Sword of Draskara (Casters of Syndrial Book 2)

by Rain Oxford

  “That’s so easy it’s not even enjoyable,” I said.

  Painter nodded. “That was another thing Ancient Egypt got right; Syndrial is big on number patterns.”

  “Prime numbers is so elementary.”

  “In that case, Sherlock, what do we do?”

  “Find something with numbers on it.” We both looked. There were rocks scattered around, but I didn’t see anything on them, so I touched the numbers on the wall to check if any came off. Painter conjured himself a flashlight and continued looking.

  “Here we go,” Painter said, holding up a rock with the number forty-two carved into it. “Not prime, but it’s a start.”

  I went back over the rocks, now knowing what I was looking for. It wasn’t easy to see, but they all had numbers on them.

  “Got it!” I said, holding up one with fifty-three written on it. I set it on the podium and the wall ahead of us slowly slid upward, revealing another hallway.

  “This is better than escape rooms because there’s actual danger.”

  I shook my head. “You’re insane.” We reached a door and opened it, then froze. “Maybe I’m the one who’s insane.” The room resembled a dollhouse … from the Addams family.

  There was a fancy antique couch and two matching reading chairs on one side of the room. The only thing the scene was missing was a fireplace. On the other side was a table with four chairs. That wasn’t the creepy part, though. Three men sat at the table, dressed in black robes and looking very secretive. Two young boys were on the floor in front of the couch, playing with a Doberman puppy. Two middle-aged women sat chatting on the couch.

  What was terribly strange was that not a single person (or the dog) was moving. They were like statues, or dolls.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Painter said.

  “Yeah, me too. Look for clues how to get out of here.”

  He went to the couch and I went to the table. I immediately saw the answer. “Wait, check this out.”

  He joined me as I read the letter I found on the middle of the table, next to a dagger.

  Take the plunge and see the truth

  For each drop spilled is a step closer.

  Your eyes will deceive you and your mind will trick you

  But blood never lies.

  “That’s totally not obvious or anything.” I picked up the dagger and sliced my palm.

  Painter winced. “You might be more dedicated to the game than I am.”

  I clenched my fingers to keep pressure on the wound and held up the bloody dagger. “Now what?”

  Painter shrugged. “Maybe I have to do it, too.” He took the dagger, but pulled out his paintbrush to fix my palm before adding his own blood to the mix. When I relaxed my fingers, blood dripped… up. The blood from my wound fell up. We both followed the drops with our eyes to see it hit the ceiling and splash. “This place just got a lot weirder.”

  “We’re upside down.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Call Alice. I think she’ll know.” We thought about it in silence for a moment until I got an idea. “I bet we have to put everything right.”

  “What?”

  I focused my mind on the table and said, “Dje.” It levitated into the air. I visualized flipping it over and it obeyed my mental manipulation. The table flipped over and then floated gently up to the ceiling. When it was in place, I cautiously released my power over it. It stayed in place. “We can do this. Just arrange everything as it is, but on the ceiling.”

  Together, we got the job done in ten minutes, but a door didn’t appear. “Maybe we have to be on the ceiling,” Painter suggested. We floated ourselves up and the second our feet touched the ceiling…

  It was the floor. Everything was back as it had been when we arrived. “Did the world just shift?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I think we need to be more careful about what we eat. You did burn those coffee chews, right?”

  “Yeah. Let’s try the door.”

  “Okay.” He clearly wasn’t expecting anything. We opened the door, stepped into the hallway, and crashed into the ceiling, which was suddenly the floor again.

  Painter let loose a string of cuss words in at least five different languages and insulted at least four different gods. I felt pretty battered myself. When the world finally stopped spinning, Painter sealed and healed my palm and we continued down the hallway.

  Soon, we came upon a section of hallway with a different floor. There was a red line down the center with three rows of square steps on each side. Each step was a foot wide. “I don’t like the looks of this,” Painter said. He cautiously pressed his foot on the far left one. Not surprisingly, it sank, so he tried the one next to it. It, too, sank. I tried the step on the far right side. It sank, but the one on the far left rose to the top.

  “That’s interesting. Step on that one again.” He did, and as we stepped on both together, they both held our weight. It was wobbly, though. “Shift just a tiny bit of weight off,” I said. He did, and I felt mine sink. “Alright, we need to step off together.” We did, cautiously.

  “For anyone else but twins, this would be a bitch of a challenge,” Painter said.

  “This isn’t going to be easy for us, either. Plus, just because we’re twins doesn’t mean we weigh the same. I’ve turned down a few more slices of pizza than you.”

  “And I’ve walked a few more miles than you. If I weigh more at all, it’s muscle.”

  “Shut up and listen. You take left and I’ll take right. We’ll use the two directly on either side of the line.”

  “Starting with your right and my left,” he said, getting into position. I nodded and positioned myself next to him. We locked arms for balance. I hovered my right foot over my first step and he hovered his left foot over his first step. With a deep breath, I counted to three and we both gently stepped on it.

  “Shift your weight,” I said.

