Chapter 26 #2
“Because the gods knew humans might need access one day?” Teyla guessed. “The friendly-to-humans gods? After all, the scroll talks about getting the orb from here if it’s needed. If that was an impossibility, they wouldn’t have listed it in what was essentially their repair manual, right?”
Another cold and ominous wind swept through, and something clicked in the back of the laboratory. As if a magical device had been activated?
Once Wreylith reached the end of the canyon, she banked to come back in their direction, this time flying low.
Her talons extended, and she swiped at the air twenty feet up, where those motes tickled Vorik’s vision.
Sparks appeared, and she jerked her limbs up to her chest, her wingbeats faltering.
She recovered quickly but roared in irritation.
On top of the pillar, Agrevlari stood, as if he might fly over to investigate it himself, but then he turned, peering toward the distant mountains that they’d flown from that morning. Was the orange dragon returning? Agrevlari’s tail went out straight, tense.
“We might have company of some kind coming.” Vorik doubted the playful orange dragon would have made Agrevlari tense. Nor, if ally stormer dragons were on the way, would he be worried.
“Of some kind?” Syla watched his face.
Maybe she was thinking about stormer dragons too—and that they wouldn’t be allies to her.
It was the Freeborn Faction dragons that concerned Vorik, though he couldn’t imagine why they would bother hunting him—them—down.
Unless Jhiton had threatened harm to their prisoners if Chieftess Atilya couldn’t produce Vorik.
Abruptly, Vorik wished he’d been able to send a message back with Wise. If Wise hadn’t been unconscious when he’d departed…
Another cold wind gusted from the back of the laboratory. It felt like something out of the arctic rather than this southern desert. A few clicks and a faint rumble sounded, whatever made the noise not yet visible. The crystal formations blocked the view of the distant back wall.
“Our more immediate problems are likely to come from that direction,” Vorik said.
Syla watched him for another moment, as if she were less certain of that, but then also faced that way.
“Let’s look for the orb.” Teyla brightened at the prospect of exploring.
Face grim, Syla pointed to Fel. “Stick with Teyla, Sergeant.”
“I’m your bodyguard, Your Highness.”
“I know, but I’ve got Vorik and his sword, and I need to keep an eye on him.”
Fel bared his teeth but surprisingly didn’t suggest that Vorik wouldn’t sufficiently protect her.
“I think you’re friends now,” Syla whispered to Vorik.
“We’ve battled together against great enemies,” Vorik murmured back.
“So, friends.”
“I think he’d still like to brain me with his mace, but I have more relationships with people who feel that way than you’d think.” He gave her a significant look.
“I don’t want to brain you.”
“No?”
“No. I wouldn’t mind cracking your brother and commanding officer on the head, but he hasn’t lingered in my orbit long enough for me to try.”
“I don’t think you would find that an easy thing to do. Even our best warriors don’t cross him.”
“There are times when I’ve wished you would fall off your dragon in the middle of the ocean and stop trying to thwart my plans.”
“Ah.”
“If you hit your head on a piece of driftwood when you landed, that might be all right.”
“Your adoration warms my heart.” It saddened Vorik that he had to keep vexing her. If only…
Apparently having no interest in their conversation, Teyla walked toward the marble bed without waiting to see if Fel accompanied her. Once again, she held her magnifying glass, and her pack, heavy with books inside, dangled off one shoulder.
“This looks like something the moon god would have made,” she said.
Probably more concerned with finding the orb, Syla waved toward the other side of the laboratory. A few objects glowed from niches carved into the wall and also sat upon the crystalline workstations.
Vorik walked that way with her, but he kept peering past the crystal formations, trying to spot whatever had made those noises.
Syla looked like she wanted to avoid it, but Vorik didn’t know if that would be possible.
Faint scratches floated out to them, like something scurrying across the hard floor.
Were there animals in here, after all? Or were most deterred by the tremendous need to mate that the flowers had instilled?
Those cactuses were such an unlikely item for the storm god to have planted. Vorik wondered if—
“Oh.”
Syla paused to look at him.
“We think that huge marble bed came later, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” Teyla called to them from where she crouched at its head. “It’s clearly the moon god’s work. There are glowing silver runes all over the back. It’s wonderful.”
“Maybe when the gods added the moon-mark to the pillar,” Syla said, “they brought that for… Well, we don’t know what it does. I’m sure it’s more than a spot to lie down and take a nap.”
