Chapter 14
14
W e pushed open the yellow door and stumbled through into a desert of brilliantly yellow-gold sand and a blazing sun that threw enough heat at us to immediately dry our clothes. As in…dry in seconds.
Once more we were shoved through, as if pushed by a giant hand. Or a grandmother who’d told us to get inside, hurry up, pie was ready.
Only this grandma was more likely to toss us in the oven and cook us up for dinner over feeding us pie.
I hit the sand, only to discover that it wasn’t sand at all. “It’s gold,” I scooped some up and hissed. “And it’s damn hot. Don’t let it touch your skin.”
“I don’t have shoes,” Kinkly said. “And my wings are exhausted.”
“I’ll carry you,” I said without hesitation.
She flew to me, the limp in her gait obvious. “You do realize I’m not as small as I was?”
“Sure, but you’re like a bird, all light bones,” I was betting on that, and to be fair I wasn’t wrong. But I could tell it wouldn’t be long before I’d need a break too.
“We’re going to go blind if we’re in here too long,” Robert said. “Squint as much as you can. Do your best not to look directly at anything.”
Anything. I glanced at him. “Seriously? How do we find the door then?”
“I think we should hang onto each other,” Corb said. He was looking more like himself, his body bulking up again. Maybe this little journey was proving to him that he had value when he wasn’t a complete and utter asshole.
“Not a bad idea.” Robert put himself in the lead, me in the middle, and then said to Corb, “You can hang onto Kinkly’s hand.”
Robert slipped his belt off and tucked the buckle into my hand. “There. Don’t let go.”
I nodded, and we started to walk. I knew in minutes that I would be dreaming of the Darkest Ocean, and I was right. What I wouldn’t give to turn around and dunk myself back into the ocean we’d just left. Dreaming of cold water and waves had me moving on autopilot.
“Shit!” Nancy yelled. “I can smell gungrotters! Get down, you need to hide!”
I didn’t ask him what a gungrotter was, didn’t really need to know, but… “Where the hell are we supposed to hide? There is nothing to hide behind!”
“Under the sand!”
“It’s not sand you idiot!” I snapped. “It’s gold, and it’s ducking hot! It’ll burn any exposed skin!”
“Hot and crispy, maybe, but you won’t be dead!” Nancy retorted.
Damn, I couldn’t argue with that. Kinkly jumped off me and immediately yelped, hopping and dancing. I dropped to my knees and dug at the sand, the skin on my hands screaming at me to stop touching the hot, shiny, tiny things. I grit my teeth and dug faster, found a sort of cooler section that was tolerable, grabbed Kinkly and all but threw her down into it. “I’ll be beside you.”
Whimpering, she pulled the sand back over herself until just her mouth was exposed to breathe.
I dug frantically for my own hole and dove into it as the ground around us began to shake, loosening the sand, sending it shimmying down the slight slope. I couldn’t even look to see if Corb and Robert had done what Nancy had said and hidden themselves.
I pulled the hot gold sand over my body and then lay there silently, holding my breath.
The beasts thundered past us, and as soon as the sound eased off, I sat up and shook the sand off my face, pushing it away as fast as I could.
Maybe a little too soon.
I came face to face with what looked like a woolly mammoth but was no bigger than Skeletor. Its bright white coat was thin, just a slick bit of hair covering the critter’s body and muscles.
“Hi?” I waved stupidly at the thing. It tipped its head and gave a tiny bleat. Maybe it was a baby?
Which would be bad, because if it was a baby, the big ones would be mighty huge.
Could we…ride it?
Its feet were massive dinner plates, and its horns swept from its lower jaw up and over its back so you could easily steer it.
The thought was ridiculous, especially considering how little experience I had riding anything. But I dug around in my hip bag and found what I was looking for.
A chocolate bar.
“Friend?” I peeled the bar and offered it to the beast. The critter opened its mouth and three tongues shot out, wrapped around the chocolate bar, and sucked it out of my fingers.
The second the chocolate hit its mouth, its eyes slid shut and a moan slipped out of it. A tiny, bleating moan. “Friend?” I whispered, then added, “Everyone, hurry up, I’ve got us a ride.”
