unTalent, chapter 9 of 11
Jun. 5th, 2011 01:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laleiaChapter 9:
Please see Chapter 1 for the Summary, Author's Notes, additional details, etc.
For some reason, Avi had expected the alternative dimension to be cold and barren, something like a desert at night. She had expected it to be empty and spooky, and filled with nothing. That is, not that it had nothing, but that the very essence of nothingness would permeate the place, much like the in-between of dragonflight.
To her surprise, the air on the other side of the portal was hot and muggy. She could feel the humidity almost instantaneously soak her tee and mold it to her body, as if there was a blast of dampness. It was dark on the other side, and she could barely make out her surroundings, but apparently she had gotten the spooky bit right, if nothing else.
The sky was an eerie green color, and the vegetation (what she could make out through the thick fog, at least) was a poisonous purple. Fog, she felt, was typically associated with colder weather, but this thick fog or mist or whatever felt like the essence of humidity – as she stood in it, and looked through it, she could feel it bogging her down.
The next thing she noticed was that there was no sun, no moon, no stars, no source of light in the sky. That was the reason it was so dark – the only source of light was the dim, phosphorescent glow of the fog, which didn’t make her very comfortable about standing in it.
“Well … this wasn’t quite what I expected,” Jason admitted as he too surveyed the world around them.
“Yeah,” Avi chimed in.
“Folds generally take on the resonance of the local culture,” he continued. “I’d assumed it’d be something that resembled the mythological Immortals’ Realm more closely. You know, the stuff that’s on all the mundane historical dramas.”
“I’m guessing Old Yang made a few modifications so the place wasn’t as predictable,” Maya said dryly.
“Well, at least we have a map,” Jason said finally.
“If we can figure out how it works,” Avi grumbled. “I thought we had the map deciphered, but there’s no way for us to tell which direction is what.”
“Well, where do we need to go first?” Maya asked practically.
Avi unfurled her copy of the map (no need to take the real thing out and risk it), and said, “First, we should be heading toward the 假山, false mountain. But …” She looked up and around. “I can’t see anything but purple trees through this mist.”
“I can’t see any rocks either,” Jason sighed, in case the mist was penetrable only by the eyesight of those with the blood of Yang in them. “I’m guessing the first challenge we face is going to be navigation.”
“Look at our feet,” Maya said suddenly.
Both Jason and Avi looked down, and saw some odd markings (symbols of some sort, perhaps?) carved into the ground.
“That’s not Chinese,” Jason said, pointing out the obvious. “Not even old Chinese. Not any language I recognize, actually.”
“Nor me,” Avi said. “Symbols? A code?”
“No, I don’t think they’re a code,” Maya said slowly. “They look like grooves. Notches.” She looked up expectantly.
Avi and Jason caught on at the exact same time. “Buttons!” Jason said at the same time Avi said, “Switches!”
“You’re genius,” Avi beamed at Maya.
“I’ve seen something similar in some of the more restricted areas of Zhang House, that’s all,” Maya said modestly. “You need to step on them in a certain order, and in a certain rhythm if they’re advanced enough, to access whatever room is underneath or hidden.”
All three moved away hastily and carefully so they could stare at the whole of thing without accidentally stepping on one of the switches prematurely.
“How do we know what order?” Avi wondered. “There’s no markings.”
“Does the map hold any clues?” Maya asked.
“No …” Avi said, poring through the map carefully.
“Wait a minute,” Jason said. “Maya, you said that they have these in Zhang House, right? Do you know if the code for them is the same? Like, if there are three rooms hidden, do they tend to have the same code for all three?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure,” Maya said, “as I don’t have high-enough clearance level to know, but I imagine so. It would be too difficult to remember multiple sequences given the convoluted rabbit-warren maze that Zhang House is, and the spells would have been too difficult to set up anew each time.”
“Well then, Yang House probably had some of these life-sized enter-password-type things too, right? And they would have had the same master code for all of them as well – so we just need to know what the Yang Family code was.”
“But how are we going to know that?” Maya asked.
“I was in charge of being the Yang expert, right? And I looked through the Library files on my … the Yang Family extensively. Did you know that when your Family falls, any and all confidentiality contracts fail and the Library gathers a detailed and thorough account of every aspect of your Family, including all your passwords?” Jason said triumphantly.
“Does it have this in there?” Avi asked eagerly.
“I figured that the Yang Family passwords might be important, so I copied them all down to bring with me,” Jason said. “With Talent, so I don’t know if this specific password is on the list, but we can check.”
He rummaged through his knapsack until he found the paper in question. He waved it in the air, and it projected its contents on the air in front of us. The image quality was poor, however, and flickered. Jason’s face fell. “Oh, I forgot that Talent is somewhat dampened in Folds,” he said. “We’ll have to make this fast.”
Avi stood clear of the paper, well aware that an already-faulty spell would not be helped if her unTalented aura affected it. He started scrolling through the content as if it were one large, invisible touch-phone or something, until finally his “Aha!” came in what felt like minutes but was only seconds.
“Well?” Maya asked impatiently.
“I think I’ve got it,” Jason said. “But hold this so you can prompt me if I get lost,” he said, and thrust the paper at Maya.
Avi stepped back again to get out of the way, and watched anxiously as Jason leapt onto the first switch without even getting Maya’s confirmation.
Maya kept one eye on the screen and one eye on Jason’s movements as he leapt from one spot to the next, pausing on occasion, not pausing on the other.
“Just one more!” he called out excitedly, and was going to step to the left, when Maya’s voice rang out.
“No! The next one over!”
Jason hesitated for the fraction of a second before doing as she said, and the whole thing started spinning as Jason leapt off.
Avi held her breath, wondering if the fraction of the second had thrown the beat off enough to make a difference, whether the spinning meant they’d gotten it right or it meant the Fold was going to spit them back into reality, or worse, lock them there forever.
All of a sudden, Avi lost her balance and felt back. “What’s happening?”
“The ground is moving,” Maya said, but there was something making a loud noise and she couldn’t hear anything else Maya was yelling. Instead, Avi focused on gripping the floor, which was indeed moving – moving up, if she could tell.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on not falling off as the formerly flat ground she had been standing on became a rapidly-growing mountain. When the shaking of the ground finally stopped, she tentatively opened her eyes, and saw Maya and Jason on either side of her, both also gripping the ground.
Where before they’d been on flat land in the mists, they now seemed to be on the peak of a mountain that poked out over the top of the mists. The light was still dim, but she could see other peaks in the distance, and bridges that connected their peak to the others. The bridges were precarious – some were expansive, but others seemed to be made of a single log, or floating stones, and in one case there was just as single piece of rope. She could see the bridges go from peak to peak off into the distance, where she could also spot an ever taller mound of rocks that she knew instinctively was the 假山 they were looking for.
