Akarnae (21 page)

“Miss Jennings?”

She glanced up and noticed the librarian waving at her. After exchanging perplexed looks, the three friends headed in his direction.

“Good morning, sir,” Alex said.

“Yes, yes,” he muttered distractedly. “Might I ask what you and your friends are doing?”

“Uh—” She hesitated, unsure what to tell him. “We’re just trying to get into the Library, sir.”

He raised a bushy eyebrow. “You didn’t think to use the stairs? Like every other time you’ve been here?”

Alex shifted awkwardly on her feet. “Well, we’re not really trying to get to that particular part of the Library today.”

“Nonetheless, I dare say it’s as good a place for you to start as any. More so than walking around aimlessly in my foyer.”

She nodded, understanding that perhaps they were looking in the wrong place. “Thank you, sir.”

“Where are we going?” Jordan asked as Alex led the way to the staircase.

She shrugged. “He suggested we go down. He might be cryptic, but I doubt he’d give advice without reason.”

Partway through their trek down the stairs, Alex noticed something strange. “Does anything seem different to you guys?”

The three of them paused and the boys looked at her questioningly.

“Nothing?” she asked. “Never mind, then.”

They continued their descent until her friends finally noticed what she’d already observed.

“Why are there so many stairs?” Jordan asked.

The study level of the Library was only a short trip down from the foyer and that was where the staircase ended. For some reason, even though they were on the same stairs that
should
have taken them to that level, they had already descended much further down—at least four floors so far—without passing any kind of exit.

“Fascinating,” Bear murmured, tapping his knuckles against the solid stone wall.

They continued walking down, until finally they reached a dead end.

“I wonder what—” Alex started to ask just as all three of them stepped off the stairs and onto the stone floor. Her words were cut off when the torches blew out and darkness surrounded them.

“That’s just great,” she said. “I don’t suppose either of you brought a flashlight?”

Silence.

“Guys?”

No answer.

“Yeah, okay, you’re hilarious. What do we do now?”

Still no response.

She swung her arms out, fully expecting to smack into one of them, but all she found was empty space. Her heart started to beat wildly at the thought of being all alone in the darkness.

The flames suddenly flared to life again and she felt a hand grab onto her shoulder.

“Thank goodness,” Alex said as she spun around. “Why didn’t you—
AHHHH!
”

She scrambled backwards to get away from the—
thing
—that had grabbed her. It looked like a man in a suit of armour, except there was no man inside. There was absolutely nothing above the shoulders, just empty space where the neck and head
should
have been. It was a headless, rust-covered suit of armour. And if that wasn’t creepy enough, it was also holding an enormous battle axe in the air, as if ready to attack.

She didn’t have a moment to wonder at its strangeness before the axe swung towards her face.

Alex automatically threw herself out of its path, hitting the ground hard. She scrambled to her feet and gaped at the suit of armour which had just—impossibly—tried to behead her.
Regardless of how unnatural it sounded, she hadn’t imagined its attack.

Proving her thoughts true, it moved a step forward while raising the axe again, prompting Alex to react instinctively. She didn’t think; she just spun on her heel and ran away as fast as her legs would carry her.

The dead end had transformed into a long torch-lit corridor, but she had no time to question the strange architectural phenomenon as she sprinted for her life down the hall. She could hear the suit of armour coming after her, its heavy metal clunking with every step it took.

In her mad dash, Alex noticed hundreds of closed doors all along the hallway, interspersed between the solid stone brickwork and flaming torches. Each door looked different from the next, with a dizzying assortment of sizes and shapes. While some were completely normal, like those which were wooden and simplistic in design, others were made out of brushed glass, strange glowing metals, and even—in one case—some kind of iridescent rainbow cloud.

As curious as she was, Alex was too focused on running away to think about entering any of them. But when the corridor abruptly ended in what looked like a medieval dungeon, she regretted her lack of exploration, since there were no doorways left and she was now trapped.

