Arjun’s first reaction upon setting foot inside the mysterious dome was one of wild panic which lasted no less than three blinks, as it took precisely that long for his foot to eventually touch blessed ground, followed by the rest of his flailing body. Thankfully, even his pathetic air Manipulation ability was enough to arrest the fall, resulting in nothing more than severe bruising of his knees and hands.
Not much later, two sets of thumping noise and choice curses announced the arrival of Kumil and Eve – surprisingly similar curses, Arjun couldn’t help but note. When she really put her mind to it, Eve could absorb knowledge like a sponge-mushroom in Palir Desert.
Lying prone on the hard stone floor, Arjun assessed his surroundings with his earth and essence senses. In the pitch black environment they’d landed, his eyes were of no help. Consoling himself with the thought that it was better than the reverse scenario, Arjun climbed back up to his feet, then craned his head.
Two bonfires of kernel slowly floated down toward the three of them from a deceptively tiny aperture hundreds of feet above their heads. Now that all her secrets – well, most of them anyway – were out in the open, Aisha was pulling out one trick after another from her impressive repertoire.
Using Space Shields to decelerate your descent – even Gravity bowed before the Masters of Space it seemed, though by her own admissions, Aisha was nowhere near accomplished enough to be considered a Master Enfolder – or Maestro, as they’re more commonly known. In Arjun’s mind, this only highlighted Aisha’s boundless potential. Before long, she’d be giving even ancient Maestros a run for their money.
A few blinks later, while Arjun was searching his pockets for a glowstone, Aisha’s feet gently touched down beside him, and the whole surrounding lit up like the Celebration of the Creator.
Numerous strange beads of white light floated above their heads, illuminating a massive place – at least a mile long, though the glossy ebony surface of the wall absorbed an unusual amount of the light, creating unnatural shadows that hid much of the space. The amount of Basil present here at ground level was minimal, enabling Arjun to gauge more of the layout of the triangular stone floor. When he did, his heart sped up.
“It’s a maze!!” he breathed.
James had landed nearer to Kumil and was making certain the half-stonehorn was back to fighting shape. “No need to sound quite so happy about that fact,” the Battle Cleric grumbled. “We’re also inside a Pocket Dimension. No telling how large the maze is.”
Arjun felt like smacking his forehead.
In all the excitement, it’d completely slipped his mind that the dome they’d entered through was no larger than a barn. Pocket dimensions could be as large as a city. Miniverses, larger cousins of Pocket Dimensions, could even be larger than Sindria. Supposedly. Of course, the consensus among Cleric scholars was that neither existed outside the pages of the Historica, or the plethora of fiction stories based loosely on those said pages.
Reality had once again outstripped even the most imaginative mind, for none of the scholars, or even writers, could come up with something so bizarre – Arjun decided after staring at his own warped reflection on a strangely curved metallic surface. After a few blinks, literally, he realized it was a small part of a larger whole.
Less than ten yards in front of him was an odd spherical metallic structure as large as a house, but it sported no doors or windows, indeed no aperture of any kind on its glossy dark-purple surface. The metal was an alloy of iron, copper, and several others he failed to identify. Glancing up he saw there was a very similar sphere right above his head, at the bottom of which there was an aperture, an annular one, the same one they’d fallen through. The thousand or so feet separating him from the hole also muffled every source of essence that originated outside of it, so much so that he couldn’t sense fire essence up there at all.
After James, the last member of their group, had entered the chamber, the annular ring had clicked shut, sealing them in. Not that Arjun was worried. He was too ecstatic with wonder to care about such mundane emotions. Craning his head this way and that, Arjun drank in every sight and sound and began exploring.
The layout of the seemingly endless chamber – well, Dimension – had a certain familiarity to it, though he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. It seemed triangular at first glance, though the edges were enveloped in dark shadows that somehow rebuffed all his probing efforts to sense beyond, making the exact shape and size anyone’s guess, at least until they could physically reach one of the outer walls.
There were also these metallic spheres everywhere, even suspended midair, laughing at Gravity with the help of essence constructs – permanent ones as far as he could tell, something he didn’t believe was even possible. Smaller spheres, made from seemingly liquid dark-purple metal, but with lower iron content than the larger solid ones, vibrated with a sound that had absolutely no effect on the ground, or air, but could be felt through essence sense.
“Even the larger ones are vibrating, Jukatis help us,” Kumil complained, clutching his head in discomfort. “Can feel it in my bones.”
