I lost feeling in my hands after ten minutes.
I tried huddling behind Mia as gale-force artic winds jet streamed over us. Unfortunately, she was about as good a windbreaker as a paper bag, huddled as she was behind the wall that was Colson. Over the roar of the wind, I thought I heard Asher’s teeth chattering, but that could have been the strands of my frozen hair clacking together like North Pole wind chimes.
“I’m gonna try to warm us up!” I yelled.
“B-b-est i-idea I’ve h-h-eard a-all day!” Mia said.
I tightened my legs around Dragon and clasped my hands together. “Fevie.”
With the cold, it took a bit more energy to coax my magic from my core, but soon the fever spell was warming me from the inside. I pressed my hands to Mia’s back and heard her exhale with relief. From behind me, Asher was also growing warmer. Or that could have been from how close we were sitting.
Now that I was passably comfortable, it was easier to look at where we were headed. Not that I could see much. Clouds obscured most of the ground, but from the few glimpses between the puffs of ivory white, I could tell we were cruising fast. Dragon didn’t waver an inch in his direction; he’d simply taken off with a preset destination. Like a golden, lively, slobbery GPS.
Another patch of cloud flew by and once more I spotted the ground far below. Far below. Way too far below.
“Don’t look if it bothers you,” Asher said.
“I’m not bothered,” I said, though my voice came out trembly. “Not like one strong gust of wind or Dragon sneezing could send all of us plummeting to our death.”
“Would you like me to tell him to do a barrel roll now?” Colson called back.
“Mia, can you hit him for me?” I said.
Mia gave Colson a light tap on the back, then huddled into him like a bear that’d found a cave to cuddle up in during a storm. Asher scooted closer, until he was right at my back.
“You can close your eyes if you want,” he said. “I promise I’ll catch you.”
I felt another rush of heat that had nothing to do with my spell. Dragon gave another strong flap. I bounced a little in my seat. Sure enough, Asher’s hands were on my waist, steadying me.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“Anytime.”
Secure now, I shut my eyes and waited for the ride to be over.
It felt like only a few hours before we lurched into a descent through the clouds.
I sat up, blinking off the ice crystals coating my eyelashes. It’d just started growing brighter, the sun like a ripe peach in the east, slicing the sky into halves of light and dark.
“Easy does it.” Colson patted the back of Dragon’s head. “Take us down nice and—”
Dragon must have seen something he liked on the ground, because suddenly we were freefalling.
“I said easy!” Colson yelled as the rest of us gripped onto whatever we could for dear life. Colson’s commanding shouts were drowned out as the ground hurtled toward us. Dragon was beating his wings wildly, tongue flapping out the side of his mouth, neck undulating back and forth as he aimed for one of the mottled green and white patches that might have been a peak. I bent over as much as I could and prayed for it to be over. We were trapped on the world’s worst living roller coaster, one that was about to come to an abrupt, final, halt.
Just when I swore I could see the individual tufts of grass that’d managed to poke up through the snow-covered ground, Dragon parachuted his wings. My body snapped forward, spine compressing like an accordion as the sudden stop slammed into us a moment before Dragon touched down.
Without waiting, I rolled off. Asher and Mia did the same, all three of us practically collapsing onto sweet, sweet ground.
“That was fun,” Colson chuckled.
I rolled over to glare at him. He was still atop Dragon, scratching him between the ears while the horrid beast let off some kind of low grumbling sound, not unlike a deadly purr. Colson easily swung himself off and in a couple quick tugs removed the saddle. Dragon immediately licked him and Colson chuckled again. “He was just showing us what he could really do.”
“How considerate of him,” Mia said. Her face had returned to a deep shade of goblin green.
I dusted the snow off my clothes as I stood. Dragon had deposited us (if that’s what you wanted to call it) on a plain devoid of trees and covered in a foot of snow. The landscape dipped into valleys that appeared as though they’d been etched out by retreating glaciers millions of years ago. To our right and left, vales wound their way through elevated plateaus. The air was still and so icy the moisture on my tongue felt as though it might freeze with each breath. I really hoped Radell was right and the house was around here. This was a place few could survive.
Dragon had taken to rolling around in the snow, leaving steaming patches of brown grass in his wake.
“He probably hasn’t been able to stretch his wings like that since he was born,” Colson said. He tossed the saddle across a rock. “It’s amazing Radell was able to keep him as long as he did.”
“Do you think what he said was true?” Asher had stood and was also scanning the landscape. His expression told me he’d arrived at the same conclusion I had: there wasn’t much of anything out here. “Do you think this is the anchor point for the Cursed One?”
“Even if it’s not, Dragon’s magic might be enough to bring it to us, right?” Mia said.