“Well, this is a bit more like something out of the dramas,” Jason noted. “Is that our destination I see in the distance?”
“We’ll have to cross a few bridges before we get there,” Avi said wryly, and Jason groaned at the terrible pun.
---
As soon as the three had recovered somewhat from the earthquake, they set out across the first bridge to the first peak, or island, however you chose to think of it. The bridge was a simple wooden bridge, and Avi had crossed many like it through the course of her life. She hadn’t even been quite as nervous as she was now, though, as she kept on waiting for a slat to fall, for the bridge to disappear, for the railing to collapse, for something terrible and unexpected to happen and stop them from completing their quest.
Of course, nothing happened at all, and they arrived at the site of the first challenge.
There was a large lake in the middle of the rocky outcropping, and in the middle of the large lake (whose placid waters Avi knew for the misleading trap that they were) was a stone fountain of a waterspout atop which rested a proud dragon king, holding in his claws a crystal orb.
“That is the orb we need to retrieve,” Avi said. “That orb is the key we need to present if we want to pass the next bridge.”
“Are you sure?” Jason asked doubtfully. “I feel like we could walk carefully along the edge of the lake and reach the other end with no problem.”
“We could try,” Avi said, “but I don’t think we can set foot on the bridge if we don’t have the orb. I did the research for this Jason, just like you did the research on the Fold – are you really going to doubt me?”
“Of course not,” Jason said. “It’s just that I can’t swim.”
“Well luckily, only one of us needs to do the swimming,” Maya said, and started stripping.
Jason politely averted his eyes. “Only one of us needs to complete the challenge for all three of us to pass?”
“I did the research on quest typology,” Maya said reprovingly. “Are you really going to doubt me?” she asked, mimicking Avi’s tone and dodging Avi’s irritated swat. She continued more reasonably, “This entire quest is designed for one person to complete – but if we work together the right way, there’s no reason we can’t all three do it together.” When she was down to her bra and underwear, she rolled her shoulders, stretched her arms, and looked expectantly at Avi. “Is there anything else I might need to know before I jump in?”
“Umm … there might be piranhas?” Avi ventured.
“Piranhas?” Maya echoed disbelievingly, no longer looking quite as eager to jump into the water.
“Well, there will be something in the water that will try to bar your path,” Avi said. “The challenge won’t just be swimming alone. Also, the distance will be farther than it seems, the lake is bespelled so that you reach the fountain when you’ve reached the end of your stamina, not when you’ve swum the distance. Are you sure you’re not too fit for this?”
“It’ll be fine,” Maya said. “The muscles you use swimming are entirely different from the muscles you use during the forms I practice. I should tire quickly enough that we can be on our way.”
“Well then, good luck and godspeed,” Avi said, hiding how nervous she felt with a cheery grin.
Maya took a step back, even though that put her perilously close to the edge, and then dived in. She surfaced some feet in, tossing her hair back. “It’s not even cold,” she said in surprise, “it’s like a room-temperature bath.” And then she didn’t have any more breath for a running commentary, because she was swimming toward the center of the pool with long, easy strokes.
It took Maya a long while to reach the center of the pool. Even though she did tire relatively quickly, and Avi could watch her strokes grow shorter and shorter, watched her flounder in the water, the pool evidently did not consider her tired enough until she almost drowned, and then it spat her out at the base of the fountain. Maya lay there for a few moments, recovering her strength, before looking up the statue of the spout of water up at the dragon on top. She took in her breath, and began to climb the statue. When she finally reached the dragon, however, the dragon sudden came to life, an animated simulacrum. The dragon knocked her off until she was once again at the base of the statue.
“To pass, you must first answer questions three,” he said, his voice thundering across the pool.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Maya panted, wheezing with every breath.
“Why is it talking in English?” Avi asked suspiciously.
“It’s not,” Jason theorized. “We’re just hearing English because that’s what we understand.”
Avi nodded – this was once a tricky spell, but some enterprising soul had worked out all the forms required and developed an easier shortcut so that the spell was more much more common nowadays.
“First,” the dragon boomed, “who are you?”
This was a tricky question – technically, Old Yang would only let a member of his family pass (which Maya most certainly was not), but a lie would be too easily detected. Maya needed to find a truth that the dragon would accept.
“A mortal,” Maya said.
“That is true, and an answer, but not an answer I seek,” the dragon said. “You have a second opportunity to modify your answer.”
“A really tired and frustrated mortal,” Maya snapped as she tried to recover her breath.
“Again true, but not an answer I seek,” the dragon said implacably. “You have one final opportunity to modify your answer.”
This time, Maya took a deep breath and recovered part of her strength to address the dragon properly with the respect it deserved, simulacrum or not. “I am a tired and frustrated mortal who seeks the object of my quest. I am a quester.”
“That is an acceptable response,” the dragon said. “And for the next question. What do you seek?”
“To complete my quest, I need first the orb which you hold in your claws,” Maya said respectfully. “And then, uh,” she improvised, “I need the quick wits and the fleet-footedness to complete my tasks and achieve my goal.”
“That is an acceptable response,” the dragon said. The key seemed to be respectful, formal, and vague. “And your final question. Why do you seek this?”
“Necessity,” Maya said without hesitation. “It is not something I choose to seek out, but something I must accomplish.”
“That is an acceptable response,” the dragon said, and returned to stone. The orb, meanwhile, levitated in the air, glowing, then floated gently toward Maya, landing in her hand. The minute the orb touched her hand, the stone from the fountain rippled outwards, and where there was once a pool, there was now solid bedrock.
“Well,” Avi said. “That was unexpected.”
“So instead of piranhas in the water,” Maya said dryly, “there was a dragon asking me questions?”
“I’m going to guess Old Yang had less Talent than he thought,” Jason said. “He had some grand plans for the challenges, but I doubt he was able to follow through on all of them quite the way he intended.”
“Great. More surprises.”
Avi went to Maya hastily, to check that nothing was affecting her beside exhaustion. Jason and Avi waited patiently for Maya to fully recover her breath, and then Avi helped Maya up, as she was still exhausted from the energy drain of the swimming. “I wasn’t quite expecting the pool to wait for me to be that exhausted before allowing me to reach the pool,” she admitted.
The three proceeded to the second bridge, which had a translucent barrier before it. When Maya held out the glowing orb in front of her, however, the barrier parted, allowing them to approach the bridge unbarred.
The bridge was a simple suspension bridge. A little rickety, but Avi had been on worse in the course of her life. They traveled the bridge single file, cautious of any potential nasty surprises, but arrived at the second island unscathed.
Here, there was a bamboo grove, tall bamboo with their leaves and branches tangled together. Through the bamboo, there were occasional patches of light among the many shadows. Something was shining up top through the branches.
“We need to climb the bamboo and retrieve the source of the light,” Avi said, upon consulting her map.