And that’s how we ended up riding across the gold sand desert on the back of a critter that seemed not to mind packing us.
“I can’t believe you tamed it,” Nancy said for about the twentieth time. “I just can’t. I had no idea that it was even possible. They trample things to death! That’s their job, their sole purpose in life—”
I clamped my hand over my knife sheath, “Maybe they’re just hangry. You know, like the people in those chocolate bar commercials.”
The four of us were lined up on the critter’s back. Robert behind me, then Kinkly, and Corb at the very back.
I patted the critter’s head. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”
The little bleat was pathetic for a being so large, but it seemed happy. “Is there anything else we should be afraid of here?”
I asked the question knowing full well that there would be more things. Of course there would be, but what?
“Wyrms. Bravooks. People.” Nancy sighed. “The further in we go, the more the realms will fight you, trying to stop you from getting to the spirit realm.”
Robert’s hands flexed against my hips. “Wonderful.”
I shrugged. “Look, we’re making it, right?” I dared a look at my time piece. We were close to a third of the way through our time and not quite halfway through the realms. I bumped my heels against the critter’s muscular sides. It grunted, and its dinner plate feet plopped on the wicked sand faster than before. Even just a little faster was good for me.
To the left of us there was a spurt of flames and a river of lava opened up, spilling across the sand in our general direction. I grabbed the gungrotter’s horns and turned him away from that. No lava for us, thank you very much.
Here and there, the lava spurted up, melting the gold, turning the rivers into a blur of red, black and gold. Easy to see, and only a little better on the back of the critter, as he didn’t seem interested in getting close to the lava flows.
Score one for us.
I shaded my eyes and tried to see out across the flat surface. The slight hills weren’t even sand dunes exactly, more like speedbumps. As if someone was worried about people driving too fast through the flat, empty desert.
Frowning, I stared hard at the spot straight ahead of us, the gold sand speed bumps doing weird things to my vision. “Do you see that?”
Robert shaded his eyes. “Where?”
“Straight ahead…it looks like the sand is becoming an ocean of waves?” That didn’t seem right.
The critter under us suddenly stopped. It let out a pitiful bleat and turned to the right, picking up speed all by itself.
“Okay, this is not good!” Nancy yelped. “If the gungrotter is running, it must sense the presence of a wyrm! They eat gungrotters! Make it go faster! Faster!”
Make it go faster. “Like I hadn’t thought of that!” I snapped. Still, I drummed my heels against the critter’s sides again, hoping it would help.
The gungrotter picked up a slow trot, and it finally sunk in that, baby or not, this gungrotter had not been keeping up with its herd. It had no fight in it, and we’d just hopped on its back.
It was sick. Or injured.
“It’s bait!” Nancy yelled. “We need to get off its back!”
“And then be wyrm food?” Corb said.
“Or be burned by the sand again?” Kinkly yelped.
I totally got what they were saying. “We should ride it until we have to—”
“Arrrgg!” Nancy let out a bellow. “The wyrm breaches from below, like a shark, you numb nuts! There is no waiting it out! Get off! Getoffgetoffgetoff!”
Yup, that did it. I scrambled off, hit the sand, and immediately felt the heat soak through my leathers on my lower legs. But it was better than ending up in the belly of a monster that was after our ride.
“I feel bad for it,” I said as I watched the gungrotter trotting away, limping, bobbling as fast as it could.
“Don’t feel bad yet, you might be joining it! Keep moving!” Nancy yelped.
I spun as the sand behind us rose up toward us like a wave washing to shore. The sand wave slammed into us, throwing us toward the gungrotter, tumbling us through the hot sand as if there were an undertow to the desert.
I closed my mouth and eyes, even though I wanted to scream from the pain of the overheated gold. And again, I wished that I was back in the ocean realm. The Darkest Ocean was preferable to this place.
When I came to a rest, I was flat on my belly and the sound of bleating filled my ears. I pushed up so I could see.
The wyrm was a ridiculously long, big, whatever. It was easily the length of a football field, and about as thick around as a semi-truck trailer. The scales on its body were the same gold as the sand, making for a perfect camouflage.
