by Layton Green
He feinted a rush to the left, and the one on the right closed in. Will darted back. They weren’t going to let him isolate them.
The two pairs of eyes moved closer. Will’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to make out the vague outlines of the jaguars. Fifteen feet separated each one. His shoulder stung but he had full range of motion. Knowing he had to take a risk before they pounced, he decided to use their tactics against them. He rushed the cat on his left again, committing fully this time and turning his back to the second cat. Just as the cat in front of him sprang, Will turned and swung his sword in a high arc, cleaving through flesh. As Will suspected, the second cat had tried to take his back.
Instead of screaming in agony, the cat disappeared in a snip of blue-white light. Magic. Will didn’t pause. He dove forward and rolled twice before springing to his feet, knowing he was vulnerable. As he rose, he felt hot breath on his face and saw eyes glowing in the darkness from a foot away. He lurched backwards as the cat sprang. Shadowy claws disturbed the air an inch from his face as Will stabbed upwards, ripping through the chest of the creature.
Another snip of blue-white. The eyes disappeared. He shuddered through a long breath in the darkness, trembling from adrenaline. A light appeared on his right, and he spun, both hands gripping Zariduke. The light expanded to reveal an exit cut into the stone. Before Will sprinted through the door, he took a quick look around and noticed the battle had taken place in a small, featureless stone chamber.
Outside, Mala and Selina were waiting on him. “Jaguars?” Will asked, and both women gave a grim nod of assent.
Gunnar stumbled outside soon after Will, his arms covered in claw marks and with a hunk of flesh torn out of his leg.
Will and Selina exchanged a look of concern. Mateo, Will thought. Where’s Mateo?
Mala retied her sash and hurried over to Gunnar. As she inspected the leg wound, Will took in their surroundings. They appeared to be on the other side of the pyramid they had entered, standing on a ten by ten platform of mosaic tile at the edge of another boulevard. The tiles displayed a scene of two Mayan brothers battling their way through a blasted landscape filled with ghouls, monsters, and fiery torments.
Will glanced down the boulevard and saw another portion of the underground city sprawled before them, with a second pyramid waiting at the end.
“Four tests,” Gunnar said through clenched teeth, pushing Mala away and struggling to his feet. He pointed at the scene depicted on the mosaic. “Hunahpu and Xbalanque were Mayan warrior twins trapped in Xibalba. They had to pass four tests to escape.”
“Mateo!” Selina shouted.
Will turned and saw his cousin walking out of a new opening in the pyramid. As soon as he exited, one of the huge stone blocks lowered without a sound, resealing the entrance.
Mateo strode calmly forward, sword in hand, a tight smile creasing his lips. He was sweating but unharmed.
“Thank Devla!” the sylvamancer said, throwing her arms around him.
When she disengaged, Will clapped his cousin on the back, bursting with relief. “Like I said—better than most with one hand.”
“What were the tests?” Mala asked Gunnar.
“The Dark House, The Chamber of Cold, The Blade Forest, and . . .” He frowned. “I cannot remember the last.”
Gunnar refused to take any more of the final healing potion. As soon as the party stepped back onto the boulevard, the corpses returned, leaving their eternal rest to respond to the sorcerer king’s call.
Selina tried again to take flight. This time, a host of zombies grabbed onto her, forcing her back down. She blew them back with a shudder.
Yiknoom is forcing us to take the tests, Will realized. Shepherding us to the pyramids.
The battle along the second portion of the boulevard was tougher than the first, but they fought through unharmed. The gruesome zombies felt symbolic to Will, part of the horrific imagery of Xibalba rather than integral to the challenge. Still, every battle, every use of magic and every swing of the sword, chipped away at the party’s reserves.
He entered the second pyramid side by side with Mala. As soon as he stepped inside, he plunged straight into a pool of icy water, the cold so intense his brain could think only of survival. He managed to hold his breath just before he submerged, but his body temperature dropped so fast he started to shiver uncontrollably.