“Climbing bamboo sounds like my thing,” Jason announced.
“But you were so terrified of the rappelling,” Maya noted.
“Falling, controlled or otherwise, is entirely different from climbing bamboo,” Jason said. “We used to have a lot of bamboo in our backyard, and I loved scaling them. Especially once my dad taught me a few Talented tricks.”
“Well then, it’s all yours,” Avi gestured.
Jason chose the closest bamboo nearby and began scaling it with ease. About twenty feet up, however, the bamboo started to tremble and shake violently in a worrying way – Jason seemed to recognize the danger, and he leapt from his bamboo to the one next (Avi could see a faint blue shrouding his hands, so she knew he was using his Talent and not just jumping from one bamboo to another like he thought he was Tarzan), and just in time. The bamboo he left simply disappeared.
Jason, to his credit, barely hesitated before continuing up his bamboo with a sinuous grace.
“That’s an impressive trick,” Maya noted as she watched. “I wonder if you could adapt that spell toward scaling skyscrapers or something.”
“You planning any heists?” Avi asked dryly, just as the bamboo that Jason was on began to tremble violently again, and he was forced to jump to another bamboo.
His ascent continued like this, slowed because he needed to jump from bamboo to bamboo, and to make his choices not only based on which bamboo was close enough for him to make the jump without plummeting to his death, but also based on whether there was enough bamboo around that one for him to jump to.
With each disappearing bamboo, more light seemed to open up, until Avi could clearly see what seemed to be a glowing crystal brilliant with light that floated above the canopy. Jason could see it too, however, and the proximity seemed to be blinding him. She saw him covering his eyes repeatedly and turning his head away from the light, even as he tried to get closer.
Finally, after quite a few close calls where he almost missed the bamboo he’d jumped to, he was finally underneath the crystal directly, and the bamboo he was currently precariously balanced on had started trembling.
Rather desperately, he leapt at the crystal to swipe it with one hand while he tried to hold his other hand out to the bamboo below to catch his fall, but the moment his hand closed around the crystal, all the bamboo in the grove blinked out of existence.
Fortunately, the crystal seemed stuck in the air, and he hung rather gracelessly from it.
Avi could see him yell something, but couldn’t quite make out his words from the distance. “What!” she yelled back.
Maya flicked her hand, and used Talent of some sort to magnify Jason’s voice.
“I said, how am I supposed to get down?” Jason wanted to know.
Avi bit her lip. “Umm …” she began. At that moment, the crystal began drifting slowly downwards.
When Jason’s feet finally touched the ground, he immediately collapsed.
“Jason!” Avi said, running to him. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” he said weakly, as he tried to push himself up. “Just used a little more Talent than I should have.”
“That bamboo-climbing spell isn’t very energy-efficient, is it,” Maya said disapprovingly. “Do you have any Talent left?”
“I have enough,” Jason said firmly, as Avi helped him up. “And I’ll recover easily here – Folds make for faster recovery. And I have the crystal!”
Fortunately, using up most of his Talent hadn’t really exhausted Jason much on the physical front, and Maya had mostly recovered from the exhaustion of the first challenge in the time spent watching Jason. (It was difficult to estimate time in the Fold, something Jason had warned them about beforehand – Avi couldn’t say whether it had taken mere minutes or long hours for Jason to complete his task.) The three set off for the third bridge with their key, and came to see a simple wooden plank, five feet wide, with no railings. It wasn’t terribly frightening until you considered that you just needed to trip the one time and you’d plummet to your death.
“The next task,” Avi said, “should be a test of Talent. This is the one where someone needs to use their Talent to forge a sword out of the gold and silver we will presumably find lying in a heap … uh …”
They’d arrived at their third challenge only to find that what might have been pristine gold and silver when Old Yang had set up the challenge had ended up somewhat … tarnished. There were massive piles of black-streaked metal and dusty, rusty gold and she didn’t even know gold and silver turned some of those colors so Avi wouldn’t be surprised if Old Yang hadn’t quite managed to turn up real gold and silver, and had instead conjured up pseudo-metals.
“Sounds like a challenge for me,” Maya said.
“You sure?” Jason asked.
“Well, you’re certainly too drained, and Avi doesn’t have any Talent,” Maya said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, I’m probably most suited for this challenge, temperamentally.”
That was certainly true – ambitious, self-reliant, strong, and determined, that described Maya.
Maya walked forward, and with one giant sweep of her arms, settled a sheet of blue across the gold and silver pile. When she yanked her arms back, the blue came with it, leaving behind gleaming silver and gold trinkets in its wake.
“That,” she announced, “is the easy bit.”
“Show-off,” Jason grumbled under his breath.
“I heard that,” Maya said, “Mr. I-Can-Climb-Bamboo.” And then she was too caught up in her work to snark anymore.
Avi had always wondered if Talent looked so beautiful in the working because the first practitioner had just been that little bit vain enough that he’d put the work into the forms and the formulas so that it looked flashy on purpose. The calm blue of Talent, as it swirled in shapes, as it settled in sheets, as it flickered and shimmered and sparked in the different forms Maya needed for it to affect the gold and silver, was simply breathtaking.
Avi watched as the gold and silver melted into each other, than separated to form separate gold and silver monoliths, and then Maya slowly began making the sword. Avi had never seen a mundane sword being forged, except maybe on TV once or twice. There seemed to be a lot more pounding, and red-hot iron involved in mundane swords.
Swords of Talent, made with Talent, did not need to be melted as Talent could be used to manipulate the metals. Instead of pounding, the process more gentle, more of a shaving, and a forming, and a shaping. It was specialized work, so Avi had no idea where Maya had learned her technique, but there was no denying the grace in her movements, or the beauty of the sword that was slowly forming, as threads of gold and silver spun around, whirling like something of a whirlpool coalescing into a form.
And then, Avi, blinked, and the sword was done. Maya was panting with the effort, but there was a beautiful sword in her hand that glittered blue with Talent and Maya smiled.
“Not my best work,” she said humbly, “but the best I could do with synthesized metals. It won’t be much use outside the Fold, but it should help us in here.”
“What’re you talking about? It’s awesome!” Avi beamed, and went over to look at the sword – look but not touch, because you never knew what her unTalent might do to a sword precariously crafted from synthetic metals in an alternate dimension.
The bridge that heretofore not been visible now appeared, more a series of stepping stones (giant pillars of rocks that extended down who knew far, and whose stability Avi doubted).
“That doesn’t look safe,” Jason remarked as he peered down among the mists to see what he could see.
“Don’t think about it,” Maya advised. “And don’t look down – you don’t want to see how far we’d fall.”
“I’m just terrified these stepping stones are floating,” Avi shuddered, “and aren’t connected to the ground.”
