Chapter 14 #2
I really wish I hadn’t accidentally dropped our comms tablet when I was hanging upside down. “I wish we could check in on my friends.” A pang of loneliness and regret goes through me.
“I really hope they’re faring better than I am,” I say.
“You’re not faring so bad,” Zan says, patting me on the back. “But we really do need to get this puzzle together. Are you good at puzzles?”
“No,” I say, nearly on the verge of tears.
He looks at me, terrified, as one tear tracks out of my eye. The sand begins to fall quicker, and I brush it aside before it can congeal into muddy grit on my face.
One of the worms near me screeches, and I wince. “Oh, they have to have horrible little voices too. They couldn’t just be nasty little worms.”
“Well, you know, some worms are edible to some cultures,” Zan says slowly.
“Oh, absolutely not. That is revolting. I will not be eating these worms.”
“The worms are poisonous,” Ken’s voice echoes, and I clap my hands over my ears on instinct.
“Don’t eat them. I promise you. If you get out alive—which your odds are not very good, since you haven’t even started the puzzle yet and you currently have fifty minutes remaining on the clock.
You’ve spent ten of them being sad and staring and disgusted by the worms—I will provide you with a meal.
You can request whatever you like, and I will make it happen. ”
He waves his hand superciliously.
“But you only have fifty minutes, so you can either eat the worms and die a terrible death very quickly and then become worm food, or you can complete the puzzle and hopefully avoid being worm food as they grow. And you will be fed. Isn’t that fantastic?” Ken says.
“I liked it better when I couldn’t hear your voice.”
He simply turns back to what I’m starting to wonder is an imaginary camera ignoring us completely, other than glancing at us to narrate what we’re doing.
“All right, we’ve got to pick up the puzzle pieces,” I tell Zan.
“You don’t want to step on the worms,” he says. “That’s why you are in my arms.”
“Yeah, I know, but like, we can’t not get the puzzle pieces, so unless you can hold me and bend down to get them—”
“I cannot do that,” he says.
“What do you mean? Can’t you just—oh,” I say slowly.
He doesn’t have room to bend. The hourglass is tall enough for him to stand in, which he’s not even doing very well. We’re both stooped in a weird, awkward position that will likely leave us incredibly sore later, trying to avoid the sand and keep him from hitting his head on the glass ceiling.
“You don’t think we could just, like, break the glass, do you?”
“No, I do not think so. This is a special glass that they have in my world. It is not breakable.”
“Oh, fantastic. All right, so the only way out of this is if we solve the puzzle.” I hold up a finger. “Which means that we have to collect the puzzle from the worms.” I hold up another finger. “And we have to do it without running out of time or becoming worm food.”
“Or becoming worm food,” Ken’s voice chimes in again.
“Thank you so much for that, Ken,” I say. “Really appreciate your timing there, buddy. It’s great stuff.”
“Okay, so the worms are going to eat us. I don’t know how they’re going to do that, considering they’re the size of my pinky finger—”
I glance back down at them and quickly reassess the situation.
“They are, in fact, trying to eat my toes,” Zan says. “But I have a thick hide. You, however—”
He gives me a long look, and it’s full of fear. Fear that I haven’t seen on his face before. Probably because this isn’t a challenge he can fight his way out of.
We’re both fucking stuck.
“I’m delicate,” I say acidly. “Got it.”
Some of that rage starts to rear its ugly head again, and I wonder if maybe that’s not a bad thing.
“The worms are eating each other,” Zan says matter-of-factly.
“Sick,” I say, glancing down in spite of myself.
Sure enough, the little fuckers are cannibalizing each other and growing much faster. The sand is filling up too, so they’re getting harder and harder to see. And the glass pieces are disappearing in the onslaught, buried under the growing worm bodies and the sand itself.
“Shitballs,” I say.
“Exactly,” Zan says.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” I clap my hands together then immediately regret it as the sound echoes weirdly. “You’re going to dangle me, and I am going to grab as many pieces as I can.”
“Not as many as you can,” Zan corrects.
“Right,” I agree. “All the pieces.”
“Okay. I am going to dangle you,” he repeats.
“I don’t really like the way you say that,” I tell him. “I need you to be more confident.”
“I am going to dangle you over the worms that are eating each other and will likely eat us if we don’t solve this on time.”
“I don’t think that’s much better,” I tell him. “But it’s what we’ve got, all right? So hold me by my waist, and then—yep—”
I’m interrupted by the fact that Zan has already rearranged me.
