by Logan Jacobs
“Ben, you are an absolute genius!” Mira exclaimed as she lunged forward and kissed me, with both hands around my neck. We clung to each other for a brief moment, just long enough to remind the other how much we loved them, and then we split apart.
“Jonas, I’m going to need you to draw me a map to this pond,” I told the old man. “We’re going to go up there and get this magic water, while you work on making the biggest batch of the antidote you possibly can.”
“Absolutely, Ben.” He nodded.
“Alright people, it’s go time,” I said, and with that, the three of us broke apart.
Mira went to prepare some food for the journey, and I went to find Jemma and Theora. We would need more than just the two of us if we really hoped to pull this off.
I knew my plan would work. All we had to do was make sure we were prepared for them before the maldungs decided they were ready for us again.
“Hey,” I said as I slid into the bedroom where Jemma, Theora, and Ainsley were.
Ainsley was in her bed, a little tinge of green in her cheeks, and Jemma and Theora sat with her.
“Ben!” Jemma exclaimed when she saw me. “Do you know how we will defeat these ghostly invaders yet?”
“Actually, I do.” I nodded, and I bent over to kiss Ainsley’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“I feel that fighting would be good, but I know I cannot while I carry this child within me,” she sighed. “But for your child, Ben, I will stay away from a fight for as long as I need to.”
“That’s the spirit.” I grinned at her.
“What is the plan, Ben?” Theora asked as she looked up at me with wide green eyes.
“We’ve got to go on a little mission,” I told her. “Would the two of you like to join Mira and I?”
“Of course,” Jemma replied instantly. “What is this mission?”
“We’re going to turn ourselves into ghosts,” I replied point blank.
Jemma’s chartreuse eyes went wider than the coconuts she enjoyed so much, and she gaped at me for a moment before both her and Theora sprang from their seats.
“Ghosts?” Ainsley said from the bed, and a worried frown creased her beautiful face. “Please tell me that you have a plan to make yourselves living creatures again?”
“Of course.” I winked at her. “Rest up. We’re about to take down all of these maldung bastards.”
I left Ainsley in her bed, and the three of us met up with Mira, who was in the hall with a pack on her back, as well as four coconut bowls balanced in her hands.
“I assumed we would not want to turn into ghosts in the middle of the mountain,” the warrior explained.
“Good thinking,” I chuckled.
Then we found Jonas in the kitchen with Hali and Talise as the three discussed what they needed for the antidote potion.
“Oh, my king!” Hali exclaimed as soon as she saw me. “This is a terrifying idea!”
“But it’s the only thing that will work,” I assured her.
“You are right, as always,” The redhead sighed as she bit her lip. “The three of us will have the antidote ready for when you return.”
“Here is the map,” Jonas said as he handed me a piece of cloth he’d drawn on with a piece of burned wood. It wasn’t the clearest thing in the world, but I could still easily tell where we had to go.
On the opposite side of the mountain, about halfway up, we would find the destination. I realized we’d never been to the other side of the mountain, even in all the times we’d ventured into the jungle.
“Thank you,” I told the soothsayer. “We’ll be back as quickly as possible.”
“May the gods bless you on your journey,” Jonas replied with a solemn nod.
I turned back to the three women who would travel with me to see they all wore nearly identical looks of determination on their faces. Under other circumstances, it would have been almost funny to me since they’d come from such vastly different ways of living, but in this moment, it was endearing. They all wanted to help me defeat our enemies just as they had when we’d dealt with the orcs.
Of course, in dealing with the orcs we hadn’t ever had to drink strange pond water and become ghosts for an undetermined amount of time, possibly risking our lives even if we did defeat our enemy, but that was completely beside the point.
“Everyone ready?” I asked.
“As ready as we will ever be,” Mira responded for the group.
“Alright, let’s get out of here,” I ordered.
Our journey to the mountain itself was fairly straightforward. Even Theora and Jemma knew the way at this point, and all we needed to do was get to the base of it before Jonas’ map would even begin to make sense.
We sprinted the entire hike, so we turned a four hour journey into a two hour one. Mira and I were nearly able to keep pace with the two deer women and their long, long, long legs, but sweat began to pour off us as we delved deeper into the tropical trees.
Miraculously, none of the jungle’s dangerous creatures tried to bother us. No massive boars sniffed us out and decided to run at us with their gigantic tusks, and no nasty jungle cats leapt down from the trees to take us on as old foes. It was almost as if even the jungle knew we were on a massive mission and couldn’t be disturbed. After all, I had no doubts that if the maldungs were able to actually win, which they wouldn’t, they would do their very best to conquer the entire island and destroy the jungle and all of its inhabitants in the process.
Jemma and Theora no longer had the wide eyed adoration for the bright plants and bugs that lived in the jungle, and instead they kept their eyes straight ahead and trained on the path forward, with one hand on their bows and the other on their spears.
I couldn’t blame them. My hand hadn’t left the hilt of my sword in hours. The maldungs had everyone on edge.
When we made it to the base of the mountain, I pulled Jonas’ map out from my pocket and looked it over.
“Alright, according to this, it looks like we’ve got to go around to the other side, and then the cave should be about halfway up and just a little bit west,” I said as I examined the map.
