Ryzen shuffled nervously as she waited for the signal. As much as she loved Fig, she wasn’t too sure about his plan.
Together, the three of them had agreed that Fig should be the one to hold onto the World Gems. That wasn’t the part she had a problem with. The problem she had was that Fig had wanted her and Wolf-boy to cause such a disturbance that he could get a closer look at the statues and hopefully find the remaining World Gems there. When she had asked what kind of a disturbance Fig wanted he said, “Tear down the ladders, breath fire, anything that you can do to cause mayhem and chaos while I do what I can.”
That had not been what she wanted to hear. Wolf-boy, however loved the idea and was ready to rampage around and cause as much destruction as he could. With the odds being two to one, Ryzen didn’t feel like she could speak out against them. Looking around the huge cavern she now wished she had.
Men were working all around as Ryzen watched Fig and Wolf-boy move from crate to crate, her nerves tense and ready to shift at a moment’s notice in case they got into trouble. Before she could start causing said trouble, she had to wait until both Fig and Wolf-boy were in a prime position to do their jobs. In other words, Wolf-boy had to be close to the other side of the cavern to wreak havoc on his end, and Fig needed to be close to the statues of the gods and goddesses in the center. He said he wanted as much time as they could give him to figure out if there were in fact more Would Gems and how they could go about extracting them. The other thing he had asked Ryzen and Wolf-boy to do—besides causing chaos—was to find the best exit to leave the mountain for good. All she had to do now was wait for Wolf-boy’s signal, which was him starting to trash the place.
Personally, Ryzen would’ve just been fine with leaving, but Wolf-boy had seemed determined to fight back against the Alakargk. Men and their stupid grudges, she reflected grumpily.
She understood his anger towards the woman who they had seen walk by, but she just didn’t get why he wanted to try now to get payback when they were not in the best position to handle that sort of thing. Fig had liked his enthusiasm, but said that wasn’t the main goal for today.
“We just want to cause a distraction and put a temporary pause on whatever they are doing here,” Fig had told them. “Try not to draw attention to yourself, and do not let Alakargk see you.”
That would be the tricky part. How was she supposed to cause trouble and stay hidden at the same time?
Turning her gaze away from the men as they sneaked further in, Ryzen tried to see what things she could mess up that would cause the kind of distraction Fig was wanting without revealing herself to everyone there. Electrical equipment and boxes where everywhere, but she didn’t see anything that she could really use. That is until her eyes fell on a couple of metal barrels with the word Oil on the side.
A grin spread across her face as an idea began to form. One way to for sure chase everyone out would be to cause an oil fire. But if she was going to do that, she wanted to make sure she wouldn’t get caught by the Alakargk. There weren’t any torches or fires lit in the cavern which means she have to shift, and that meant she’d be more visible to everyone here. Can’t have that Alakargk catch me. Checking to make sure Wolf-boy and Fig were making their way alright, Ryzen followed the same path they had seen Chief Emerald go with her captain.
Since most of the labor being performed was up against the cavern walls where those crystalline lights shone, she found it easy to sneak her way along the outer edge where boxes sat and lay waiting. She crept along until she spotted an office looking building that was at least two stories high. Next to the door was a sign that read “Check Out Station”. Intrigued, Ryzen shuffled forward, trying to stay out of sight of the upper rooms windows while still attempting to get a good look at what lay inside the first floor of the office. Grunting in frustration at her lack of visibility from where she was, she decided she wasn’t going to see anything useful unless she was right up against the windows.
Getting down on all fours, Ryzen slinked her way to the last of the boxes and froze.
Chief Emerald stood outside the office door now and was surveying the cavern without her captain. A tall woman, she had long dark hair that was done up in a ponytail and her cold dark eyes seemed to absorb all the light around her. It was such a surreal experience that Ryzen gasped and fell back behind the box she was crouching next to. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This is how people get killed on missions. She should’ve stayed near their tunnel entrance and waited for Wolf-boy’s signal.
Footsteps echoed behind the crate and Ryzen inched along the floor until she was able to see Chief Emerald open the door and go inside the Station. For the briefest moment while the door was open, she was able to glimpse inside and saw another tunnel that extended deep into the mountain and was light by more electrical lights.
A crash echoed throughout the chamber and Ryzen’s stomach dropped.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “He’s already started.”