  We both shifted our weight on the steps, balancing each other. We moved our other foot across, watching each other to make sure we were in sync, and shifted our weight to our other foot. It was a long and slow process that had us stopping several times to regain our balance and settle our nerves.

  We didn’t say another word until we reached safe ground, because we were better in tune with each other when we weren’t speaking. “This isn’t fun anymore,” I said.

  “I don’t know how much of this we’re going to have to get through.”

  “Hang on… why didn’t we just levitate over them?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I tried. It didn’t work.”

  Next, we came upon a room that was about ten-by-ten, with a wall missing. On the other side of the room was a cliff drop into complete darkness. Across the ten-foot-wide pit from us was a door, but the wall around it consisted of forty numbered squares. They were well-lit, although I couldn’t see where the light source was coming from.

  “This is getting weirder,” Painter said. “I’m afraid I might have an idea of what this is. Twenty-five.”

  The square with that number on it flipped over to reveal three hieroglyphic symbols. “Isis,” Painter said. “Say another number.”

  “Three.”

  Another square turned over, revealing a different hieroglyphic word. “Anubis.”

  I heard a rumbling of stone sliding and some dust fell. The ceiling was closing in. It was about twenty feet high, and it looked like we had lost a foot. I looked back at the door we had come through, but it was gone. “This sucks.”

  “There are worse ways to spend the day than playing a life-or-death game of match,” Painter said with no enthusiasm.

  I got out my book and wrote the names and their numbers. Painter tried to paint the answers, but it didn’t work. Next, we tried levitating, but there was a magic ward where the wall should have been, meaning no magic could pass through it.

  After a few more numbers called, we found that Anubis was number sixteen, so when we matched it with three, a foot of stone
suddenly grew from the ledge.

  By writing it down, we solved the “challenge” pretty easily. One thing I found interesting was that each of us had to contribute a number per round. The traps were definitely not designed for one person to make it through alone.

  However, the tasked became less like games after that. The next challenge was to unlock a series of combination and key locks in a room that was filling with water. We tried opening the locks with magic, but it didn’t work. We didn’t make it. The room was filled with a number of clues, including numbers, pictures, and hiding spots. It was very similar to most escape rooms, except that we usually had more than fifteen minutes.

  Thus, the room filled and we had a tiny gap left at the top to breathe. We were fortunate for that, at least. We took turns diving, looking for clues, and unlocking chests. Painter’s jacket wasn’t a hindrance, but I had to take off my robe. We were so focused on unlocking the chests that we didn’t enjoy it like we would have enjoyed an escape room.

  Of course, we preferred escape rooms that involved more puzzles and less locks.

  When we finally solved the last lock, the water drained and the door opened. We were exhausted. “I’m serious; there was something trying to pull me under,” Painter insisted.

  I didn’t want to tell him that he was imagining it, but I never saw anything in the water that was alive, let alone that would try to drown my brother. Luca was never much of a swimmer.

  The next challenge was to dodge arrows with no light. This was the worst, because we couldn’t even create light with magic. There was a pattern to the arrows, but we had to figure that out ourselves. Fortunately, Painter didn’t have the same fear of the dark as Luca, or we definitely wouldn’t have made it.

  By the time we made it to the door and escaped the darkness, I was ready to go home and forget the dagger. “We can’t give up now,” Painter panted.

  “I don’t want to come back to Syndrial anymore.”

  “This isn’t all there is to Syndrial.”

  That was when I realized it was strange that he was panting. It hadn’t been strenuous, except for the dozen or so times he bumped into me. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He shook his head and bent over. In his back, slightly to the right of his spinal column, was an arrow. He had an arrow in his back. “Shit. I need you… to pull it out.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I can’t pull it out myself. Just do it.”

  I pulled gently, but it wouldn’t come out.

  “Don’t be a girl about it. I’ve been shot with a lot worse. Seriously, just yank it out. I can heal.”

  I put my left hand on his back, grabbed the arrow with my right hand, closed my eyes, and yanked as hard and fast as I could. Painter shouted as the arrow came out. Then he started panting harder. I studied the tip of it, which was covered in black goo and my brother’s blood. “Is this poison?”

  “It certainly feels like it,” Painter said, now struggling to breathe at all. “My muscles are starting to cramp and my blood is rushing.”

  “But you’re immune, aren’t you?”

  “It won’t kill me,” he said as he slowly dropped to his knees. “I’m just… gonna pass out… a little.

  “Damn it. If you don’t wake up, I’ll hunt down your immortal spirit and kick your ass.” He was already out, though. I sat with him for more than an hour, listening to his breathing. Even though he moaned a few times, his heart beat strong.

  * * *

  When he finally woke, I had calmed myself. It took him a few minutes to figure out where we were and why. As soon as he did, he wanted to rush back into it. I demanded he take it slow.

  Next, we found ourselves at a fork, so we went left based on a guess. It turned out we were in a maze. From there, it was just a matter of patience and memory. This gave Painter a chance to work most of the poison out of his system, but he was still sweating and cramping when we made it out.

