Page 149 of Of Serpents and Ruins
This ended in death.
What other interpretation could there be?
It wasn’t as if that was just metaphorical. That vision had even held the sulfuric blue ring of lava at the Crest’s heart. Our choices were taking us deeper to the place where we would die. Didn't all choices simply bring us closer to death?
I glanced at Brandt as we continued, quickening my pace just enough to be near him. His charm had lightened a little more now. It had such an ominous glow. The urge to slip forward and tuck my hand in his thrust itself forward, but I stilled it. We both had to focus. I couldn’t distract him.
He glanced back at me, his arm reaching back.
In that breath, his thumb brushed down the back of my hand. A small smile curled at his lips when my gaze caught his. A sad smile. A smile that said so much. I wanted to tell him another joke, but I couldn’t think of one. All my humor had evaporated.
Lava bubbled menacingly below, threatening to pop and bubble up at any moment, sometimes less than ten feet away. The ceiling above groaned as the ground rumbled. Over on the far side, a stalactite broke free and plunged into the molten rock. A fine arc of lava sprayed into the air, striking the walls.
I cringed inwardly.
Kine gave my arm a light squeeze. "It’s all right, Bug," he whispered. "It’ll all work out. You’re gonna make it."
I glanced at him gratefully. "You will too."
His brow pinched as if he intended to contradict me. Then he shook his head and motioned for me to keep pace, indicating the narrowing of the path ahead.
Everything in me tightened. Fear sliced through my mind. This was it. That archway was barely big enough for a parasaur to slip through, and on the other side lay the heart. Despite the sweat rolling down my neck, my blood went cold. I reached back to place my hand on Buttercup’s snout.
Another deep breath and we passed beneath the arch.
The air became electric.
As ominous and uneasy as the air of the beach had been, this was a thousand times worse.
My skin prickled as I took in everything I could.
This chamber was easily the size of the great hall in the palace, the ceiling arching so high above it disappeared in the darkness. The black walls gleamed and glowed with the pulsing red-yellow of the lava below. The stone smoothed out here, straight and even, like a platform. The rock floor fell away at intervals, with islands of rock on narrow columns of stone scattered throughout. Stalactites stabbed down at intervals, some easily twenty and thirty feet long. Perhaps longer.
An almost oppressive silence crushed down on us, stirred only by the hissing, bubbling pops of the lava in the chasm below.
And there it was.
A trap.
At the edge, before the tone cut off into a sheer drop of perhaps twenty-five feet or more, stood a stone table. Simple cut. Grey. Pitted and streaked with other minerals. A Goblet that was easily longer than my forearm rested next to an axe that was almost the proper size for Arjax. The other two talismans.
As if we would just run up there, grab them, and attempt to start our own ritual.
We all halted.
Not one word had to be said. It was so obvious it was insulting.
Brandt set his arms akimbo then glanced about. His gaze narrowed. He strode forward, steps heavy, boots crunching over the heated stone. "Enough of these games, Gola Resh," he thundered.
A harsh but playful voice grated out of the air. "I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed you didn’t just kill the arch general on the beach. It would have been amusing, and then we could have seen you suffer even more. I was really hoping they’d turn on you."
Like a shadow falling away, the Gola Resh appeared before the stone table. Her form was easily more than twelve feet now. Her eyes blazed orange and green, the colors swirling and melding together at points and yet at their most extreme always maintaining their distinctness. Those same flickers of color danced along the edges of her dripping form. Long claws hooked from her arms. Power pulsed from her, like a chest-vibrating bass. Her features remained distorted unless she turned in profile. A dark-grey veil seemed to hang over her. It stirred in all the wrong directions, as if displaced by winds we could not feel.
"Still," the Gola Resh said with a dark chuckle. "There’s plenty of suffering to go around." Her gaze dropped to one of the stone columns.
"Your inner court was difficult to infiltrate. But it doesn’t matter now." Elias strode out from behind a pillar, confident. He wore black-and-red robes as if he were still representing his people. He walked like a commander of nations, his shoulders thrown back, chin tilted up. His cold dark-blue eyes took us in. "All draws to a close," he said as calmly as if observing the weather, "and the Gola Resh has still allowed her mercy to be obtained."
My hands balled into fists instinctively. How dare he stand there and lecture us! Angry words sprang to my mouth but died as the air shimmered.
