Wraiths and Raiders, page 13
Koglim whistles. “I may know the dungeons like my dearest objects, but you sure know the history of Rimduum better than any bluelink channel.”
“Thanks,” Brig says. Everyone understands this to be the highest compliment Koglim could pay the kid.
The small area is so unlike other dungeons that I don’t even know where to start. There are no other doors, visible challenges, or enemies. “So, how do we find where Blackmug hid the key?”
Koglim strokes his chin. “Not sure about Blackmug’s key, but this challenge... I think I’ve seen it before. It’s ancient. Why is it that when Clayson comes into a dungeon, he pulls some ancient challenge out of nowhere? Cool, but tricky as spit. This one... it’s almost too simple.” Casting his eyes around the room, he taps his skull like it can call back a memory. “We’re looking for a small chest. Something you would use to hold ferrum before the vaults.”
“Okay,” Andalynn says. “A treasure hunt. The dungeon likely knows our purpose. Maybe if we find the box, it will lead to the key.”
Koglim says, “There could be multiple boxes.”
We fan out. I move to the kitchen, where a vat of steaming water rests embedded in the countertop. As we search, I’m careful to leave things in their place. The cupboard is stacked with silver pots and pans, but there're more items made from wood than I would expect in a Loamin cottage. Where did they get wood? Before the brightstorms, their cities contained no forests. Did they have to grow them one by one using tincraft?
The cupboard is stocked with jarred food and glass in so many colors I wonder if every craft is represented. A cornucopia of pale carrots, dark cabbage, and lumpy potatoes fills an entire shelf. Onions in braids and strips of dried meat hanging from the rafters. This is Erikzin’s childhood, and my dad would approve of the lifestyle—minus the craft.
A hand finds my shoulder. It’s Andalynn. “Strange, isn’t it?”
“Actually, no. Feels a bit like home.”
“Ha! I guessed you would say that.”
“Must have been a simpler time.”
Andalynn pulls down a blue jar of something thick, maybe jam. “People during this period had lower life expectancies than a typical Loamin today, forty at best. The brightstorms, modern leadcraft, and so many time-saving inventions... all helped to change that. Erikzin’s work was critical to the advancement of civilization.”
“And then someone discovered mithrium.”
“Yes, that was during his time.”
“It’s like I can see all the pieces are connected, but... I don’t know. Blackmug. The protodungeons. The brightstorms. The appearance of the mithrium. Vor working behind the scenes, pushing things into place.”
She sets the jam back on the shelf. “The day I met you in Gamgim, I... my life changed forever. I think everyone here can say the same thing.”
My mouth opens before my brain can construct a response. Can she mean that? “But—”
Andalynn smiles. “You may have knocked things into motion, but the world is built out of glass. The way the council hurts people, the way mob justice in Tungsten City hurts people. All of our systems have been overreactions to world events. But you look at something and say, ‘This way is right,’ and forge a new path.”
“Okay, but—”
“What I’m saying—Jeiah says this to me a lot—is that you see the world differently. Just”—this one word reveals how much she’s adopted Rugnus’ worldview— “know that you don’t have to take on the weight of the world.”
Brig takes this second to wriggle past us. “Excuse me.” He nudges everything out of place. The jars clink together. Apples spill out of a bag sitting on the shelf, thudding against the stone floor. “Ho! I’ve got it.”
Something scrapes against the stone shelf, then Brig lifts an item like a trophy, his smile gleaming as much as the gilded metalwork embellishing the box. Sneaking between us again, he sets it on the kitchen table. We all gather around.
Koglim shakes it like a mysterious gift and sets it back down, frowning. His hands glide over the surface of the box. “No lock.”
Rugnus tries next and shrugs. “Clear seam, but...”
“Think this through,” Jeiah says. “If Blackmug left behind a key, maybe he left this box, too. The dungeon is only presenting it to us. What made Blackmug unique?”
Brig picks up the idea. “He was the only other person we know of to see the mysterious Valley of Ide.”