This bridge was the most precarious so far by far. Avi almost fell off at one point, if Jason hadn’t hurried grabbed her arm so hard it left bruises. Jason and Maya might have Talented recourses to turn to if they actually fell, but Avi was less lucky. She might not be able to die exactly in this Fold (Jason had been a bit vague on that account, and she didn’t think she wanted to know the answer), but she could certainly suffer.
The fourth challenge was evident even before they’d reached the other side. In the middle of the seeing harmless-looking “island” there was a pillar of fire.
“I can take on this one,” Avi said, watching the pillar carefully.
“Really?” Jason asked doubtfully. “You’re secretly carrying a fireman’s suit somewhere with you?”
“I don’t have to go into the fire,” Avi said. “I just have to face it. I think. If I interpreted the map correctly, that is.”
She stepped forward, because really since it was her quest it was high time she actually completed one of the challenges, and the pillar twisted into a new shape, the form of a dragon.
“Who seeks the ring of fire?” it hissed, and when Avi listened carefully, she could hear what Jason was talking about earlier – it was hissing, but what she heard in her head did not match up to the sounds it hissed, it just sounded like English in her mind. The creature was not speaking English, though.
Avi had actually thought this challenge through before, because it had been one of the first she had interpreted from the map. She tried not to show any self-doubt as she said, “I do.”
“Well then, your task is as follows,” the dragon hissed, and then its form twisted again to reveal a ring in its middle. Around that ring, there was a thin ring of fire that burned blue, not the blue of Talent, but the blue of the high-temperature fire. “Retrieve the ring unharmed and you may pass on to the next challenge. Fail, and … you can guess the rest.”
The dragon that whipped out of shape so that all that was left was the ring of fire and the ring within.
Hesitantly, Avi reached out toward the ring, and the ring of fire grew larger, and the fire hotter, and the crackle of the fire more menacing. Avi bore the heat and the fear and stuck her hand closer, until it was uncomfortably hot, and then further, until it was unbearably hot, and she pushed her hand further, even though it pained her, and suddenly there was blessed relief, as her finger closed around the ring.
She held it out triumphantly to Maya and Jason, who hurried over to join her.
“So … what? The fire wasn’t real?” Jason asked. “It disappeared if your will was strong enough?”
“No,” Avi corrected. “It disappeared because my will was strong enough. I looked at the spell Old Yang was planning to cast back when I was studying the map. This wasn’t a particularly strong spell, and is one of the few cases where the protection surrounding the object is infused with Talent. And what am I?”
“UnTalented,” Maya said in dawning comprehension. “You nullified the Talent. That was a gutsy move – if it hadn’t worked, you would have been burnt to a crisp.”
“It was a calculated risk,” Avi said airily, though she had been petrified but five minutes ago. “Now let’s move on to the last task.”
“Last task?” Jason said. “How do you figure that?”
“We’ve had challenges based around water, wood, metal, and fire so far. I’m guessing earth rounds out the last of the five elements, and Maya’s guess of five was correct,” Avi said.
“Not necessarily,” Maya cautioned. “Just because these challenges are themed around the elements doesn’t mean Old Yang will restrict himself to five – he might have chosen nine, and ended with four non-themed challenges for us to overcome.”
“Be optimistic,” Avi maintained. “If there’s more than five, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Jason and Maya both rolled eyes at her pun (she hadn’t even intended it this time!) and they set off to cross the most perilous bridge yet – a single rope for them to walk on, with a higher-placed rope on either side for them to clutch with their fingers.
“What, we’re supposed to be tightrope acrobats now?” Maya grumbled, but of course she had a harder time of it because she needed to balance and cross the rope with a sword in one hand. The sword, unlike the other talismans they had acquired so far, wouldn’t fit in their bags.
Fortunately, the forms that all three had learned younger, even if Avi never ended up using those forms to practice Talent, were useful for acquiring balance. Although that wasn’t as useful as it might seem when crossing such a precarious single rope if you were walking across, it meant Avi felt much more comfortable dangling from the rope with her fingers and legs gripping the rope tightly, and scooting across. Jason chose to walk across, holding onto the ropes at either side for balance.
“How are you doing that without even slipping?” Avi asked, slightly incredulously.
“I’m cheating a little,” he admitted. “I’m using a little Talent to make my feet stick to the rope more firmly.”
Maya, meanwhile, was doing what Avi had, scooting across one-handed dangling, while the other hand carefully kept the sword out of the way in case she accidentally sliced through the rope and doomed them all.
Unsurprisingly, this bridge took the longest and most effort to cross, and then they finally reached the site of their last challenge. The last “island” seemed nothing more than plain mud. They couldn’t see what the challenge itself was.
Avi hurriedly consulted her map, peering through, and looked up. “There should be a tiny statue of some sort …”
As if summoned by those very words, a tiny stone statue perhaps the size of Avi’s hand suddenly emerged from the very dirt in the middle of the clearing, as if it were pushed out by someone below.
“So we’re to retrieve that statue,” Maya said slowly. “Might I guess that it won’t be as easy as it looks?”
And it looked so innocuous sitting in the middle of the clearing, as if the challenge really would be so easy that all that was required to pick it up.
That’s when Jason stepped forward onto the clearing, and that’s when the mud-people appeared.
For really, there was no other word to describe them. Maya later referred to them as golems, even though that was the wrong mythology entirely, and Jason referred to them as zombies, which they only had a passing resemblance to. They were nothing more and nothing less than people formed from mud, with no faces, but with arms and legs, hands and feet, and wickedly sharp teeth inside a gaping mouth.
Maya started whirling around, very effectively cutting through them with her sword. Jason and Avi were less well-armed. Jason was using his Talent, whipping through the different forms, and using his Talent to blast the mud-people out of his way. Avi had even fewer weapons at her disposal, and she was merely whipping through the forms, using a sort of degraded version of martial arts to keep the mud-people at bay. Unfortunately, while the Talented forms derived from martial arts, they were honed to make effective and efficient Talented spells, rather than for defense, so the forms were only helpful to a certain amount as Avi attempted to fend off the mud-people.
By chance, however, as she was whipping through one, the ring from the previous challenge accidentally slipped out of her bag and whipped into the air. Not certain whether it was important or not, Avi hastily scrambled after it, kicking off the mud-people who’d grabbed onto her arm. As soon as her hand caught hold of it, however, it flared red and emitted a laser that started burning through the mud-people.
Avi blinked in surprise, but did not hesitate to cut swathes of the mud-people out of her path. They weren’t much deterred by sawed-off limbs, of course, making their way to attack her despite their losses, but hopping around on one foot significantly slowed them down.
As Avi and Maya sliced and diced through the mud-people, attracting the bulk of their attention, Jason slowly snuck toward the center enter suddenly he had hold of the statue!
The minute his fingers touched the statue, the mud-people melted back into the earth, and Avi and Maya found themselves panting and whirling against nothing.