The gungrotter shook as the wyrm wrapped itself around the lame critter’s back, more snake like than shark like. “You lied to get us off its back.”
Nancy grunted. “Either way, it would have killed you. I knew what would make you move faster.”
The gungrotter bellowed a pitiful bleat, and its sad eyes found me. And it bleated again, right at me this time.
“Don’t. You. Dare,” Nancy said. “It isn’t worth it!”
I started forward. “That gungrotter can help us get to the doorway. So tell me what the wyrm’s weakness is.”
Kinkly flew just to my left. “I agree. If we can save our ride, let’s do it.”
“Stupids. You’re all stupids,” Nancy spat out.
“Tell us, otherwise you’ll end up in the sand forever and ever,” Robert said. His face was burnt a bright, angry red in several spots. I was sure mine wasn’t much better.
“Lucifer’s balls!” Nancy yelled. “Fine. Fine. You need to stick it right in the eyeball, that will be the easiest, but even that isn’t going to be easy ! It’s only got one tiny eyeball in the front of its head. And it can swim both directions, like an earthworm, so you won’t have an easy time of telling which side to get.”
I jogged across the sand and stopped just a foot away from the circling wyrm. No time like the present to test Crash’s workmanship. I pulled the blade from its sheath and gave its scaly body an experimental jab.
I mean, we had to get its attention somehow, right?
Right.
The blade stuck in far easier than I’d expected, and because the wyrm had forward momentum, it opened itself up, like slicing down the length of a banana.
“What are you doing?” Nancy yelled. “I said to go for the eye!”
“I’m trying to get its attention!” I yelled back. “I don’t see an eye, do you, asshole?”
“I see nothing. You have me buried in the beast’s side!” he roared.
Fair.
Kinkly flew up above us as the wyrm began to slow, blood spilling out all over the sand, sizzling and stinking as it hit the hot metal. “I think…I think you’re killing it!”
My eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
“Shit!” Nancy screamed. “Watch out for the tail!”
The tail shot through the air, narrowly missed Kinkly, and slammed into the ground between me and Robert. I went flying upward, tumbling over and over, past Kinkly and landed on the golden sand at the gungrotter’s feet.
I sat up in time to see the wyrm sinking partway down into the sand, blood spilling out into the sand, sizzling like it had landed on a hot pan.
“Smells a bit fishy to me.” Kinkly grimaced as she flew closer, putting a hand on my shoulder to brace herself.
I looked around the desert. The sand wave rushing toward us was the perfect tip off. “Get on the gungrotter! It’s time to go!”
We bolted for our limping ride and the four of us leapt on. “Go, go! Toward a door, okay?” I yelled at the critter, patting the top of its head.
It let out a bleating bellow. I had no idea if it could understand me. Or if it even wanted to go, but he or she lurched forward and settled into a fast, bouncing jog that covered ground far faster than I would have.
I patted the critter’s head. “Thanks, friend!”
It bellowed its little bleat and bounced along. I looked over my shoulder as the wyrm’s body was dragged under the sand. “How long will that keep the others distracted do you think?”
Corb and Robert twisted around as the huge body disappeared with a loud burp. “Not long,” Corb said.
“Hate to agree with him on this, but yes, not long,” Nancy said.
Even as we watched, a wave of sand rolled in our direction.
“There, a door!” Robert blurted suddenly, “straight ahead!”
He was right. A pale door that looked kinda gray-ish against the backdrop of the golden sand had appeared in front of us, waiting as if it had always been there.
“Can he fit, do you think?” I asked. “The gungrotter?”
“WHAT?” Nancy screamed. “You want to take the gungrotter with you?”
“He’ll get eaten!” Kinkly screamed back. “We can’t leave him behind! He’s a good boy!”
“The door is too small,” Robert said. “There’s no way…never mind.”
Even as he spoke, the door adjusted, growing in size. I would take it as a sign. “Just run straight through it!” I patted his head again. “Fast as you can, friend!”
The gungrotter put its head down, let out its pitiful bellow, and charged the door. The wave of sand caught up to us from behind and threw us toward the door. I gritted my teeth, clinging to the curved horns of our critter, and closed my eyes as we slammed into and then through the door into the next realm.