I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Just because Dragon’s here doesn’t mean the Cursed One will come to us. Though it couldn’t hurt if there were more of him.”
“You mean like those?” Colson said.
Earth-rumbling roars sounded from above. Winged outlines circled like vultures high against the new day’s sun, their forms streaming with beams of light. They were still a good few miles off, but even from here I could sense the brush of their magic, the ancient life force that kept them alive for centuries. I could also tell they were much, much bigger than Dragon.
And much, much deadlier.
I took a step back. “I…don’t think we should be here when they arrive. Because if it’s a welcome party, then we’re the snacks.”
“Agreed,” Colson said. “Those are truly wild. No clue how they might react to us.”
Dragon’s ears had perked at the roar. He’d stopped rolling around and stood erect on the nearest stone, facing the incoming dragons. Colson quickly gave him one last goodbye pat, but Dragon didn’t notice. He continued staring straight ahead, all the playfulness gone. There was another piercing roar, closer now.
That was the cue for all four of us to boogie out of there.
We beat a hasty retreat down the hill, stumbling in the thick snow, until we found an outcropping of rock that was hopefully far enough away.
“Stop here,” Colson said. “Even if this isn’t the anchor point, their magic might still direct us to it.”
“How will we know?” Asher said. “You guys said you didn’t notice the house until it was right on top of you.”
“Maybe that will happen again,” Mia said.
I looked up, as though a house might be hovering overhead, waiting for us to pay attention. Instead of a house, all I saw were a bunch of potentially hungry beasts approaching faster by the second.
We crouched lower as the dragons came in for landing, circling twice before touching down beside Dragon. Dragon might have been big, but he was nothing but a pipsqueak beside the newcomers There were four of them, each about as long as a 747, wings twice as broad and leathery. Instead of being any dazzling primary colors, they were various shades of dull browns and green. Which made sense. If blending in to stay hidden from humans and prey alike was your goal, you probably didn’t want to look as flamboyant as a Mardi Gras float. I only hoped Dragon grew to match them.
“We should go,” Mia whispered, slowly backing down the hill.
“Wait.” Colson craned forward to get a better look. “They have to accept him, first.”
“Which is something I’m sure they don’t need our input on.”
Colson continued leaning forward, fascinated, as the dragons began to pace around Dragon, sniffing him and bashing their tails into the ground. I half expected Dragon to smother them with licks, but he kept his head down, tail and wings tucked in until one of the older-looking dragons, its body covered in scars and eyes faintly milky, reached out and sniffed him.
Then it raised its head and launched a stream of fire in the sky.
The rest of the dragons followed suit before taking off one by one, leaving only Dragon and one of the mottled green adults behind.
“They didn’t eat him,” I whispered. “That’s good, right?”
“Pretty sure,” Colson said.
“Which means we can go now,” Mia said.
With an exuberant bounce, Dragon flew after the dragons already in the sky. The final dragon opened his wings to follow.
A burst of wind rippled up from our backs and blasted over us.
The dragon paused, nostrils flaring. It swept its massive head left and right, sniffing. Its tail clubbed the ground a few more times.
“Okay, now would be a great time to go,” Colson said.
All four of us took off down the hill, too scared to look back to see if death via a four-legged inferno was following. I heard the rumble of the earth. I really hoped it wasn’t footsteps coming after us.
“Faster!” I hissed as we dodged around boulders and practically threw ourselves down the steep hillside. “Must go faster!”
The hill steepened. Low, snow-dusted scrub brush made any full-out sprint a test of ankle strength. I dodged around another boulder right as an ear-tearing roar followed us.
“I really hope staying to watch them was worth it, Colson!” Asher yelled.
I could practically feel the anger of the dragon as it took off in pursuit. I wasn’t sure if it’d spotted us yet among the field of boulders, but strangely, I didn’t want to stop and check.
The plateau finally leveled out onto a barren, snow-covered plain. With so much white, we’d stand out like insects against a paper towel: perfect targets for squashing or grilling.
“Which way, which way, which way?” Mia said, dancing in place as the rumbling grew. I risked a glance back and saw glimpses of the dragon pummeling its way down the hill, smashing boulders out of the way as it began to take off after us. Seriously? How thick-skulled were these things?
Asher’s hand went to his sword. “Maybe we can try to calm it down?”
“Right, waving our sword at it’s going to help a whole lot,” Colson said. “It’s too angry to calm down now.”
“Well standing here’s not going to do anything!” Mia said, voice a couple octaves higher than normal.
I spun like a top, trying desperately to think of some way we could get out of this, some way we could go where we wouldn’t—
Then I felt it.