Pale blue light filtered through the water. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement and realized it was Mala, swimming for the surface. Above her, through a shimmer of transparent water, Will saw that they had dropped into a cenote at the bottom of a cylindrical cavern with sheer walls. Ten feet above the water, a set of crude stairs cut into the wall led to a door at the top of the cavern.
An exit, if they could stay alive long enough to reach it.
A burst of adrenaline gave Will the strength to swim to the surface, though he felt sluggish and disoriented. He looked down and saw Mateo and Selina struggling to reach the surface. Mateo was closest. Will gave him a hand and pulled him up, and Selina used magic to propel herself through the water.
After a few moments of frantic searching, Will spotted Mala treading water. She was looking back and forth between the set of stairs and Gunnar’s flailing form ten feet below.
She turned to dive for Gunnar. Just before she submerged, she screamed at the sylvamancer. “Fly us out! To the stairs!”
Good idea, Will thought, except when Selina rose out of the water, a hailstorm began raining down chunks of ice as big as golf balls. The storm forced her to drop back into the water and cover the party with a Wizard Shield.
“This will drain me!” the sylvamancer said. “We have to submerge!”
Mateo pointed out the obvious. “That’s certain death.”
Mala burst out of the water with Gunnar, taking refuge under Selina’s shield as huge lumps of hail battered it. The warrior’s lips were blue, his eyes glazed over and his speech slurred.
Will guessed they had less than a minute before all of them succumbed to the cold. The hypothermia caused his brain to wander, and a flood of memories flashed through his mind. Racing down a warped New Orleans sidewalk on his bike with Caleb, shyly asking Val to play a board game, their father stroking Will’s hair as his mother read bedtime stories. Another piece of his subconscious reached through the fog, a darvish girl trapped in a basin of water with her palms glowing red, forced by her delver captors to heat water for their barracks.
Will shook off his lethargy. “Heat it!” he said to Selina. “Use your magic to heat the water!”
“The basin is too large,” she replied, her teeth chattering as she mumbled her words. “It will take too long.”
“Just around us,” he said. “Form a bubble. Use our body heat.”
Selina cocked her head sideways, then raised her eyebrows in sudden understanding. “I can’t keep the shield and heat the water.”
“Then we go under,” Mala said.
Selina grimaced, then commanded everyone to link arms and huddle together as they slipped beneath the water.
The water numbed Will’s face and stole his breath. Everyone pressed close together, sharing as much warmth as possible. Mala breathed oxygen into Gunnar’s slackened mouth.
Selina had moments to work her spell. Will’s lungs burned as the cold seared through him. Just as his breath gave out, a tingle of warmth grazed his fingertips and spread along his nerve endings. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of his life. He let himself drift, enjoying the warmth. A corner of his brain told him he was dying, and he laughed when he saw Selina waving her arms frantically through the water, pointing upwards.
Strong arms yanked Will to the surface. The hailstorm had ended. Someone slapped him on the back, over and over, and after Will vomited water he realized his cousin was holding him.
Though blue in the face and disoriented, everyone had survived. They huddled within the protective arms of Selina’s bubble of warmth until their body tempe
ratures returned to normal, the water as warm as a sauna, and then paddled to the side of the cenote underneath the rough-hewn stairs. Afraid the hailstorm would return if Selina used her magic to fly, the party erected a human pyramid to reach the bottom of the steps. Gunnar formed the base, and once the rest of them had ascended, Will and Mateo used Mala’s jade stick to pull the big man out of the water.
Sword at the ready, Will led the climb up the stairs. Blackness loomed above them, as if a starless night had consumed the jungle. As soon as his head cleared the top of the cenote, the whole scene disappeared, and Will found himself standing on another mosaic tile, just past the second pyramid, at the edge of a new section of boulevard.
He shuddered at the awesome power of the sorcerer king.
