The Compass Key (Book 5) (11 page)

“Will you face your fear?” Kira asks, her voice booming throughout the chamber.

“Yes. Every time it rears its head, I will stare it down,” Sari answers. She draws two daggers from thin air and spins them in her hands. “I do love Luke, but I still declare that he is not mine to have forever. Part of me won’t accept that, but what woman would believe with all her heart that she can’t have the man she loves. So like my guilt, I will live the rest of my life with my fear.”

“You’re an idiot
if you think you can live in such a way,” the specter laughs as her body fades away. Her head remains as it floats to Sari and gets within inches of her face. “A person cannot exist in a state of always wanting. One day you will either claim Luke for yourself or commit an act to make sure you can’t have him.”

“Then so be it,” Sari whispers, flashing a friendly smile. “Now let me out of here.”

The head disappears in a burst of smoke, but Kira’s voice echoes throughout the room a final time. “It is not my place to release you. That can only be done by you and at the proper time. For now, you are too weak to return to the land of the aware. So, enjoy the company of your next inner demon. I know he’s been dying to get his hands on you.”

“Let him come,” Sari snarls. Her anger rises and she swings her arm, creating claw marks in the ice without touching it. “Let all of my demons come and challenge me! I’ll defeat all of you!”

“Oh really, my old partner,” hisses a familiar, silky voice from the shadows.

5

The Lich’s castle holds no life in its halls as the heroes cautiously move among the partially erected buildings. All of the zombies have been destroyed and they can hear the battle dying down outside the walls. The uneventful walk to the wooden door of the central tower makes them nervous. When Delvin pushes the door open, Luke and Timoran are already prepared to charge. Nyx has fireballs whirling around her body, sweat beading on her forehead from her looming anxiety.

“It’s empty,” Delvin says, scratching his head with his shield arm. “It’s an open room leading to a stairwell.”

“You’re kidding,” Luke whispers. He peeks around Delvin to see the barren, gray-stone room in front of them. “Not even a gargoyle or a chandelier in there.”

“It is a trap,” Timoran calmly
states.

“Definitely,” Delvin agrees. He taps the stone floor with his foot before yanking it
back. “Nothing. We need a trap expert.”

“The Lich has our trap expert
,” Luke growls in frustration. “How can we set off the trap when we don’t know what it is?”

“I can blast the room,” Nyx suggests
, carefully moving in front of Delvin. “I think I sense the trap. It’s magical and involves something invisible in the middle. So, hitting it with an attack spell would be the best option. The Lich already knows we’re here, so we’re not losing the element of surprise.”

Delvin sighs and takes a long look at the room, gradually poking his head through the doorway. He is jerked back by Nyx and he feels the wind of something passing by his face. A few cleanly cut hairs fall onto his nose
, causing his mouth to go dry.

“Blast away,” he says, politely gesturing for
the caster to proceed. “Try to keep the sound to a minimum.

Nyx grins as the fireballs circling her stream into the room and begin exploding against the floor. Even though the fiery blasts are blinding, they make small popping noises instead of deafening booms. Throughout the room, invisible creatures with bladed arms burst into flames and collapse to the ground. Nyx has two fireballs run along the ceiling, igniting a swa
rm of winged beasts. In a matter of seconds, the room is filled with the smoking corpses of invisible monsters.

“That was easy,” Nyx claims while rubbing her hands together.

“Too easy,” the three warriors tell her.

“I’ll take point,” Luke declares, his senses on edge. He takes some comfort in Timoran being a few steps behind him.

The two trackers cautiously move across the room with their weapons drawn. They can hear Delvin and Nyx several yards behind them, but refuse to take their eyes off the distant stairwell. Everyone freezes when Luke reaches the middle of the room and the clank of a metal bar falling free echoes off the walls. The scraping of claws and metal on the stone floor brings their attention to a sudden slant of the floor. As the invisible bodies slide toward the front door, the floor dips and reveals a growing gap.

“The floor is like a see-saw!” Luke shouts. He bra
ces himself as the floor steadily gets steeper. “We need to get across to balance it and escape!”

“It’s balancing as the bodies go over the edge,” Nyx mentions, her feet unsteady on the moving floor. “We can wait it out.”

