by Gage Lee
The room was much smaller than I’d anticipated. Three of its walls were porous and chalky, not at all like the smooth stonework in the rest of the Academy. Splotches of glowing green lichen had taken up residence on the walls, and their wan light illuminated the wall opposite the entry door. This one seemed more like a bank of purple-and-black fog than a solid barrier. When I tried to reach through it, though, my hand stopped against an immovable surface as smooth as glass. A faint hum filled my ears when my fingertips brushed the invisible wall, as if a machine were hard at work on the other side of the glass. Curious, I flattened my palms against the barrier and leaned my head forward to get a better look at what the fog was hiding.
>>>Shadow vault status check initiated.<<<
Shadow vault? Was this where Baylo kept the soulforged armor?
The fog rolled back as if it had been sucked away by a giant vacuum cleaner. The sight of the floating city had frightened me. What I saw now was far more horrifying.
Green globes dangled from the ceiling and shed their sickly radiance over the rest of the chamber. The floor looked rough and rubbery, with inch-wide channels carved in a grid through its surface. Dark metal cages floated a foot off that strange floor. Dozens of them.
My eyes didn’t want to accept what else they saw in that room.
But there was no denying the awful truth of what those cages held.
Kids, all of them around Biz’s age, dangled from bizarre harnesses inside the cages. Their open eyes were covered by a milky film that drained the color from their irises. None of the prisoners moved, not even to blink.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that those strange, empty eyes saw me very clearly.
Chapter Eight
THE AIR INSIDE THE small room was suddenly too hot and stale. My stomach heaved, and I backed away from the barrier. The humming vanished from my thoughts, and the purple-and-black fog flooded back into the chamber.
>>>Shadow vault status check complete. No errors or warnings detected.<<<
It took me two tries to twist the doorknob and wrench the closet door open. I stumbled out onto the landing, rushed to the window, and pushed it open to snatch a breath of cool, clean air from outside. The thought of all those kids trapped in those cages, eyes wide and staring at nothing, left me sick and confused.
“That’s how people get killed,” Baylo shouted.
“Only when other people overreact!” Biz shouted back. “We were looking for Ylor, not trying to steal any of your secrets.”
“If you want to come into the Band’s territory, you ask first,” Baylo said with a snort. “And you certainly don’t bring that thing in here. No one likes thieves.”
The two of them reappeared on the landing with me, Biz leading the way. The blue fuzzball rode on my sister’s left shoulder, its arms wrapped around the top of her head, its tail dangling down her chest. The critter stuck its tongue out at Baylo, then ducked its head when she took a swipe at it.
“He’s not a thief,” Biz shouted.
“Tell Ylor that when you see him,” the fighter grumbled.
I took another deep, clean breath, then turned away from the window to face Baylo. I had to know why those kids were locked up, but I wasn’t sure I could handle the answer. We needed the Tribunal to get us home. If they were evil kidnappers or mad scientists, though, there was no way we could trust them.
“Tell me about what’s in there,” I said to Baylo and pointed at the door to the small room.
“It’s nothing,” the warrior said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“There are kids in there.” I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard the warrior say. “They aren’t nothing.”
“You don’t understand,” Baylo started.
“Help me understand, then,” I interrupted. “Because I’m not doing anything for any of you until I know why you’ve got a bunch of kids hanging in cages.”
Biz moved away from Baylo and leaned against me. The fuzzball chittered quietly and coiled its tail around my wrist.
“Sounds like we need another meeting,” Biz said. “Let’s have a nice little chat, and you can explain what’s going on.”
“Call Monitor,” Baylo said. She shook her head and rolled her eyes as if this was all a huge waste of time. “He’ll gather the others. Have them meet us downstairs.”
The warrior herded Biz and me down the spiral staircase into the main hall. She let out an exaggerated sigh every so often, just to make sure we understood what an inconvenience we were.
“Monitor?” I muttered under my breath, hoping this would actually work. “Gather the Tribunal in the great hall.”
