So when the bridge collapsed beneath them, Pi yelled at Ernie, "Grab us!"
Then Pi threw one of the last of her explosive seeds at Frank Orpheum. She didn't aim at him, because he surely had enchantments to protect himself. Instead she exploded the seed directly behind him. The concussive force threw him over the edge.
The vines wrapped around her midsection, redirecting her plummet towards the wall. The impact jarred her shoulders and cut up her hands, but she was alive. The four Harpers hung by vines on the crevasse wall.
"I can't hold much longer," said Ernie. "There's nothing to grip onto up there."
The vines slipped downward. Pi tried to grab the wall, but her hands were numb from the impact.
Before she could get another word out, the vines released them. Her scream was swallowed by the fall. She hit the ground a moment later. Hannah fell next to her, the skates slamming into her leg.
They'd landed on a ledge halfway down the crevasse. Everyone groaned around her, but otherwise seemed alive.
"Nice save, Ernie," she said.
"From the frying pan into the fire," said Hannah.
Pi peered over the edge. A faint bioluminescence revealed the bottom another forty feet below them. The silence was promising.
"We should climb out," said Aurie.
"No," countered Pi. "I think we have an opportunity. The bugs have spilled out of the caves to hunt. Falling down here probably saved us. There's no way we were going to get back to the portal at the fort. This place is probably mostly empty. We can take a few bugs at a time easily. If we find the queen, the portal should be nearby."
"I don't want to fight the queen," said Hannah.
"We don't have to," said Pi. "We only need to reach the portal. I'm sure we can figure out how to do that."
Aurie gave her a worried look. "What about Frank Orpheum? He did something that slowed his fall. I'm sure he survived. He's down here somewhere too."
"Let's not run into him then," said Pi.
Ernie had been exploring the little cave connected to the ledge. "Hey, there's a passage back here. Looks like it goes down towards the other areas."
"Let's get going. We have to reach the portal before the other bugs realize we're not up top and come home," said Pi.
As they went into the passage, their eyes adjusted to the dim light created by fungus.
When they reached the main passage, Aurie asked, "Which way?"
"Down, I think. The queen is usually at the bottom of the nest," said Pi.
The caves were brutally quiet. Occasionally, the echoes of chittering bugs moving somewhere nearby reached them, forcing them to take defensive postures. But after the noises receded, they realized the bugs had been in a different passage.
Pi heard other things too: water dripping, the controlled breathing of her companions, occasional foot scuffs, and unidentified noises that made the darkness more oppressive.
When they reached a crossroads that had multiple bridges of hardened saliva reaching across an empty space, guarded by a trio of enormous brute bugs, they huddled up to form a plan. The bridges went both up and down, leading into a network of passages.
"We can go straight down from here," said Pi.
"We just have to get past those brutes," said Hannah. "They have massively thick plates of armor. They look like tanks."
"We need to kill them quickly. So they can't warn the others," said Aurie.
"Kill them fast enough and they can't do a thing," added Ernie.
Pi held her hand out, showing two seeds remaining. "I was hoping to use these to help us get past the queen."
"Save them," said Aurie. "Too loud. I can take one with a solar spear."
"I could knock one off the bridge," said Hannah.
Pi and Ernie looked at each other. "I'm sure if we hit the last one with fire spears we can take it down."
When they were ready, Hannah strode onto the bridge, churning her legs to achieve a high speed in a short time. With the multiple layers of enchantments, she was up to ramming speed within a few strides.
Once the brute bugs noticed Hannah, the other Harpers stepped out of the darkness and readied their spears. They launched them at the bugs, two spears outshone by the third, which flew higher and harder through the empty space.
Before the brute bugs could react, Hannah was upon the first, slamming into it. The massive bug slipped over the edge, angular legs scraping at the bridge.
The spears hit together. Aurie's solar spear vaporized the body of a bug, a set of legs remaining like a crab leg buffet. Pi and Ernie's fire spears impacted the third, but failed to do more than scorch the outer armor.