She spun in a circle, taking in the cobwebs that covered almost every surface of the room and the slime that dribbled down the walls from the ceiling. There was even a set of rusty manacles hanging from the roof. But the most disturbing feature was the human skeleton perched in the corner. Bony hands held the pommel of a gleaming sword, and the head was shielded by a helmet which thankfully covered the entire skull.

It was a disturbing sight and Alex couldn’t help but stand and stare for a moment. Then she heard the sound of grinding
metal as her pursuer caught up to her and she turned away from the skeleton to face the animated armour.

“Now listen here,” Alex said, hoping it could be reasoned with. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I want to know what you’ve done with my friends!”

The suit of armour stopped in front of her and she felt her confidence grow. If it hadn’t been for the metallic
screech
of warning then she wouldn’t have had time to duck when the massive axe whooshed towards her head again at an alarming speed.

For the second time that day, she hurled herself onto the floor and rolled out of the way. She quickly rose to her feet before ducking away again when the axe swooped a second time. Her reflexes were much improved—mostly thanks to Finn’s unwavering disciplinary tactics in PE—but she was definitely not capable of fighting this thing. Still, she might be able to knock it over.

The axe swung at her again and, as she dropped to the ground, she kicked out at the knee joint of the armour. The suit wobbled slightly, but if anything, she’d done more damage to herself, since her foot was now throbbing from kicking the unyielding metal.

“This is bad…” Alex murmured and she dodged the approaching axe again. She couldn’t keep throwing herself to the ground every time it came at her. It was time to try something else.

After the axe swooped towards her once more, she rolled quickly to her feet and launched herself at her attacker. Alex had hoped to catch it off guard and cause it to topple, but as she straddled the rust-covered torso, she found it to be as immovable as an oak tree.

She, however, was not so fortunate.

The armour wrapped its gauntleted arm around her waist and threw her across the room. She smacked into the rough stone wall with a sickening crunch and collapsed to the ground.

“
Oww.
” Alex made a groaning sound and pulled herself into a sitting position. She didn’t think anything was broken, so she couldn’t account for the crunching noise until she realised that she’d landed on the skeleton. Her natural reaction was to roll away, gagging, but when she noticed the sword again, she managed to set aside her disgust.

Alex rose painfully to her feet and reached for the weapon, shuddering as she pried the skeletal hand off the pommel. She gripped the sword tightly and turned back to face the suit of armour, raising the blade in front of her. It was heavier than she’d expected, but it was still usable.

Before she could so much as blink, the axe was once again swinging towards her head. She was trapped in the corner and had little option but to put all of her adrenaline-fuelled strength into lifting the sword to meet the axe mid-air. The two weapons collided with a horrible metallic screech, and Alex quickly deflected the blade away from her head.

The axe swung at her over and over again, and each time she met the weapon with her sword. But, unlike the suit of armour, Alex was quickly running out of energy. She wouldn’t be able to continue deflecting its attack for much longer.

“Somebody, please help me!” she cried out.

Her whole body trembled with the effort of maintaining her defence. Sweat beaded on her forehead from exhaustion and fear. Her weakened arms almost dropped the sword after another jarring attack, but she renewed her grip when something caught her eye. Both the sword and the axe had the same engraving etched onto their blades; it looked like a coat of arms with a decorative shield split into three parts.

The breastplate on the suit of armour had the same picture engraved where the heart should have been. Turning her head slightly, Alex found that the helmet on the skeleton was also etched with the same emblem. And from out of nowhere she had an idea.

When their blades met mid-air in the next attack, instead of deflecting the axe, Alex gave one heaving push forward, causing the armour to stumble back slightly. Using her downward momentum, she directed her blade into the bony neck joint of the skeleton lying at her feet. It immediately turned to dust, leaving the helmet sitting amongst a pile of ashes.

Out of the corner of her eye, Alex saw the axe coming towards her head again. Dropping the sword, she scrambled to pick up the helmet, thrusting it in front of her face like a shield. The impact of the axe on the helmet sent her staggering into the wall and she gasped out a grunt, straining against the armour’s strength.