>>>Monitor has received your message.<<<
Well, it would have been nice to know that I could send messages to Monitor when I’d been trapped underground.
Hopefully, the metal man would hear the message and do what I’d asked. It was clear that these strange people needed me, but it wasn’t so clear that they were willing to listen to anything I had to say.
It was time to put that to the test. I was mad and worried and ready to knock some heads together. Being trapped in the basement with a snake monster was bad. What I’d seen in that room was much worse. I had to get some answers before I did anything else.
Baylo and I took our seats at the table in the great hall and eyeballed each other in sullen silence. I was mad that she wouldn’t level with me about what was in the room without dragging the rest of the Tribunal into the conversation. She was just as mad that I’d been where she didn’t think I belonged and was wasting her time with all of this drama.
Biz and the fuzzball, on the other hand, were having the time of their lives. The little blue creature had retrieved what looked like acorns from its satchel and was busy tossing them at my sister’s head. Biz snatched the projectiles out of the air and tossed them right back. The two of them had fallen into an easy rhythm, and the steady stream of nuts from one to the other was impressive. I’d never known Biz to be much of a juggler, but she was so smooth I’d have sworn she’d practiced this act for years.
As weird as it was, this place really did agree with my sister. First, she’d been able to breathe, and now she was a regular circus performer.
“Honored guests.” Monitor’s mechanical voice echoed in the hall as he entered. “The remaining members of the Tribunal have arrived.”
The fuzzball changed his aim and launched a volley of acorns at Ylor’s chest. The nuts left dark, oily smudges on the eldwyr’s white robes where they bounced off him.
“You told me you’d gotten rid of all of those revolting creatures, Monitor.” Ylor glowered at the soulforged. “And yet this little cretin disrupted a very important task with his thieving ways.”
“Why, yes, my brother and I are fine, Ylor,” Biz said sarcastically. “No thanks to you.”
“That thing is why I had to leave the lift,” Ylor protested. “It leapt out of the bushes and stole my medicine. That forced me to depart for a few minutes to retrieve another dose. But you found your way out of the chapel with no harm done.”
“No harm done?” I shot back. “The yaoguai down there nearly killed me.”
Monitor and the rest of the Tribunal all leaned back from the table as if shocked by my news. Reesa wouldn’t meet my eyes, and Baylo stared at Ylor like he’d grown a second head.
“You sent them down there to face off against a spirit?” Baylo asked. “What if he’d gotten killed?”
“He’s fine.” Ylor shrugged as if it was no concern of his whether I’d lived or died. “I’ll send him back down after we finish our little chat.”
“I’m not going back down there until you give me more salt,” I said. “I used all that I had to kill the yaoguai.”
Baylo smirked, and even Reesa seemed amused by the horrified look on Ylor’s face. The fuzzball chittered and pointed one of its long fingers at the eldwyr’s obvious concern.
“That is most distressing.” Ylor sighed. �
�I can’t make any more salt. That was the last of what we had in the stores.”
That sucked all the humor out of the room.
“You seriously only had one sack of reagents?” Baylo asked. “I somehow managed to get twenty suits of soulforged armor in my storage allotment, but you only brought one sack of salt?”
“Most of my space was taken up with my medicine,” Ylor explained. “I had no idea when we’d be resupplied. Without proper treatment, I wouldn’t have lasted this long.”
“I feel that.” Biz shot finger guns at Ylor. “Until I came here, I was sick as a dog without my sicky juice. But meditating and all that ghostlight stuff helped me. Try that.”
“No,” Ylor said. “I cannot just meditate. My condition isn’t curable. It is a function of my abilities, and of the path of advancement that I have chosen.”
“It’s a condition that comes from playing with demons and spirits,” Baylo said.
“Enough.” I smacked my hand on the wooden table. “Who wants to tell me about the kids in cages on the fifth floor?”