Jeiah weighs this in her mind. “Right. Anything else.”
I point at Rugnus. “Rugnus is related somehow.”
Rugnus snaps. “And, he had Icho. Maybe...” He picks the box up and takes a deep breath like he’s steeling himself for something bad to happen.
Then he draws Icho.
The lights across the room—in the hearth, flickering in candles and lamps, even through the two slanted window boxes—fade into embers. The temperature drops.
In a pulse of darkness, Rugnus, Jeiah, and Brig disappear.
In the time it takes for Andalynn to reach for the place Rugnus was, something shakes the door.
Thud. Thud. THUD.
With the last loud smash, the yellow wood splinters. Koglim charges and drops the bar over the door. Koglim and I scramble to the windows. We both slide out a simple wedge that holds the window covering in place. One covering swings down. Koglim clamps it into place, but as I swing the second cover into place, something metallic slips through the crack before I can clamp it shut.
Koglim knocks me to the floor, forming a shield around me with his body.
One—the sound of the wind. Two—an ear-splitting tearing of wood. Three—Koglim’s teeth grinding together. And then silence.
Koglim rolls off. I pull myself to my knees. The right side of the room is covered in sand.
Andalynn helps me up, shouting, “Look out!”
I whirl around. One of Grimflail’s masks, dull and haunting, glimmers in the lamplight on the far side of the room, the side I failed to secure. It’s Rugnus’ mom, Rusela Whitechin. She charges Koglim without a sound, a jagged knife in her hand. It looks so much like Vor’s jagged sword I have no doubt he wanted us to see it.
She’s quick, but Mom is quicker, a streak of golden light. Rusela’s knife strikes downward, and Mom blocks it. Koglim grabs Rusela’s left arm while Mom uses her block to pivot and grab on, wrenching back the other arm at the wrist. The knife clatters to the floor. With an extended leg, Mom brings down our assailant. She reaches for the mask.
“No!” Koglim shouts. “If you take it off, it will kill her.”
He flips Rusela over and pins her down. Rusela struggles against him, but she makes no sound as if she feels nothing but the drive to kill us. I’m not certain I would prefer a scream to silence, but the quiet feels wrong. I’m suddenly glad Rugnus isn’t in the room with us.
“That’s how Grimflail’s relic works,” Koglim says. “That’s how Valifra... that’s how she died.”
Mom’s hand had been wavering, but now she withdraws it. “Can we keep her restrained?”
Koglim wrangles her arms even more. “Can you get any other relics off of her?”
Searching her, Mom shakes her head. “Nothing. Why would they send her in with only a knife?”
“How did she... I almost had the cover in place. She didn’t budge in?”
Someone outside hammers the door. The bar shakes but holds.
Andalynn searches the pile of sand lining this side of the cottage and grabs a small ball of wrought iron and gold. “Hardkeeper’s work.”
“Should you be...” I gesture to the fact she’s holding it in her bare hands.
“It will be fine. It’s not engaged.”
“What are these things?” I ask.
Koglim’s eyes are saucers. “Packing husk. They used to transport soldiers in these things by the barrel full. Or they’d use them on the battlefield...could throw a person at your enemies like a grenade. They’d pop out and do the up-close, dirty work.”
The cover over the window rattles.
Whatever Rugnus did with Icho and the box, maybe it wasn’t connected with this attack. Rugnus’ mom makes another effort to free herself, but Koglim stands her up, keeping his arms around her. Silver light seeps from his forearms, and her eyes flicker shut. She slumps downward. Koglim sets her gently on the ground.
He pulls the collar of his shirt, where he’s woven in a thread of silver. “That will give us a few minutes.”
“So”—I look around the room—“where did Rugnus and the others go? And did opening the box somehow bring Grimflail here?”
“I’m not sure what to think,” Koglim says, “I’ve heard of this task, but it never included a group competition, just searching for the box. I think their attack was just bad timing. Could be a good sign that Brightstorm didn’t give them an easier way in.”