It was a soft ping at the corner of my consciousness, a tug on my senses that let me know there was another magic, a stronger magic, nearby. Despite the danger, I forced myself to close my eyes and focus on it, following the threads back to the source. I discerned the dragon’s rage, thick as smog, but it wasn’t the origin of this new source. This was something different, yet familiar.
“Follow me!” I yelled, taking off around the base of the plateau. The others followed without question, probably grateful to be running somewhere, anywhere, away from Smaug the hungry one.
I heard rock crack behind us. The dragon must have put his head through another boulder. I hoped it slowed him down a little bit.
I continued sprinting, keeping my eyes peeled for…something. The magic continued to ping me, a supernatural homing beacon that seemed to draw me toward it. I realized I’d felt this magic before, in the cave in Greece. It was the tug of power I’d only felt there. Maybe we had truly stumbled across the anchoring point for the Cursed One.
I only hoped we found it before—
The dragon roared again.
“You guys feel that?” Mia panted beside me.
“The ground shaking? Yeah, it’s been doing that ever since the dragon started trying to kill us,” Asher said.
“She means the magic,” Colson said. “I feel it, too.”
Good, I wasn’t crazy.
The magic grew, its call singing in my veins. But there didn’t seem to be any place nearby that was hiding a giant, randomly appearing house. Other than the entire open plain surrounding us. If it was out there, I wasn’t seeing it.
“Look!”
Asher pointed straight ahead. Around the next curve, cut slightly into the side of the plateau, was a shallow indentation. I almost missed it at first glance—passing it off as nothing more than an undulation in the side of the hill. As we drew closer I saw it went deeper, as though the rock that used to be there had collapsed inward, as though the plateau was nothing but a hollow shell.
“Think that’s it?” Colson said.
“Does it matter?” I said. “Go!”
Leathery wings flapped behind us. I risked another glance back and got the encouraging sight of an enormous shadow blotting out the sun. The very air shimmered with anger. Any second the dragon was going to reach us, and we’d get to choose if we wanted to be eaten medium or well-done.
“Go, go, go!” I shoved the others into the cave, scrambling in after them. We didn’t stop, but stumbled farther in until the narrow entryway opened up into a couple side tunnels. Asher pulled me to one side and we crouched, gasping for breath, out of sight of the entrance. Mia and Colson huddled across from us. Colson wrapped a reassuring arm around her as she trembled.
“He can’t smell us in here,” I heard Colson mutter.
“Oh good, great, fantastic,” Mia whimpered. “You just had to stay and watch, didn’t you?”
Before Colson could respond, a powerful gust of wind tore past us, ripping at my jacket. We were briefly plunged into darkness as a massive shape soared past. Another roar rattled the stones and made me clamp my hands over my ears. I kept my eyes glued to the ground, too afraid to look up and see a snout full of razor-sharp teeth poking into our hideout.
Asher pressed me further into the corner as the shadow passed again. It was circling. We could go further into the tunnel but all of us were too afraid to move, too afraid that doing anything might draw its attention.
I focused only on the small space my body took up. On Asher’s warmth, on his fear, so palpable and so much like mine. It was his fear that, surprisingly, calmed me down. Maybe it was confirmation that I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way, that made me feel better. If I was going to die, I thought, at least I’d do it beside someone who shared this experience with me.
The shadow passed one last time, and then didn’t return. None of us moved for a full five minutes. I didn’t dare breathe too loud for fear it’d come back. I expected at any moment for the ceiling to cave in, and to look up and see the dragon, face twisted in a toothy grin that said, ‘Hello, snacks!’.
Eventually, I uncovered my ears. Asher briefly pressed against me as he leaned over to check the entrance.
“Gone.” His voice was still scary soft. We might have bought some respite, but we were far from safe.
“Let’s get further inside,” Colson said. He helped Mia up. Asher took my arm and we stood, my stiff legs protesting. I checked in once more with the magical pinging. It was still there. Stronger now.
“This way.” I pointed down the left tunnel. We took it without hesitation, winding our way deeper into the heart of the earth.
We walked in silence, following the invisible string of magic that tugged us along.
“What are we going to do when we find the Cursed One?” Mia said. Her normally soft voice was magnified ten times in the narrow space. “If this is even it.”
“This is it,” Colson said confidently. “And we’ll stop it.”
“How?”
In the dim glow cast by our magical lights, I saw Asher’s face darken. “We stop it any way we can. Just so long as the Society doesn’t get their hands on it.”
Mia’s eyes were wide, almost glistening as much as the damp rock walls. “You mean we have to…are you saying we’re seriously going to…”
“We can’t let the Society get it,” I said. “Whatever it is, whatever it could do, we can’t take that risk.”