“I’m going to find out soon,” Teyla declared. “I recognize some of these runes. You would too, Syla. There were some carved into the walls of your temple.”
“Do you think the special cactuses came later too?” Vorik glimpsed movement above.
Wreylith and Agrevlari were circling the area. Looking for them, though Agrevlari glanced toward the mountains more than once.
“Are you asking if the gods planted them?” Syla asked.
“The gods who don’t hate humans. Or animals or anyone. As a nonlethal way to keep them away from this place. For their own good.”
“That might be more of an earth god kind of thing. Prompting people to have orgies in order to save them.”
“People and rabbits.”
“Yes. It’s possible.” Syla gazed toward the back of the laboratory as another cold wind swept in from that direction. “Are we going to need saving soon?”
Vorik looked up again as the dragons stopped circling and flew at top speed back toward the pillar. Something was agitating them.
He flexed his hand around the hilt of his sword. “We might.”
Following the various glows of artifacts, Syla trod deeper into the laboratory.
Objects in niches looked like magical versions of the kinds of medical tools she would have enjoyed having in her collection, but she resisted the urge to touch things, suspecting booby-traps.
Given the warning on the scroll, she was surprised nothing deadly had yet sprung out at them.
The crystalline formations they passed glowed and hummed, emitting energy. Magic.
She didn’t yet see an orb, but it had to be here. She hoped.
Carrying the teal ore and the amphora was tiring, especially since the container wouldn’t fit in Syla’s pack.
When more scratching noises came from deeper in the laboratory and Vorik held up a finger, indicating she should wait while he checked on it, she decided to risk setting her belongings down by the bed.
Busy studying it and murmuring to herself, Teyla didn’t look like she would leave the area anytime soon.
And the dragons couldn’t get it, so it wasn’t as if Agrevlari would swoop down and take the items. Vorik…
She only had to worry about Vorik. And he was busy doing—
“Stay back,” Vorik barked as he sprang onto a chest-high crystal formation.
At first, Syla thought him yelling at whatever he’d spotted, but his glance in her direction promised the words were for her. Hisses responded to him, then clacks, like claws or talons on the floor. Many sets of them.
As Vorik crouched, sword poised, six-legged thigh-high creatures that looked like a cross between a cockroach and a Gila monster rushed into view down various aisles. Antennae wavered, long-slitted tongues darted out, and saliva—or was that venom?—glistened on sharp fangs.
Jaws snapped as the giant bug-lizards ran first toward Vorik. But some rushed toward the bed too.
“Climb up on the canopy,” Fel ordered Syla and Teyla, placing himself to block the creatures as Vorik sprang from his perch to land on the back of one of them.
The giant bug-lizard didn’t buckle under his weight, not even close. It swished a long, thick tail while using its antennae like whips to attempt to knock him off. He plunged his gargoyle-blade sword into its back, crunching through its scaled carapace.
Several creatures scurried toward the bed from different aisles.
Fel met the foremost one with his mace, slamming it down onto their foe’s broad head before it could bite him.
Syla pushed her pack up ahead of her and climbed a marble post. What she’d been thinking of as a canopy was rock-solid—marble-solid—but would it be high enough to keep them from the creatures’ reach?
Both lizards and insects could climb vertical objects…
As if to answer her question, one scurried up onto a wall to avoid Fel as it continued forward. Like a spider, it wasn’t disturbed by gravity. Its tongue flicked out, and it hissed as its beady black eyes locked onto Syla.
The unnerving steadiness of its gaze as it looked at her was disturbing. A lot of them were looking at her. Even a pair that Vorik had intercepted, forcing them to deal with him, darted glances toward Syla.
At the base of the bed, Fel’s mundane mace smashed into more creatures, knocking them back if he hit hard enough, but it didn’t break through their scales or stop them.
Atop the sturdy marble canopy, Syla and Teyla crouched, not certain how to help. From their elevated perch, they could see past the crystalline formations and tell that dozens of the bug-lizards were heading in their direction. Syla wished she had explosives she could throw at them.
A huge gust of wind battered at her, stronger than any that had yet blown through the laboratory. Syla would have tumbled off the bed if she hadn’t grabbed onto one of the columns. It rose a couple of feet above the canopy, the top open to reveal it was hollow, like the barrel of a canon.