Concentrating closely, Arjun realized his half-stonehorn friend was correct. Also, apart from the beads and strange spheres, the entire space was devoid of any building or living soul. Approaching one of the spheres, the one right in front, Arjun extended his left hand, placing it on the warm metallic surface.
“A room, larger on the inside.” Delving deeper with his senses, a puzzled expression crossed his face, which, in the next blink, turned into elation. “No wait, not just any room, but a Lab!! This has to be from the Age of Creation!!”
Today is the day all his dreams will come to fruition. Arjun could feel it in his gut. It’s one of his lifelong dreams – to have an adventure that involved creations from the golden age of Sindria. And now, he found himself right in the thick of it!!
In today’s world, the largest dimension spaces were bags made by aditarun Artificers. This was leagues beyond their capability. Of course, this whole Dimension was testament to the fact that they were dealing with Enfolders from the Age of Creation.
“Allfather help us!!” Eve mumbled, still sitting cross-legged on the hard stone floor, but eyes glued to the beads of light near the ceiling. These gave off a soothing hint of Energy essence, somehow powering the essence constructs around them. “He must’ve had a hand in creating this,” she said, voice full of reverence.
Arjun, of course, was so agog with excitement that he’d crossed the threshold of reverence ages ago – that is to say, a few blinks earlier.
“More than likely,” James said, for once sounding just as excited as Arjun and as reverential as Eve. Then, forcibly gaining control of his emotions, he gestured behind him, toward the dark northern corner of the maze. “First thing’s first.” His gaze landed on Aisha, then switched to Arjun, standing beside her. “Reconnaissance from both above and ground level. Can you two handle the back? I’m going to take the front.”
Aisha glanced sideways, sharing a determined look with Arjun, then turned back to the Cleric and gave a nod of affirmation. Within a few blinks, she was standing twenty feet over their heads on a Space Shield, though she couldn’t keep them active for long or move them as fast as the ones made of air that the Cleric used, causing her to skip from one transient one to the next in a graceful dance.
“Also, every single maze I’ve ever been unfortunate enough to encounter had one thing in common. They were full of traps,” James reminded all four of them. “Watch your steps.”
“Downer,” Eve shook her head. “Mazes also mean rewards.” She emphasized the last word with unmistakable glee.
“Unless the reward is our freedom,” James said, casting a suggestive glance upward. The annular ringlike aperture had long since closed. And that particular section of the stone ceiling was saturated with Basil, not to mention the other unknown minerals and metals they’d sensed earlier. Escape through there seemed unlikely – just as you’d expect from a maze designed by the hand of Allfather himself.
Within a few bells of exploration, several points of worry surfaced to the thoughts of all but Arjun, who was still riding the flame of excitement and refused to let it be doused by cold hard logic. But James was adamant.
“Whatever this dark-gray substance the walls are made of is – it’s metal unknown to me, and highly resistant to Manipulation, even more so than strelenium,” he said, the meaning behind the words readily apparent even to the three who lacked Arjun’s talent.
“No punching our way through to the center for us, even if we knew where exactly the center was,” Eve lamented. “Seems we’re stuck here.”
“Also, we don’t know for sure that the exit is at the center either. I still can’t make heads or tails of this maze.” Kumil gave voice to all their thoughts.
The central avenue where they’d landed was cordoned off by tall walls, with side streets and the odd spheres breaking the monotony. The scene was less restrictive but just as confusing up in the air, where every once in a while, an ominous dark sphere would peek through the shadows.
Arjun rubbed one section of the metallic wall with his index finger. “Maybe we should shave a tiny portion off, for later study.”
Kumil’s head bounced up and down in eager excitement. He patted his self-made utility belt. “Already started. Could only take a sliver though. Or else we’d be stuck here till even James’ inventory of dried food runs dry,” he said in disgust.
After weeks of traveling together, Arjun had worked out that his half-stonehorn friend not only possessed a healthy appetite but also preferred his solid food to have some amount of fluid in it. Or at least a boatload of gravy. Else ‘it feels like I’m swallowing all of Kailash one peak at a time’ – to quote Kumil.
“Maybe take a few more samples from different parts of the maze? Also, see if you can slice off a small portion of the spheres. I tried, but it reconstituted itself faster than I could damage it, taking the materials right out of my palm. Liquid ones were even worse.”
“I like the way you think, my friend. I’ll give it a try.”
After hitting one of the outer walls, they began working their way around the huge space, deciding as a group to postpone exploring the individual spheres for later. Given time they could’ve eventually broken through, of course, but they had other priorities. Namely, how to get out of here.