All three stared at each other for a minute, adrenaline still pumping.
Please see Chapter 1 for the Summary, Author's Notes, additional details, etc.
For some reason, Avi had expected the alternative dimension to be cold and barren, something like a desert at night. She had expected it to be empty and spooky, and filled with nothing. That is, not that it had nothing, but that the very essence of nothingness would permeate the place, much like the in-between of dragonflight.
To her surprise, the air on the other side of the portal was hot and muggy. She could feel the humidity almost instantaneously soak her tee and mold it to her body, as if there was a blast of dampness. It was dark on the other side, and she could barely make out her surroundings, but apparently she had gotten the spooky bit right, if nothing else.
The sky was an eerie green color, and the vegetation (what she could make out through the thick fog, at least) was a poisonous purple. Fog, she felt, was typically associated with colder weather, but this thick fog or mist or whatever felt like the essence of humidity – as she stood in it, and looked through it, she could feel it bogging her down.
The next thing she noticed was that there was no sun, no moon, no stars, no source of light in the sky. That was the reason it was so dark – the only source of light was the dim, phosphorescent glow of the fog, which didn’t make her very comfortable about standing in it.
“Well … this wasn’t quite what I expected,” Jason admitted as he too surveyed the world around them.
“Yeah,” Avi chimed in.
“Folds generally take on the resonance of the local culture,” he continued. “I’d assumed it’d be something that resembled the mythological Immortals’ Realm more closely. You know, the stuff that’s on all the mundane historical dramas.”
“I’m guessing Old Yang made a few modifications so the place wasn’t as predictable,” Maya said dryly.
“Well, at least we have a map,” Jason said finally.
“If we can figure out how it works,” Avi grumbled. “I thought we had the map deciphered, but there’s no way for us to tell which direction is what.”
“Well, where do we need to go first?” Maya asked practically.
Avi unfurled her copy of the map (no need to take the real thing out and risk it), and said, “First, we should be heading toward the 假山, false mountain. But …” She looked up and around. “I can’t see anything but purple trees through this mist.”
“I can’t see any rocks either,” Jason sighed, in case the mist was penetrable only by the eyesight of those with the blood of Yang in them. “I’m guessing the first challenge we face is going to be navigation.”
“Look at our feet,” Maya said suddenly.
Both Jason and Avi looked down, and saw some odd markings (symbols of some sort, perhaps?) carved into the ground.
“That’s not Chinese,” Jason said, pointing out the obvious. “Not even old Chinese. Not any language I recognize, actually.”
“Nor me,” Avi said. “Symbols? A code?”
“No, I don’t think they’re a code,” Maya said slowly. “They look like grooves. Notches.” She looked up expectantly.
Avi and Jason caught on at the exact same time. “Buttons!” Jason said at the same time Avi said, “Switches!”
“You’re genius,” Avi beamed at Maya.
“I’ve seen something similar in some of the more restricted areas of Zhang House, that’s all,” Maya said modestly. “You need to step on them in a certain order, and in a certain rhythm if they’re advanced enough, to access whatever room is underneath or hidden.”
All three moved away hastily and carefully so they could stare at the whole of thing without accidentally stepping on one of the switches prematurely.
“How do we know what order?” Avi wondered. “There’s no markings.”
“Does the map hold any clues?” Maya asked.
“No …” Avi said, poring through the map carefully.
“Wait a minute,” Jason said. “Maya, you said that they have these in Zhang House, right? Do you know if the code for them is the same? Like, if there are three rooms hidden, do they tend to have the same code for all three?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure,” Maya said, “as I don’t have high-enough clearance level to know, but I imagine so. It would be too difficult to remember multiple sequences given the convoluted rabbit-warren maze that Zhang House is, and the spells would have been too difficult to set up anew each time.”
“Well then, Yang House probably had some of these life-sized enter-password-type things too, right? And they would have had the same master code for all of them as well – so we just need to know what the Yang Family code was.”
“But how are we going to know that?” Maya asked.
“I was in charge of being the Yang expert, right? And I looked through the Library files on my … the Yang Family extensively. Did you know that when your Family falls, any and all confidentiality contracts fail and the Library gathers a detailed and thorough account of every aspect of your Family, including all your passwords?” Jason said triumphantly.
“Does it have this in there?” Avi asked eagerly.
“I figured that the Yang Family passwords might be important, so I copied them all down to bring with me,” Jason said. “With Talent, so I don’t know if this specific password is on the list, but we can check.”
He rummaged through his knapsack until he found the paper in question. He waved it in the air, and it projected its contents on the air in front of us. The image quality was poor, however, and flickered. Jason’s face fell. “Oh, I forgot that Talent is somewhat dampened in Folds,” he said. “We’ll have to make this fast.”
Avi stood clear of the paper, well aware that an already-faulty spell would not be helped if her unTalented aura affected it. He started scrolling through the content as if it were one large, invisible touch-phone or something, until finally his “Aha!” came in what felt like minutes but was only seconds.
“Well?” Maya asked impatiently.
“I think I’ve got it,” Jason said. “But hold this so you can prompt me if I get lost,” he said, and thrust the paper at Maya.
Avi stepped back again to get out of the way, and watched anxiously as Jason leapt onto the first switch without even getting Maya’s confirmation.
Maya kept one eye on the screen and one eye on Jason’s movements as he leapt from one spot to the next, pausing on occasion, not pausing on the other.
“Just one more!” he called out excitedly, and was going to step to the left, when Maya’s voice rang out.
“No! The next one over!”
Jason hesitated for the fraction of a second before doing as she said, and the whole thing started spinning as Jason leapt off.
Avi held her breath, wondering if the fraction of the second had thrown the beat off enough to make a difference, whether the spinning meant they’d gotten it right or it meant the Fold was going to spit them back into reality, or worse, lock them there forever.
All of a sudden, Avi lost her balance and felt back. “What’s happening?”
“The ground is moving,” Maya said, but there was something making a loud noise and she couldn’t hear anything else Maya was yelling. Instead, Avi focused on gripping the floor, which was indeed moving – moving up, if she could tell.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on not falling off as the formerly flat ground she had been standing on became a rapidly-growing mountain. When the shaking of the ground finally stopped, she tentatively opened her eyes, and saw Maya and Jason on either side of her, both also gripping the ground.
Where before they’d been on flat land in the mists, they now seemed to be on the peak of a mountain that poked out over the top of the mists. The light was still dim, but she could see other peaks in the distance, and bridges that connected their peak to the others. The bridges were precarious – some were expansive, but others seemed to be made of a single log, or floating stones, and in one case there was just as single piece of rope. She could see the bridges go from peak to peak off into the distance, where she could also spot an ever taller mound of rocks that she knew instinctively was the 假山 they were looking for.
“Well, this is a bit more like something out of the dramas,” Jason noted. “Is that our destination I see in the distance?”
