Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (45 page)

I grabbed Zed's arm and drug him away from it.
 

The team moved with me, each of us scanning our surroundings in a different direction so nothing snuck up while we were distracted.
 

The cocoon unfolded, and an ancient looking old man emerged from within, hanging from his head, which sprouted brightly colored feathers in lieu of hair.
 

He dropped to the sand with a
pop
, and steadied himself with a cane. His back bent like the curve of a fruit-laden tree branch, and he smiled at us kindly out of a face with no unwrinkled spot.

"Hello, children. I see that you are all here, and appear to be ready."
 

At least it wasn't an Intelligence type Trial. From all our combined experiences, the Intelligence types never had Moderators.
 

When there was no response, he continued. "Very well then. That volcano," he pointed with his cane, "is about to erupt. To win the Trial, you need to capture some of the fire and bring it back to me. Inside the Cube are the containers for that. Everyone please take one. And be quick about it. We don't have much time."

He continued to speak as the Cube doled out clear glass bulbs. "Point the end toward some of the flame and snap the seal. It will suck inward and seal the fire within."
 

"Is that all?" someone asked.
 

His eyebrows drooped over his eyes, along with the feathers on his head. "You must survive, too. That is enough."
 

The ground gave a rolling heave, and a booming wave of sound followed, forceful enough to almost knock me off my feet. The clouds around the mountain were writhing, but I still couldn't see above them to the tip of the volcano.
 

The feather-headed old man reached upward with is cane and prodded the tip of the leaf-cocoon.
 

It reached down and wrapped around his body, then drew upward along with the other branches and shrank in close to the trunk. It shivered, then settled, color changing to a dark gray that spread out from the trunk to the tips of the cocoons.
 

One of the Players rapped their knuckles on the tree. "Stone," they announced.
 

All around us, the other trees started to pull their limbs in close and do the same.
 

Adam ran to one of the cocoons and patted on it, trying to get it to open, but it pulled away unconcerned and stiffened as its color leached away. He turned to me and shook his head in futility.
 

Something started to fall through the clouds. Something flickering dark and light, and heading our way.
 

"Uh oh," Jacky croaked.
 

"Fire," I said. In my dream, the land for miles and miles had been covered, cleansed by the flame. "There's no outrunning it."
 

I looked to Zed, whose eyes reflected the light of the flickering sky. I willed the panic down and started doing mental calculations. In less than two minutes the fire would reach the ground. Since there was no way to escape the mountain’s spewing wrath, we needed a way to weather through it.
 

The trees around us curled up and turned to stone in ever widening ripples. “Find us a place to take shelter,” I snapped to the group, already racing toward the still-green trees. If the Moderator was hiding in one, I knew they could keep us safe. I launched myself at the side of the tree, used my momentum to take a few more steps upward, and grabbed one of the folded green leaves. With a firm grip, I use gravity and my feet pressing against the trunk to rip the leaf off. It ripped away from the stem with a milky white spray and started to calcify even as I fell to the ground. Once it was hardened I couldn’t unfold it, and I tossed the useless thing to the ground in frustration.

I repeated the process, but this time snapped the leaf as if I was airing out a dirty rug before the gray spread through it. It straightened and hardened in that position, a makeshift leaf umbrella against the coming firestorm. I dropped the stone leaf at my feet and moved on to the next green tree. When I’d used up as much time as I could, I turned and sprinted back to the others, snatching up the huge leaves I’d harvested as I ran.

 
I pulled up a map Window through my Command Skill and followed the moving dots on it to the rest of the team. Adam was leading the others over the lake, across the sparse sandbars rippling a path through its depths, toward a large rock jutting diagonally out of the water. I followed them out into the deeper water, each lunging step splashing the crystal clear liquid up and out.

Zed looked back to see me, relief loosening his face.

 
A dark shadow moved across the water in the corner of my eye and drew my alarm. “There’s…something in the water,” I screamed, gasping for air.
 

They immediately started to move faster, but the resistance of the water impeded their movements, while the shadow raced toward them. They would not arrive quickly enough.

My heart crashed around in my chest, and the sick feeling of fear and helplessness made me want to scream. I pushed myself harder and started to catch up with the group, but I knew the creature, slicing toward them like a bullet, would reach them first.

I threw the leaves like Frisbees towards the rocky overhang, slipped off my pack and hurled that, too, and then turned to intercept the creature. I inserted myself between the team and the approaching monster with only seconds to spare and jumped as hard as I could. I blocked off everything in my mind but the monster. My body twisted in the air and I brought my clawed left hand down first, thrusting into the water as the monster passed beneath me.

I caught a glimpse of the legged, spiky-spined shark in the second before I thrust my hand into the lake and hooked my claws into it. They tore through its thick, rubbery skin, just behind the head, and continued tear as its momentum forced my hand along the body. I realized it was going to rip itself free in a frenzy of pain and anger, so I curled my clawed fingers inside even harder and wrenched, swinging my other arm around. That hand slammed into it right above the tail, and then we were both under the water, and it was thrashing around with a strength I had no hope to match.

My claws ripped free, and I saw only huge, curved teeth in the opening of its tube-like throat before it was on me. I sliced my pointed fingers through the water as quickly as I could, and slammed my right hand into its jaw right behind the mouth to throw off its toothy aim. With the other hand, I raked across its murky black eyes, slicing them open.

It tried to get away then, but I dug the fingers of my right hand in even farther, far enough to clench them together on the inside of its throat cavity. If it left, it was taking me with it.

With my left hand, I continued to thrust, holding my hand and fingers straight and compact like I was going to karate chop it, but using my claws like daggers. They allowed me to pierce easily, and I did so, again and again, stabbing indiscriminately.