Kumil’s efforts at collecting samples from them proved just as fruitless as Arjun’s. At James’ suggestion, they’d refrained from trying more drastic measures, especially after Eve all but collapsed due to fatigue, her formidable punches leaving her more damaged than the spheres.
Then, James caught what Arjun had sensed the moment he’d entered the Pocket Dimension. Sensed but never quite realized what exactly he’d sensed. Benefits of decades of experience, I suppose, Arjun grumbled to himself. Or maybe even centuries. He didn’t know how old the man was, though he looked no older than his father, who was forty-five. Some Material Clerics, ones who possessed Healing abilities, could live for three hundred years. Thurma, for instance, was pushing two-fifty.
“The Dimension is shaped like a temple of Aimin. A massive one.” The Cleric announced, as Arjun and Kumil extended their senses trying to verify it. “The floor is an equilateral triangle, while the apex lies vertically above the center of the triangle, it being the aperture, or rather the sphere we jumped through.”
The announcement seemed to lift the veil of mystery surrounding the space as Arjun’s mind sensed the location of all the spheres on the floor and his Crown remembered the position of all the airborne ones. Within a few blinks, he connected the dots, and nearly jumped out of his skin in joy.
“Not only that,” he exclaimed, “the spheres are acting like Nodes of the base sigils or the Artifacts. At least that of Matter, Energy and Force, and maybe Mind as well. The sigil for the Pools, for the number five, think of it lying vertically above the floor, perpendicular to the sigil for the Fulcrum. We landed near the intersecting Node, the middle of number three and base of five.”
Realization dawned on every eye, along with admiration on three sets and approval on one.
“Didn’t even know 3-Dimensional sigils could exist,” said Kumil.
“They’re supposed to be purely theoretical. Highly unstable. Unless you believe some of the older tales from the Historica or the Lore.” Which I do, Arjun added silently. “Somehow, I’m not altogether surprised to find them here.”
“This whole place feels old,” Eve said after an agreeing nod, wary eyes peering into the shadowy depths. “And the Nodes – the Spheres…feel ancient.”
The Cleric gave a firm nod and moved on, not bothering with verbal compliments. “They are vibrating like Cosmic Nodes as well, which is what we were sensing earlier, and still sensing now.” His gaze flickered to Kumil. “It is also the same vibration that some of us are sensing more than others, though only the Dualgods know why.”
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Melwig’s Shrine dislikes my blood, that’s why,” Kumil growled under his breath.
“Also,” the Battle Cleric continued, trying to neither contradict nor comfort the half-stonehorn, “I sense the sigil for the number eight, for Mind, but inverted. Instead of a spiral going down, it goes up. The spiral starts at the other end of the Fulcrum, at one of the vertices of the floor. We’re going to investigate it, since it breaks convention.”
“Also, it’s not symmetric,” Arjun put in. “The center of the Mind as well as the Pools is off-kilter.”
“Probably because these aren’t normal base sigils, but are more like those weird attuned ones,” Eve ventured.
“Precisely,” James said. “I’m going to do some more aerial reconnaissance, you do the same in any way you see fit. But don’t wander too far off.”
Deciding on a close formation, the four of them followed the Cleric, all their senses extended to the fullest.
“Is it just me or does that wall look a bit closer than where it was when we first entered?” Arjun asked, trying to sense whether it seemed this way because the shadows had been slowly encroaching upon them, growing darker and more ominous every passing blink, or if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Eve scowled. “These damned shadows are gonna come alive next. I can feel it in my bones.”
Arjun looked askance at Kumil, whose glazed over eyes suggested he was already analyzing the information gained from his long range senses. “Might be onto something,” he said. “Two of the walls are moving, boxing us in.”
Eve perked up, swiveling her head. “I don’t sense, or even see anything apart from the same gloomy gray walls cloaked in shadows.”
“It’s subtle. And slow,” the half-stonehorn said, his gaze fixed on one particular section of the distant wall to their left. “But trust me, it’s moving.”
“Yeah, it definitely is,” Arjun put in, though he wasn’t as worried as Eve.
Together, their group can handle most opponents, and more importantly, he didn’t sense any malevolent intent from whatever creature lurked in the outer shadows. And as for the spheres, they felt almost….welcoming, though still resistant to all efforts on his part to modify them, or glean their secrets. Or even enter.
“So an Augmenter, eh?” Kumil said after a while, tone uncharacteristically subdued. “How did that happen?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how babies are made,” Eve replied with a forced smile.