“We keep calling it an ‘it’, but what is it really?” Colson said.
“It’s an ancient entity that could give Kasia some insanely evil powers,” I said. “That’s all we know and that’s all we need to know. Maybe we won’t have to do anything. Maybe we’ll find some way to send it back to where it came from where nobody can get their hands on it.”
Colson’s shadow bobbed up and down as he nodded. “We stop it however we can, then.”
“If it comes to that,” Asher said.
Mia’s lips were a tight, thin line as she pushed past Colson. He frowned. I put my hand on his arm. “I really hope I’m right and it doesn’t come to that.”
“Yeah, who said it’d be some ancient being?” Asher said. “For all we know we could walk in there and find a giant sunflower or something.”
Colson and I stared at him. Asher sighed, waving for us to keep walking. “It’s just a hope, guys.”
A hope that wouldn’t be true. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen in the house’s window the first time, but it hadn’t been a giant sunflower.
When we reached the end of the tunnel, Colson held up a hand to stop us.
“There’s an opening.”
“A cavern?” I said.
Colson squinted into the dark. “Maybe. I think so.”
He unshrunk his hammer and hefted it. Each of us drew our own weapons. It was strange, this unspoken need to draw weapons. Though we didn’t know exactly what we’d be facing, it was clear none of us wanted to be facing it empty-handed.
Colson took a deep breath, then slipped into the cavern, all of us quickly tailing behind him like a trio of heavily armed ducklings.
The second we entered this new chamber, I was immediately reminded of the space beneath the mountain in Greece. It seemed the Cursed One had a liking for enclosed earthen structures. There was no light in here, only the thin halos of our magic reaching its fingers into the darkness. The only things I could see were my friends’ determined faces, the snappy glow of Valkyrie—
And the lighted windows of the house in front of us.
It appeared as it had before: a gothic mansion that the Addams family might have picked as their summer home. Spires and swooping arches over the windows; an open space in a ring surrounding the entirety of the property that looked somewhat scorched, as though the force of the house simply popping into existence had decimated the land beneath it.
I heard Asher gasp as we drew closer. “This is what you saw?”
“This is it,” Mia said. “We should hurry. The last time the house disappeared, the ground beneath it crumbled away.”
“Agreed,” I said.
But even still, none of us moved for a moment, reluctant to go any further. It was hard to say what stopped me. Maybe it was the anticipation of what I’d find inside. I knew Radell and Master Deltroy and pretty much everyone else said the Cursed One wasn’t evil, (name notwithstanding), but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something, something was in there that I wouldn’t like. Bad energy oozed from the house, creeping over my skin, making the skin of my arms prickle. This was a place of old magic; a place time had forgotten, a place I had the uncomfortable feeling no mortal was supposed to interfere with.
Yet we had to. One way or another, we had to.
I tightened my grip on Valkyrie. “Let’s do this. Asher and I will head straight, right through the back door. Mia, you and Colson swing around front and cover that. I doubt whatever’s inside is going to make a run for it, but we can’t let it get away.”
The others grimly nodded. We advanced toward it, the ground slowly growing squishy beneath my feet as we drew closer. Asher swore as a damp patch of earth nearly sucked his shoe in.
“It’s not scorched, it’s a swamp,” he muttered. “The house pulled a swamp with it.”
I kept my eyes fixed forward as we drew close, scanning each of the broad, open windows for any sign of whatever—or whomever—I’d seen the first time. My heart was loud in my ears. My hands began to shake with the thought of what we had to do. I couldn’t risk hesitating. The minute we broke our way inside I had to assume we’d be under attack. This thing might not have been evil, but if it got even a whiff of what we were really there for, I had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t just lie down and let us finish it off.
We paused twenty feet before the back of the house. Mia and Colson headed around toward the front. Their feet squishing through the bog sounded unbearably loud in the quiet space. I was sure the Cursed One heard it, even from inside.
And that wasn’t the only sound I heard.
At first, I thought I was imagining it. Maybe it was the noise we were making bounced a hundred times over in the enormous cavern. Then Asher’s eyes grew wide, and I realized the noise was familiar. It was the sound of fabric tearing. Like a portal being opened.
“Farcast portal!” Asher hissed.
We whirled. Not one but a half dozen split the air in a semi-circle around the back of the house, allowing Society acolytes to step through. Five. Ten. A dozen. For a moment, I could only gape in shock, until Asher gripped my jacket and practically threw me after Mia and Colson toward the front of the house.
“Go! Go!”
But I hadn’t made it a single step before I felt it: the prickling of a thousand eyes stripping me of any defenses and peering straight into my soul. I was being examined by darkness itself, predators from the shadows ready to leap out and devour me.
Kasia was here.