by Hanna Peach
“Israel!” But he couldn’t hear her.
The hell-creature turned its vacant eyes to Alyx. She knew now not to make eye contact so she kept her eyes on the creature’s mouth where its fangs extended out, quivering as if excited at the prospect of biting into her flesh.
She couldn’t stare at that mouth and keep her nerve. She dropped her gaze lower to the bony chin lined with tiny bumps. As the creature advanced upon her the silence that suffocated her was louder than any noise she had ever heard. She tried to balance herself, to let go…
She was already moving when the creature attacked, lashing at her with its talons. Its wings created a small wind behind it, kicking up dust around the cave. Alyx ducked and lashed back, managing to slash at the creature’s arm. It let out an angry roar that echoed through her partly deaf state. Her hearing was coming back. The effects of the creature’s screech must be wearing off.
It came at her again. She twisted into the air to avoid a clawed kick. As she landed, she spotted Israel advancing towards them slowly with his sword at the ready. Their eyes met for a second. Neither of them spoke but she knew in an instant what he planned to do. She knew exactly what she needed to do to help him.
She lashed out her sword in the creature’s face, getting its attention. “Hey, you, look at me.” It reacted by letting out another piercing screech. This time she didn’t drop her sword and she hardly flinched as her world went mute again.
She shifted around farther into the cave, causing the creature to turn its back completely on Israel. “Come on, come get me,” she taunted into her own silence. She led the beast back until she was almost completely in the dark.
In her near-deaf, near-blind state, her other senses seemed to rise to a heightened state. She could sense the creature getting closer as the air shifted against her skin. She could smell the musty dampness of the cave and underneath it, the scent of something metallic. Under her feet she could feel a steady vibration that went on and off like a drum beat.
The creature was partially silhouetted against the light coming in from the cave’s entrance. She felt the air shift, signaling an attack. She spun out of the creature’s way, the tip of its claw catching her arm. She barely registered it.
Her focus was on the tip of Israel’s sword pushed through between its black breasts. The creature let out a fierce roar that broke through the muffle, and it spun, the sword still stuck in its body. Israel rolled around behind it towards her.
“Move.” Israel grabbed her arm and yanked her aside. Just as one of the creature’s wings came crashing down where she had just been standing.
They ran outside and ducked behind the side of the entrance. They watched as the creature convulsed in the dim cave. She let out a long breath. They did it. They defeated it. Any minute now the creature would drop down dead.
The creature folded its wings back, reached behind with its hands and awkwardly pulled the sword out from its body, a dark blue sticky blood bubbling out from its wound. It then snapped the blade in two and dropped the pieces to the floor with a clatter. It opened its mouth and a long dark blue tongue forked out.
“What is it doing?” Israel said. Her hearing had almost returned to normal.
“I don’t know.” She watched in horror as the creature licked at its raw flesh. “Oh my God,” she hissed. “Look.”
The creature licked itself again and again, like a cat would. The dark blue blood stopped bubbling out and the wound began to seal itself. It was self-healing. It had been stabbed through the heart and it was still standing. How the hell were they supposed to kill it?
“It can’t be possible,” she said. “You struck it straight through the heart.” Could a creature really regenerate its own heart?
Israel cursed. “How do we kill it?”
They both backed away from the entrance as the creature darted towards them, moving a little slower than before.
Alyx skidded back in the melting snow as the creature landed at the cave entrance and appraised them both with what she took to be utter disdain. It began to pace the entrance, glaring at them and flapping its large wings, sending flakes of snow back from the doorway. But it got no closer.
“Why isn’t it coming out here?” she asked.
“Maybe it can’t deal with sunlight. Like a vampire.”
“Don’t be silly. There’re no such things as vampires.” She swallowed. “At least I hope not.” She stared at the creature, watching it. “It can’t be about the light. Look, it just walked through a patch of sunlight.”
Why wasn’t it coming out?
Realization struck Alyx. “You know what it looks like?”
“We’re screwed?”
“It looks like it’s guarding something.”
The creature hissed loudly at them, then disappeared inside.
“I think you’re right. It’s guarding the exit. That’s why it won’t leave the cave. We’re not supposed to kill it. We’ve got to get past it.”
Alyx was alert for any sound as they entered the cave again. They moved carefully, deeper into the cave, the light dimming as they traveled farther away from the large open doors. She could hear the sound of claws on stone and the steady low drumbeat coinciding with the vibrations through the stone floor. What was that noise?
Israel grabbed her and yanked her back behind a boulder. “There it is.”
At the back of the cave was the creature silhouetted against a bluish light coming from an unknown source. It must be the exit.
“We need a plan,” Israel said. “In a few minutes that creature is going to come back and finish us both off.”
“What do we do? With only one weapon left, we’re running out of options.”
“Give me your sword.”
She handed it to him by the handle. “What are you going to do?”