I looked up to see the slope where the mountain curved upward, and I carefully compared our location to the map for a second time.
Our hike up the mountain and around to the place Jonas described on his map was once again relatively undisturbed, but as we got closer and closer to the cave, I started to feel a chill at the base of my spine.
I was suddenly very glad I’d never been on this side of the jungle. It was far from the village and anything close to civilization, and it somehow seemed even darker and scarier than the rest of the island. A low hanging mist covered the soft ground, which was so moist my shoes squelched in it with every single step that I took. The bark of the trees had darkened even further, to a brown so heavy with color it almost seemed like someone had taken a paintbrush to it just for added effect. I reached my fingers out and brushed along the dark brown wood, and they came away moist, with little soggy bits of tree dust all over them.
Movement caught my eye, and I turned to see a dark black caterpillar crawling up one of the trunks to my left. The thing was massive, at least a foot long, and so thick it almost seemed like it would burst apart and spew chunks of its innards everywhere if I so much as touched it.
“This place is terrifying,” Jemma breathed, as if she could read my thoughts, while she looked around.
“And that, dear friend, is precisely why none of us venture to this side of the jungle.” Mira nodded. “Jonas must have stumbled upon it during his time living here.”
“Jonas lived in the jungle?” Theora’s eyebrows shot up so far they nearly disappeared into her hairline. “Why on earth would a sweet old man like him do that?”
“Tradition.” Mira shrugged. “All of the older people of our village wander into the jungle when they are no longer useful to our society. They are normally killed by the wild things that live here, but not Jonas. He surv
ived for many years in the jungle, undisturbed by its ferocious creatures. It would seem the gods saved him to help Ben.”
“That is exactly what happened.” I nodded. “Jonas lived so he could pull me through a portal from my world, and into this one. He saved my life. If he hadn’t done that, I would have drowned.”
“You came from another world?” Jemma gasped, and her bright yellow-green eyes nearly popped out of her head.
“I did.” I nodded. “It’s a long story, but basically I arrived on this island completely confused, and Nerissa and her people thankfully took me in. I bonded with George not long after and, well, the rest is history. I owe it all to Jonas.”
“I knew I liked the old man.” Jemma grinned at me and clung to my bicep. “But I still do not understand how he lived here. I would have died from the sheer fear of it all!”
“Jonas is made of tough stuff,” I assured her, but I hated to think of Jemma alone in the jungle. As strong as she’d gotten, I knew none of the deer women would have been able to stand up to its predators.
As we continued on our path, the mist grew heavier and the jungle grew darker. I knew the sun was still in the sky above us, but it had clearly begun to set.
“Let’s camp here for the night,” I said to them and pulled to a stop. “I know we’re on a time crunch, and we don’t know when the maldungs will return, but I don’t know what kind of monsters could be lurking here, and I really don’t want to meet them in the dead of night.”
“I agree, Draco Rex.” Mira nodded solemnly.
“Oh, thank Nira,” Theora sighed. “My feet were just about to give out from under me.”
She and Jemma sank down onto a fallen log to rub at their high-arched dancer-looking feet, while Mira built a fire and I opened up the pack she’d brought to dole out the food. Our rations weren’t the fanciest, but after all the hours spent in the forest, the dried boar meat and coconut shavings tasted like the most delectable feast possible. We also poured water from a clay bottle Mira had packed, and then we enjoyed the quiet of the jungle in silence as we munched on our meal.
Somewhere close by, I could hear what sounded like the ribbit of frogs as they settled in for the night. Of course, I’d learned by now that what a creature sounded like may not always be what it was.
The four of us took turns with the watch throughout the night, and we made sure to keep the fire stoked and hot. It wasn’t just to keep us warm. If there was one rule of thumb that could be applied to almost everywhere, it was that wild predators were not a fan of hot, burning orange flames.
I took the last watch, and I woke everyone up the moment the sun peeked its head through the tangle of leaves above us. Normally, I didn’t mind letting the women sleep in just a little bit, but this was a journey that needed to be completed as quickly as possible.
The three women were awake instantaneously, and we ate a quick breakfast of dried meat and fruit again before we took off toward our destination.
It was only another hour before we came across the spot where Jonas had marked the cave on the map, only there was one small issue.
There was no cave to be found. Anywhere.
“It’s supposed to be right here,” I murmured as I looked around.
Jonas had given me a fairly detailed map, but even if he hadn’t, one major thing stood out. Right next to the little “x” he had drawn to mark the cave was a drawing of a massive formation made out of three boulders. It looked a little bit like Stonehenge.
And this landmark was right in front of us now. The boulders were at least ten feet tall, and they formed a circle on the hill of the mountain.
There was absolutely no way there were two of these formations on this one mountain.
“I do not understand it.” Mira shook her head as we stared at the rocky, very solid side of the mountain, but there was no door or opening anywhere to be seen.
“Let’s hike around a little and see if we find it,” I told the group.
We circled the area like ground vultures as we searched for any sign of the cave. We scoured the rock face to see if there had been a rock slide, or if there was some sort of secret, hidden door like in The Hobbit.