There was another crash and Ryzen got to her feet and ran. She had been soo stupid! Why hadn’t she stayed back by their tunnel? Another minute later she was almost to the tunnel when something else smashed against the floor, this time accompanied by men shouting and yelling. Hoping that Arclin was alright, she reached the cans that held the oil. She tried to open one of the lids, but no matter how hard she twisted the lid, it wouldn’t budge.
There was another crash as more men began to shout and scream for someone to stop.
Panic welled inside as Ryzen glanced around quickly to find something that could help her open the oil barrels. When she couldn’t find anything, she stomped her foot in frustration.
“I really didn’t want to do this,” she said miserably.
Transforming into her Nethardra form, she started picking up the barrels and began throwing them all over the cavern, making sure to avoid the middle where the statues where. Each time the barrel landed, it hit with enough force to break open, and oil spilled out over the boxes and electrical equipment.
Now she could hear the shouts. Men wearing muddy overalls and hats were coming at her, yelling about how one of the shifters must’ve gotten loose.
Well, it’s now or never, she thought. Taking a deep breath, Ryzen blew fire over the crates, aiming for the places where she had thrown the oil barrels. The men running in her direction stopped as a wall of fire erupted in front of them as her fire consumed the oil she had spilled. Grinning in satisfaction at doing her job, she breathed fire again, pointing the flames at other crates and barrels. Within minutes, her side of the cavern was up in flames. Satisfied with her work, Ryzen changed back into her human self and ran through a space in the fire she had left for herself and headed towards the statues.
Men from all over had stopped working and were either running towards the flames or screaming and heading to where the Check Out Station was located. Ryzen ignored them, running towards Fig and hopefully Wolf-boy.
The statues were on a raised platform or dais of some kind, and there standing in the middle of them was Fig staring sightlessly at the fire she had caused.
“You said you wanted me to cause a distraction,” she said, hopping up on the platform and nearly out of breath.
“Yes, but I wasn’t expecting you to burn everything down,” Fig said, his voice an octave higher than usual. “Why did you do it?”
“I wanted something that would get their attention, just like you asked,” she said, and she threw him a soft punch on his shoulder. “Now do your part and see if we can get anything from these statues, otherwise this will be a complete waste of time.”
“Right,” Fig said, rubbing his shoulder and giving her a dirty look before turning back to the statues.
Ryzen looked out over the cavern floor and tried to spot Wolf-boy in the mess of everything. She saw him running around the ladders that didn’t have men on them, kicking them out of place, unscrewing bolts and pretty much anything else he could do to sabotage their work. She liked his unwillingness to hurt people, but right now was the wrong time to worry about hurting people. If he’s going to commit then he needs to do it whole heartedly and not half way, she thought shaking her head.
Ryzen turned her gaze instead to the Check Out Station and saw that it was crowded with workers who were trying to escape the fire that she had caused, which were now making their way towards the Station and threatening to cut off their escape route she had found.
“Damnation. Hey Pig,” she shouted, turning around to face him. “How much longer till you have the things?”
“I think I almost have it,” he said, placing one of the orbs into the open hand of the goddess Silventha, “but I need Arclin here if this is going to work properly.”
“Right,” she whispered to herself. Spinning around, she looked out among the sea of chaos to find where Wolf-boy had gotten to.
She spotted him again, only this time he was facing off against…
“By the true god,” she swore, then louder she yelled. “He’s facing off against the Alakargk.”
Fig swore too, but Ryzen didn’t hear what else he said since she had jumped down off the platform and ran towards Wolf-boy. Don’t do anything stupid. Please don’t do anything stupid, she pleaded, watching as Wolf-boy exchanged heated words with Chief Emerald.
For a moment, it looked like they were just going to have a standoff. But then Chief Emerald raised her hand and dark energy shot out and hit him straight in the chest, sending him spiraling across the floor and screaming like he was in unbearable pain.
“NO!” Ryzen screamed. Without thinking about it, she changed into her true form and rammed into the Alakargk, slamming her draconic head against Chief Emerald’s side and sending her flying against the wall were a pile of crates had been stacked. The tall woman vanished from sight as the crates collapsed on her and dust flew in every direction. Ryzen paused for a moment, amazed at her own daring to attack an Alakargk. Had she really just done that? Had she really just attacked one of the lead Enforcers?