“You’re really strong,” I tell him, slightly awed.
“Well, of course I am. I am a Draegon soldier,” he says, completely nonplussed.
“Right, okay, we’ll just—yep—if you can just—yep, right there.”
We wriggle around, and I try not to throw up, though I continue to gag and retch a little bit as the worms eat each other, growing bigger and bigger.
I dig through the sand, shoving pieces into the top of the fitted suit that I’m thanking my lucky stars I put on before I accidentally disintegrated our damned dome this morning.
“How many pieces is it?” I yell, hoping to get Ken’s attention.
“It feels like I have at least thirty pieces stuffed into my top, and while I used to think that I wanted bigger boobs, now that I’ve got some weight up there, I’m not so sure.
I’ve got a lot more respect for my friends with big ones now.
Although I guess theirs aren’t sandy and glass, otherwise that would be, like, super weird. ”
“You do realize you’re saying all of this out loud?” Zan asks.
“You know what? I’m doing whatever I can to not focus on the fact that these worms are starting to get really freaking huge.”
“Okay, there it is,” I say.
One of the worms latches onto my hand as I grab for one of the last puzzle pieces I can see.
“I really hope that’s all of them, otherwise you’re going to have to, like, kick around and find them with your toes,” I tell Zan.
I yank the piece up, the worm squealing, and I scream back at it, ignoring the fact that it’s drawn blood and throwing it against the glass wall.
It makes a thick, wet plopping noise as it hits squeaking as it slides down into the sand that’s now at Zan’s shins before disappearing from view.
“It bit you,” Zan says, his voice a low growl of fury the likes of which I haven’t heard before.
It sends a thrill of pure excitement through me.
“Well, yeah, that’s, I think, what they’re here for,” I say nonchalantly.
“It bit you,” he repeats.
With that, he pushes me up into the small aperture that leads to the top part of the hourglass.
“What are you doing? There’s no way I’m going to fit—”
He pushes one last time, leaving just my toes dangling through the opening.
“Okay, wait,” I say, realizing something. “I can give us more time if I do this.”
“That’s against the rules,” Ken says from outside, forgetting to do whatever it is that makes it so we can hear him clearly. But I can still make out the words.
And I grin at him.
“Well, you never told us the rules, did you? You just said that we had an hour to solve the puzzle according to the hourglass. Well, guess what, friend—the hourglass isn’t going to be an hour if I block it, is it?”
“That’s not fair,” Ken says.
“Well, what’s not fair is that you took over this whole damn operation from the people that were supposed to be running it. Whatever happened to them, by the way? I noticed we haven’t heard from them or about them since you did whatever you did. Maybe you want to tell your viewers that.”
“I’m going to block the sand!” I yell down to where Zan stands.
“I’m right here,” he says. “You don’t have to yell.”
He looks up at me, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “That is very brilliant of you, Lily.”
“Oh, well, thanks, Zan. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to do the puzzle, because I’m absolute shit at them while worms tear at your feet. Because I don’t think you can fit through here.”
“Does that mean that you’re going to show me your pretty little tits while I do it?”
“Absolutely not,” Ken’s voice booms inside the hourglass.
“Absolutely yes,” I tell Zan.
I tear at the neckline of the jumpsuit just enough so that I can reach in and grab out the pieces. “You’re going to have to figure out a way to—”
Zan manages to stretch out a wing at an awkward angle, making a table of sorts where he can arrange the puzzle.
The sand is pounding on my back as I block its exit toward the bottom of the hourglass, and frankly, I don’t even care.
“We’re going to call it a weird hot stone spa treatment,” I tell him. “Best massage of my life.”
“When we get out of here, I’ll give you the best massage of your life,” Zan says very seriously.
“Accepted,” I tell him with a laugh.
I wiggle a little bit, trying to get the rest of the pieces out. Zan stacks them neatly, sandworms writhing around his upper thighs now.
I hadn’t realized how quickly it had risen, and while I’m grateful that he pushed me up into the other section, I’m terrified for him.
“You better not let them bite your cock,” I say. “That’s mine.”
He’s so concentrated on the puzzle that he doesn’t answer me, just continues to place pieces as I hand them down.
I don’t pull out my boobs because, for one, I don’t want our so-called intergalactic audience to see them, and for two, I don’t want to distract him. I want to get out of this fucking hourglass before the sandworms decide that Zan’s feet are worth chewing on. Or worse, his balls.
“I was just getting to know his balls, and was getting very attached to them very quickly. It would be a shame for the sandworms to eat them.”