Nyx yelps when an invisible corpse knocks her legs out from underneath her. She tumbles down the floor toward the gaping hole, her fingers unable to gain a hold of anything solid. Looking back, she can see Delvin charging after her and Timoran racing to the far side of the room. Nyx is about to slip over the edge of the floor when she feels the former mercenary catch her hand. She looks down to see blood-covered spikes a few yards below her feet, their tips glinting in the faint light.

“I have you,” Delvin grunts as he holds her tight. He is on his back with his legs braced against the solid part of the floor. “I can’t move, but I have you. You guys have any ideas over there?”

“We’re working on it!” Luke calls back as Timoran joins him in the middle. “We can’t go forward until you pull Nyx out of the hole. We can’t go backward because all of us will fall into there.”

“The hole has spikes!” Nyx announces while trying to reach for the edge of the floor. She is
a few inches too low and stretching nearly pulls Delvin into the trap with her. “What about your griffin form?”

“What about your magic?” Delvin asks through clenched teeth.

Nyx tries to cast a wind spell to lift her to safety, but the tips of the spikes create a glowing net that absorbs her spell. She curses under her breath before trying another spell and getting the same result. In frustration, Nyx hurls a fireball at the spikes and it is sent ricocheting along the bottom of the floor. As it disappears into the gloom, Nyx catches sight of a stairwell hidden under the center of the floor.

“Good news is that the real stairwell is in the dead center of the floor,”
the caster calmly reports. She reaches up to get a better grip on Delvin’s wrist and ease the pressure in her shoulder. “Bad news is that the spikes are spell absorbers and I don’t know how to open the stairwell. We need to get out of this trap and think, so Luke should go griffin.”

The forest tracker closes his eyes to focus on the griffin spirit and
feathers appear around his neck. A loud cracking erupts from the ceiling and Timoran looks up to see a large rock golem emerging from the black stone. The barbarian grabs Luke by the arm to stop the transformation, which causes the golem to move slower.

“It
appears that the creature in the ceiling will materialize faster if Luke transforms,” Timoran says with a frown. He looks back to the entrance and wonders if he can make a running leap to the doorway. “I think I can do something.”

Timoran charges a few steps and leaps with all of his might. The barbarian soars across the room as propelled by magic instead of powerful muscles. He is about to land in the doorway when an invisible barrier repels him. Timoran is sent hurtling to the far side of the room where he lands with a heavy impact. The force is enough to push the floor down on his side and raising it on Delvin and Nyx’s side.

“That was lucky,” Nyx gasps as she stares at her magic bracelet. The unbreakable jewelry is wedged between the floor sections, preventing the trap from closing. “I’m so thanking my mother with flowers or a new dagger for this one. An inch in either direction and I’d be missing my hand. I’d also be impaled.”

“Actually, it wasn’t luck,” Delvin whispers. He is sitting up with his shoulder braced against the solid part of the floor. “I maneuvered your bracelet into position when I saw Timoran go flying. I figured it was magical when you yelled pineapple this morning.”

“I could have just been crazy,” Nyx laughs more out of fear than amusement. “Are they doing anything to help us?”

Delvin is about to answer when a loud crash shakes the floor and sends Luke
slamming into the wall. The forest tracker transforms into a griffin before he hits the ground and soars to the ceiling. The brown-haired warrior cranes his neck to see that the rock golem is free of the ceiling and standing in the middle of the room. It swats at Luke, who gracefully flies around the heavy giant to prevent it from moving. Through the golem’s legs, Delvin can see Timoran getting to his feet and watch the creature for any weak point.

“They’re doing all they can,” Delvin finally replies. He turns back to Nyx and flashes her a smile. “I’m sure we can get out of this. Luke is keeping the golem busy and Timoran is coming up with a plan.”

“If only we could get into the stairwell.”

“
Can golems react to what people are saying? I always thought they were simple creations that only follow orders.”

The caster wracks her brain for the answer, her experience with magical constructs very limited.
“I believe Golems can only follow simple orders. I think I know where you’re going with this. You can yell a plan and the golem won’t react. It will follow its initial orders when Luke stops distracting it.”

“It won’t have time to do anything if this works,” Delvin assures her. He grins as he leans forward to clearly see her face. “Do you trust me, Nyx?”

“Not much of a choice here, Cunningham.”

The warrior
carefully braces his feet and turns around without letting go of Nyx’s hand. He crouches in front of her, his butt pressing against the stable floor beneath the entrance. Reaching down, he takes her other hand in his and takes a deep breath. Delvin sees a glimmer of doubt in Nyx’s eyes, so he makes a silent prayer for Cessia to grant him luck and for Ehre to reward his refusal to let go of the caster.