“A brilliant solution,” Selina said. “Heating the water.”
“An old friend gave me the idea,” Will replied.
Mala’s eyes flashed with anger. “How does he do it? Limit your magic after death?”
“I believe it to be a controlled warding,” Selina said. “Specific to certain spells.”
“Taking away our easiest options for escape,” Will said, glancing at the third pyramid in line, a hundred yards down the boulevard.
“Or maybe the sorcerer king is still alive,” Mateo said softly. “Watching us as we stumble into his home.”
Mala scoffed. “For a thousand years and more?”
Will snarled to cover his fear, and strode forward, onto the first paving stone. The dead Mayan warriors attacked again, even more than before, but the party tore through them with a fury and raced inside the next pyramid.
As soon as Will stepped inside, he found himself at the edge of a clearing surrounded by jungle. The landscape was similar to that outside Ixmal, vines and spiky aloe interspersed with thickets of slender trees. Will could smell the musky air, hear the chirping of the birds and insects.
The goal was clear: on the other side of the clearing, a hundred feet away, an open doorway set into the bottom of a huge ceiba tree beckoned for them to enter. A small pile of bones was scattered in front of the doorway.
Will barely had time to notice the hundreds of obsidian knives littering the dirt floor of the clearing before the blades attacked, rising into the air and coming at the party from all sides. The Blade Forest. He had half a second to prepare, wishing he had his shield, worrying about the other members of the party. Gunnar had taken a beating in the last two chambers, Mateo only had one hand, Selina’s Wizard Shield may or may not be enough to save her, and Mala, well, Will always worried about Mala, even though she was the most capable of them all.
The knives attacked in unison, lunging at him from multiple sides. He lowered his head and hunched his shoulders to protect his vitals, giving up his forearms, shins, and sides of his thighs as he batted away the knives attacking his face and stomach. When they struck, the weapons pierced his leather armor, though every time Zariduke met one of the ensorcelled blades, the smaller weapon dropped to the ground in a snick of white-blue light.
A quick glimpse told him how the others fared. Mala had her short sword and dagger in hand and seemed to be parrying five knives at once, spinning and striking and blocking, making steady progress towards the door. Mateo fared almost as well, not as fast as Mala but meeting the knife thrusts with great precision, the whip-like motion of his urumi sword able to take out multiple blades at one time.
At first Will couldn’t see Selina, but then he noticed a giant tortoise on the edge of the clearing, lumbering towards the door, the thick shell absorbing blow after blow.
Gunnar was struggling yet again. The strongest but slowest of the party, he couldn’t keep up with the spinning knives, and had not advanced a step. Blood poured from a dozen wounds.
Will ran to help him, batting away the knives surrounding the big warrior. Will arched in pain as a knife stabbed him in the side, penetrating an inch into the thick muscle. He spun away and redoubled his efforts, snapping his wrists as he whisked his sword back and forth. Gunnar roared and barreled forward beside him, taking cuts as he ran. Mala tried to fight her way to them, but the sentient knives sensed her intention and clustered to bar her way. In response, she reached into one of her pouches and withdrew a weighted net. She swept it back and forth, clearing the air. The knives shredded the net within moments, but it gave Gunnar a pathway to the door. He sprinted forward, almost making it before three of them pierced his back, driving him to the ground.
Will and Mateo tried to reach him, but neither could fight his way through. It was all they could do to protect themselves. More whirring knives slammed into Gunnar’s prone form. Mala had almost reached him when a trio of knives forced her to stop and fight. She recovered at the last moment, crouching and spinning, blocking knife thrusts faster than Will could follow.
He watched in horror as one of the knives streaked towards Gunnar’s face. Just before it hit, the tortoise blurred into human form and Selina created a shield in front of the warrior. The knife bounced off it. Another caught the sylvamancer in the arm before she could defend herself, and she stumbled backwards. A dozen more came at her, and she was forced to erect a Wizard Shield and sprint for the end of the clearing.