“It’s not what you think,” Ylor said immediately.
“It kind of is.” Baylo shrugged. “Reesa, fill them in.”
“The children were isolated for their own protection,” the worm woman explained. “They’re perfectly fine. They aren’t even aware that any time has passed since they went into the containers. When the time is right, we will release them from the shadow vault and they will continue their studies here at the Academy.”
What I’d seen in that room was still vivid in my thoughts. None of those kids looked protected. They looked trapped. I wasn’t sure if I could believe anything the Tribunal was telling me now. If I didn’t trust them, though, who could I trust?
“Hey, Monitor,” Biz asked. “Is she telling the truth?”
The soulforged’s eyes glowed green as he leaned forward in his seat. He clasped his hands in front of him and gave Biz a slow nod.
“Yes,” he said. “When the Fell Lord and his armies attacked Incaguloth, we were forced to pull this city out of the baseline and insert it into the shadowstream. Mortals can’t really survive in this environment for long, at least not without special precautions. We planned to restore the school with the help of Narsk Alaush, then release the rest of the staff and students from the shadow vaults. That did not go as planned.”
“I’m sorry we were such a disappointment to you,” I said, “but this is where we are. If we can’t restore the chapel and summon spirits to help us leave, then we need to get the students out of their cages. Wouldn’t more hands help us get the generators turned back on faster? They could cultivate ghostlight with Biz and me, right? I can’t believe none of you even suggested this.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than you think,” Baylo said. “What you’re asking isn’t as easy as opening a door. Go ahead and ask the interface how many blades of ghostlight you’ll need to open a shadow vault.”
>>>A shadow vault requires one hundred blades of ghostlight to safely retrieve its contents from the shadowstream.<<<
“Fine, we’ll need a hundred blades.” I shrugged. “I guess we better get started on that.”
“No,” Reesa corrected me. “It’s a hundred blades to open the shadow vault. But the children released from it will need food and safe lodging. If they aren’t preserved, the shadowstream will wither them away in a matter of days.”
“Are we going to dry up and blow away?” Biz asked, panic tightening her voice.
“No,” Ylor said flatly. “The sorcery that brought you through the portal also shielded you from that fate. Engineers are travelers, and their hosts are required to protect them as long as they stay. Until you leave this splinter, you do not need to worry about shadow corrosion.”
“The same cannot be said for the children in the vault,” Reesa added. “They need dormitories to anchor them and food services to nourish them.”
“They’ll need two different restorations before we can even unlock the vault,” I groaned.
The fuzzball had made its way across the table and rested a hand on my shoulder. It looked at me with those big, round eyes and made a soft cooing noise. Then it flopped down in front of me, rolled onto its back, and waited for me to scratch its belly.
“There are worse ways to spend your time,” Ylor said. “And, after we release those students to study with me, I am sure we will—”
Baylo and Reesa both threw a fit at that idea. The three of them bickered about who the students would work with, while Biz and I looked at one another with exhaustion in our eyes. I didn’t want to be involved in these people’s petty squabbles. It was giving me a headache.
I turned my attention to the interface and willed it to give me a rundown of what we’d need to let those kids out of their cages.
>>>The nineteen registered occupants of this shadow vault will require first-level dormitories and food services for support. These restorations will require one hundred blades each. Total cost of shadow vault reclamation is three hundred blades.<<<
“Three hundred blades of ghostlight.” I raised my voice to be heard over the Tribunal. “What’s the fastest way to get it? And don’t tell me we can cultivate it in our cores. That will take forever.”
The Tribunal glanced at one another uneasily until Reesa cleared her throat and dove into an explanation.
“You have to understand that we didn’t tell you about this option earlier because it is extraordinarily dangerous.” She brushed her tangled hair back behind her ears with ink-stained fingers. “If Ylor’s plan had worked, then we would have availed ourselves of the much safer option of using spirits to accomplish the needed tasks.”