“The door back to the real world must be back there. I’ll distract it, and you sneak past and get to the exit.”
Shock reverberated through her. “I can’t leave you behind. That monster will tear you apart.”
He wouldn’t look at her. He just kept staring at the creature as he bounced on his toes, twirling her sword in his hand. “We don’t have time to argue. Go, on my signal.”
“Israel, you’re insane. I won’t let you—”
He grabbed her head with his free hand and planted a firm kiss on her mouth. When he pulled back she found her eyes filling with tears.
“Thank you,” she said. Thank you for what he was about to do. For what he had already done: making her feel again, making her brave again.
He nodded once. The moment his hands left her, she felt her heart lurch. He backed out from behind the boulder, his eyes locked on hers. “Even if this is all we have,” he said to her, “it was worth it.”
Alyx couldn’t speak, her heart swollen against her throat. She just nodded.
He broke eye-contact with her and turned to face the creature. “Hey, you ugly devil-bat. You want me? Come get me.” He waved his arms around.
The creature lifted its head and screeched, once more taking away sound so that Alyx couldn’t hear Israel’s voice anymore. It stepped fully from the small enclosure in the back, opened its wings and shot forward through the air towards Israel. He cursed and flew back, the air crackling with magic.
Alyx ducked as the creature flew past. She sent out a curse and a prayer out to Israel and sprinted towards the blue glow at the back of the cave, her legs pumping as fast as they could. She tripped as her foot caught on a rock and stumbled to the ground, the harsh stone tearing at her hands and knees. She barely gave the pain across her skin a thought. She rolled to her feet and kept running, her blood a swollen beat in her ears almost in time with the vibration in the ground. At any moment she expected the creature to rip at her from behind. She stumbled into the semi-enclosed space where the blue light was coming from. But it wasn’t the exit.
On the far wall was an alcove, a withered-looking heart the size of her torso beating in time with the
noise, thud-thud, thud, thud, with sallow purple and blue veins disappearing into the rock around it.
That was its heart.
That’s what it was protecting.
Stop the heart, stop the creature. This was how Alyx would kill it. She had to stop the heart before the creature killed Israel.
She ran to the heart, its beats so loud that it reverberated throughout her body. She drew back an arm and punched her fist at it as hard as she could. She smacked into something solid, jarring her arm, and her knuckles exploded into pain. She stumbled back clutching her hand, biting her lip to stop herself from screaming out and giving her position away.
The heart must be enclosed in some kind of thick glass. How the hell was she going to get through it?
She heard Israel’s screams from somewhere near the front of the cave breaking through the muffle. Her heart lurched in her chest. Israel. Oh God. She wanted to run towards him, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t get to him in time. She needed to destroy this heart, right now.
But how? How would she break through this shield?
She didn’t even have a sword. No weapons. Nothing. Just this stupid Alchemist magic that turned out to be totally useless.
Alchemist magic.
Of course. This magic would allow her to change the elements into other elements. She could turn this unbreakable shield into something else.
She placed her hand on the cool surface and tugged at the magic in her bloodink tattoo. Her veins filled with a rush of molten fire and she tasted the tang of metal in her mouth. She felt the shield and knew at once it was made of a single sheet of diamond, the hardest element in all the world. What should she turn it into?
Her mind flickered over the chair leg she had turned to gold. Gold was a soft metal but not soft enough to cut through without a weapon. She thought of the protractor she had turned to glass.
Glass. Of course.
She pushed it all out through her hand, ordering the molecules of this diamond to turn to a delicate and brittle glass. She felt the shield crackling underneath her hand as it changed, groaning at the offense of being forced to rearrange itself.
She heard the creature roar and the flapping of wings coming closer. She didn’t need to turn her head to know that the beast was bulleting straight for her.
The last of the Alchemist magic drained from her fingers. The change was done.
She didn’t waste another second. She elbowed the glass and it shattered. The creature let out another roar of anger. She grabbed a large pointed shard, ignoring the edges that cut into her palms, and thrust it into the center of the blue heart with both hands.
The creature collided with her, crushing her against the rocky cave wall. All the air was knocked out of her and her world went totally dark.
Chapter 19
Israel.
That’s all Alyx could think as she struggled to push herself out from this suffocating darkness. The creature’s limbs were heavy, a dead weight, as she struggled to shove them off her. Mercifully, it shifted and rolled away. She inhaled sharply as she lay there. Now she could breathe.
The creature’s eyes were dull and open like two eight balls, its mouth open in a final scream. The thudding heart had fallen silent. The alcove where it had rested had dissolved into a doorway, a pale white light shining from inside. She knew that this was what she had to walk through to get back to the other side. She couldn’t even think of doing that yet. The creature was dead. But did she kill it in time?
“Israel,” she called out.
The cave was silent. She couldn’t hear him moving or breathing. Her heart clenched with a throb of pain. Dear God. Please let him be okay. She was already running as soon as her feet touched the ground.
