by Eric Vall
“Okay, you work on that,” I agreed. “We need to find the other way in.”
“I’ll stay and guard her,” Laika said as her wolf ears flattened against her head.
“And we might be able to help with our magic,” Polina added.
“We do connect with all types of nature,” Trina agreed.
“Plus, we can help keep the princess safe if anything happens,” Marina said and furrowed her brow with determination.
“Okay, the rest of us will make our way to the back entrance,” I decided. “Vallen, you stay here with them.”
“Of course, my lord,” the lizard Demi-Human replied as he wrung his hands. “I will stay right here and, ah, keep watch?”
“That would be great,” I chuckled before I returned my attention to Naomi. “We’ll have to try from the other side, but don’t worry. We’ll get you out.”
“I’m not worried,” her muffled voice huffed, and I could practically feel her eye roll from here.
“See you soon,” I snickered, and then I motioned for the others to follow me further down the tunnel.
I lit a fireball, and we walked for several minutes before we found another tunnel that led in the right direction. We followed it back around in the direction of the cavern only to run into a dead end.
“That’s annoying,” Aaliyah muttered, and her long golden tail swished back and forth in irritation.
“Agreed,” I grumbled as we turned back around and returned to the first tunnel.
So much for this set of catacombs being easy to navigate.
We continued a few more minutes and found another tunnel, and this one looped around but took us in the right general direction. As we got closer and closer to the cavern, I could feel the energy of the Bow again, but I still couldn’t hear its voice.
We were definitely going the right way.
Then I tripped over a large pile of sand and nearly face planted.
“What the fuck?” I grumbled and stepped back.
I’d been so focused on finding the door that I didn’t look at where we were walking. There were at least eight piles of sand that stood about two feet high, and they were clustered around in a circle with a flattened section of sand in the middle.
I started to kick my way through the weird piles when Ravi stopped me.
“My lord, those aren’t just sand,” she murmured, and she pointed to a set of large three-toed footprints headed away from the sandy circle.
“What are they?” I asked as I looked down at the footprints.
“Shh,” she suddenly hissed with a finger over her lips. “They’re nests.”
“Nests for what?” I whispered back.
“Most likely, they’re drovians,” the phoenix replied as her eyes darted around the tunnel. “They live in desert environments, and they build a little nest for each youngling. The mother drovian sits in the middle of the piles to keep an eye on her babies. I saw them all the time on our travels. Drovians are very protective of their young.”
“What do they look like?” I grunted.
Before Ravi could answer, a loud, angry squawk echoed down the tunnel, and a pair of beady black eyes reflected the light from the flames in my hand.
It seemed I was about to find out for myself.
Chapter 13
Little pink heads with orange pointed beaks popped up from the sand piles. The baby drovians had woken up at the sound of their mother’s call, and they began to squeak and screech in response. The noise was quiet at first, but then their cries became louder and higher until the cacophony echoed in the tunnel around us and became nearly deafening.
“Shit, what are they doing?” I called out over the noise, and I sent out a layer of my healing magic to protect our ears.
“They’re trying to guide their mother to the danger,” Ravi answered and shifted uncomfortably.
“I’m guessing that means us?” I asked as I looked around with a frown.
“Yes,” she replied and grimaced.
Suddenly, a big dinosaur-looking bird emerged from the darkness of the tunnel ahead and barreled toward us. The mother drovian had beige and white feathers that billowed behind her as she ran, with her wings halfway extended so they nearly touched the walls. Her orange curved beak was considerably larger than her younglings’, and it looked ready to tear into any one of us. Her long neck was covered with white scales that reflected the orange light of my flames, and her shape reminded me of an emu or an ostrich. She ran on thick pink legs that supported her fat feathery body, and her black eyes were focused on our group as she screeched in fury.
I didn’t want to kill a mother that protected her younglings, but I wasn’t about to get my eyes pecked out, either. It was only a matter of seconds before she reached us and happily tore into our flesh. So, I grudgingly reached for the Sword of Hatra, but Nike placed his hand on my shoulder.
“My lord, do you think we could use the drovian to help our cause?” he asked as the beast got closer.
“Everyone against the wall!” I shouted as I raised an eyebrow and then dodged the bird like a matador with a bull. “What do you mean? I don’t think she’s looking to do us any favors. We seem to have pissed her off.”
The drovian tore through the tunnel between everyone who had plastered their backs to the wall, and they had to duck under the edges of her wings. Then she skidded to a stop with a squawk and turned around to face us again.
“I can see that, but we need a guard for the Bow, so what better than a creature that would kill anything that came close to her younglings?” the noble suggested as he kept his silver eyes on the beast. “Drovians are instinctual creatures, so we wouldn’t exactly ask her to help, but we could move the nest wherever it suited our cause. From there, she would do all the work naturally.”
She certainly looked ready to tear us apart for standing too close to her babies, and Nike’s idea sounded way better than hurting her. All we had to do was put her younglings near the entrance we wanted to guard. I wasn’t sure yet if that would be the door or the tunnel entrance, but for either one, it would be helpful to have the drovian on our side, even if she didn’t know it.
