeared at her side again and pushed her out of the way as a tangle of burning vines fell from the ceiling. She’d been so distracted that she hadn't even noticed. Rich rolled her over, and she could see that his face was covered with grime. “Are you hurt?" he asked.
"Just my arm," she replied, pointing to the injured spot. “Guess one of them liked the taste of me.”
Rich held his hand over the spot, and it felt a little better. A second after he stood up, he vanished, probably to save someone else. He was good at that, but she knew he wasn't going to be able to save everyone.
Nadia rose to her knees and saw the battle still raging. Jezreel stood in the center of the clearing, completely encased by fire, fighting off entire hordes of the creatures with only her arms and legs. She incinerated them as fast as they rose up to attack.
Her flame burned up the creatures, but gradually they were also squelching her fire as well. She wouldn’t be able to hold out forever. Nadia didn't have enough strength to run and help like she had with St. George, but then she remembered that she did have another weapon, one that made her feel immensely powerful when she wielded it.
The thought of taking up her grandfather’s sword make her feel queasy, but at this point, she didn't know what else to do. She couldn’t just rely another people to d
efend her. She needed to act.
She reached into her pocket and took out a slender tube of metal that looked like a lipstick case. The second she twisted off the cap, it became the sword, gleaming and still stained with red patches of blood. Her strength returned in an instant and then some. Even her injured arm felt completely better.
Without hesitation, she leaped toward Jezreel, swinging her sword at the closest creatures. As the blade touch them, they dissolved and did not reform. With every one she cut down, she felt herself grow stronger as though she were taking energy. The rest of them gathered around her, and she could feel something else taking over, turning her into a machine of destruction.
As the last creature retreated, she stuck her sword in the ground and leaned heavily against it. It impacted the ground in a shockwave that shot through the clearing, rustling the trees. A circle of decay spread out around the immediate area where she’d stabbed the earth, all the plants crumbling to ashes.
This was getting out of hand. The sword didn’t seem to care what it destroyed. What was going to keep it from killing her friends? She thought about sheathing it, but something in her resisted, as if the sword had a mind of its own.
She stood, staring directly at Jezreel, whose flames had gone out completely. The dark knight had up her hands defensively, her face registering genuine shock and fear.
“Put the sword away," she said urgently. "You cannot control it for long."
Nadia twisted the hilt of the sword in opposite directions with both hands and it returned to being a lipstick case. She placed it in her pocket and looked around the clearing. There were no sign of the shadow creatures. She felt a sensation of warmth wash over her body, emanating from the spot where she kept her black chess piece. She took it out and saw that parts of it had become golden instead of just black. Jezreel approached, motioning for her to sheath it. "Don't let anyone see that. Put it away."
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