"Shit," said Pi, readying a second spear.
But Aurie was faster, and as the bug raced away to warn the others, the second solar spear took it in the front, turning its head to ash.
"That was close," said Aurie.
A loud rattling sound went off. Far above them, a second trio of bugs rattled a chandelier of bones. The noises echoed throughout the complex.
"Run!" said Pi. "We have to get to the queen before they all arrive!"
They went down the ramp, skidding around corners, being careful not to fall over the sides. The bugs didn't believe in safety guarding it seemed.
When they reached the bottom, it was easier to see because the luminescent fungus covered everything and a faint mist hovered above the ground, collecting the ghostly light.
"It's like an underground graveyard," said Hannah.
No one could disagree. There was only one way to go, so they took it.
They stumbled onto a couple of bugs moving toward them, but destroyed them before anyone was in danger.
After a short passage, the way opened up into a massive chamber. A sea of squishy-looking yellow-brown eggs the size of basketballs covered the front half of the chamber, the mist floating between them, swirling from unseen breezes. Softer bugs moved amid the eggs. They lacked the armor of the others. An egg near the wall opened with a sickening suction sound. A creature the size of a large lobster climbed out of the egg into the arms of the soft nursery insect.
"This is worse than an underground graveyard," said Hannah. "This looks like—"
"Don't even say it. Don't. Even. Say it," said Aurie.
Beyond the eggs was an oppressive gloom. Pi's skin felt prickly just looking in that direction.
"The portal is back there," said Ernie. "I can feel it."
"So is the queen," said Pi.
They all nodded.
"Should we worry about those bugs over there?" asked Hannah, referring to the soft-skinned bugs.
"No," said Pi, "and be careful not to damage any eggs. The less we can enrage the queen, the better off we'll be."
Stepping between the eggs made Pi's skin crawl. She kept expecting one to explode open and a bug to latch onto her leg, or run up her face.
As they made their way through the eggs, the view of the queen became clear. The monstrous insectoid was hunched over a pile of refuse, stuffing rotting plant material and other foul things into a maw that was the thing of nightmares. Her dread turned into full-fledged horror when she realized the queen was sitting on the portal.
No one knew what to do. They just stood there within fifty feet of their escape.
"We're screwed," said Hannah.
Movement out of the corner of her eye prompted Pi to throw the final two seeds. Frank Orpheum was moving through the eggs towards them. She never had a chance to make them explode as he mesmerized her with a wave of his hand.
The rest of the Harpers were entranced too, even Aurie, who had resisted his charms thus far. She was fighting against it as if she were being held by invisible chains.
"I can't hypnotize you," he said to Aurie. "But you're not immune to bug poison. I found one of the dead darters you killed and took one of its little poison barbs. It was a simple thing to poison you."
The queen shifted its enormous weight. It seemed to be realizing that they had entered the cham
ber.
"Yes," said Frank Orpheum. "The queen is stirring. Soon she will lumber over here and despite your efforts to resist, you will start destroying eggs, which will only draw her down upon you. While she snuffs out your little lives, I will reach the portal and escape this nightmare unharmed."
Frank turned his head towards the entrance. Bugs were arriving. Even if he didn't bring the queen down on them, the others would kill them. Only their fear of injuring eggs kept them from streaming into the room. The first bugs took tentative steps into the room, moving carefully around the eggs.
"I'm very sorry," said Frank Orpheum. "Our time together is at an end."
He waved his hand and Hannah stooped down. She wrestled an egg from the floor. Creamy goo coated her arms as she lifted it above her head.
The queen lurched forward, drawn by the threat to her brood. With tears in her eyes, Hannah threw the egg to splatter against the ground, and a half-formed insect spilled out against the ground.
The queen mashed her mandibles together, the cacophony of sound almost deafening in the small space. She made ponderous steps towards them, dragging her bulk across the floor while the four of them made no move, frozen in place by charms and poison.