And yet, nothing.
“Ben, I do not think it is here,” Jemma sighed, and the auburn-haired woman was near tears as she watched me with large chartreuse eyes.
“It has to be.” I shook my head. “This is the last lead we’ve got.”
I pressed my lips together, gazed around, and aimlessly walked into the center of the circle of three boulders as I thought.
Just as I stepped into the center, I noticed something. The boulder right in front of me was just a little off in its placement. It was tilted at an angle so small it would have been completely unnoticeable if I hadn’t looked straight at it.
I slowly stepped up to the massive, dark grey rock. It towered over me, but it wasn’t what was above me that I was concerned with.
I dragged my gaze down the rock to the ground just below it.
The soil underneath it was different from the rest. Where the other ground was harder, undisturbed by plants or moisture somehow, the spot underneath this giant boulder was much softer, so I curiously kicked away some of the dirt with my toe.
Suddenly, the pile of dirt shifted, and I watched as just the tiniest bit of it slipped underneath the boulder.
There was a hole under it, and the dirt fell through the hole to something far below.
“You guys, come help me!” I called out to the others, and the three women dashed to my side.
“What is it?” Mira demanded.
“I think the boulder is covering the entrance,” I said. “Let’s get behind it and try to push it over.”
A ten foot tall boulder was a lot heavier than I would have expected. The four of us got behind it, so we were uphill of the boulder, and we thrust all of our strength and weight into it to try and knock it over.
But it barely budged.
“Come on,” I grunted as I stepped back, with the ladies following, and took a run at the boulder. The four of us repeated the action twice before we finally felt it break loose from the dirt it was buried in.
The boulder came away from the mountain and rolled down the hill. We could hear the crack of branches as it took down plants in its path, but that wasn’t what was important to me at the moment.
The important thing was what the boulder revealed. Where it used to sit was now a gaping hole that led right into the belly of the mountain.
“Well, shall we?” I asked as the four of us peered down into it.
“Absolutely.” Jemma nodded. “But, uh, you can go first, Ben.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I chuckled.
I squatted down on the dirt and tried to see into the depths of the mountain, but it was difficult.
The hole itself was about four feet in diameter. It was plenty wide enough for me to jump through, but the problem was I had no idea what I would be jumping into.
It didn’t matter, though. This is what we had to do to defeat the maldungs, so I swung my legs over the side of the hole, hoisted myself up, and jumped down. Then I let out a silent prayer that I wasn’t about to land in the toothy mouth of some massive monster, or even worse, not land at all and just fall all the way back down to island level, where I would shatter every bone in my body. The maldungs wouldn’t even need to worry about killing me.
None of that happened, though, thank the gods. Instead, I fell about ten feet before I landed, right side up thanks to my limber serpent body, inside the cave.
And what I saw nearly took my breath away.
I was in a round space, about twenty feet from the farthest rock walls to the other end, and I stood on solid rock, but about eight feet in front of me was a bright, sparkling pool of crystal blue water that lapped at the rocks with little miniature waves.
And the entire cavern around me sparkled and glittered with sea glass from dragons who had been born and died long ago. The walls
that surrounded the pond were literally filled with sea glass. It was embedded into the rock almost like the glass had come first, and the rock had simply grown around it.
Mira dropped down next, and I heard her breath catch in her throat as she gazed around with me.
“Oh, my gods,” the warrior murmured. “This is magical.”
“Literally,” I laughed.
“Hello, you two, is it safe down there?” Jemma called out. “Have you died yet, or been eaten by some horrible monster?”
“Those would be one in the same, Jemma,” Mira teased.
“We’re fine, my love,” I called back as I rolled my eyes at the warrior.
“I have to have a little fun sometimes,” she snickered.
“The two of you should stay up there,” I called out. “We’ll need you to throw down a rope so we can haul ourselves back up.”
“Good idea, Ben,” Jemma replied. “Let us know when you are ready.”
“Let’s get this pond water and get out of here,” I told Mira.
With that, the two of us grabbed our containers from our packs and stepped toward the pond.
But, just as we were about to dip down and retrieve some of the most crystalline water I’d ever seen, the pond erupted, and a massive, ghostly figure emerged from its depths and headed straight toward us.
Chapter Fifteen
Water splashed across my front as the giant ghost burst toward Mira and me. Without any other option, I yanked out my sword and backpedaled as quickly as I could while Mira followed, and the two of us scrambled away from the translucent being as quickly as we could.
But just when it hit the edge of the water, the thing suddenly stopped, as if it had slammed into some invisible wall and couldn’t go any further.
“Holy shit,” I gasped as my heart hammered in my ears.
For the next few moments, the ghost eyed us, and we eyed it. The specter looked more like the dragonkin women than it did an orc or a beast like the wargs. It had razor sharp teeth laid in its mouth, and I could see there were two layers of teeth instead of just one. Much like the dragon women, the ghost bore a trail of scales that went down the side of its face and, presumably its body, but this was difficult to discern since it was dressed in clothes just like the maldungs. Only, this ghost wore two sashes instead of one, the way Tarun did. This phantom also had long, flowing hair that was braided into a sort of half up, half down style, like a merman.