“Good call,” I agreed. “Let’s capture her instead. We can decide how we want to set her up after she’s not trying to kill us anymore.”
As the bird geared up for another strike, I shot webs at her feet. I hoped to tangle her up just long enough to get everyone else out and move the younglings, but it didn’t work out that way.
Instead of wrapping around her scaly three-toed feet, the web was torn into shreds by the drovian’s claws. She slowed long enough to rip through the sticky webbing and then continued to barrel toward me with her deadly beak. I stepped to the side again, and she blew by me, but this time, she let out a heated, angry squawk.
Nike was right about her instincts. She wasn’t much of a fighter, but she didn’t look like she would stop until she shredded me or I got away from her babies.
“I’ll try to help you,” Nike offered as he drew the Sword of Light.
Suddenly, a beam of white light burst out from the blade, and I had to shield my eyes from the blinding glow. It lit the entire tunnel like a camera flash, and the bird screeched again as she closed her eyes and sprinted straight for us.
She really was going to try to attack us with her eyes closed.
We dodged her blind attack easily, and Nike sheathed his sword.
“She won’t stop on her own,” I muttered.
“Maybe I can guide her somewhere else, and you can trap her?” Ravi suggested.
“Okay, try to get her closer to the wall, and I’ll use the web to pin her to it,” I replied.
Ravi nodded and then disappeared into a column of fire as she took on her phoenix form. Her tiny orange body flitted up to the ceiling as she zoomed closer to the drovian, and she tried to herd the beast to the wall, but the drovian mother snapped at Ravi’s feet.
The phoenix heaved a frustrated sigh and flew back to us.
/> “This isn’t working,” she muttered. “We’ll have to try something else.”
So, I searched through my magic to see how to stop her without killing her. Earthquakes were too dangerous down here, especially after having one collapsed wall. Fire, stone, and water were all useless in this scenario, and I didn’t need echolocation to find the screeching bird in front of me.
“My lord, maybe try your petrification,” Miraya suggested as I watched the bird with a careful eye and then nodded.
Petrification was my last option that didn’t involve killing her.
The drovian dug her feet into the sand like she was preparing for another sprint. Then she took off at me again, and her beak opened wide enough to take a bite out of my throat as her enraged squawk echoed throughout the chamber.
So, I stood in the middle of the path and activated my displacement magic to appear slightly to the left. I watched as the drovian’s eyes diverted to the side, and she adjusted her path. As she got closer, I opened my maw and activated my petrification magic, and a surge of power burst forth from my mouth in a yellowish-green cloud. It looked like a nasty storm that billowed toward the bird, and she continued her run as she cocked her head to the side in confusion.
The magic rolled out of my mouth and plowed into the beast. She froze in mid-step, and her momentum carried her rigid body forward to crash into the dust before me as a puff of sand blew up into the air. As the sand settled, we could see the drovian’s large wings were still partially extended, and her muscular legs stuck out at odd angles from under her feathers as though she were still running. Her beady black eyes stared at nothing, and if I wasn’t familiar with my magic, I would have thought she was dead. I knew a little healing magic would set her back to normal, but she still looked creepy, like a taxidermist had stuffed her feathery body.
Then I realized it was suddenly very quiet in the tunnel, so I looked down at the little drovians, and their tiny heads were rigid as they poked out of the sand hills without moving. Their dark eyes were still focused in the direction of the mother drovian, but they couldn’t see anything as the petrification cloud had settled on them, too. They looked like tiny statues of birds which had been buried in the sand. It wasn’t my plan to petrify them, but it would probably make them easier to move. Besides, I didn’t know how sharp their little beaks were, and they hadn’t been happy to see us, either.
“Looks like we have a guard,” I declared. “And a few future guards, I suppose.”
“We’ll have to dig them out,” Ravi said as she squatted next to one of the little birds with a worried expression and dragged her finger lightly across its bald pink head. “Their heads are the only thing above the sand. They can breathe and everything, right?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I agreed. “I didn’t want to hurt them, and once we figure out where we want to put them, we can dig them out and move them. Then I can heal them like I did the bats in Colaruma. For now, they aren’t hurting anything, and we don’t want to just carry them around. We don’t know what else is in these tunnels, so we can leave them there until we’re ready to move them.”
“Okay.” Ravi nodded and stood up before she brushed the sand from her robes. “I just don’t want to harm these little creatures. They aren’t predators, only protective of their younglings.”
“I understand,” I assured her. “I didn’t want to just kill their mother, either. I thought Nike’s plan for them being guards was the best option for keeping them all alive.”
“You have a kind heart, Lord Evan,” the phoenix said with a smile, and she reached over and squeezed my arm. “The people and creatures of Rahma are lucky to have you.”
I grinned as I stepped around the mother drovian and continued down the path, and the rest of my group followed behind me as we got closer to the cavern. The pulsating energy of the Bow became stronger, and I was glad it wasn’t in my spatial storage anymore. Miraya was right to suggest hiding it somewhere else. The voice of the Bow was powerful, and I had to focus on taking care of these relics instead of fighting one in my head.
