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Toby shifted to the large metal portal outside the Ice Creatures’ cavern. Thought back to the day of the third test; remembered that spot, a pair of stalactites hung down like fangs. He concentrated on that exact spot and-
Surrounded by darkness, he reached up and found the stony fangs. Could he dare use his light?
There were no drops or dangerous places.
He inched along, using his hands and memory as a guide.
Was that a chewing sound?
Can spiders see in the dark?
Can they see heat?
He stood perfectly still, heartbeat pounding, but heard nothing else.
Red swirls formed at the edges of his vision.
The air was too thick to move.
Lungs burned. Each inhale came faster, but nothing worked right. The world spun left, then right. His fingers tingled.
Sadly, fearing his phobia only hastened the panic.
Another thought jumped to the front: This is still a trap.
He could shift out and try later. Everyone would understand.
He took a step backward. Part of his brain congratulated him on the first smart thing he’d done in months.
More steps followed the first.
This was good. Teacher didn’t want him there, anyway.
A little thought crossed his mind.
He ignored it.
The thought grew.
He shook his head.
She’s counting on you.
“No, damn it.”
Great-grandfather Tobias ran toward the danger despite the fear.
Chase didn’t give up. Teacher and Carrick didn’t quit.
But Mom and Dad ran away.
No. They gave up everything to protect their small children.
Toby turned toward the cavern and took one step.
Still terrified, he took another step and another.
His vision still swirled red, and his breathing would not behave, but he took more steps.
Breath in through the nose. Out through the mouth.
His tingly hands felt better.
He remembered that little trail in the cavern, the one behind an enormous boulder. He could shift there and look around.
Crouched down and closed his eyes, concentrated on that spot, and-
Everything was still black, and his hand found a solid, rough surface.
Hopefully, it was the boulder.
The faint blue light of sunrise came through the ice ceiling. He remembered a trail down to the cavern floor.
Inched his way along.
Something foul stung his nostrils: rotting spider.
He covered his nose and continued toward the cavern floor.
There were the ropes that bound Lela.
More bits of Spider.
Despite the freezing temperature, his armpits dripped with sweat.
Falling pebbles and shards of ice clicked and snapped on the cave floor.
To his left, the cave floor angled up.
He picked a concealed spot and shifted.
Not even daring to breathe, the seconds ticked by, but nothing moved.
He picked another protected spot and shifted.
The air grew somehow colder with each shift farther north.
Several shifts later, he looked back down the hill and saw something: the Barrier.
Oh.
It’s a sphere, not a dome.
Toby stayed low. The light was increasing. Was he too late?
“Toby!” called his mother.
He froze.
No.
He looked over the rock.
Mom crouched behind a boulder and waved him over.
“Hurry,” Mom said. “I have Lela.”
He kept scanning the area.
“They’re coming back,” Lela said.
Chewing noise came from behind him.
Spiders.
Everywhere.
“Run!” Mom said.
Spiders lined the walls.
“Hurry!” Lela said.
“Toby!” Spiders attacked Mom.
“No!” The red beam passed through the spider, and nothing happened.
Wait.
Oh.
“That’s enough.”
The spiders moved toward Mom, became clouds.
The Mom devolved into something gray and shapeless.
An oval formed in the mass and became a handsome face. Many amulets hung from its neck.
“Master Tobias,” he bowed. “So happy to talk to you face to face. Thank you for coming. A most profitable day.”
Lela stood up and moved closer.
To the One.
A small crystal glowed.
It had to be that vile youth amulet.
A cloud hand pulled out a book from somewhere inside the cloud body.
“Do you recognize this, my young friend?”
The Book of Amulets, but Toby kept quiet.
“When an adult speaks, child, you respond.” He looked at Lela, “Don’t they anyone teach manners anymore?”
Toby shifted about 50m back.
Lela looked at the One.
The dinners, the kiss, everything for the One.
Worst of all, the One had told the truth; Lela attacked his mother.
Pain in his chest.
“Is the widdle boy going to hurt me?” said the One, and he laughed at his enormous wit.
Toby aimed at Lela, but something said, Wait.
“You’d shoot your Keeper? Bravo, my young friend.”
Lela’s smile dimmed.
The pain continued to build. He concentrated on the One.
The blue beam passed through, but the hole filled in faster than it formed.
He magnified the effort and fired a red beam.
The One smiled as he made a hole for the beam to pass.
“I can do this all day.”
The One’s eye-shaped swirls narrowed, and he said, “That simpleton grandfather of yours kept me from my prize.”
A tendril pointed at Toby’s chest. “It’s called me for centuries.”
Toby could feel the Amulet lift away from his chest. Toby’s hand pushed it down.
The One laughed, and Toby watched Lela attempt to stifle her smile.
