“Uh… are we sure that’s safe?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. It looked pretty rickety.
“You’re heading into an active volcano to fight a deadly dragon at your pathetic level and you’re asking if the elevator is safe?” Yano asked.
“Good point.” Also, I assumed Ikumi had already used it, so at least it had been tested recently.
How far had she gotten at this point? I wondered, looking up at the volcano again. Was she close to Atreus’s lair? What would happen if she handed over the stones before we could get to her?
The now-familiar ache settled in my stomach. Was she at all regretting what she did? Or had this been her plan from the start? To toy with us like those horrible girls had with my sister—just having some fun, not caring who they hurt to do it? Had Ikumi ever really cared what happened to us? Had she ever really been a friend?
Let me give you some good advice, little brother, my sister had said. Never trust anyone you meet online.
I was beginning to understand her internet boycott.
I shook my head, picking up my pace as I walked determinedly to the elevator. We still had a chance to stop Ikumi and I wasn’t about to blow it.
Once inside, we pressed the big red button on the wall, and the elevator groaned and creaked before shooting us into the sky, leaving my poor stomach somewhere back on the ground. Whoa! From the state of the thing, I had assumed it would be a slow ride up—not a full-on replica of the Superman ride at Six Flags.
But in Dragon Ops, as Hiro had said, things were not always as they seemed.
“Wow,” Lilli remarked excitedly. “You can see everything from up here!” I gripped the railing a little tighter, forcing myself not to look down.
Soon, the elevator lurched to a stop, almost throwing me off the side. Good thing I had been holding on! Taking in a deep, calming breath, I followed my sister off the lift, relieved to find solid ground under my feet.
I might have been able to face dragons now. But heights? They were always going to be my kryptonite.
Yano directed us to the cave, half hidden behind some low-hanging vines. As we stepped inside, I blinked my eyes to adjust them to the darkness. The passageway was only dimly lit by some kind of phosphorescent moss, and for a moment I wondered if I should turn on my night vision.
But soon the tight passageway opened up into a vast cavern—the mouth of the volcano itself. The good news? It was well lit from the sunlight streaming in from high above. The bad? It was filled with well-lit waterfalls of lava.
I stared down into the pit of the volcano, which dropped straight into a molten core; lava boiled violently with big, fat popping crimson bubbles that looked way too much like blood. Narrow wooden walkways clung to the sides of the volcano, descending into the pit without any railings to speak of. Which meant one wrong step, one loose floorboard, and we would meet a very fiery end.
“Holy burning pit of awfulness,” Lilli breathed, her eyes wide.
“Right?” I asked, trying to ignore the fresh wave of nausea rising inside me. “And here I thought the dragon slaying would be the tough part.”
“I’m quite sure that’s going to be tough, too,” Yano chimed in, fluttering over the pit as if it was no big deal. Once again I wished I had wings like his. It would make things so much easier.
Instead we began our descent on foot, hugging the side of the volcano as we went, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other and not looking down. A few loose stones slipped under my feet, splashing down into the lava pool below, and my heart beat a little faster as I tried not to imagine being one of those stones. What would happen if I fell? Would I die instantly? Or would I burn and burn, treading lava until I finally tired and sank down to the bottom and drowned?
“I wonder what this place looks like without goggles,” Lilli remarked, trying to sound casual and totally failing. “I bet that lava pit is really just a giant trampoline. So if you fell, you’d bounce really high.”
“Yeah,” I said, the thought making me feel a little better. After all, this wasn’t supposed to be real-life dangerous. They must have had all sorts of safety procedures in place. Not that they would do us any good now. It might be a trampoline down there in real life. But our minds would believe it was lava. Which meant it would burn.
“I’m going to go on record that I much prefer the Cave of Terrors and its pretty glowworms,” Lilli remarked, fanning herself as she continued to take one careful step after another. The lower we got, the hotter it became, and I was feeling like a sweaty mess under my armor.