As we curved around the tunnel, the big wooden door appeared on the right. Though the cavern side of the portal was plain, this side was much more interesting. The wide wood panels were a deep chestnut color with a round brass handle on the left edge, but it was the design that drew my attention.
Numbers and letters in various languages were carved into four large wooden circles that stretched the entire width of the door. The concentric circles were made of a lighter brown wood, and the letters and numbers had been painstakingly dug out of each section with care. The figures were separated by deeply cut lines, and they were etched in an intricate font with loops and swirls in each section of the circles. Each of the circles was divided into three parts, and each part in the smallest circle featured a letter, while the sections in the other circles had a number.
Symbols I didn’t recognize were painted all around the circles in a variety of colors. Some looked like flowers, some like stick figures, and others like abstract art. They were painted in golds, blues, reds, and greens, though some appeared to have faded a bit over time. In the middle of the smallest circle was a simple painting of a green lizard. Though the design was plain, the reptile seemed to watch our every move as we investigated the door, and I had the distinct feeling it could pop off the door at any moment.
There was no keyhole or lock, so the way to get in had to be something related to the door’s decorative face, but the door was anchored into the sandy walls from floor to ceiling and didn’t budge when I ran my fingers along the edge. There were no gaps in the design, and I couldn’t see any way to break it down, so we just had to figure out how to open it.
I ignored the lizard painting as I reached out and touched one of the light-colored circles, and I could feel the wood shift slightly under my touch. I dragged my finger down over the carvings, and the circle moved with me. The circles appeared to be on some kind of swivel and could be spun either way.
“What are those?” Nike asked as he looked over my shoulder.
“I’m not sure,” I murmured as I spun the circle back and forth, and each of the wooden circles swiveled around while I tried to understand what we were looking at.
“Do you think it’s some kind of puzzle?” Miraya wondered as she stepped forward and fingered one of the circles. “I don’t see any kind of pattern. It looks rather random, and I’ve seen quite a few intricate puzzles in my time.”
“I imagine it has to be,” I replied and watched her move the circles back and forth. “But I don’t see any patterns, either. How do we solve something that has no meaning?”
“It has to have some meaning to someone, even if it doesn’t to us,” Ravi pointed out. “Maybe Lady Naomi could help.”
“She can’t see it,” Aaliyah said doubtfully. “How can she help solve a puzzle she can’t see?”
“Maybe we could describe it to her,” Miraya suggested. “She likely knows something we do not.”
I reached down, grabbed the knob, and tried to twist it. No dice. It was locked from this side as well. So, whatever the puzzle was, we would have to solve it to get through to the cavern.
“Lord Evan?” I heard Naomi’s voice through the door. “Is that you?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “It’s locked from this way.”
“Great,” the lizard mage huffed. “Did you take Vallen’s keys with you? Can you open it with one of those?”
“No,” I admitted. “That would have been a good thought, but it doesn’t matter. There’s nowhere to put a key. Just the knob and some spinning circles with shit on them.”
“So, how do you unlock it?” she grumbled and then cursed under her breath. “I don’t particularly want to be stuck in this cavern forever.”
I could hear the lady mage as she paced back and forth in the cavern while taking deep breaths. Abel was nearly silent, though I imagined he stood with his arms crossed over his chest as he watched her move around.
/> “It must have something to do with these symbols,” I answered. “I’m not sure how it works, though. It looks like a puzzle of some sort, but I don’t know what everything means.”
“What do they look like?” Naomi asked, and I could hear her creep closer to the door.
“There are a few letters and a bunch of numbers,” I told her as I scanned the door. “They’re all carved into these four big circles that spin around. The letters are on one circle, and the other three circles just have the numbers. And there’s a lizard painted in the middle of the circles, plus some other art all around the circles. It looks like a bunch of gibberish.”
“Gibberish?” the lizard mage repeated in a confused tone.
“Nonsense, nothing that makes sense,” I explained. “I’m not sure what it could possibly mean.”
We all stared at the symbols as we tried to find a reason to the carved scrawls. It seemed like they were completely random, and I had no idea how to put them together.
I didn’t like feeling so damn clueless.
“Okay, let’s think about what we know about the catacombs,” Nike suggested. “How long have they been down here?”
“Hundreds of years,” Naomi answered with a sigh.
“But this door is not that old,” I murmured. “It’s in great shape, not warped or dilapidated. The paint is a little faded, but that’s it.”
“I agree.” Nike nodded. “The door can’t be more than forty or fifty years old.”
“So, who would have installed the door that recently?” I wondered. “You said you helped build the new catacombs, right, Lady Naomi?”
“Yes, I worked on them with my parents, but that wasn’t until I was a teenager,” she replied.
“So, did they use these catacombs before that?” I questioned.
“It’s entirely possible,” the lizard mage sighed. “But I don’t know what they would have used it for.”
“Well, that part may not be important,” I pointed out. “If it was your parents who used this, then they could be the ones who put in this door. So, the pattern would mean something to them.”