“Listen up, guys!” Delvin yells to get everyone’s attention. “When I say the word ‘now’, I want you two to do exactly what I say. Luke will transform back into his true form and get four feet in front of me. Jam one of your sabers into a stone crevice, but keep the other one sheathed. I’m going to need you to catch Nyx’s ankle. Timoran! I need you to throw the golem to our side of the floor. Aim for the corner to avoid crushing us. I know it’s big, but I have faith that you can rage toss that thing without a problem. Once you throw the golem, prepare to slide down the
floor and slow yourself until the stairwell comes into view. Yes! We’re going to make the floor go vertical and drop into the stairwell. Let me know when you’re ready, Timoran!”

“I am ready now!” the barbarian proudly bellows. He claps his hands and hungrily eyes the golem.

Delvin takes a deep breath and grips Nyx’s hands tighter. “Now!”

Luke transforms and drops to the ground as the golem swings at him, its fist narrowly missing his head. He races to the spot in front of Delvin as Timoran rushes toward the golem with a mighty roar. The barbarian gets his hands under the golem’s foot as it steps down and he uses all of his
strength to flip the heavy construct. It crashes into the corner and pushes the floor down as Luke slams his sword between two of the floor stones. The moment the gap opens enough, Delvin flips Nyx through his legs and stretches his arms to get her close to the forest tracker. His legs slip off the edge as Luke grabs the caster by the ankle.

The floor swings like a door that has been kicked open until its far end crashes into the ceiling. The violent jolt is enough to jog Luke’s saber loose and they fall into the welcoming
stairwell. Timoran slides down the floor, slipping in a second before the floor flips closed and locks with a metal clank.

*****

“And so we come to the end!” the Lich declares from his low balcony. He grins at his enemies as they step out of the stairwell and into the brightly lit basement. Leaning on the marble railing, the Lich calmly eyes the new face among the heroes. “Are you going to introduce yourself, new champion?”

“I’m Delvin Cunningham,” the warrior says to the
necrocaster’s surprise.

Nyx swats
the warrior in the arm and glares at him. “Why did you answer him? Never tell the undead monster what he wants to know.”

“Well, he asked and it isn’t like my name is a secret,” Delvin responds with a shrug. He turns back to the Lich and smiles warmly. “Would it be possible for you to hand over our friend and let us leave? We’ve caused you so much trouble that it seems smarter to give us Sari and call it a day.”

“You’re an interesting one,” the Lich laughs. He wipes away nonexistent tears before regaining his composure. “That would be easier, but I don’t have her.”

“Tell me where she is!” Luke roars.

He steps toward the Lich and stops when several winged forms dart out from behind the Lich. Their emaciated bodies are held in the air by molting wings that lazily flap in the stale air. Their narrow eyes blindly scan the room as they begin to groan. Each one carries an ebony longbow and a quiver of arrows, but none of them are prepared to shoot. When Luke takes another step, one of the creature’s eyes burst open into orbs of pure white. In a fluid motion it nocks an arrow and fires at Luke, who jumps out of the way. The Lich swiftly holds up his hand to stop the creature from firing again.

“As I was saying, I don’t have your gypsy,” the Lich continues
, gesturing to an ice-covered door in the corner of the balcony. “My . . . ally has her in that room and he is the only one who can give her back. I’m sure he will get bored and return what’s left of her soon enough.”

“You’ve been demoted to a minion. How pathetic,” Nyx mentions with a sneer. She throws a small fireball at the icy door, but it
is dispelled in a puff of smoke.

“That is not normal ice,” Timoran whispers, eyeing the flying archers. “You should focus on those bowmen.”

The caster looks around the room, her eyes searching for anything suspicious. “I agree, but there’s something wrong. The Lich isn’t attacking. He should be sending the archers after us and casting spells.”

“I should be, but I want to savor this
encounter,” the Lich answers from across the room. His boney fingers screech across the smooth railing, the noise painful to anyone with ears. “After all, it could be our final meeting. I’d hate to kill all of you without getting a chance to enjoy your banter and say good-bye.”

Delvin bows to the Lich and draws his longsword. “Then, we thank you for being a friendly host. It’s unfortunate that I met you so close to my demise. I’m sure we could have had some glorious battles.”