20 – Together Again

Grace continued to pester Ward as he climbed, and climb he did—the stairs seemed interminable. He’d tuned her out for a while and was thinking about the stairs and their ceaseless upward climb, when she chimed in with a thought that echoed his own, “There’s no way we descended this far. There must be portal magic involved in this place.”

“Thought we all agreed on that earlier.” To mix things up, Ward went back to taking the steps two at a time, amazed, as ever, by his body’s endurance.

“Just confirming the hypothesis. Come on! Quit ignoring me. It’ll help pass the time. Answer this one: when I transported us here, and you thought you were dead, why were your sister and her family the only people on your mind? No lover? No kids? Never slipped one past the goalie?”

Ward paused, turned, and looked into her face, noting the teasing grin, the sparkle of flames dancing behind her red-orange irises, and her perfectly coiffed hair falling to her spotless, wrinkle-free suit. “Dammit, Grace. You got bored asking me about my nightmares, so now we’re gonna talk about my other failures?”

“You wouldn’t spill any details about those weird thoughts that wake you up at night! What’s that image of an empty swimming pool that keeps coming up? What about the man yelling? The one you keep seeing with the goatee and the sloshing drink?”

“You’re lucky I’ve got thick skin. You know how many people have tried to rattle me in my life? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and it won’t matter how many times you repeat it. And before you get started, I won’t talk about the Marines either.” It was the truth—Ward didn’t know what she was talking about. Were they nightmares? Sure, he woke up in a sweat sometimes, heart hammering, but he couldn’t ever remember the things he’d been seeing in his dreams, at least not those times. He wracked his brain for memories of an empty swimming pool and came up blank. A guy sloshing a drink around? Too many people he’d known might fit that description.

“Okay, if you won’t talk about that stuff with me yet, tell me about someone who tried to rattle you.”

“Rattle me . . .” Ward tried to ignore the question, focusing on the stairs, taking one step and then another, breathing with each downward thrust of his legs.

“Well?” Grace had taken his pause as a signal that he was thinking, not ignoring her again.

“You know, I’m trying to get into a rhythm here, trying to get into the zone.” He sighed and stopped again, then turned to face her, sitting on one of the narrow, tarnished steps. “I’ve had shitloads of people try to rattle me. Take your pick—my dad, my uncle, teachers, drill instructors, sergeants, my field training officer, bunches of asshole cops, and a hundred or so very clever suspects I’ve sat down with in the interview room. Let’s see, my ex-wife’s attorney, my ex-wife, hmm, a judge or two, and a couple dozen lawyers for the defense. Shit, might be easier to name the people who didn’t try to mess with me.”

Grace sat down two steps below him, scooting her butt way too close to the dark abyss for Ward’s comfort, all so she could turn to look at him more easily. “Who would be on that list? Your sister?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s about it.” Ward snorted. “Nah, it isn’t that bad. I’ve had quite a few good friends over the years.”

“Well, I’m glad you have a tough mentality. I think it’s working out well for you here. That crawl through that cramped tunnel would have ruined some of my prior hosts.”

“You trying to butter me up?”

“No, but I think you and I should try to get along, don’t you? I know I messed up, Ward. I knew I bit off more than I could chew when I tried to save you—it might have been simpler to let you die; at least you would have had your anima to see you to . . . whatever’s next. I’m just trying to get to know you now, though, and I don’t see anything wrong with pointing out that you’ve done a good job in here.”

“Fair enough,” Ward sighed. “For the record, I’m kind of glad I’m not dead. Maybe I’d say differently if I knew what was next, but . . .” He let the thought die; Grace knew what he meant. He wanted to drink something, eat something, but he was running low on supplies, especially in the water department, which, of course, reminded him of another reason Grace was on his shitlist. “Hey, seriously, don’t you think you could’ve told me to pack more water at least? Look, I’m not a kid; I admit to some of the fault. I should’ve known better than to go into some ‘catacombs’ without more supplies. I just didn’t know what the . . . Ah, forget it.” He let his complaint die with a sigh, shaking his head. It wasn’t worth it.

“I was going to say, no sense crying over spilled milk. We both learned a lot from this first challenge. You know I don’t know much about this world either, right? I mean, I’ve made that clear. I’m operating off snippets of journal entries, rumors I remember from hundreds of years ago, and fairy tales I heard from the other people in my . . . family. Even the portal circle we used was made by that creep about to kill Christina. When you get out, we’ll know how to prepare better for the next challenge.”