That’s a thought. Brightstorm watching over us, maneuvering our party as close as we can get to the key. Now the bars on the door and the window covers seem more intentional. But Grimflail and the others got past Lennox, which means they can get past this.
I move back to the box on the table. But something is different. A smooth metal disc, like a coin, is pressed into one side.
Andalynn sees it too. “What’s that?”
Shrugging, I pick up the box and press my finger to it.
The lights in the cottage return. Andalynn vanishes from my side. I blink, and Koglim, Mom, and Rusela are gone. The sand from the husk is gone too. Suddenly, Jeiah, Brig, and Rugnus appear, startled by my sudden presence.
“That’s curious,” Jeiah offers, the corner of her mouth twitching up.
“Ho, Clayson, what did you do? I mean, glad you’re back, but—”
“Back? You three are the ones that left. Wait. Quick, bar the door!” I rush to the door and drop the bar into place. As I seal one window, Rugnus seals the other.
There’s a clink of metal against the window cover. Did Hardkeeper try to get another husk in through this window? Could he be in both places, in front of both doors, at the same time? A loud thud against the threshold answers my question.
Rugnus stops me from pacing. “What’s going on?”
“Will the door and windows hold?” I ask.
“In a cottage from the Discovery Era?” Brig scoffs. By his reaction, I can tell this may be something I missed out on from Loamin grade school. “Trollbrick, have you read any of our histories? With the doors and windows barred, you couldn’t break into one with mithrium.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” Jeiah says.
“Okay,” Rugnus says. “Gonna tell me what’s happening?”
“You three disappeared, and then—we think Grimflail tried to—”
Rugnus grabs my arm. “Grimflail! He’s outside the door?”
“He sent your mother in through the window in a husk, like how he got Brude through my shield. He had Hardkeeper do that.”
“Another husk?” Jeiah asks.
“Yeah. But Rugnus, she’s... she’s okay. We’ve got her subdued for now.”
“And Grimflail?”
“Trying to bust down that door,” I point backward. “Weird, this is the same room, but...”
“Let me try something.” Rugnus takes the box from me. Nothing happens.
When I take it back, my finger grazes the plate surface on the side, and the room returns to darkness. Rugnus, Jeiah, and Brig are gone again, but Andalynn hugs me.
A second later, the banging resumes at the door.
“What happened?” Mom asks.
“Hold on,” I say. Gently, I set the box on the table, waiting a moment, then lift it again and press my finger to the plate. Again, the room switches like a light, and the other three appear.
Brig looks at me, questions swimming in his eyes. Jeiah appears much the same.
"Okay,” she says expectantly.
"Seems like I can go between rooms." Another loud bang drowns out my words. “And I think I’m bringing Grimflail with me no matter which room I’m in.”
I survey the room. Both cottages are the same: a single yellow door, now barred, two windows, now covered, the central room with its fluffy, comfortable-looking chairs and a few small tables, the kitchen and pantry, and the sleeping area, plush with hammocks and oversized pillows.
“So, what’s the challenge here?” Rugnus asks.
“I’m not sure. The room hasn’t changed at all.”
Jeiah’s ears perk up. Her eyes adopt that ever-so-familiar confidence that somehow draws me to her. She’s a bright flame against a cold, intolerable road ahead. “You’ve said exactly the right thing, Clayson. It hasn’t changed at all. Brightstorm—Erikzin—used the same words a long, long time ago. It was something I found while I was doing my initial investigation about the Bluelink disturbances before StoneYoke.”
“Translation,” Brig says, “when she was obsessed with you.”
“Brig,” she says firmly. “Turn off your mouth. Besides, it’s a mutual obsession now.”
This stops me short. My breath quickens.
Rugnus smiles, that wide dangerous smile of his. “Not wrong.”
I widen my eyes so he understands that I want him to stop talking.
“What? Come on. In what world is love a bad thing?” Rugnus asks. “Certainly not this one. We can use more of it.”
“You sound like my sister,” I say.
Another smile. “I’m okay with that.”