I leaned back in my chair and let out an exasperated sigh. Of course. They’d been holding out on me since the beginning.
“Give it to me,” I said. “All of it. I’m sick of being kept in the dark.”
“Yes, well,” Reesa continued, “that was never our intent. But, now that things have become more desperate, well, it is time to consider searching for ghostlight ore.”
I wanted to hurry this conversation along but knew that any interruptions from me would just delay the answers I wanted. Instead, I scratched the fuzzball’s belly and gritted my teeth.
“Ghostlight is crystallized ghostlight, sort of,” Baylo explained. “If we gather and process it, we can accumulate blades much more quickly than through cultivation.”
The fuzzball slid out from under my hand and crouched next to me on the table. His eyes were fixed on the Tribunal, his little hands rubbing together as if eager to hear what they had to say.
“A pound of raw ghostlight, depending on purity, can net a hundred ghostlight blades,” Ylor said.
“You should’ve told us all this before we risked our necks clearing your chapel,” Biz interjected. “Gathering ghostlight sounds a lot easier than fighting a giant snake monster.”
The Tribunal all quietly chuckled at that. Baylo and Reesa exchanged glances, then shrugged and nodded toward Ylor. The eldwyr drummed his pointed nails against the tabletop and stared up at the ceiling
“Ghostlight attracts the Fell,” he said quietly. “The more concentrated the deposit, the more of them will appear to claim it. Fortunately, those revolting monstrosities can’t mine the ore themselves. Any attempts they have made to remove it from the veins have contaminated the ghostlight beyond repair. But, if someone else removes the ore from its home, well...”
Ylor didn’t need to finish the sentence. The Fell, whatever they were, would pounce on any miners loaded down with the valuable ghostlight ore. The Tribunal hadn’t told us about this because they hadn’t wanted to risk their engineer, even an amateur like me, when other options were available.
Now, though, we’d run out of other choices.
“We’ll do it,” I said. “But there’s something you have to do for us first.”
The members of the Tribunal eyed me cautiously, unsure what I was about to ask. It occurred to me that
I must have looked every bit as strange and alien to them as they did to me. I doubted any of them had any experience with teenaged humans.
“All right,” Ylor said cautiously. “What do you need?”
“Protection,” I said to Baylo. “I know the rest of you can’t leave the Academy. But you can train us to fight, right?”
Reesa and Ylor both looked uncomfortable at that idea. Baylo, on the other hand, gave me a wide, ear-to-ear grin and clapped her hands together.
“Oh, yes,” she chuckled. “I can definitely do that.”
Monitor abruptly pushed back from the table, clasped his hands in front of him, and backed toward the exit.
“Oh, dear,” he said. “If Baylo is training new students, I’d best take stock of our medical supplies.”
Chapter Nine
BAYLO SPIRITED US OUT of the hall before Ylor and Reesa could protest. I’d expected her to guide us up the spiral staircase to the Band territory, but instead she led us back toward the pool where we’d originally entered the Academy. She continued down the hallway past the pool room and two more narrow doors, and through a curtained arch. The room we’d entered held a pair of beds on one wall, a window on the second wall, and a barred wooden door on the third.
“This is your room for the moment,” Baylo said. “Don’t try to open that barred door, and keep the window shuttered as much as possible. The Fell Lords don’t come this close to the Academy, but we’ve had problems with scrats here and there. Better safe than sorry.”
Biz ran across the room and threw herself into one of the beds, the blue fuzzball clinging to her shoulders. The pair of them landed on the bed with a thump, bounced off the overstuffed mattress, and tangled in the sheets and blankets as they wrestled. It was good to see my sister acting like a normal kid, although I wasn’t sure how many normal kids wrestled with little blue squirrel rabbits.
“Try not to break anything,” Baylo said with a grunt. “There’s a chest under each bed. You’ll find sustenance capsules and hydration beads that should last you for the foreseeable future. Until we get the food stores back, that’s all we can offer. Sorry about that.”