Page 153 of Of Serpents and Ruins
Stretching out my hand, I approached the table. Kine followed, concern etched in his features, spear still gripped tight. The air started to change once I was within a foot. Not a heat. But an energy of sorts. It shimmered and danced like heat waves, only sharper and more electric. "No one touch the talismans!"
The Gola Resh cackled. She looped over the lava and spread her arms again. "Oh-oh, what did you find, children?" Her eyes rolled up, and she started to chant.
"Tile!" I shouted, gesturing for him to come close.
The flame-haired council member slid out from the center of the circle and ran to me. His brow furrowed once he was within a foot of the table. "Something is wrong with this…" His palms turned up, his left hand started to shake once he was almost within touching distance of the axe.
Kine drew nearer as well, hovering his hand over the Goblet. He had almost grazed his palm over it when he jerked back. Blood streamed from his fingernails. He shook his head, falling back. His pupils enlarged, then shrunk. "Ihlkit!"
Tile gripped his own trembling hand. "Whoever picks these up will be drained of their life. Immediately. This won’t just require two though. If anyone actually touches these weapons, it will start leaping from person to person, draining their life."
"How many?" I demanded. My gaze snapped back to the Gola Resh. She was snarling and chanting, her eyes rolled back. The cavern trembled. Silt fell from the ceiling. "Is there any way to counter it?"
"A moment," Tile murmured, hand thrust in his thick hair. "Give me a moment."
The Gola Resh's voice echoed through the cavern, sending chills down my spine. Her body continued twisting and contorting. The air around us pulsed and vibrated, making my skin prickle as it washed over me.
Brandt dropped back into his human form, picked up a fallen enchanted spear, and slashed it downward. The other spear warriors stabbed and slashed downward as the archers rained down their arrows and bolts.
Tile's eyes remained closed in concentration as he held his hands over the weapons, assessing the spell. The blood welled along his fingernails.
Small hills formed across the rock floor. Spiderwebbing cracks fractured out as small puffs of dust and air shot up. Brandt commanded everyone to prepare. The warriors surrounding the arcanists swung their weapons into the ready position.
The Gola Resh continued to chant and sweep her arms through the air. The shadows that surrounded her intensified and twisted.
The small hills erupted. Bony claws and fragmented skeletons emerged.
I startled, my hand flying to the short sword.
Ragged skeletons thrust their way out of the ground. They dragged themselves up and out.
We were surrounded on all sides—lava monsters crawling up from below, undead rising around us, and the Gola Resh's magicpressing down. It was relentless. They just kept coming and coming.
The dinosaurs shrieked in fury, stomping the skeletons into the stone and crushing them into dust. Buttercup pounced on them, jumping on one as it came up like a fox on a mouse. Cracks split through the ground as more pressed up, grasping and clawing. The melee warriors hacked away at them while the archers focused their barrage on the lava creatures. If it wasn’t hopeless, it soon would be. We couldn’t waste any more time!
I turned back to him. "Tile, I’m sorry to rush you, but we’re running out of time here!"
The Gola Resh continued her demonic chanting, her body snaking in inhuman contortions.
"It’s going to take at least fifty lives," Tile said hoarsely. "She’s using the life energy to bring back the Babadon. They’re tied to the talismans now. Once the talismans are in the lava and she has the fifty lives, the Babadon can come back. He won’t be at full strength until the items are fully melted, which might take a little bit based on the metals that were used here. But this isn’t the only way she can get the lives she needs to bring the Babadon back. She can just start throwing people into the heart or some other equivalent."
"Can’t we just throw the reagents in after we get the weapons in and kill her before she does that?" Kine demanded. "We’ll just find a way to launch the table into the heart without touching the weapons. Then we get the reagents in before she can take fifty lives."
"Is there any way we can cut this off so she won’t claim fifty lives?" I demanded. She was fast. Any second now she might start swooping in, grabbing our people, and tossing them into the heart.
Tile shook his head. "Assuming any of us can leverage, launch, and aim a stone table with those talismans on it, we cantry, but if she gets those fifty lives in before we kill her, then she’ll have the Babadon back at full strength. Our ritual could only ever make them vulnerable to our attacks. It won’t kill them. We have to do that on our own." His voice grew even more sober. "If we play this wrong, we will destroy our forces here, strengthen her, restore the Babadon, and hand her the victory in a gold cup."
A fiend got past the melee warriors and charged us. Kine spun around, swung the spear, and knocked it off the edge in a clean swipe. Buttercup had moved away from me, leaping on another fiend. She thrashed and trampled with zeal, then butted three right off the edge. Baby girl hated those skeletons. They arced through the air until they disappeared in a fiery splash.
All the while the Gola Resh kept chanting. More and more fiends jolted up from the ground just as more lava creatures attacked the sides of the cliff. We were running out of time. Keeping up at this pace was barely enough to contain them as it was.
I circled the table, searching for some hole in the energy, some weakness we could exploit without triggering the deaths.
Kine grabbed Tile’s arm. "She poisoned the shifter rings to change the energy so she could absorb it. The Vawtrian energy in its original form was toxic to her. What if the reason she slowly siphoned it and changed the rings over time was because she was also changing it? She isn’t a shifter. Their magic isn’t natural to her. She would have to adapt it."
Tile’s eyes widened. "All our people who were lost in Taivren…those rings vanished. If she took that power…if she changed it in the same way…that means changing the talismans with the energy again might be enough to keep the Babadon from coming back."
The dread intensified within me as I fought against the despair of the visions. It was easier to destroy than create, butthe Gola Resh was still so far beyond us. There had to be a way. A choice. Something we could change.