The front of the helmet was facing towards her and the coat of arms pulsed slightly with light. Something about the light reminded her of the TechnoConnectivity Devices, which helped her to realise what she needed to do next.

Mustering her last reserve of strength, Alex heaved against the axe with all her might, pushing her attacker off balance and backwards a few steps again. It gave her the room she needed to move into position.

Just as the armour regained its balance, Alex leapt on top of it and held on for dear life. It stumbled again but recovered quickly, and she felt rather than saw its gauntleted arm reach out to throw her off once more. Before it could do so, she tightened her grip and jammed the helmet onto the collar of the armour, pressing her palm to its now glowing coat of arms.

A flash of blinding light filled the room and Alex was thrown into the wall—again. When the light faded and her eyes recovered from her daze, she gaped at the sight in front of her. “I can’t
believe
that actually worked.”

Nineteen

Alex was breathing heavily and
shaking all over, but that didn’t matter because standing before her was a full suit of armour, complete with helmet, and no longer rusting. It was gleaming, in fact. But more importantly, it was bowing to her.

When it rose from its bow it kept one gauntleted arm crossed in a formal salute. “How doth thee, fair lady?”

Alex gaped at it. Or rather, at
him
.

“What be thy title?” the armour asked.

“Err… My name is Alex.”

He tilted his helmeted head as if confused. “Be not thy title somewhat… masculine?”

She stared at it. Him. Whatever. “My full name is Alexandra, if that makes a difference?”

“Salutations, Lady Alexandra,” he said. “My gratitude I bestow upon thee, for ending a much grievous curse.”

“You’re… welcome?”

“Sir Camden be my name,” he said, bowing again. “I shalt forever be in thy debt, and as such I shalt serve and protect thee always.”

Alex just continued to gape at him as her heartbeat began to stabilise.

“How doth a fine maiden such as thyself cometh to be thus situated?” he asked. “These here dungeons appear unseemly for
a lady. Perchance thou might consent upon a knightly escort from such unsavoury quarters?”

Translation:
I’ll lead you out
. Alex was all for that, as long as he wasn’t about to go ballistic on her again.

“Just to clarify,” she said hesitantly, “you’re not going to chop me up into little pieces, are you?”

“The lady need not fear Sir Camden,” he said. “I be a Protector Knight of the Highest Order. To induce harm on one such as thyself, I would truly hath to lose my head!”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Alex mumbled. But in the end, she figured there was nothing for it. “I really should find my friends,” she told him. “Will you help me?”

“A quest!” he cried, joyous. “A noble quest to find thy loyal retainers! Fear not, fair lady, for together we shalt uncover the mysteries of thy kinsmen’s whereabouts.”

He reached down to pick up the sword she’d dropped and secured it into the empty scabbard at his waist. Then he offered her one of his gauntleted arms and, after glancing at it warily, she accepted his steadying grip.

Sir Camden started to lead her down the corridor but after a few steps he paused in front of one of the many doors lining the hallway. When he opened it, Alex couldn’t keep from gasping. Spanning out farther than her eyes could see was a vast, grassy wasteland. If Jordan and Bear were in there, there was no way she would ever find them.

But that wouldn’t stop her from trying.

When Alex moved to step through the door, Sir Camden closed it in front of her.

“Hey!” she cried.

“Thou kinsmen not be through there,” he told her. “And there be naught point in wasting time on useless folly. We shalt continue onwards, fair lady.”

He started walking down the corridor again, stopping in front of the next door. This one opened to a tropical rainforest, and it was so real that Alex could actually feel the humidity in the air as it blended with the cool draught in the stone hallway.

When she moved towards it, the knight blocked her path again, so she asked, “How do you know they’re not in there? Or in the last one, for that matter?”

“I hath been in this here Library for many millennia,” he said. “In such time, I hath discovered many secrets buried within. Thou wouldst do well to favour this knight’s judgement on the matter, lest thou wander off at will and perish.”