She spotted his body, lying prone in a pool of blood near the cave entrance. Outside the snow had all but melted away and it seemed to be growing lighter. There wasn’t much time left. Winter was almost over.
Right now she didn’t care about that.
She fell to her knees at his side. His body was shredded almost into ribbons, his beautiful golden body raked with raw open gashes. He couldn’t have survived this attack, could he? “Israel? Oh God, why did you have to do that? We could have found another way.”
She brushed his face with her hands, blood smearing on her fingers. He moaned and his eyelashes flickered.
He was still alive.
“Israel, can you hear me? You’ll be fine.”
He laughed once and it turned into a groan. “You’re such a bad liar.”
Her eyes filled up with tears again. “I can’t watch you die. I can’t. Not again.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“No, it won’t.”
“All that will happen is that I’ll wake up in my real body.”
“What if the Elder’s wrong?”
“We just have to have faith. Did you find the exit?”
She nodded.
“Then walk through it.”
“Once I wake up, I’ll be all alone again.”
He grasped at her hand and slipped his fingers through hers, his movements stiff and slow. “No, you won’t be.” The soft touch sent ripples through her body. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
She leaned down and placed her mouth on his and kissed the last breath from him. Again. I’ll wait for you.
When she pulled away, his eyes were closed and his chest had stopped moving. She gulped down a sob and tried to coat herself from these sharp, tumbling feelings. The feelings of loss over his past death echoed through her, ripping her heart into pieces all over again.
The greater the love, the greater the loss.
One day she would have to do this for real. Again.
A ripping feeling went through her. She couldn’t. She couldn’t do it, she couldn’t.
“Hello, Alyx,” a soft female voice called from behind her.
She leaped to her feet and spun. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the two familiar figures standing there. His soft smile and dark intelligent eyes. Her warm smile and open arms. Just as she remembered them the last time she saw them when she was fourteen.
“Maninka? Táta?”
“It’s us, cherub,” her father said, using his nickname for her.
She ran into their arms and a comforting warmth rushed in to fill the cracks of her heart. For a few moments she basked in the completeness she felt in their arms. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time…until Israel.
At the thought of Israel and the real world, she pulled back and looked her parents over. They looked real. They felt real. “Why can I see you?”
“Because you’re close to death. Look,” her mother said pointing behind her. “Winter is almost over.”
She turned. Just outside the door the melted snow left evaporating puddles across the damp rock.
“Go,” her father said, indicating the gleaming door behind them. “If you stay here you’ll die.”
“We just wanted to see you again,” her mother said, “to tell you we love you. And we’re proud of you.”
She stared at the white door at the far side of the tunnel. If she walked through…who knew what life had in store for her. Would she even get to remember Israel? Would she even get him? She would have to say goodbye to her parents again. She’d have to lose them again. “But if I stay here then I’ll get to be with you both again, right?”
“It’s not your time,” her father said. “You have so much left to do, darling.”
“And Israel,” her mother said with a knowing smile, “he seems…perfect for you.”
Israel. She had to go back so she could see Israel again.
But what about when she lost him? That was the brutality of life. It ended. It always ended. And nobody could say when. Death was only a blink away from taking everyone you loved away from you. Love, no matter how strong, couldn’t tether them to the Earth. She knew this deep in the marrow of her soul. She�
��d already experienced it once.
If she stayed here, if she didn’t wake up, she’d never have to experience that pain again. She could stay wrapped up in the love of her parents and just fade away.
“Be a bitch. Be ungrateful. Throw a tantrum for all the good it will do you. I’m not leaving. Do you hear me? I’m. Not. Leaving.”
“Of everything we’ve faced in here already, I’ve barely seen an ounce of fear or hesitancy in you. So why are you so afraid out there?”
“Just because it didn’t last forever, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.”
Israel’s words echoed in her head.
A realization snapped inside her like a rubber band.
This was her labyrinth. She had made the dream city, the Maze of Whispers, the Heartless Mountains. All of this. She had trapped herself in here. Deep down she hadn’t wanted to wake up.
The Heartless Mountain beast, her final test…this was her. Hiding away, never straying too far from comfort, just to protect her heart. A heart that was withering away anyway, because it wasn’t being used.
She wasn’t ready to die. Not yet.
I won’t be afraid anymore, Israel, she promised him in her mind. I swear, I’ll live and I’ll do it right.
She looked at both her parents, who were watching her closely. “I’ll go. I’ll live.” The beaming smiles across their faces confirmed she’d made the right decision.
They walked with their arms around her towards the white door back to the outside world. The light had already begun to fade. She held them both one more time. “I miss both of you so much, every day.”
“Oh, darling,” her mother said, “we’re with you, every day.”
“Now go live your life, cherub.”
“I will, Táta. I love you both.” With one last look back, she stepped through the white light so she could live.
Chapter 20