Pi fought against the spell, but could not move her arms or legs. There would be no getting away from the queen. When she was almost upon them, Pi took one last look at Frank Orpheum, who crept around the other way.
Remembering the unexploded seeds, Pi concentrated, hoping she could trigger them through his hypnotism. When the first seed exploded on the other side of Frank, throwing egg slime in all directions, everyone froze. The queen turned her enormous head towards Orpheum, suddenly aware that he was there.
Using the distraction, Pi exploded the second seed, which was only a few feet behind the theater patron. This enraged the queen. Frank Orpheum started running the other way around, hoping to slip past to the portal, but she was faster.
He waved his hand and created the illusion of a soft-skinned nursery bug overtop of himself. Pi couldn't tell the difference, and had to look a second time, only knowing it was Frank Orpheum by his location.
But the bugs were immune to illusions. Rigel Yamaguchi had taught them that.
The queen rose above Frank Orpheum and brought her bulk down upon him, turning him into mulch. With him dead, the charms evaporated. Hannah threw Aurie over her shoulder in a fireman's carry.
They hurried towards the portal as bugs from the entrance dashed after. After climbing over refuse and bug offal, they reached the cube of obsidian, collectively placed their hands against the cool surface, and activated it.
The last thing Pi saw before she was teleported back into her home realm was a sea of bugs climbing over themselves to annihilate her.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The sheer whiteness of the portal room was soothing in ways Aurie had never considered. Cradled in Hannah's arms as poison coursed through her veins, Aurie relished the simplicity of the blank room.
Using a simple spell, Pi was able to cleanse the poison from her veins, allowing her to stand on her own.
No one spoke for a while. They sat in the room, careful not to touch the portal even though they knew it was dormant, quietly reflecting on how near they'd been to death.
Hannah stood up and announced, "I need chocolate." They followed her back to the waiting room.
Ernie was digging through the refrigerator when Pi said, "Uhm, hey guys. Check out the scoreboard."
The first thing Aurie noticed was that none of the scores were blinking, which meant everyone had finished their final attempt. Then she searched the bottom half of the lists for the Harpers' score. It didn't occur to her to look at the top until she heard Hannah laughing.
There, at the top, one spot above The Indigo Sisters, with a score of 125,781, were the Harpers.
"We won?" asked Aurie, not because she was completely surprised, but because she was still recovering from the horror of escaping the queen. Since they hadn't killed her, Aurie had assumed they hadn't won.
When the scoreboard split in half, it startled the whole group. They shared nervous laughter as the wall became a passage.
With shrugs and clutching cold energy potions, the four of them trod forward. They walked for a good two minutes down a featureless hallway. Aurie kept checking behind them to make sure the door hadn't closed. She knew it'd take a while to get over the whole bug thing.
A stone archway signaled the end of the passage. In a small room, a chest the size of a steamer trunk waited for them.
"Should we check for traps first?" asked Hannah with a grin.
"I think we're okay on this one," said Aurie. "You do the honors, Pi. You deserve it."
When the lid flipped open, the small room glistened in the reflections of gold. Overwhelming gold. Coins, a pile of them, filled the space. There were other items in the huge chest, but Aurie could only really see the gold.
"Holy balls," uttered Hannah. "I can buy a lot of gaming books with that."
"You can buy all the gaming books with that," said Pi.
With the revelations of sudden wealth behind them, the Harpers examined the items. There were six magical trinkets inside the trunk: a stylish black leather jacket, a music box, a fancy screwdriver, a necklace made of seashells, a pair of bracelets, and a runed knife.
Pi pulled the leather jacket out, looking hopefully at the others. "Can I has?"
After everyone nodded, Pi slipped it on. At first, Aurie had thought it too big, but it seemed to conform to her form. Pi walked away, examining the inner pockets, eyes alight with wonder.
Hannah went right for the screwdriver. As she yanked it out, she said, "It's a Universal Tool. I can build anything with it."
