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“Are growing dimmer. And there are more dark spots.” Keita points upward. “Look.”
I follow his finger, my alarm growing when I see he’s right. The edge of the sky is dark, as before, but now there’s also a tiny, almost imperceptible black spot in the middle, as if a shadow has swallowed all the stars. Those flapping sounds are concentrated at that spot. As is that thrumming. It vibrates through me—a warning.
“What happens when it gets fully dark?” I ask.
Lamin points at the next dune over, where large trails ripple across the red sand, equus skeletons in its wake. “I assume that’s when whatever made those tracks emerges.”
“That’s what I thought.” I urge Ixa on, rushing him toward the top of the dune, where Li waits. But as we approach, Li suddenly stops, his entire body stiffening.
“Uhh, everyone?” he calls. “Over there.”
“Wha now?” Britta sounds irritated as she urges her gryph onward, but then she stops too, eyes focused on where Li’s pointing.
The moment I catch up to them, I do the same.
A short distance from us is what looks like a plain, except it’s made of the same glossy black material as the mountains. An obsidian floor almost, but one that covers leagues and leagues of sand. What’s shocking, though, is the group of girls kneeling in the middle of it, robed and hooded priests at their side, all of them carrying daggers. Each of the girls is wearing a gold mask, the kind only the wives of village elders wear, except, judging from their awkwardness and the baby fat swathing their bodies, none of these girls is even old enough for the Ritual of Purity. None of these girls is even old enough to leave the children’s corner of the temples.
“Those would be the sacrifices we’ve been expecting,” Li says grimly, immediately recognizing the scene below, as we all do, from having seen it hundreds of times before.
Swords are unsheathed and war hammers hefted, my friends already preparing to do battle with the priests down on that obsidian floor. One thing we’ve always agreed upon is that we save any innocents along the way. Except when I peer closer, I notice what the priests are doing.
I hold up my hand. “Wait, something’s strange.”
I point to where the priests seem to be handing the girls the daggers and whispering encouraging last words to them before they themselves hurry, footsteps fumbling through the darkness, toward the series of black columns that stand, silent guardians, at the very edge of the black stone floor.
The priests are all human, I can tell that immediately. If any of them were jatu, their vision would be as sharp as ours in this low light, but every one of them stumbles about as if blind, their clumsiness exacerbated by the fact that they don’t have any torches.
They don’t want to disturb the creatures hiding in the sands either, that much is apparent.
The moment they reach the columns, they begin blindly pressing the black stones, as if searching for a specific spot. It’s almost amusing, watching them, except they’re clearly villains: they left those girls out on that obsidian floor to die.
Britta squints. “Wha are they doin’? Why are they touchin’ those things?”
My own eyes widen as I realize: “That’s how they’re getting out!” I hiss. “They’re using those columns!”
Now Britta grins. “I knew there had to be an exit!”
As we both watch, rapt, one of the priests reaches the last column and presses something there. The moment he does so, his hand disappears, then his whole shoulder. My breath hitches. It truly is the exit.
I commit the exact location to memory as the priest then gestures to the others, who all follow him as he steps through the rift in the column, as silent as the tomb.
My group remains quiet as well—just as we have this entire time, but our efforts, as it turns out, have been in vain. I look back toward those strange mountains, where that thrumming sound is getting louder with every moment that passes. The creatures know we’re here, likely felt our footsteps the moment we landed in this place. Their bodies are already uncoiling in the distance, readying themselves to hunt whatever unlucky prey has stumbled their way.
We have to hurry now.
I return my attention to the others. “I saw where they pressed the column,” I say. “We take the girls, make our way out through there before those things come out of the mountains.”
“Let’s hurry, then.” Britta grasps her war hammer as we all ride across the sand.
We’ve just finally crested the next dune over when the sky just to our right suddenly goes black. Terrified gasps rise from the obsidian floor, the girls swiftly huddling together, their eyes looking in the same direction that ours are. It’s as if all the stars there were candles and someone just snuffed them out. The gryphs begin growling low in their throats.
I turn to my friends. “Hurry!” I urge.
Then we hear the cracking sound.
It’s coming from the darkness, where one of those curved black mountains is shuddering. As I watch, unnerved, another crack sounds, this one even louder than the first. Then another sounds, and another, all in swift succession until—boom! A column of eerie blue light explodes into the air from the peak of the black mountain, releasing four towering black reptilian shapes, which fly in the direction of the obsidian floor and the girls waiting there in terror.
When an eerie scream splits the air, that horrible thrumming underneath it, I glance down at Ixa. Go! I command.