“If I get out.” Ward stretched his neck and leaned to the side, toward the precipitous drop at the center of the spiral so that he could look up the shaft. “Holy shit!” Not two turns of the stairway above, he saw a tarnished copper platform.

“We made it!” Grace howled, following his gaze. “Let’s hope all this upward progress meant we’re near the exit!”

“Yep.” Ward hopped to his feet and hurried up the last couple dozen steps until he stood on the disturbingly flexible copper platform at the top of the stairs. Rather than stand there and wait for the old bolts securing the platform to fail, he hurried for the door. It looked much like the ones he’d seen elsewhere in the catacombs, and he pulled it open. It swung easily, if a bit noisily, grinding on its ancient green hinges and revealed a narrow, square space with a copper ladder affixed to the far wall. Twisting his neck to peer upward through the doorway, Ward saw yet another piece of tarnished copper hardware—a hatch about twenty feet up. “Looks like we’re not at the top yet.”

He mounted the ladder and started up, his backpack scraping the shaft behind him, barely able to fit in the confined space. “Are you sure you shouldn’t wait to examine things a bit more?” Grace called from the bottom of the shaft.

“Examine what?” Ward kept climbing.

“I guess . . .” she trailed off, and he heard her start to climb the ladder behind him. He wondered at that; why did she bother? Couldn’t she just disappear into him or whatever she did, riding to the top and reappearing the next time he stood somewhere solid? Did she want to experience the climb? Did it make it easier for her to see things around him if she was “out?”

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He decided to voice his question. “Hey, why don’t you ride along inside my head?”

“I dunno. I like being out.”

“Huh.” Ward reached the top of the ladder and grabbed the long lever affixed to the copper trapdoor, wondering if he was about to murder himself with some kind of trap. He didn’t see anything funny about the door; no wires or extra gears or anything. He didn’t see any holes in the wall where spears or arrows or poisonous gas might erupt. More than that, he hadn’t gotten any kind of written warning or heard any chimes. This didn’t feel like an “obstacle.” Having made those considerations, he yanked on the lever, listened to the bolts click as they slid out of their housings, and saw some pale light around the door's seam.

Ward pushed the trapdoor open with a clang and peered upward, trying to see what he could without poking his head through. The light up there differed from the ambient pale light that seemed to follow him through the catacombs. He saw flickers of yellow and orange that reminded him of a fire. Far above, he saw a domed copper ceiling and the edge of a curved wall but nothing else. He tilted his head down, looking along the side of the ladder to lock eyes with Grace. “Doesn’t look like we’re out yet.”

“Are you going—” she started to say, but Ward was already climbing, poking his head through the opening. The stone floor outside the trapdoor was a slightly different shade, more brown or tan than gray. When his eyes drifted around the room, he immediately saw Nevkin about fifteen feet distant on his hands and knees, staring his way.

When he saw Ward, he reached up to adjust his glasses, then called out, “Ward! Welcome to our prison.”

“Is that Ward? Be careful where you move, Ward!” He heard Haley’s voice from the opposite direction and saw her standing, staring his way but not moving forward.

“Hey, guys,” Ward grunted as he pulled himself out of the hole. Once he was sitting on the edge, he got a better view of his surroundings. The room was circular, with no doors of any kind in the walls. When he let his eyes drift away from the walls, frowning at the lack of an exit, he saw the floor wasn’t solid stone. It was divided into thirds by long strips of what looked like inlaid copper. They ran from the circular wall to the center of the room, where they met at a tarnished copper pillar that stretched thirty or forty feet up to the middle of the domed copper ceiling. He, Haley, and Nevkin were all in a different segment of the room. “So, what’s the deal here?”

Nevkin held up a palm, and Ward saw it was red and blistered. It looked awful, though he could see it was smeared with some kind of salve and figured that moist sheen probably made it look worse than it was. “Don’t try to cross the copper lines.”

“It burned you?”

Haley spoke up for him, “Yes! It only burns living things, as far as we can tell. Nevkin and I tried throwing things across the lines, and they didn’t burn.”

“Did you test it? I mean, on yourself?” Ward clambered to his feet and approached the copper metal strip separating his segment of the room from Nevkin’s.

“Yes! Just with the tip of my knuckle, I didn’t want to burn my palm or finger. It hurts a lot, Ward. I wouldn’t recommend it. Careful!” she shouted the warning as Ward started extending his hand toward the line.