There was a moan that barely reached her ears over the sounds of fire and screaming men, and Ryzen remembered why she was here. Turning she found Arclin laying on the ground, his body curled in a fetal position as he sobbed and moaned.
Shifting back, she ran over to his side. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” she yelled, nearly screaming herself.
“It hurts. Everything hurts!” Arclin cried out, tears rolling down his face.
“I don’t see anything broken or bleeding. Do you know what she hit you with?” she asked, trying to see if there was anything physically wrong with him.
“I don’t know,” he sobbed. “I just know that my body aches and feels like I’ve got knives sticking out of me everywhere. It hurts!”
Ryzen felt the blood drain from her face. If she hadn’t seen the beam of dark energy hit him, she would’ve assumed he was being a big baby and to just suck it up. But that… that was magic like she had only heard about in myths and legends. Stories about the gods and of sorcerers of old.
“Make it stop!” he said in a blood curdling scream that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
“I… I don’t…” she looked back to the dais where Fig was waiting and remembered how amazing she felt after holding a World Gem. “I can’t help you Arclin. But let me just shift and I can carry you to Fig. Maybe we can use the World Gems to heal you.”
Stepping back a few paces, Ryzen became a Nethardra again. Before grabbing Arclin, she glanced where she had slammed the chief into, and saw two booted feet sticking out of the crates. Not willing to tempt fate and have the dark woman chase them, she left the pile of rubble alone and picked up Wolf-boy like she had the first time they had met in the forest together.
Flapping her wings she carried him back across the cavern to the dais where Fig stood waiting. Looking around, she saw that the Check Out Station was in flames as were many of the other tunnels in the room as the flames continued to eat through everything that was in the cavern. As she landed on some crates near the dais, Fig came over and reached out for Arclin.
“What happened? What is wrong with him?” Fig asked, taking Arclin and pulling him over to the statues.
“I don’t know,” she answered after changing back. “That Alakargk woman hit him with some kind of dark energy and now he’s writhing in pain. Fig, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. The flames they’ve blocked off all the tunnels.”
“Even the one we came out of?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said shaking violently.
Fig cursed and lowered Arclin down in between two of the statues.
“Please, help me,” Wolf-boy moaned as Fig lowered him. “It hurts so bad.”
“I will in a moment, but right now I need your help first,” Fig said gently. “Can you touch these two statues for me, Arclin?”
Arclin reached out an arm only to withdraw it a second later with a scream. “I can’t,” he sobbed. “The pain…it hurts so bad.”
“Arclin. I need you to do this,” Fig said his tone growing more serious. “Try not to think about the pain. Try to think of something or someone important. Do you have something like that you can think of?”
M-m-my sisters,” he stuttered through the pain.
“Then I need you to think of them right now,” Fig said gravelly. “Think of them. You do this for them. Without their help to help you hold onto these statues we cannot get the World Gems.”
Arclin breathed heavily for a moment, and then Ryzen saw focus, and determination enter his eyes as he reached out his left arm to the statue of Drahlros, and then his right arm to the statue that must’ve been Rathi, and she felt a tear fall down her cheek. “Hurry,” Arclin said through clenched teeth.
“Good man,” Fig said, then he stood and turned to Ryzen. “Now I need you to touch the statue of Silventha. No it doesn’t matter where just place your hand on it.”
Ryzen did what she was told, placing a hand on Silventha’s outstretched hand with a World Gem in it and turned to see Fig doing the same thing with the god Mehlri.
The ground shook beneath them and slowly they began to rise on the dais in small circles into the smoke filled air. Ryzen glanced nervously over to Fig who shook his head furiously and shouted, “Don’t let go of the statues. Whatever you do, don’t let go!”
Wolf-boy began screaming in pain, his eyes wide and his muscles bulging from the pain and effort he was exerting from the simple action.
The ground shook a little and Ryzen changed from holding the statues hands to wrapping her arms around the goddesses waist. “Please save us,” she heard herself praying to the goddess. “If you truly care for us, please save us.”
The dais continued to rumble as they slowly climbed higher into the cavern, the smoke getting thicker around them.
“Hold your breath,” Fig called out to them. “Do not breath in the smoke.”