But Kumil was having none of it. “I meant how was he made. Even fifty years ago, there weren’t any unomynds in Sindria. Then again, if asked even ten days ago, I would’ve sworn there aren’t any, not outside the pages of the most obscure stories from the Lore. Even some human scholars would struggle to tell you what they actually are. I only heard about them since one of my sisters, and quite a few of my brothers, are absolutely obsessed with history, irrespective of race.”
“History doesn’t care about your race. To a river, a boulder and a grain of sand are the same,” Arjun said, eyeing Eve. “How did he come to exist? There hasn’t been any unomynd in Sindria. Ever. Supposedly, Aimin and Anantika went to great lengths to ensure that. After fighting your father, I’m starting to understand why.”
That wiped the fake smile off Eve’s face. “He never told me. I never dared ask. But your assumption is spot-on.” Her eyes took on a haunted expression. “Something unholy created him and his mates.”
Created her, she meant. Despite sensing her fears, Arjun remained silent, as he didn’t know how to provide solace other than by telling her to ignore the facts. She was half-unomynd, after all.
“The High Priest,” Arjun said. “Only an Ascendant like him would be capable enough, and just as importantly, resourceful enough, to create the monstrosities we faced.”
Kumil gave an agreeing grunt, while Eve simply nodded, face darker than the surrounding shadows. “Seems likely. They form a unit of the Grand Army, after all.”
“But how?” Arjun continued, still perplexed. “This is the domain of Allfather, and no one else. Did the High Priest somehow unearth a Chamber of Creation as well as one of the Artifacts?”
“The Fulcrum. It unlocks Force.”
“We can worry about that once we get out of here,” Kumil said.
“Or not,” Eve added. “I’m more interested in avoiding them. This creation business is way over my pay-grade.”
Arjun gave her a sidelong glance, but withheld his opinion on the matter. She wasn’t the best liar he’d ever seen – that is to say she was a newborn babe compared to James.
“Since we’ve mapped out the general layout of this place, think we can try breaking into one of the spheres now?” he pressed instead. “Who knows what secrets they hold? Could even provide an answer to the question we were just discussing.”
“We can. If time permits,” James said from up ahead. In another frustrating example that illustrated just how useful and versatile air-shields could be, he was standing on literally nothing but air, two-stories above their heads, his own head craning to peer at the shadowy distance. Whatever he saw must have worried him as the shield vanished in a deft application of Manipulation that also slowed his fall. He landed in a crouch, looking oddly concerned. “Which it won’t. I saw movement up ahead.”
A frown of confusion crossed Arjun’s face. “I sense nothing. Other than the walls.” Both Kumil and Eve looked just as perplexed. Aisha joined the four of them inside a small alcove formed by stone-casting the floor. There was even a backless bench made of an odd metal.
“I didn’t sense much either. They can dampen the vibrations. As well as their kernel signature.”
An involuntary grin spread across Arjun’s face. The first he was fairly good at, but clamping kernel signature by this amount was next to impossible, unless they were Grandmasters. Or maybe even one of the legendary Ascendants, with all seven Chakras including the Third-Eye opened or Awakened.
“They?” asked Eve, seemingly debating with herself if she should rest her feet after their arduous journey. In the end, fatigue triumphed over caution.
“A horde of creatures cloaked in shadows.”
Eve lurched to her feet. “Aimin’s Balls!!! Knew it.”
“These are a tad more intelligent than the canines we fought earlier.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Only met them once and that was one time too many. Too damn slippery, never where they seem to be.”
“Hard to land hits,” Kumil agreed, eyes searching the shadows. “Good news is this time around there are too many of them for you to miss.”
This earned him a grunt of amusement. “Should’ve softened me up with the bad news first.”
“Bad news is, as James had implied and I just verified, they can also Manipulate Matter, not just Energy.”
“Wonderful!!” groaned Eve.
“Space?” Arjun asked, glancing at Aisha, just as a legion of slithering shadowy serpents came crawling out of the walls, which themselves were now clearly constricting. His efforts at figuring out if they were inside the bowels of some creature out of the Legends, or just in the space between its coil, proved futile. Even now, his talent indicated that the mind, or rather the minds – he sensed a couple, both far more intelligent than any animal – seemed to be more interested in testing their mettle than in devouring them. His essence senses, however, screamed that a huge beast was all around them, as were its minions, tiny versions of itself that were larger than the biggest python Arjun had ever seen.
After Aisha shook her head in the negative, Arjun turned to the Battle Cleric. “Any ideas what the mammoth serpent that seems to be corralling its offspring toward our position is?”