“Too right!” Yano chirped. “There isn’t even anything down here to eat! Why, I might have to resort to human flesh if things keep going this way!” he declared. “Not yours, of course!” he added hastily. “A good guide never feasts on his friends. It’s like Guiding One-oh-one.”
“Well, maybe you’ll get lucky and we’ll run into Ikumi,” I muttered, pressing my chest against the rocky wall at a particularly narrow spot where a few wooden boards had collapsed. “Clearly she’s no friend, so you can totally eat her.”
I could feel my sister giving me a sympathetic look, and I clamped my mouth shut before I could say anything more. It was embarrassing how much I still cared about Ikumi. But you can’t just shut off your feelings like a light switch, even if you should. I wondered if Lilli ever thought about Logan—ever caught herself missing him, even now, knowing he never existed to begin with.
I quickly accessed my menu, checking on the quest again. It was still there, not listed as “failed.” Did that mean Ikumi hadn’t handed over the stones yet? Though that seemed weird, seeing how close we were at this point. Surely she would have made it to Atreus by now, with her big head start.
“Is Ikumi still in the game?” I asked Yano. “Can you tell?” She’d blocked me, so I couldn’t, but maybe she didn’t think about our guide.
Yano closed his eyes, then opened them. “She’s still listed as a player,” he said. “Though it won’t tell me her exact location.”
“Maybe she changed her mind?” I suggested hopefully. “Decided not to give the stones to Atreus after all?”
“Or maybe she did and Atreus didn’t keep his promise to free her,” Lilli reminded me. “Just like we told her he wouldn’t.”
“Right,” I said, something worming through my stomach, though I wasn’t sure what. I certainly didn’t want Ikumi to hand over the stones to Atreus. But also, deep down, I didn’t want her to be stuck in the game, either. I thought back to her sad eyes. The desperation on her face. She said she’d been trapped here for two years. And though I had no idea how something like that was possible, it didn’t seem like she’d been lying. How horrible would it be to be trapped in this deadly world for so long—with no friends. And no one to talk to except computer programs.
Finally, we reached the bottom of the walkway, which dead-ended at a large gaping mouth of a door framed with chunky crystal teeth. Above the doorway was a sign, also made of crystal, etched with the same familiar Latin words we’d seen on the starting gates at the beginning of the game. I stared at those words now, my heart beating like mad in my chest.
HIC SUNT DRACONES.
Here be dragons.
This was it. The Crystal Temple. The entrance to Atreus’s lair. We’d finally made it.
But making it, of course, was only the beginning.
I switched on my night vision, peering into the dark cave. “Do you see anything?” Lilli asked. “Atreus? Ikumi? Derek?”
I shook my head. “It just looks like a tunnel filled with more crystals.”
“Well, let’s go check it out.”
We stepped gingerly through the mouth of the cave, into a forest of giant crystals dripping down from the ceiling and poking up through the ground. Like an underground icicle forest. It was beautiful—almost as beautiful as the Cave of Terrors had been. But I was too freaked out to spend much time taking it all in. In fact, it was difficult to even remember to breathe at this
point. Any moment now we could find ourselves face-to-face with a dragon. The dragon.
And what would we do then? Well, we still hadn’t really worked that out.
The passageway led to a small cavern carved out of rock. The walls were dripping red with something that I really hoped wasn’t blood, and the ceiling was low, giving the space a cramped, claustrophobic feel. At the far end was another doorway, opening up into what appeared to be a larger room. Creeping over to it, I peered inside.
And found Atreus at last.
“What do you see?” Lilli hissed from behind me.
I retreated from the door, back over to my sister. “He’s in there,” I told her in a low voice. “He seems to be asleep.”
“What about Ikumi? Derek?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t see either of them. But there was some kind of opening at the other end of the cave. Like a passageway or something. Maybe Derek’s down there.”
