Stealing the Dragon’s Heart by Kiersten Fay

44

When the tile Caryn had indicated glowed as bright as a miniature sun the instant Onnika set foot on it, her whole body went tense with the anticipation of a fiery doom. She slammed her eyes shut and made a desperate plea to the gods. Do not let Aidan suffer over my death. Do not let it destroy him.

To her astonishment, death didn’t come.

She peeked down at her feet. Thought the tile remained glowing, it was dormant. No spewing flames ready to engulf her.

After exhaling a shaky breath, she glanced up at Caryn. “Okay, what now?”

“Step on the one adjacent to your left, wait no! My left. Your right.”

Onnika huffed in frustration. “You’re sure?” She pointed with her foot to the tile Caryn indicated.

“Yes, there.”

Filling her lungs with air, muttering another prayer, she moved forward and to the right. Again, the tile simply lit up. Relief coated her system. This might just work. She just needed to trust in Caryn and follow directions.

Caryn’s eyes fluttered closed briefly and she swayed on her feet.

“Caryn? Caryn!”

Her sister’s eyes flashed open, and she steadied herself. “I’m okay.”

Again, faint noises distracted Onnika for a moment. Banging sounds and…growling? She deduced The Gauntlet was made up of several internal compartments within the larger structure. The room they were currently in was closed off to the outside world, but she had no doubt the many race-hoppers, as well as the millions watching via the live feed, could see in, thanks to hidden cameras buried in the walls, or ceiling, or wherever else they could be planted, broadcasting throughout the universe. Two beautiful women bumbling around in a booby-trapped obstacle course, risking death or at the very least, maiming? That made for high entertainment. Everyone would be tuning in.

It felt strange to think that so many were currently watching her every move, some hoping for failure, others rooting for success, and all on the edges of their seats. To distract herself, she examined her surroundings more closely. The walls appeared to be made of the same stony material as the outer front entrance, with carvings of snarling creatures that, if real, would happily tear out one’s jugular and spit it back in their face. And an array of those same creatures had been painted over each tile’s surface.

“Now then,” Caryn continued, after swiping beads of perspiration from her forehead, “step to the one directly in front of you.”

Onnika complied, and this time she didn’t cringe as the tile lit up. Two more times, she followed Caryn’s directive. Once they were but a single tile from one another, they gingerly embraced. When they separated, Onnika took Caryn’s cheeks between her two palms and stared into her eyes—red and yellow veins had begun to invade the whites. The sight of it stabbed through her spine and up into her throat. “You can do this,” she choked out. “I believe in you.”

There was a slight quiver in Caryn’s lower lips, and her eyes began to glisten, but she simply squared her shoulders and nodded with an inner strength that Onnika wasn’t used to seeing in her sister. Pride bloomed in her chest, and she felt her own strength and determination rising to the fore.

It wasn’t until they’d made it to the opposite side of the room that a door began to creak open. She glanced back over their illuminated path and realized the key to success had been laid out in the carvings on the walls, which matched the designs on the tiles. Every tile they’d stepped on had been painted with the image of a creature that had its mouth closed. The open-mouthed tiles were the deadly ones. Had Caryn deduced that? Or was it purely her gift that had guided them?

Before she could ask, a baying from somewhere outside, or, gods forbid, beyond that open door, shivered the air around them. Was that Aidan, furious in his dragon form? Or was it some beast waiting in the next room eager to devour them?

By now Aidan and the others had to know what they were doing. She couldn’t fathom the level of his anger. She’d promised him she would stay out of trouble, and less than an hour later she’d broken her word.

Thankfully, no hungry beast greeted them beyond that door. Instead, a thin hallway lit by flaming torches led to a T section. They could go left, or they could go right. Onnika looked at Caryn, who was leaning against the wall, contemplating their options. Her breath was labored and short, and it was obvious the poison was eating its way through her.

Onnika thought she saw a shadow of something move across the ceiling, but when she glanced up, all she saw was dark stone crafted into perfectly arranged blocks. This place was starting to creep her out, and all she wanted was to get out. “Which way?” she asked.

Caryn pinched the bridge of her nose, as though suffering a sudden headache. “Maybe right?”

“Maybe?” She didn’t like the uncertainty in Caryn’s tone.

Standing straighter, Caryn nodded. “Right. I’m sure of it.”

Good enough for me.

Together they eased down the corridor, cautiously entering a room splashed by light. It was an almost clinical, sterile, gray box made of metal panels. If the room were to be flipped on its side, the only thing that would change was gravity. Behind them, several panels slid into place, seamlessly merging with the wall and making her question if there was ever a door there to begin with.

She couldn’t tell where the light came from. There were no obvious light sources. Perhaps each metal panel illuminated a soft glow that reflected off its counterparts in an eternal swapping and amplifying of photons. Of course, she couldn’t see any cameras, either, so maybe they were dealing with sophisticated illusions. She had the sense of being dropped into a fishbowl, swimming around aimlessly while outer beings poked at the glass and demanded she do tricks. Gods, she was sick of this race.