When Mala reached Gunnar, the big man was unmoving. Using one hand to defend them both, Mala poured the remains of the last potion over Gunnar’s back. She grabbed her other sword and fought off the attacking blades as the big man blinked and slowly regained his feet. Mala took two more cuts to the arm and one to the thigh as she covered him. Not once did she cry out.
Side by side, muscles aching and sweat pouring into their eyes, Will and Mateo fought their way to the door and joined Selina. Moments later, Mala and Gunnar arrived. The knives came all at once as the party dove through the portal.
Again they appeared on the other side of a stone pyramid, on another tiled platform at the edge of a boulevard. The fourth and final pyramid loomed before them.
Though no one collapsed or moaned, everyone gasped for breath and stood on unsteady feet, streaked with blood from the knife wounds. Will wondered how they would survive another test.
“You should have let me die,” Gunnar muttered. “I’ve become a liability.”
“Hush,” Mala said. “You’ve saved us more than once, and your turn came.”
Will remembered the undead Mayans never left their houses until someone stepped foot on the boulevard. He got a surge of hope that they might be able to catch their breath but, as if the sorcerer king had read his thoughts from beyond the grave, the first dead Mayan warrior emerged into the street.
“Queen’s Blood,” Mala swore. “Run.”
The party dashed forward, gaining as much ground as they could before the streets filled with the undead. Selina used more Wind Push than usual, and everyone arrived unscathed at the entrance to the fourth pyramid.
Mala led the way inside.
Darkness, and then a jaundiced light.
Glistening within that sickly glow were strands of woven silver, tens of thousands of them, a network of finger-size filaments interlocking to form a pattern of beautiful but deadly design.
A spider’s web.
Filling the entire cavern.
A soundless scream bubbled in Will’s throat. He recoiled and brushed against another portion of the web, which caused him to flail his arms and shout. Shaking with fear, he forced deep breaths through his nose, then turned to survey his surroundings.
The web stretched for hundreds of feet in every direction, anchored between the walls of a giant underground grotto, wrapped around the tips of stalactites and stalagmites.
Not this, Will whispered. Not a web.
Was this the final test? Defeating a massive spider in battle? It would fit the subterranean theme.
For the first time on the journey, the icy talons of panic—true panic—clawed at his throat. As he remembered his imprisonment by the spider people, awaiting a gruesome death within the cocoon, he felt the familiar punch of desperation, the shor
tness of breath that preceded a full-blown panic attack.
You’re past this, Will. You’re a warrior now. A leader of this expedition.
He told himself this, but still the anxiety swelled within him, a geyser building towards eruption. Will reached deep and channeled his primal self, the reptilian portion of the brain that knew only two things: fight or flight.
And he chose battle.
Stomping down his fears with booted feet, flinging thoughts of the past away like a handful of lice, Will snarled and strode deeper into the web, owning his panic but leaving him saddled with the knowledge of his predicament.
Alone in the home of whatever creature had made this.
At least he had freedom of movement. Why that was, he had no idea. He swung at the web and sliced through it, though it didn’t disappear. So it was real, then. Not made of magic.
He reached a section of the web marked by six-foot wide funnels of silk. Down one of them, a flash of movement. He started to turn and run the other way, then looked closer. There was someone trapped in the web, waving for help. Someone human.
Why weren’t they shouting? Was the giant spider nearby?
As Will advanced, the person in the web took shape. It was a human female with her back stuck to the web, facing Will. Why is she stuck and I’m not? Is it my sword, or something the spider did to her?
The woman had freed one hand and kept waving it at Will. A flicker of light splayed off a jeweled ring. Will moved closer, towards a T-junction of funnels. The woman’s head took shape: long black hair splayed against the web, dark brow, a narrow face and hooked nose.
Mala.
He darted forward, though when he passed the T-junction, he saw more movement down a funnel to his right. Another form trapped, another hand waving. A man, this time.