“Should we try to sneak past Atreus and look?” Lilli suggested. “If he’s sleeping…”
“Or we could try to attack him,” I countered. “Get a jump on him before he wakes up. It’d give us some advantage.”
“Would it, though?” Yano queried, landing on my shoulder. “We have a saying where I come from: Let sleeping dragons lie. Especially sleeping dragons who possess four major Elemental Stones with the power to blast one into oblivion with nary a thought.”
“We don’t know he has the stones,” I reminded him. “We might have beaten Ikumi here.”
“And you might have beaten me at chess,” Yano said. “If you played five thousand four hundred and thirty-two games with me in a row. But only because I let you win out of sheer boredom in the end.”
“Do you mind?” Lilli admonished. “We’re trying to plan a boss fight here.”
“So sorry! Carry on! Don’t let the voice of reason stop you from plotting your own brutal demise!” Lifting off my shoulder, Yano flew toward the temple exit.
“Where are you going?” I demanded.
“Just gonna find me a little snack. Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll be back in time to watch you both be fried to a crisp. Toodles!” And with that, he disappeared out the door.
My sister rolled her eyes. “Worst guide ever.” Then she turned to the doorway to Atreus’s lair. “Okay. So what do you think? Sneak or fight?”
I gave her a grim look. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I vote sneak.”
“All right then, ninja warrior. Let’s do it.”
The dragon was bigger than I remembered.
That was my first thought as we crept through the dark temple, entering the beast’s inner lair. Atreus lay sleeping on a massive hoard of gold and jewels, his thick, scaly tail coiled around his body like a snake’s. He was so large, in fact, he barely fit into the cramped space, and I wondered wildly how he could possibly be comfortable all squashed up like that. A totally ridiculous thought, I know.
But I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. Too busy freaking out with fear.
I shot my sister a questioning look, wondering if she noticed the change, too. Had Atreus really grown bigger since we’d seen him last? Were his scales redder now—more blood-like—or was it just a trick of the light? His wings seemed longer, his tail thicker, his talons sharper.
As if evil had gotten an upgrade.
Suddenly, what seemed a totally doable plan down at the bottom of the mountain now seemed a craziness of epic proportions. What had we been thinking? We were just two kids—total noobs. And yet, here we were, hoping to take down the biggest, baddest dragon in all the land by ourselves.
This was so not going to end well.
Atreus stirred, rousing from his slumber. We dove behind a crumbling stone column, desperate to stay out of sight. My heart thudded madly in my chest as his eyes slid open, twin golden crescents shimmering in the darkness. A burst of steam shot from his snout as he yawned lazily, showing off a dark pit of razor-sharp teeth. Sweat dripped down my back. How could we ever hope to defeat such a creature?
But we had no choice. Everything came down to this.
I squeezed my hands into fists, trying to wake my inner hero. To remind myself that here, in this world, I was not Ian Rivera, twelve-year-old gamer geek from Austin, Texas, and real-life total wimp. Here, I was Lord Wildhammer, premier knight of the realm. Lord Wildhammer wouldn’t be scared of some dumb old dragon. Lord Wildhammer would be chomping at the bit to slice its ugly head off and save the world.
Lord Wildhammer, it would seem, was a major idiot.
Atreus’s eyes began to rove the chamber, and the walls seemed to close in on us, tighter and tighter with his every glance. When he reached our hiding spot, he stopped, his head cocked and his ears pricked.
I froze. Could he see us? Could he sense, somehow, that we were here? My heart beat so hard in my chest I was half convinced it would break a rib. What were we going to do? How were we going to survive this?
My sister reached out, squeezing my hand hard.
“Remember, it’s only a game,” she whispered.
But the thought wasn’t as comforting as it should have been as my eyes fell to the dragon’s belly, glowing a deep, dark red as it warmed with deadly fire.
Because this might be a game.
But one wrong move and it would be game over.
This time forever.
Well, well, tiny humans. It seems we meet again.