The volcanic fire started to hit the top of the water and fall down, un-dampened by the liquid. A piece hit the creature’s torso and evaporated some of its flesh into a flashing, dark mist. I prayed none fell on me, because I was too busy fighting the monster to focus on anything else.
 

My lungs burned and my arms weakened from lack of oxygen, but the creature finally slowed, having lost too much blood to continue. I ignored my exhaustion and searched desperately for the surface of the water, disorientated after the shark’s mad, blind flight. Luckily, we were close. If not, I’m not sure I would have made it.

I burst through the surface with a gasp, and only after a few breaths of air cleared the blackness from my eyes did I realize I was still holding the huge creature in a death grip with my right hand.

Blood dyed the water, splashing into my face and rolling over my head as the fire rained down, all around me. If these creatures were anything like the sharks of Earth, others would come soon, and I knew I didn’t have the strength to fight them. If I didn’t get incinerated first, that is. But as I tried to remove my forearm from the monster’s throat, I realized I was stuck. Somehow, the corpse had tightened around me, and something hard pressed together around my wrist. I couldn’t release my fist to make my hand small enough to slip through the entrance wound, and so the huge bleeding beacon was stuck to me.

With a single sob of exhaustion, I started trying to swim back to the rock overhang with one arm, dragging the shark like monster. Water kept finding its way into my mouth and nose as I struggled to stay afloat.

I heard indistinguishable shouting on the shore, and then Adam calling out to me. I looked blearily upward to Jacky holding a huge length of rope in her arm. I was too winded to shout acknowledgment, but she threw it anyway, spinning her body and releasing the rope so that it flew in a wide arc through the air, unwinding as it went.

It landed in the water not far from me, and I grabbed on with just enough time to wrap the loop around my shoulders before they started hauling me forward. I sliced through the water, the rope never losing tautness, and was soon being grabbed by the hands of my team.
 

I coughed, spitting up some water, and then collapsed onto the warm sand beneath me. Someone grabbed me and drug me, shark and all, under the protection of the jutting rock and hardened leaves.
 

Behind me, I heard the wet sounds of slashing and stabbing, the evidence of my team fighting the monsters that had followed me.
 

After a while, the fighting died down and I regained some of my energy.

Adam leaned over me and pried at the flesh gripping my right hand. He let out a shuddering laugh. "I thought you'd lost the arm, because you weren't using it to swim. I thought…" he trailed off.

I smiled weakly. "No worries. My arms don't come off that easily."

Jacky knelt beside me and gave me a quick visual inspection, letting out a sigh of relief only when she didn't find any wounds. "You are
loca
. We thought for sure…” she stopped herself. “You were under for a long time."

"I'm just glad you guys kept an eye out for me. If you'd given me up for shark bait, I don't know if I'd have made it back."
 

She scowled. "You’d definitely be dead, stupid. If not for me and my crazy good tug-o’-war skills, no?" She sniffed and pursed her lips.
 

"Thank you. Now stop bragging," I said, giving her a light smack on the arm.
 

Zed finished helping Sam use the rock leaves to create a barrier around the opening of the scoop-cave we were all huddled in. He knelt beside me, his dark eyebrows pulled down in a horrible scowl. But when he saw me lying there, his eyes started to fill with liquid.

I frowned and shook my head. "Zed, everything's fine. It's okay. This is no big deal, I promise. I've dealt with much worse."

He shook his head and bit his lip hard, as he worked to push down the tears. "Is this…what you've been doing? Stuff like this, is what you've been going through?"
 

Adam cut away the shark that was gripping my hand, and gently slid the appendage out of the carcass.

I flexed my stiff fingers and muttered, "Thanks," then turned to Zed. "This is why I didn't want you involved. This Game runs on fear and death. But if one of the team needs help, we help. Like I helped stop the monster, and everybody helped me just now."

He pressed his lips together and clenched his jaw.

"Are you hurt?" Sam asked. "Do you need my help?"

"I'm fine, just a little winded," I said.

When I stood up, Jacky gave a whooping cheer and flipped the bird outward, to everything that was making our little makeshift hiding place quiver and shake.
 

We stayed huddled up under the rock as the world rumbled around us for what seemed like hours. Finally, things seemed to settle down and I tentatively shifted one of the leaves covering the opening and looked out.

Fire no longer fell from the sky, so I removed the leaf and crawled out, climbing up the rock for a higher vantage point. Except for the large landmarks like the mountain and the water down below, the landscape was completely different.

The lakes had spread and changed shape, and the greenery on the shore sprung from the sand, a riot of brightly colored blooms sprinkled among the transformed vegetation. The only things that were the same were the cocoon trees that had turned to stone. Mist from the mountaintop was quickly spreading to create dark clouds, but for the moment the sand sparkled clear and bright, reflecting light from the water and the sun. Here and there, patches of dark flame shone, rippling shadows as they burned a new land into existence.

Chapter 32

Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,--/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross.
 

― John Milton

We hurried to grab samples of the last of the flames before they burned themselves out, and brought them back to the feather-headed Moderator, who had survived, protected by the stone trees.
 

He took the bulbs from us and secured them in a padded briefcase. "It gladdens my heart to see you alive," he said. "May your strength lead you on." He turned and walked into the trees and sprawling bushes till his hunched form disappeared from sight.

The Cube popped up with its usual message.

DO YOU WISH TO RETURN FROM THE TRIAL?

YES
NO

I stepped forward, a shaking finger hovering over the cube surface. I pressed, "No,” and let out a breath.

IF YOU DO NOT RETURN NOW, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO UNTIL THE NEXT ALIGNMENT. ARE YOU SURE?