The reptilian body circled all around the Dimension, slowly narrowing the perimeter by seeming to almost solidify the shadows themselves, which coalesced into the walls that were thickening before their very eyes.
“Matters not. Our end-goal remains the same.” The Cleric took the lead, and the rest of them followed his example as he shot like a quarrel toward the Node at one of the three vertices of the triangular floor.
Less than fifty yards in front of the huge ball of metal, the shadows were upon them in a frenzy of wickedly curved dagger-like ivory teeth.
“It’s a great boon there’s no sign of any poison in their bites or else we’d be in a real pickle,” Eve shouted after engaging two of the serpents simultaneously.
“Perhaps their father failed to pass on that particular trait,” Arjun supplied over the din of battle.
“Why would you even jinx it like that?” cried Kumil, producing a flash of amusement from Aisha.
“Also,” bellowed Eve, “we’re turning into a half-decent fighting unit. Chuck sour-face over there for a solid Power Cleric, and we’d make a good cabal.”
Arjun’s eyes lit up. “Might even form our own Fist someday.”
“We might,” said Kumil. “If we don’t die first.”
With that remark, the five of them fell into their well-established routine.
Aisha stood in the center providing emergency Healing and occasional Shields while picking off the creatures that seemed most troublesome using what she called ‘Slicing Tears’.
Arjun was off to the side but near enough to eliminate any threat that might mean her harm, while negating the serpents’ crude but powerful earth Manipulation attempts, their sheer numbers proving the greatest threat.
Eve and Kumil were both busy thumping the large dark-scaled snakes using stone columns and boulders, with the latter also throwing up hasty air-shields when necessary. True to form, Eve took them head-on, often foregoing shields altogether.
Any material object, even solid rock, that touched the snakes’ skin began sizzling immediately, as if their scales were on fire, though no flames were visible to the naked eye. Their essence senses, however, picked up a huge cauldron of Energy deep within the snakes’ bellies; in their Stomach Chakra, which was bigger than Arjun’s entire torso. The large snakes also occasionally opened their jaws wide and squirted massive torrents of flame that necessitated Kumil or Aisha’s intervention. Arjun’s own earthen shield was next to useless against them as he couldn’t maintain it long enough while retaining his mobility.
With only four Awakened Chakras – Heart, Crown, Stomach and Plexus, and no opened primary or even secondary – this was by far the most bizarre Manipulator Arjun had ever come across. Also, before today he’d never faced animals that could Manipulate. Then, a realization made him frown.
“Their signature doesn’t look right,” Arjun shouted, hoping the Cleric could provide some insight. Which he did.
“Channels are mono-layered,” James replied in between hacking the heads off a couple of snakes big as crocodiles, his shortsword a blur of motion “Never seen anything like it.”
This truly was the day all his dreams were going to come true. A mad grin spread across Arjun’s features as he looked over the field of battle. Fighting back to back with people you could trust with your life – it was an oddly liberating sensation.
Suddenly, in a flash of soul-wrenching understanding – or Knowing, as the entity called Self would say – he realized that before today he’d never truly possessed any friends, not true friends. The murky background of his parents and his own secrets had made sure of that.
“Stop grinning like a fool and guard the right side,” Eve roared. “This is no time to get lost in your head.”
“Right,” Arjun said, shoving those painful thoughts to the back of his mind and moving over to the other side of Aisha, after throwing a glance over his shoulders at the Cleric. This was the first time he was seeing the man in full throttle. And it was a sight to behold.
Simply put, James had become nothing short of a one-man army, gliding between their massive bulks, his trusted sword slicing open huge gashes that bled rivers of blood. When the opportunity presented itself, the sharp blue sigil-enhanced inner edge of his sword would produce a near-instantaneous air-blade, rapidly growing in length and neatly bisecting the huge beasts.
Carnage incarnate, with the Battle Cleric holding the majority at bay, the rest fell back bit by bit toward the spherical Node, though Arjun had no idea how they were going to force their way inside. They were more likely to end up inside the snakes’ bellies than inside the damned Nodes.
As if sensing his thought, James turned his head, and bellowed, “Aisha, form stairs and lead them up. I’ll be right behind you.”
The slight distraction brought on by the shouted instruction proved almost fatal to Arjun as a snake broke through their shield-wall and chomped down on his left forearm, a couple of five-digit-long teeth piercing straight through the muscle and coming out the other end, mercifully without touching the bone. Still, Arjun screamed in agony as his flesh started to sizzle. Gritting his teeth in rage, he returned the favor after grabbing hold of one of its scales. Pouring everything he had, using degenerative Healing Arjun decimated the scale, followed by the tissue underneath, then carved his way to the other side, all the while screaming his lungs out.