“We’ll have to cross a few bridges before we get there,” Avi said wryly, and Jason groaned at the terrible pun.
---
As soon as the three had recovered somewhat from the earthquake, they set out across the first bridge to the first peak, or island, however you chose to think of it. The bridge was a simple wooden bridge, and Avi had crossed many like it through the course of her life. She hadn’t even been quite as nervous as she was now, though, as she kept on waiting for a slat to fall, for the bridge to disappear, for the railing to collapse, for something terrible and unexpected to happen and stop them from completing their quest.
Of course, nothing happened at all, and they arrived at the site of the first challenge.
There was a large lake in the middle of the rocky outcropping, and in the middle of the large lake (whose placid waters Avi knew for the misleading trap that they were) was a stone fountain of a waterspout atop which rested a proud dragon king, holding in his claws a crystal orb.
“That is the orb we need to retrieve,” Avi said. “That orb is the key we need to present if we want to pass the next bridge.”
“Are you sure?” Jason asked doubtfully. “I feel like we could walk carefully along the edge of the lake and reach the other end with no problem.”
“We could try,” Avi said, “but I don’t think we can set foot on the bridge if we don’t have the orb. I did the research for this Jason, just like you did the research on the Fold – are you really going to doubt me?”
“Of course not,” Jason said. “It’s just that I can’t swim.”
“Well luckily, only one of us needs to do the swimming,” Maya said, and started stripping.
Jason politely averted his eyes. “Only one of us needs to complete the challenge for all three of us to pass?”
“I did the research on quest typology,” Maya said reprovingly. “Are you really going to doubt me?” she asked, mimicking Avi’s tone and dodging Avi’s irritated swat. She continued more reasonably, “This entire quest is designed for one person to complete – but if we work together the right way, there’s no reason we can’t all three do it together.” When she was down to her bra and underwear, she rolled her shoulders, stretched her arms, and looked expectantly at Avi. “Is there anything else I might need to know before I jump in?”
“Umm … there might be piranhas?” Avi ventured.
“Piranhas?” Maya echoed disbelievingly, no longer looking quite as eager to jump into the water.
“Well, there will be something in the water that will try to bar your path,” Avi said. “The challenge won’t just be swimming alone. Also, the distance will be farther than it seems, the lake is bespelled so that you reach the fountain when you’ve reached the end of your stamina, not when you’ve swum the distance. Are you sure you’re not too fit for this?”
“It’ll be fine,” Maya said. “The muscles you use swimming are entirely different from the muscles you use during the forms I practice. I should tire quickly enough that we can be on our way.”
“Well then, good luck and godspeed,” Avi said, hiding how nervous she felt with a cheery grin.
Maya took a step back, even though that put her perilously close to the edge, and then dived in. She surfaced some feet in, tossing her hair back. “It’s not even cold,” she said in surprise, “it’s like a room-temperature bath.” And then she didn’t have any more breath for a running commentary, because she was swimming toward the center of the pool with long, easy strokes.
It took Maya a long while to reach the center of the pool. Even though she did tire relatively quickly, and Avi could watch her strokes grow shorter and shorter, watched her flounder in the water, the pool evidently did not consider her tired enough until she almost drowned, and then it spat her out at the base of the fountain. Maya lay there for a few moments, recovering her strength, before looking up the statue of the spout of water up at the dragon on top. She took in her breath, and began to climb the statue. When she finally reached the dragon, however, the dragon sudden came to life, an animated simulacrum. The dragon knocked her off until she was once again at the base of the statue.
“To pass, you must first answer questions three,” he said, his voice thundering across the pool.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Maya panted, wheezing with every breath.
“Why is it talking in English?” Avi asked suspiciously.
“It’s not,” Jason theorized. “We’re just hearing English because that’s what we understand.”
Avi nodded – this was once a tricky spell, but some enterprising soul had worked out all the forms required and developed an easier shortcut so that the spell was more much more common nowadays.
“First,” the dragon boomed, “who are you?”
This was a tricky question – technically, Old Yang would only let a member of his family pass (which Maya most certainly was not), but a lie would be too easily detected. Maya needed to find a truth that the dragon would accept.
“A mortal,” Maya said.
“That is true, and an answer, but not an answer I seek,” the dragon said. “You have a second opportunity to modify your answer.”
“A really tired and frustrated mortal,” Maya snapped as she tried to recover her breath.
“Again true, but not an answer I seek,” the dragon said implacably. “You have one final opportunity to modify your answer.”
This time, Maya took a deep breath and recovered part of her strength to address the dragon properly with the respect it deserved, simulacrum or not. “I am a tired and frustrated mortal who seeks the object of my quest. I am a quester.”
“That is an acceptable response,” the dragon said. “And for the next question. What do you seek?”
“To complete my quest, I need first the orb which you hold in your claws,” Maya said respectfully. “And then, uh,” she improvised, “I need the quick wits and the fleet-footedness to complete my tasks and achieve my goal.”
“That is an acceptable response,” the dragon said. The key seemed to be respectful, formal, and vague. “And your final question. Why do you seek this?”
“Necessity,” Maya said without hesitation. “It is not something I choose to seek out, but something I must accomplish.”
“That is an acceptable response,” the dragon said, and returned to stone. The orb, meanwhile, levitated in the air, glowing, then floated gently toward Maya, landing in her hand. The minute the orb touched her hand, the stone from the fountain rippled outwards, and where there was once a pool, there was now solid bedrock.
“Well,” Avi said. “That was unexpected.”
“So instead of piranhas in the water,” Maya said dryly, “there was a dragon asking me questions?”
“I’m going to guess Old Yang had less Talent than he thought,” Jason said. “He had some grand plans for the challenges, but I doubt he was able to follow through on all of them quite the way he intended.”
“Great. More surprises.”
Avi went to Maya hastily, to check that nothing was affecting her beside exhaustion. Jason and Avi waited patiently for Maya to fully recover her breath, and then Avi helped Maya up, as she was still exhausted from the energy drain of the swimming. “I wasn’t quite expecting the pool to wait for me to be that exhausted before allowing me to reach the pool,” she admitted.
The three proceeded to the second bridge, which had a translucent barrier before it. When Maya held out the glowing orb in front of her, however, the barrier parted, allowing them to approach the bridge unbarred.
The bridge was a simple suspension bridge. A little rickety, but Avi had been on worse in the course of her life. They traveled the bridge single file, cautious of any potential nasty surprises, but arrived at the second island unscathed.
Here, there was a bamboo grove, tall bamboo with their leaves and branches tangled together. Through the bamboo, there were occasional patches of light among the many shadows. Something was shining up top through the branches.
“We need to climb the bamboo and retrieve the source of the light,” Avi said, upon consulting her map.
“Climbing bamboo sounds like my thing,” Jason announced.