What terrors did this room hold? She and Caryn held still, waiting for a clue.

“What do we do?” Onnika eventually asked.

“I…” Caryn glanced around, seeming at a loss. She was subtly shaking as though racked with chills, even as a bead of perspiration crawled down her temple.

Suddenly the numbers three and zero flashed on the wall to their left. At the same time, a tiny sequence of eight or nine green lights fluttered past their feet, following the seams of the metal paneling, snakelike. Another series of lights appeared, this time red, darting past them and heading up the right wall and then fading out. Then the entire room exploded with color: reds, greens, blues, and purples slithered along the panels, taking random paths before dying about halfway up one of the three walls.

To their left, the number three changed to a two and the zero to a nine…then eight…seven.

“It’s a countdown!” Onnika exclaimed. Thirty seconds. Just thirty seconds to figure out this puzzle. She turned to Caryn, who looked drowsy and confused, and clamped her by the shoulders. “How do we get out of here?”

Caryn’s lids seemed to slide closed of their own accord, and her body listed. “Follow the lights.”

Onnika glanced at the clock: Twenty-one, nineteen, eighteen. Then at the lights: they were a kaleidoscope of color clashing at intersections and breaking apart.

A hissing sound had her hackles rising. Her gaze darted frantically. A fine grey mist began seeping from the ceiling, thickening like a dark cloud above them. “What is that?” she asked aloud, though she didn’t expect Caryn to know the answer. Seconds later, it became very clear what it was when breathing became a challenge. Little daggers sprouted in her lungs, and they both erupted into coughing fits. Poison! Caryn could handle no more. She wouldn’t survive.

Pulling Caryn low to the floor, they crawled to the center of the room. The clock flashed thirteen…twelve…eleven.

“How do we follow the lights?” she asked. “They’re all going in different directions.” The haze of poison inched lower, taking up nearly half the room. She felt more of it invade her every breath.

Caryn seemed dazed, hunched over, clutching her chest. “Do you remember home?” Her voice came out so grated and low Onnika nearly hadn’t heard.

After pointlessly trying to clear her lungs, Onnika replied, “Home? Caryn, focus! I need you here…now.”

“I miss it. All that lovely green. I’m so tired. I just wanted to go home.” Caryn’s head slumped to the floor, coughing and struggling for breath.

Eight…

Seven…

Six…

“Caryn! Please. Stay awake.” A serpent of green lights slinked between them, crawling to a spot on the floor and vanishing at an intersection of panels. Another trail of green lights vanished at the next intersection over, and yet another at the one above that. A fourth one made its way to where she guessed and she mentally drew a line, connecting all four endpoints together.

With only seconds left on the clock, Onnika dragged Caryn to the center of the panel and banged on it with all her might.

The toxic cloud sank closer, with only inches of breathable air remaining.

Three…

Two…

In a last-ditch effort, Onnika banged the butt of her fist onto all four corners where the lights had vanished—

Weightlessness came as a sudden and intense shock, and her brain didn’t comprehend what was happening until the moment her body met with a hard, uneven surface. The impact blasted the air from her lungs, and she spent the next several seconds gasping painfully. For a moment, she knew only pain and the urgency to get her bearings fast before the next hellish trap was tripped. She blinked several times to clear the sizzling sparks from her vision. High above, there was a bright square of light that her dazed mind had briefly mistaken for a sun. When that light began to dim, being cut off by a panel sliding into place, she realized it was the hole they’d fallen through; the light was filtering in from the poison room. Then she was gazing up at nothing but a dark, cavernous ceiling ornamented with reddish-brown stalactites. She rolled to her side, fighting her dry heaves, the poison in her system slowly abating.

She could hear Caryn nearby, coughing as well. It was a blissful, beautiful sound, because it meant she was alive. She caught sight of Caryn in time to see her hack up something black. In this dim lighting, it could have been bile…or blood.

Eventually her own breath started to come easier. She waited another few seconds for her dizziness to wane, then, pushing onto her hip, she surveyed the rest of their surroundings. They seemed to be in a subterranean level of The Gauntlet. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought they were on another world entirely. The redolent scent of soil hung heavy in the air. The uneven walls and floor were dusted with red-tinted powdered clay that stained her skin and hair where it touched her. Large loops of roots ran in and out of the walls. Musical chirps of insects in the dark danced around the room. Flowers grew from cracks in the wall, their petals glowing with a deep, unnatural blue light. There were no doors or caves to wander through, or any obvious place where a door might open up for them.

Caryn sat up and wiped her damp forehead with the back of her hand, leaving behind a smudge of red-tinted soil. Onnika could not have been more proud when her sister pushed herself to stand and squared her shoulders once more as though ready for the next challenge. With a slight twinge in her right knee and left wrist, she rose, too, and then they waited for whatever would come next.