A cold chill shuddered through me at the familiar greeting, now spoken in a deep, throaty voice filled with menace. As I watched, frozen in place, the dragon slowly rose to his feet, gold and jewels falling from his body and plinking back to the pile below.
But I’m afraid you arrive too late. For the quest has already been completed by another.
My heart sank at his words. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been holding out hope that Ikumi hadn’t made it here yet—or that maybe she’d changed her mind about helping him. But the look on Atreus’s face told me he wasn’t bluffing, and suddenly my eyes caught a flash at the ridge on his back. Four stones—one red, one white, one blue, and one poop-colored, now embedded into his scales.
He had the Elemental Stones.
And we had nothing left to bargain with.
“Did you let Ikumi out, at least?” I blurted before I could stop myself, a small shred of hope still lingering inside me. If Ikumi was free she could get her father to send help. If she really was Hiro’s daughter, that was. And if she even cared what happened to us.…
But the dragon only gave a lazy smile. Of course not.
I heard my sister gasp as I rose to my feet to face the dragon. I knew I should be scared, but somehow I was only angry. It wasn’t fair. This was a game. It should follow rules. There should be a clear path to winning.
“But you promised!” I protested, stepping forward. My whole body was shaking, but I ignored it, squaring off with the deadly beast. “That was the reward for completing your quest!”
That was your quest reward, the dragon corrected. Not hers. She—she can never leave this game.
“Why not?” I demanded. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Lilli shaking her head violently from side to side, as if begging me to not argue with a creature who could simply end me with one breath. But I ignored her. I was done being lied to and manipulated by this game. I wanted answers. And I was not going to back down till I got them.
Atreus seemed to shrug. None of the game’s creatures are allowed to leave.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “She’s not one of the game’s creatures. She’s human. Like us. She’s just playing virtually, that’s all.”
Atreus’s mouth curved, as if he were in on a secret joke. Are you sure about that?
I faltered, my stomach dropping like a stone. Was I sure? I mean, I was sure she had told us she was human. But she had said a lot of things. And I had no way of knowing which of those things were true. What if she’d been lying to us all along—not just about being
Hiro’s daughter. But about everything else, too?
No. I shook my head. Ikumi was real. I knew she was. The way she looked at me, the way she laughed, the way the tears welled in her eyes when she was sad. The dragon was trying to trick me. To confuse me and upset me and make me unable to fight.
I wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Where is Derek?” I demanded. “Free him, then! He’s done nothing wrong!”
Atreus snorted, a plume of steam shooting from his snout, so hot it burned my skin. The little bard? he asked. But I do so enjoy his songs. It will be such a shame when I have to finally eat him. I wonder if he will taste musical, too.
That was it. With a yell of fury, I charged Atreus, sword raised and ready to swing. I got about halfway there before the dragon flicked his tail, sending it crashing down on a pile of gold and jewels. As if a bomb had gone off, the trinkets scattered across the temple like marbles. I tripped and crashed to the ground, dropping my sword in the process.
You should not have done that, Atreus growled.
“Oh I’ll do a lot more,” I snapped back, scrambling to my feet. “We will defeat you—one way or another.”
Atreus laughed again. Come, come, tiny human. You know as well as I that this will never happen. Now that I possess the Elemental Stones, even the makers themselves cannot take me down!
And with that he gave a mighty, booming cry—loud enough that I had to block my ears. There was a tremendous groan, and the chamber’s ceiling retracted, creaking open to reveal a wide passageway above, straight up and out of the mountain. The dragon shook out his wings, one by one, then locked his amber eyes on me.
Now if you’ll excuse me, he said, I have a reign of terror to begin.
I watched, helpless, as Atreus pushed off on his hind legs, launching himself into the air. “You’ll never get away with this!” I screamed after him.
He stopped, hovering above me, craning his neck to gaze back down. I probably looked like an ant to him from up there. A ridiculous, pathetic, angry ant.
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