“But you were so terrified of the rappelling,” Maya noted.
“Falling, controlled or otherwise, is entirely different from climbing bamboo,” Jason said. “We used to have a lot of bamboo in our backyard, and I loved scaling them. Especially once my dad taught me a few Talented tricks.”
“Well then, it’s all yours,” Avi gestured.
Jason chose the closest bamboo nearby and began scaling it with ease. About twenty feet up, however, the bamboo started to tremble and shake violently in a worrying way – Jason seemed to recognize the danger, and he leapt from his bamboo to the one next (Avi could see a faint blue shrouding his hands, so she knew he was using his Talent and not just jumping from one bamboo to another like he thought he was Tarzan), and just in time. The bamboo he left simply disappeared.
Jason, to his credit, barely hesitated before continuing up his bamboo with a sinuous grace.
“That’s an impressive trick,” Maya noted as she watched. “I wonder if you could adapt that spell toward scaling skyscrapers or something.”
“You planning any heists?” Avi asked dryly, just as the bamboo that Jason was on began to tremble violently again, and he was forced to jump to another bamboo.
His ascent continued like this, slowed because he needed to jump from bamboo to bamboo, and to make his choices not only based on which bamboo was close enough for him to make the jump without plummeting to his death, but also based on whether there was enough bamboo around that one for him to jump to.
With each disappearing bamboo, more light seemed to open up, until Avi could clearly see what seemed to be a glowing crystal brilliant with light that floated above the canopy. Jason could see it too, however, and the proximity seemed to be blinding him. She saw him covering his eyes repeatedly and turning his head away from the light, even as he tried to get closer.
Finally, after quite a few close calls where he almost missed the bamboo he’d jumped to, he was finally underneath the crystal directly, and the bamboo he was currently precariously balanced on had started trembling.
Rather desperately, he leapt at the crystal to swipe it with one hand while he tried to hold his other hand out to the bamboo below to catch his fall, but the moment his hand closed around the crystal, all the bamboo in the grove blinked out of existence.
Fortunately, the crystal seemed stuck in the air, and he hung rather gracelessly from it.
Avi could see him yell something, but couldn’t quite make out his words from the distance. “What!” she yelled back.
Maya flicked her hand, and used Talent of some sort to magnify Jason’s voice.
“I said, how am I supposed to get down?” Jason wanted to know.
Avi bit her lip. “Umm …” she began. At that moment, the crystal began drifting slowly downwards.
When Jason’s feet finally touched the ground, he immediately collapsed.
“Jason!” Avi said, running to him. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” he said weakly, as he tried to push himself up. “Just used a little more Talent than I should have.”
“That bamboo-climbing spell isn’t very energy-efficient, is it,” Maya said disapprovingly. “Do you have any Talent left?”
“I have enough,” Jason said firmly, as Avi helped him up. “And I’ll recover easily here – Folds make for faster recovery. And I have the crystal!”
Fortunately, using up most of his Talent hadn’t really exhausted Jason much on the physical front, and Maya had mostly recovered from the exhaustion of the first challenge in the time spent watching Jason. (It was difficult to estimate time in the Fold, something Jason had warned them about beforehand – Avi couldn’t say whether it had taken mere minutes or long hours for Jason to complete his task.) The three set off for the third bridge with their key, and came to see a simple wooden plank, five feet wide, with no railings. It wasn’t terribly frightening until you considered that you just needed to trip the one time and you’d plummet to your death.
“The next task,” Avi said, “should be a test of Talent. This is the one where someone needs to use their Talent to forge a sword out of the gold and silver we will presumably find lying in a heap … uh …”
They’d arrived at their third challenge only to find that what might have been pristine gold and silver when Old Yang had set up the challenge had ended up somewhat … tarnished. There were massive piles of black-streaked metal and dusty, rusty gold and she didn’t even know gold and silver turned some of those colors so Avi wouldn’t be surprised if Old Yang hadn’t quite managed to turn up real gold and silver, and had instead conjured up pseudo-metals.
“Sounds like a challenge for me,” Maya said.
“You sure?” Jason asked.
“Well, you’re certainly too drained, and Avi doesn’t have any Talent,” Maya said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, I’m probably most suited for this challenge, temperamentally.”
That was certainly true – ambitious, self-reliant, strong, and determined, that described Maya.
Maya walked forward, and with one giant sweep of her arms, settled a sheet of blue across the gold and silver pile. When she yanked her arms back, the blue came with it, leaving behind gleaming silver and gold trinkets in its wake.
“That,” she announced, “is the easy bit.”
“Show-off,” Jason grumbled under his breath.
“I heard that,” Maya said, “Mr. I-Can-Climb-Bamboo.” And then she was too caught up in her work to snark anymore.
Avi had always wondered if Talent looked so beautiful in the working because the first practitioner had just been that little bit vain enough that he’d put the work into the forms and the formulas so that it looked flashy on purpose. The calm blue of Talent, as it swirled in shapes, as it settled in sheets, as it flickered and shimmered and sparked in the different forms Maya needed for it to affect the gold and silver, was simply breathtaking.
Avi watched as the gold and silver melted into each other, than separated to form separate gold and silver monoliths, and then Maya slowly began making the sword. Avi had never seen a mundane sword being forged, except maybe on TV once or twice. There seemed to be a lot more pounding, and red-hot iron involved in mundane swords.
Swords of Talent, made with Talent, did not need to be melted as Talent could be used to manipulate the metals. Instead of pounding, the process more gentle, more of a shaving, and a forming, and a shaping. It was specialized work, so Avi had no idea where Maya had learned her technique, but there was no denying the grace in her movements, or the beauty of the sword that was slowly forming, as threads of gold and silver spun around, whirling like something of a whirlpool coalescing into a form.
And then, Avi, blinked, and the sword was done. Maya was panting with the effort, but there was a beautiful sword in her hand that glittered blue with Talent and Maya smiled.
“Not my best work,” she said humbly, “but the best I could do with synthesized metals. It won’t be much use outside the Fold, but it should help us in here.”
“What’re you talking about? It’s awesome!” Avi beamed, and went over to look at the sword – look but not touch, because you never knew what her unTalent might do to a sword precariously crafted from synthetic metals in an alternate dimension.
The bridge that heretofore not been visible now appeared, more a series of stepping stones (giant pillars of rocks that extended down who knew far, and whose stability Avi doubted).
“That doesn’t look safe,” Jason remarked as he peered down among the mists to see what he could see.
“Don’t think about it,” Maya advised. “And don’t look down – you don’t want to see how far we’d fall.”
“I’m just terrified these stepping stones are floating,” Avi shuddered, “and aren’t connected to the ground.”