  We entered a room and I heard rock move behind me. The doorway was gone. I studied the familiar room and my heart sank. There was no door, window, or hole in the wall, aside from numerous vertical lines in the ceiling. The only things in the room were a large stone altar and the dagger on top of it. The dagger was instantly recognizable. I just wished the room wasn’t.

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  “What?” Painter asked, grabbing the dagger.

  “This is the temple our mother was detained in. We could have used my ring to get here.”

  Chapter 15

  With a lot of self-disgust, I returned us and the dagger to Roman’s shop. We found the man cleaning up the mess. “We got the dagger,” Painter said.

  “Good,” Roman said, unenthusiastically. “It was always meant to go with the ring.”

  “Do you know why you created it?” I asked gently.

  “Of course; it looked cool.”

  “So the names Draskara and Rakma mean nothing to you?”

  “No. Never heard of them.”

  “How did you get to Syndrial from Earth?” I asked. “You never said.”

  He focused hard on the set of daggers he was hanging. “Didn’t I? I was certain I did,” he said absently.

  “Oh, that’s so sincere,” Painter commented sarcastically.

  Roman didn’t even dignify that with a glare. “How did you get here?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I took a cab.”

  Painter smirked. “You’re making this fun for me. I was itching for a good interrogation session.” His crazy was starting to peek out.

  “Nobody is interrogating anyone,” I said. At least, not at this moment. “Roman, we want to use this weapon against the god Maori. To do that, we have to activate it. Do you know how to do it? Do you even know what I’m talking about?”

  He looked at me hesitantly, which was a strange demeanor for a man as large as him. “I’ve seen it in my dreams.”

  “Then you know how to do it?”

  “Give me the dagger and I’ll show you.” I handed it to him. He gestured to the spade-shaped pommel at the end of the hilt. “Slide the ring on here and say, ‘senef sakur nedj iam.’ The sword is meant to kill only to protect the innocent.”

  “Do you know how you got to Syndrial?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember. I feel like I’ve lived so many lives and I have trouble keeping track of which one was real.”

  “I think they’re all real,” I said.

  Roman shook his head. “I don’t believe in rebirth like the Syndrial natives do.”

  “I don’t see the nose on my face, but I know it’s there,” Painter said.

  “This is different,” I said.

  He shrugged and started helping Roman put his shop back together. “Roman strikes me as the ‘rip off the Band-Aid’ type of guy.”

  “I am,” Roman agreed.

  I nodded. “If you’re certain. We think your name is actually Draskara, you’re the son of a god named Rakma, and you have been reborn numerous times over the centuries and brought back to Syndrial each time to create this weapon.”

  Roman dropped the panel of sheet metal he was holding and it clattered to the floor with a terrible sound.

  “Yes, that is the correct response,” Painter said.

  “You’re both nuts,” Roman accused.

  “That’s what the voices tell me,” Painter said.

  At the same time, I said, “First my therapist, and now you.”

  We explained to Roman about the book and he admitted that it made sense, but he didn’t believe was the son of Rakma or that he was a god. He had dreams and memories of another world, and in them, he had magic. However, he said the only magic he had was in enchanting tools and weapons. “If I was a god, or even a demigod, I would be able to use magic for something else. Plus, I think I’d remember more.”

  “Not really,” Painter said. We both looked at him and he shrugged. “Let’s say for a minute that you are Draskara. Your father wanted you to save people from t
he gods, so he gave you the blueprints for a weapon that could kill gods. He knew that any god would kill you if they knew what you were going to make. What does he do?”

  “He hides his son,” I said.

  Painter nodded. “Where better to hide a god but among mortals, who vastly outnumber the gods? He also knew his own brother would kill you, so he made it so that you would be reborn as many times as necessary. He couldn’t have known Kradga would kill himself, so Rakma was probably afraid you would go after your uncle.”

  “Thus, he makes it so that you only remember enough to create the weapon, not to seek revenge,” I concluded.

  * * *

  With the weapon in hand, I used my ring to transport Painter and me to Maori’s dungeon. The reason I chose that spot was because the layout was a lot easier to figure out than the top floor.

  “I know how we can weaken Maori,” Painter said, getting out his book and brush the instant we appeared in the dungeon.

  “Yeah, by killing him.”

  “We’ll take away his food source. At least some of it.”

  “You’re not going to kill these people, are you?”

  “No. If I send them back to Syndrial, they’ll still be dead, but they’ll be re-judged. That means if they repented or if they shouldn’t have been here at all, they’ll go to the Land of the Gods. Let them out. I’ll get the portal ready and conjure water.”

  “What about those who do deserve to be here?”

  “Then they’ll come back here, but at least they’ll have some water.”

  “I don’t see how that’s a good thing.”

  “You say they’re bad because they’re here, but that’s based on someone else’s judgment. Who’s to say Maori didn’t keep ‘good’ people around for selfish reasons? There is no good or bad.”

  It was at that point that I realized I wasn’t a better person than Painter just because I didn’t kill. I went to the first door. “Ketmeek.” The woman limped out of her cell cautiously. “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I stole another woman’s child.”

  “Why?”