I knocked on my head, then called upon my ice power, letting it fill me with its shivery cold. When I felt full to bursting, I pressed my hand to the track and sent a blast of ice outward, envisioning a bridge.
Let it goooooo! I sang in my head as the glittery blue ice shot across the open air, forming a bridge with the other side. It was a few feet wide and at least as thick. It would hold.
I hoped.
I stood. “Let’s do this.”
Roarke glanced doubtfully at me, then shook his head and started across, leading the way. After the first few tentative steps, we started to run. I slipped once, nearly plummeting off the side, but Roarke caught me. The Coblynau’s laughter echoed behind us, bouncing off the mountain and echoing.
Goosebumbs prickled my skin and fear chilled my blood. There was nothing below us except open space and jagged rock a thousand feet below. Just my magic.
Sweat broke out on my skin as we sprinted the last half. When my feet finally hit solid ground, my knees turned to rubber.
Roarke turned, kneeling and raising his fist. He punched the bridge with one big fist, sending his magic through it. The ice shattered, sending the Coblynau plummeting.
He turned to me and we ran, racing along the track. We reached another ramp and scrambled up. The eerie laughter of the Coblynau grew. They climbed out from crevices in the rock from all around us. More and more. The whole mountain was teeming with them.
There would be no fighting them. Only running.
I thought my heart would explode by the time we reached the top. A decrepit iron mining cart sat there, long abandoned after carrying its last load of slate down the tracks to the lake.
I dodged around it, catching sight of the mouth of the cave in front of us, perched on the cliff.
We’d made it! The Great Black Mouth. A cave, just like Roarke had guessed.
The Coblynau’s laughter and their scrambling footsteps sounded louder.
“Hurry,” Roarke said.
We hurtled toward the cave entrance, darting inside. I spun around to look out. The Coblynau crested the top of the ramp and caught sight of us, their eyes brightening.
Shit!
I called upon my magic, nearly drained, praying that I had enough. As the Coblynau sprinted toward us, the ice filled my chest and limbs. I touched the cave wall near the entrance, willing the ice to fill it like a wall. It grew outward from the rock, glittering and bright, closing us in like that weird circular door on the spaceship in the movie Independence Day.
The Coblynau reached us just as it closed. They beat their fists against the ice, but it was at least two feet thick. I lowered my hand, panting. I’d used up almost every ounce of magic I had and was running on fumes. I’d need to rest to regenerate.
Somehow, I doubted I’d have the opportunity.
“That should buy us some time,” Roarke said.
“Yeah.” I stepped back, sticking my tongue out at the goblins.
They shrieked, enraged, their eyes and fingertips glowing green. I turned, joining Roarke, who still looked like hell covered in blood with tattered wings.
“Now what?” He wiped some of the blood off his face with his hands, but it didn’t help much.
I pulled the map out of my pocket, unfolded it, and read by the light that flowed through the ice wall.
“They wait in the darkness broken only by the fall of the water,” I read.
“That’s obscure.”
“No kidding.” I started forward. “Let’s go figure it out.”
We set off through the dark. A faint blue glow shined from the black slate walls, just enough that we could see where we were going.
“Thanks for getting us out of that blast house,” I said.
“No problem.”
“Sorry you got so badly hurt.”
He grinned and looked down at himself, hoisting his wings up a bit. He winced at the motion, but said, “This? It’s nothing.”
“Yeah, sure.” Nix and Cass were right. He’d more than proved he had my back. I should trust him with my secrets.
We walked in silence for a while. The tunnel was about as wide and tall as a school bus and very uniform. Eventually, splattering water sounded in the distance.
When we walked out into a massive cavern lit by a silvery blue waterfall, my jaw nearly dropped. The water glowed, shedding a hazy light over the cave. Blue lights glittered against the ceiling high above. Gold ore was piled high against the walls, thousands of pounds of it. My dragon sense lit up immediately, making my fingertips itch to go touch the stuff.
Touch it. Hell, I wanted to dive in it like Scrooge McDuck.
“Whoa…” I murmured. “They weren’t just mining slate.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Roarke strode to the pool of water and knelt beside it to wash the blood from his face.
I explored while he cleaned up, desperately trying to ignore the gold while looking for the exit. There was none.
Which meant this was our destination.
But no one waited here.
I pulled out the map and consulted it again. There was nothing new on it.
When I looked up, Roarke was mostly clean and had shifted back into his human form. Thank fates he was powerful enough that his clothes had reappeared. I was already starting to get cold again now that we weren’t running for our lives.
“Where are they?” I asked. “No one is here.”
“This is the end?”
“Yeah.” I paced, searching for any sign of life. “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.”
The waterfall tumbling into the little lake was glorious. So was the general feel of this place, all misty and blue.
But that it was empty except for the gold.
And I had basically no magical juice left to bring this place back to life and see what had once been here. There was no way I could turn back time right now. Not the way I was feeling. My magic was just dregs. I continued to pace, eyeing every inch of the cave like it held the secrets of the universe.
“What do you think those look like?” I pointed to four big slate rocks on the other side of the pool. They were roughly square.
“Pedestals?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” I walked closer to the water to get a better look. My gaze caught on three dark blue spots deep in the pool. I squinted at them. “Did you see those earlier?”
“See what?” Roarke joined me and peered into the water. “I just see water.”
“Really? Not dark blue orbs?”
“No orbs.”
Huh. They were definitely orbs. I pulled the sword off my back and stripped out of my jacket, then toed off my boots. “I’m going in. But you’re not allowed to look.”
“Not allowed?”
“I’m not gonna wear my clothes in, crazy.” I shivered at the memory of being soaking wet on the deck of the boat.
“What if something happens to you in there? I can’t exactly let you jump in a magical pool alone.”
“Sure you can. Anyway, I’m the only one who can see them. And I have a feeling that if this is some kind of challenge, then I need to be the one to complete it. Isn’t that how quests work? I’m seeking the answers, so I have to pass the test.”
He nodded. “Yeah, fair enough. But I at least need to know if you need help.”
“Fine. I’ll wear my underwear. No staring.” At least I was wearing conservative stuff. I wasn’t the sort to go on quests in scratchy lace underwear.