As the upper half of the beast fell off, bisecting it in two, Arjun decided that these beasts were really starting to rub him the wrong way. And earlier he’d thought they were almost playful and curious, wanting to only test their strengths. His talents had never before led him so astray. Arjun didn’t know whether to be pleased or alarmed at this turn of events.
Soon, covered from head to toe in reddish-blue blood and viscera, he stood near a concerned-looking Aisha. Eve, standing on a fragile construct of Space essence, waved at the two of them. “Hop on.” The grin she gave was just as maniacal as Arjun must now look to the others. “She can’t hold them solid for long.”
After he jumped onto the ten feet by ten convex plate, James joined them and the next step in their ladder to the stars was hastily formed, this one made of air.
Wait, Arjun thought, blinking wearily at all the floating points of white light. Not stars, his Crown belatedly supplied, but the center of the Pocket Dimension, which was missing something, something that was at the edge of his understanding, yet was proving to be stubbornly elusive.
He remembered the question: Why was there no sign of the Mind sigil anywhere on the device that facilitated their entrance into this Pocket Dimension when the sigil was clearly present here?
But unfortunately, the answer was almost, but not quite, within his grasp. If there was no Mind sigil there, the absence of the Sphere of Space in here would imply James’ obsession with symmetry was misplaced. Or the Creators had a warped sense of symmetry.
Arjun shook his head, trying to disperse the fog of exhaustion that had engulfed his Crown, then quickly spared the last of his flagging strength to Heal himself, though only partially, since his powercells were finally dry.
Uncorking the stopper from the canteen, he took a swig of the tincture James had procured from Rukalia, an energy essence drink that was strong enough to perk him right back up, though he feared the cost would be steep when his blood cooled down. Also, the taste was nowhere near as pleasant as the one James had supplied him with on that fateful day.
After the fog from his brain cleared, glancing down, Arjun saw that the dark snakes were all staring up in unison at their circular platform. “Ahhh, that is somehow more troubling than when they were trying to tear our heads off,” he said, eyes on the eerie phenomenon, mind on something even more interesting that lurked behind the snakes.
“Is it their mother?” Eve said, clearly sensing the kernel signature that, even masked, felt as grand as the firmament. “Did we finally piss off the one mother we shouldn’t have?”
“It’s a male, I think,” Arjun supplied.
And then, as one, the mass of snakes all opened their jaws wide and let out an ear-splitting screech. Thereafter, in a process that left even the seasoned Battle Cleric dumbfounded, they started dissolving – back into shadows, the whole process lasting less than five blinks.
What followed was even more bizarre.
In a hair-raising display of essence and kernel interaction, the shadows began merging into one singular reptile of gigantic proportions. From above, it looked like a giant spider made of shadows was devouring itself, and in the process transforming into a snake capable of gobbling up the spider many times over.
Following the transformation, the male snake that he’d sensed earlier slithered up to the newly formed and slightly larger reptile, rubbing it on the head with the bottom of its jaw in an oddly affectionate and endearing gesture.
“It’s not their mother. Nor father,” Arjun breathed, voice weak with dread and delight. “They are mates.”
“We’re at the center,” James announced, breaking Arjun’s train of thought. “Though I don’t see anything out of place, other than the central Node of the Pools. Guess that should be our next destination.”
Whispered in a low voice as it was, hundreds of feet above their huge heads, the massive snakes still heard it clearly, and their heads snapped upward to lock onto the five of them.
“Not that Node. We need to find the one Node that’s hidden among all others.”
The male opened its jaws wide enough to swallow a person whole, preparing to launch some new horror, and then clamped it shut when Arjun uttered the next words.
“The one corresponding to Space. The Sphere of Space.”
James’s eyes cleared, though they were still focused on the threat below. “The four Aspects we used to unlock this Dimension. All but Space accounted for.”
“What about the Mind sigil?” Eve asked. “It wasn’t on the pedestals.”
All of a sudden, everything clicked.
“Yes, it was. Because we were. It’s the most important sigil of them all. Without our keen minds, we would never have been able to solve the puzzle to begin with.”
Arjun’s reply produced the most unexpected reaction imaginable from the gigantic reptiles.
In an act of air Manipulation that made James’ earlier efforts seem like the fumblings of a child, they began spiraling upward.
Toward their platform.