Ryzen tried to hold her breath, but her eyes watered from the smoke and she had to cover her nose with her shirt to avoid inhaling the smoke too much.
The sounds of fire crackling below faded the higher they circled, but the light from the glowing crystals in the room shone through the smoke, almost as if they were absorbing it. The cavern’s roof was closing in on them and Ryzen was suddenly worried they were going to be smashed.
“Fig,” she called out. “It’s going to crush us.”
“Not it won’t,” he called back to her. “Trust me.”
Thinking that this was seriously stretching the bounds of how much she trusted him, she kept her face covered with her shirt and wished she was holding Fig instead of this cold statue. Closing her eyes, she waited for the end.
But none came. Opening her eyes she looked around and was startled to find that they were surrounded by a stone tube that rose higher to a bright sky above.
“What happened?” she called to Fig since the rumbling ground was still loud as it scrapped against itself from the circling dais.
“The roof opened to us,” Fig answered her. “The message said that the sky would open for those seeking the gods blessings with the proper offerings.”
“So you guessed that it would lead us to safety?” she yelled at him. Her voice sounded hoarse and a fit of coughing took over as her body worked to clear the smoke from her lungs.
When she was done coughing she was about to run over and pummel Fig from withholding that bit of information, but Fig held out a hand as he coughed out, “Please… do not let go… of the statue. There is more to the instructions than that…I’m sorry I guessed… I had to, to save us. Arclin… thank you for holding on this long. Just a little more and I promise I will do what we can to take away the pain.”
Ryzen stayed by the goddesses side and turned her attention to Wolf-boy, who was no longer screaming in pain but was crying as tears streamed down his face. Amazed at his resilience to suffer all this for her sisters, Ryzen held on to her statue and wondered if she could’ve done the same for her father? Maybe not him, but a chance to see her mother again. That she could understand.
As they neared the end of the tube, she looked at the serene face of Silventha as light from the fading sun fell across it. Ryzen gasped. Unlike the statue at the top of the mountain, this one still had all of its color and seemed more lifelike that she had first realized. I guess in all the excitement, I never stopped to look and see how the statues actually looked.
The dais circled to a stop on one of the smaller mountain peaks. Looking to Fig, she watched as he slowly let go of the statue of Mehlri. Fig slowly backed away until he was nowhere near the statue.
“It is alright,” Fig said with a sigh. “It will not lower us down.”
Arclin jerked his hands away from the statues and began to sob loudly as he curled on his side again. “Please… help me!”
“Right, of course we will,” Fig said. Moving over to the god Drahlros, he reach up and plucked the World Gem from the god’s hand. “Here Arclin. Take this. Perhaps it will help.”
Tears streaming down his face, Arclin reached up and took the stone from Fig. The effects were instant. All the pain and anguish that had been etched into his face vanished and Arclin sighed in relief.
“The pain, its gone,” he said amazed. “How did you know it would do that?”
“Based how you and Ryzen reacted to it the first time you held the World Gems. And it helped to notice that Ryzen’s shifter form had been fully healed when she flew you to the dais.”
Ryzen stood up straighter. “I…it didn’t. I wasn’t…” but she could not deny that her shifter body had been healed. Where the octilid’s had damaged it, the stone seemed to have made it better.
They stood quietly for a moment until Arclin rose to his feet.
“Well, we better get going then. I don’t know where those tunnels exited but I bet that chief woman is going to come looking for us.”
“You don’t have to worry about her. I straightened her out,” Ryzen said, feeling proud of herself.
“I wouldn’t count on that yet,” Fig said. “Did you see her die?”
“Well no,” Ryzen admitted. “When she hit Arclin with her dark magic, I smashed her into a pile of crates. But she wasn’t moving and there’s no way she got away from the fire. That place should be completely enveloped in smoke and fire by now.”
“Hmm. Perhaps,” Fig said. “But I agree with Arclin all the same. We should collect the stones and leave. The sooner we meet up with your father the better.”
Ryzen reluctantly agreed, and together the three of them collected all four World Gems. Once they had stepped off the dais it began to sink back down into the depths of the mountain. When they could no longer see the dais down the hole, the ground began shaking as the dirt and rocks came together to seal it up again. Before the hole completely closed, there was a loud roar that all of them agreed did not should like the roaring of a raging fire.