Behind the One, the cavern’s mouth opened into a glacial valley bright with the morning sun.
A plan took shape.
The One moved ever closer. A tendril formed where a shoulder should be.
Toby picked a spot outside the cavern, concentrating on a small block of deep blue glacial ice.
As the One struck, Toby wondered-
He opened his eyes, nearly blinded by the sunlight reflecting off the snow.
“Running away?” The One drifted toward the mouth of the cavern. “Your mother taught you so well.”
Toby concentrated on the landscape. His feet sunk into the deep snow. He pulled his right leg up, but the left sunk to hip level.
The Eastern horizon grew darker.
Toby crouched behind the blue ice and waited.
The eclipse approached totality.
“Even the Sun abandons you, my boy.”
The One struck with invisible speed.
Toby barely escaped; he shifted to a high rocky outcrop.
The One followed.
Toby shifted again down to the snowfield and threw up.
“Can’t run forever, my child.”
The cold numbed his mind as quickly as his hands and feet.
Each shift took a toll.
He forced himself to recite the prophecy. ‘Friend and foe seem as one’ - that was Lela.
‘Light and dark is the sun,’ - the eclipse.
‘Appearance is not as it seems’ - that was Mom.
‘Some things are only in dreams’ - the fake Spiders.
One more line.
A pair of tendrils snared Lela by the neck. “End this now, boy. Don’t make me break her lovely neck.”
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Silence.” He shook her like a dog with a stuffed toy.
“But I did everything you-”
Tighter tendrils cut off her words. He said, “Her blood is on your hands, my young friend.”
Lifting her by the neck, her feet danced on the empty air, her fingers clawed at solid tendrils.
“Sklavos and Raymond will know you could have saved her.”
Toby stepped out of hiding. “Don’t hurt her.”
The One stared at him like a starving man.
The One flew closer and said, “Give me - the Amulet, now.”
Toby took a step closer.
The first ray of sunlight pierced the sky.
The One screamed as his form boiled. Turning into the shape of a hawk, he flapped madly toward the cavern entrance, dragging Lela like prey in his talons.
The seconds of exposure turned him into a reeking, bubbling mass of black and gray on the cavern floor, with Lela still in his grasp.
One’s face became a contorted mask of pain.
Toby watched with raw fascination as the creature’s great sad eyes silently pled for help.
The mass continued to spread across the floor like liters of crude oil.
Toby inched forward into the shadows.
A tendril shot out of the melted mass and wrapped around Toby’s neck.
Another pair ripped Toby’s tunic and grabbed the Prime.
Toby’s hands clawed at the solid, constricting band.
Couldn’t breathe.
The One lifted him off the ground, yanking at the chain, and pulled him closer to that ruined face.
Tried to shift-
“What’s wrong? Shifter not working?”
The One grabbed the tiny youth amulet that glowed with the eerie light. “One shot from this and I’m as good as new. And then I’ll remove my property from your charred corpse.”
The One dangled the crystal in front of Toby’s face.
Toby clawed at the tendrils; no air moved.
“Bits of them are still in here. Teacher, Carrick, even that idiot brother of yours.”
The tendril tightened.
“I will feed on you for centuries.”
Toby’s vision faded.
That glowing amulet flared brighter.
Toby concentrated on his target.
He let the chest pain build, now so deep and vicious; death was preferable.
With his last thought, he fired.
His eyes erupted with searing red heat.
The red beam penetrated the One.
And The Book of Amulets exploded.
***
Toby woke up against the cavern wall.
The One oozed down the far wall.
“You idiot!” cried the One tried to peel himself from the wall and catch the remnants.
An amulet split with a loud crack, and fragments clattered on the cavern floor.
One after another, the charms popped and snapped like wet wood in the fireplace.
The One grabbed his one remaining weapon, the life amulet, and aimed it at Toby.
Toby was about to shift when the crystal exploded, and the fabric of space seemed to ripple and distort, knocking Toby down.
Toby stood up to see the cloud covering Lela’s face.
“No!” Toby wanted to fire but had nothing.
Something buffeted the One -with the force of a hurricane- blowing him off Lela and against the far wall.
The gale was deafening, but Toby didn’t feel a breeze.
First, at the edges, the cloud started dissipating.
The One leaned into the wind. His hand-shaped clouds came up, vainly shielding his face-shaped cloud.
And he laughed.
Great deep laughs.
Enormous holes blew open in the middle of the mass as more of his essence dissipated into the ether.
And his last scream cut off as it began.
The roar of the unfelt gale died down.
The shattered amulet remnants dimmed and were dark.
Toby ran toward Lela but stumbled over something on the floor.
A book.
The book.
In one piece.
He simply scooped it up and ran to Lela.
Still breathing.
He kneeled beside her, put his hand on her arm, and shifted her to Teacher’s Room.