“Anyway,” Jeiah says. “I’m trying to tell you that I think Brightstorm left a hint about what he and Blackmug left here. He was close to death, so no one wanted to be around him for fear of being caught in a dungeon as a wraith. But someone interviewed him through bluelink. When the topic came around to his childhood home, he said: I’ll give you a clue. It hasn’t changed, only a few stones out of place. It was a strange response. He planned on dying here. He planned the location of his dungeon. They moved everything and everyone out of the radius.”
“But Erikzin wouldn’t have known what anyone would find in his dungeon,” I say.
Brig shakes his head. “Some champions believed they could control what formed, at least to some extent.”
“And,” Rugnus continues, “If he told Blackmug what he would make, then Blackmug may have come in here with the key knowing exactly what to look for.”
Brig immediately scours the walls and floors. We join him, fumbling over the stones, making every attempt to pull or shift something out of place. Rugnus works systematically from ceiling to floor, yet after testing nearly all of them, we have nothing to show for it.
“It has to be something about stone,” he says. “Spread out; look for anything out of place.”
Three canvas hammocks stretch across the sleeping room, one of which is made for a child—Erikzin’s childhood bed. I duck under the two longer ones and move to the back corner, where the child’s hammock is slung crosswise. But it’s been flipped over. As I nudge it to the side to check the stone wall for anything movable, my hand bumps into something inside a pillow.
It’s cold and rough, about a finger’s length. I withdraw the slim stone and immediately recognize the rich black of obsidian. The small rock is even on all sides except one. When my finger passes over the surface, symbols appear.
WRAITHBORN AS ME
“Guys! I found something.”
Ducking back under the hammocks, I make for the table.
The pounding at the door recommences, but we ignore it. I think Brig was right about this cottage being impenetrable. I just didn’t seal the window fast enough in the other room.
“What did you find?” Jeiah says.
I hand her the stone. She turns it over and over again.
“Wraithborn,” I say. “That’s got to be something.”
Rugnus takes the stone from her and flips it over. “It’s just a rock.”
I pull it out of his hands, fearing that the words are gone by some craft. But they’re there. I point. “It says, Wraithborn as me. None of you can see it?”
Brig pries it from my hand, looks over it once, and shakes his head.
“It must be Blackmug’s key.”
Jeiah takes back the stone. “Then maybe that’s why you can read it and we can’t. You're both wraithborn.”
“Weird way to phrase it,” Rugnus says. “Wraithborn as me.”
“It sounds almost... poetic,” I say.
Brig snaps his fingers. “Didn’t Yinzar find the recipe for the mithrium objects in some old poetry of Blackmug’s?”
Rugnus claps Brig on the back. “That’s it. There will be another piece that fits into the jagged part. It should form a line from a poem.”
“It’s a puzzle,” Jeiah says, eyes dazzling.
“And I bet,” I say. “The other room has another piece.”
MARK THESE STONES
The other team waits for me in the kitchen. They’ve already found a stone. It’s nearly identical, but this one’s jagged puzzle edge is on the left side. After a hasty explanation of Jeiah’s theory about Blackmug hiding the box and my apparent ability to read invisible messages, Koglim collects the stone from the counter and hands it over.
“Thought it was kinda weird,” he says.
They all watch as I turn it over. Andalynn says, “Anything?”
But my attention is drawn away from the stone. Rusela.
She’s tied up—unconscious—slumped over the side of a leather chair. Another thud sounds against the door. I shake my head and focus on the stone. As before, strange symbols appear.
I mutter what it says. “Must open the box.”
Koglim keeps one eye on Rusela but glances at me. “Does that mean something?”
I tell them the phrase from the other rock. “Where did you find this one?”
Mom points up to a shelf. “Koglim says he looked in this cup before we found the box, but Andalynn double-checked, and there it was. Perhaps the stones showed up after we found the box?”
Andalynn rubs her temple. “The message doesn’t make sense: Wraithborn as me must open the box.”
“Maybe there’s more. I should go back and forth between the two rooms.”