He pulled it back and turned to look at her. “I wasn’t going to touch it. I just wanted to see if heat was coming off it.”

“No, no! It’s not just the metal; it’s the air above it, too! If you try to cross that plane, you’ll burn.”

“Interesting,” Grace said. Ward turned to her and watched as she tried to step over the strip of copper. It looked like she was trying to walk through a solid wall. Her foot just wouldn’t go past the copper. “Some powerful boundary magic here, it seems. Much mana went into the creation of this room.”

“So, what are we supposed to do?” Ward turned and paced over to the opposite side of his section, to the line separating him from Haley. At the center of his triangular space, it was eight steps across.

“Careful!” Haley cried, “Imagine if you tripped!”

“Uh-huh.” Ward turned and carefully followed the metal line to the central copper pillar. His space grew very narrow near the center of the room, so he stopped short and stretched out an arm to touch the metal. It felt normal, if a bit colder than he would have expected.

“I believe the catacombs were waiting for our third member, you. I was the first to arrive in this room, and then Haley appeared through a doorway that no longer exists. You’ll notice the hole you climbed through is gone.”

Ward whirled, and sure enough, the stones were smooth where the trapdoor had been. “Dammit.”

“It would be interesting to see how this place was created. I wonder if true transformative magic is taking place or if we’re all being influenced by powerful illusions. It could be that everyone who came into the catacombs together is standing in the same room, suffering from wild, mana-induced fantasies.” As Ward had seen him do a hundred times, Nevkin reached up and pushed his spectacles higher on the bridge of his nose.

Ward turned to look around the room again. “There wasn’t something written on a stone or plaque or anything?”

“Not that either of us could see.” Haley moved to the center of her section and looked around slowly as though confirming that nothing new had popped up in her space.

“I don’t see anything,” Grace added. As if in response to their words, a chime began to ring through the space, echoing oddly from the walls and high, domed ceiling—ding, ding.

Ward turned in a slow circle, scrutinizing every inch of his space, but he couldn’t see anything he was supposed to do. He couldn’t run anywhere, he couldn’t climb anything, and he couldn’t jump up or down to any ledges or through any holes. As the chimes grew more frequent, he turned to Haley. “Only logical thing we can do is hold still. There's nowhere to go if we can’t cross the copper.”

“Even if we could,” Nevkin added, “we’d just walk in a circle.”

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Ward reached for his pistol grip, then thought better of it and drew the thick, heavy sword he’d looted from Karl. He didn’t know how to swordfight, but he could swing it or stab it. He’d checked it out earlier and found the metal was sound, well-oiled steel, and the edge was sharp as hell. He felt good holding the heavy weapon in his fist. He saw Haley doing her dance, charging up her fists, and Nevkin had drawn his rapier.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

As the last chime rang out, Ward saw the central copper pillar begin to rotate, and then it started to descend, sinking into the stone floor. He followed it upward with his eyes and saw that a round section of the ceiling was descending atop the pillar, revealing a circular, copper chamber, almost like an elevator, as it sank downward. Ward watched as the copper structure, built almost like a giant birdcage, came into view. He could see a latch and hinges and realized a gate was facing his section of the segmented room. Before he could say it, though, Nevkin announced, “I see a gate in my section!”

“Me too!” Haley cried.

“All of us.” Ward continued to watch, and as the birdcage elevator descended a bit further, he saw something moving behind the bars. “Uh, it’s occupied.”

“You’re right!” Haley’s dance movements sped up, and Ward could see her fists glowing red, radiating heat waves. They looked like they’d hurt like hell. “What about you, Nevkin?” she called.

“The same. I believe we are all about to have an encounter.”

Ward figured he was right. There was little chance the catacombs were about to send them something friendly, not on the heels of those chimes. He watched the cage lower a bit more, and then, when it was only about ten feet from the ground, he saw his incoming guest. It looked more lizard than man, hissing and leaping against the cage door, rattling the metal and screaming its animal hatred through a mouth filled with jagged, triangular teeth. The creature looked like it had to weigh at least three hundred pounds, and it shook that metal cage door like it was close to ripping it off the hinges.

Ward studied the hulking shoulders, the red baleful eyes, the thick, scaled hide, and shaking his head, cussing his luck, he swapped the sword to his left hand and pulled out his pistol.