Ernie poked at the music box, then the bracelets before settling on the runed knife. Once his fingers touched it, his face lit up. He tucked it into his belt without a word.
After a little experimentation, Aurie determined that the bracelets provided magical protections to a variety of dangers. They seemed to be the most normal of trinkets when compared to the others, though they made up for it in strength of enchantment.
The seashell necklace initially proved impervious to her investigations until she put it on and asked Pi if she noticed anything different about her. Pi had been on the other side of the room and immediately spun around.
"I totally heard you speak inside my head," said Pi.
Aurie tried it again, this time mumbling subvocally, "There's a bug behind you."
When Pi reflexively glanced backwards, she knew it had worked.
"Not funny, sis."
Aurie put the necklace back and tried the music box. It was ornate with a winding handle on the back. She flipped it open to find a dancing faerie wearing a leafy crown. After a couple of spins of the handle, the tiny doll danced while ethereal music filled the air.
The notes were played on instruments Aurie had never heard before. She was so entranced that she didn't notice the song was over until the silence crept back in.
"That was magical," said Ernie.
Everyone looked at their limbs as if they were different after listening.
"I feel better now," said Pi. "My hands don't hurt from slamming into the cliff."
Hannah pulled back her sleeve. "The scar from the thorn is almost gone."
Aurie hugged the music box. "I think this will be perfect for the clinic."
When it came to the final two items, Aurie thought there would be a big debate, but Ernie and Hannah said they had no interest in them. So Aurie took the necklace while Pi took the bracelets.
"We'll split the gold five ways," said Aurie after the trinkets were given out.
"Five?" asked Hannah.
"Rigel's mom should get a share. It's only fair," said Aurie.
Everyone nodded in agreement. It wouldn't bring back her son, but it would at least give her a measure of comfort.
After collecting their gold, they left the Spire. Aurie and Pi went stra
ight to the bank. There was a bit of controversy when they showed up with a bucket full of gold coins, but eventually the Hundred Halls was contacted. The bank manager had thought the coins stolen, but once that was cleared up, Aurie and Pi were treated like royalty.
With the gold in the bank, they headed back to Arcanium.
"What are you going to do with yours?" asked Aurie.
"Pay for tuition, obviously," said Pi. "But after that, I'm not sure. It wasn't as much as I thought, but it means we're not poor anymore. What about you?"
"The clinic," said Aurie. "With Frank Orpheum gone, the district has a chance of rebounding."
Pi had a funny look on her face.
"What?" Aurie asked.
"You remember what Frank Orpheum said about Priyanka?" asked Pi.
"Yeah," said Aurie. "He'd hypnotized her."
"What does that mean? You know, since she was Raz," said Pi.
Aurie frowned. "I don't know. Maybe nothing."
"What about Zayn?" asked Pi.
"Who knows? He's graduating in a week. He was never really that forthcoming about anything outside of here. I have no idea what he's going to do. As far as I'm concerned, I'll never see him again," said Aurie, remembering the last time they'd spoken.
They walked toward the Red Line train station. Aurie carried the music box under her arm. It was quiet in the city, and the nightmare of the bug planet was fading behind them. Besides, they had finals to study for. A student's work was never done.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The clinic bustled with activity. Since Aurie had opened it two weeks ago, the number of patients had increased each day. Eventually, she'd have to modify the old dress shop. She was using the changing stations along the wall as the visiting rooms, but they didn't give as much privacy as she would like.
She'd just finished speaking with the parents of a little girl with pigtails and aquamarine scales across her body who had contracted a fungus on her lower legs. Aurie had taken samples and promised them a solution in a few days.
As they left, Aurie made notes about the fungus. Pi could make her a book on the subject to eat. Her sister had been busy working for Radoslav, though in the downtimes, she made edible books for Aurie. There were so many things she didn't know, but she was learning every day. The only problem was that medical texts on non-humans were rather sparse. They were clearly an underserved minority, a problem she hoped to fix.
Web of Lies (The Hundred Halls Book 2) Page 24