This bridge was the most precarious so far by far. Avi almost fell off at one point, if Jason hadn’t hurried grabbed her arm so hard it left bruises. Jason and Maya might have Talented recourses to turn to if they actually fell, but Avi was less lucky. She might not be able to die exactly in this Fold (Jason had been a bit vague on that account, and she didn’t think she wanted to know the answer), but she could certainly suffer.
The fourth challenge was evident even before they’d reached the other side. In the middle of the seeing harmless-looking “island” there was a pillar of fire.
“I can take on this one,” Avi said, watching the pillar carefully.
“Really?” Jason asked doubtfully. “You’re secretly carrying a fireman’s suit somewhere with you?”
“I don’t have to go into the fire,” Avi said. “I just have to face it. I think. If I interpreted the map correctly, that is.”
She stepped forward, because really since it was her quest it was high time she actually completed one of the challenges, and the pillar twisted into a new shape, the form of a dragon.
“Who seeks the ring of fire?” it hissed, and when Avi listened carefully, she could hear what Jason was talking about earlier – it was hissing, but what she heard in her head did not match up to the sounds it hissed, it just sounded like English in her mind. The creature was not speaking English, though.
Avi had actually thought this challenge through before, because it had been one of the first she had interpreted from the map. She tried not to show any self-doubt as she said, “I do.”
“Well then, your task is as follows,” the dragon hissed, and then its form twisted again to reveal a ring in its middle. Around that ring, there was a thin ring of fire that burned blue, not the blue of Talent, but the blue of the high-temperature fire. “Retrieve the ring unharmed and you may pass on to the next challenge. Fail, and … you can guess the rest.”
The dragon that whipped out of shape so that all that was left was the ring of fire and the ring within.
Hesitantly, Avi reached out toward the ring, and the ring of fire grew larger, and the fire hotter, and the crackle of the fire more menacing. Avi bore the heat and the fear and stuck her hand closer, until it was uncomfortably hot, and then further, until it was unbearably hot, and she pushed her hand further, even though it pained her, and suddenly there was blessed relief, as her finger closed around the ring.
She held it out triumphantly to Maya and Jason, who hurried over to join her.
“So … what? The fire wasn’t real?” Jason asked. “It disappeared if your will was strong enough?”
“No,” Avi corrected. “It disappeared because my will was strong enough. I looked at the spell Old Yang was planning to cast back when I was studying the map. This wasn’t a particularly strong spell, and is one of the few cases where the protection surrounding the object is infused with Talent. And what am I?”
“UnTalented,” Maya said in dawning comprehension. “You nullified the Talent. That was a gutsy move – if it hadn’t worked, you would have been burnt to a crisp.”
“It was a calculated risk,” Avi said airily, though she had been petrified but five minutes ago. “Now let’s move on to the last task.”
“Last task?” Jason said. “How do you figure that?”
“We’ve had challenges based around water, wood, metal, and fire so far. I’m guessing earth rounds out the last of the five elements, and Maya’s guess of five was correct,” Avi said.
“Not necessarily,” Maya cautioned. “Just because these challenges are themed around the elements doesn’t mean Old Yang will restrict himself to five – he might have chosen nine, and ended with four non-themed challenges for us to overcome.”
“Be optimistic,” Avi maintained. “If there’s more than five, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Jason and Maya both rolled eyes at her pun (she hadn’t even intended it this time!) and they set off to cross the most perilous bridge yet – a single rope for them to walk on, with a higher-placed rope on either side for them to clutch with their fingers.
“What, we’re supposed to be tightrope acrobats now?” Maya grumbled, but of course she had a harder time of it because she needed to balance and cross the rope with a sword in one hand. The sword, unlike the other talismans they had acquired so far, wouldn’t fit in their bags.
Fortunately, the forms that all three had learned younger, even if Avi never ended up using those forms to practice Talent, were useful for acquiring balance. Although that wasn’t as useful as it might seem when crossing such a precarious single rope if you were walking across, it meant Avi felt much more comfortable dangling from the rope with her fingers and legs gripping the rope tightly, and scooting across. Jason chose to walk across, holding onto the ropes at either side for balance.
“How are you doing that without even slipping?” Avi asked, slightly incredulously.
“I’m cheating a little,” he admitted. “I’m using a little Talent to make my feet stick to the rope more firmly.”
Maya, meanwhile, was doing what Avi had, scooting across one-handed dangling, while the other hand carefully kept the sword out of the way in case she accidentally sliced through the rope and doomed them all.
Unsurprisingly, this bridge took the longest and most effort to cross, and then they finally reached the site of their last challenge. The last “island” seemed nothing more than plain mud. They couldn’t see what the challenge itself was.
Avi hurriedly consulted her map, peering through, and looked up. “There should be a tiny statue of some sort …”
As if summoned by those very words, a tiny stone statue perhaps the size of Avi’s hand suddenly emerged from the very dirt in the middle of the clearing, as if it were pushed out by someone below.
“So we’re to retrieve that statue,” Maya said slowly. “Might I guess that it won’t be as easy as it looks?”
And it looked so innocuous sitting in the middle of the clearing, as if the challenge really would be so easy that all that was required to pick it up.
That’s when Jason stepped forward onto the clearing, and that’s when the mud-people appeared.
For really, there was no other word to describe them. Maya later referred to them as golems, even though that was the wrong mythology entirely, and Jason referred to them as zombies, which they only had a passing resemblance to. They were nothing more and nothing less than people formed from mud, with no faces, but with arms and legs, hands and feet, and wickedly sharp teeth inside a gaping mouth.
Maya started whirling around, very effectively cutting through them with her sword. Jason and Avi were less well-armed. Jason was using his Talent, whipping through the different forms, and using his Talent to blast the mud-people out of his way. Avi had even fewer weapons at her disposal, and she was merely whipping through the forms, using a sort of degraded version of martial arts to keep the mud-people at bay. Unfortunately, while the Talented forms derived from martial arts, they were honed to make effective and efficient Talented spells, rather than for defense, so the forms were only helpful to a certain amount as Avi attempted to fend off the mud-people.
By chance, however, as she was whipping through one, the ring from the previous challenge accidentally slipped out of her bag and whipped into the air. Not certain whether it was important or not, Avi hastily scrambled after it, kicking off the mud-people who’d grabbed onto her arm. As soon as her hand caught hold of it, however, it flared red and emitted a laser that started burning through the mud-people.
Avi blinked in surprise, but did not hesitate to cut swathes of the mud-people out of her path. They weren’t much deterred by sawed-off limbs, of course, making their way to attack her despite their losses, but hopping around on one foot significantly slowed them down.
As Avi and Maya sliced and diced through the mud-people, attracting the bulk of their attention, Jason slowly snuck toward the center enter suddenly he had hold of the statue!
The minute his fingers touched the statue, the mud-people melted back into the earth, and Avi and Maya found themselves panting and whirling against nothing.
All three stared at each other for a minute, adrenaline still pumping.
