“You were made immortal very early in life. You must have done something very important,” I said to him.
“It was the days before the wall. I was part of a group of volunteers that drew the beasts away from our town, buying the witches the time they needed to activate the magic wall. Over two hundred of us went. Only I returned. For my service, the gods made me immortal. I survived for a reason: to protect humanity from the monsters that plague our world. The holy relics are objects of great power. This isn’t just about the thrill of locating relics that have been missing for centuries. It’s about saving the world.” He smiled at me. “And we can only do this together.”
“Wow, that’s a great motivational speech.”
“He does excel at that,” commented Grace. “And that’s why we’re all here, seven pilgrims from seven cities.”
“That’s a great line for the memoir.”
Soft, kind wrinkles crinkled her brow as she smiled. “It really is.”
We had to park outside the Lost City. Over the past two hundred years since the end of the war, sections of the crumbling city ruins had sunk into the ground. There was no road that led into the city, at least not one our trucks could drive on.
So we approached the city on foot. The ruins glowed eerily, reflecting the light show of mixed colors dancing across the sky. It was as though magic were brewing and blending up in that supernatural kitchen in the sky. A clash of heaven and hell. Ice and fire. Sun and smoke. It sure had made thing hot down here. The temperature had risen at least ten degrees since I’d woken up this morning. Sweet beaded up on my body, saturating my clothes, pasting them to my skin.
We passed the husks of old buildings blast apart two hundred years ago in the battle to decide the fate of the Earth. Time had slowly eaten away at what was left, corroding, decaying, corrupting. The streets were split open, their dirty guts exposed. At least what was left of the streets. The ground had swallowed up most of the city’s paved surfaces. We sidestepped potholes and craters. We walked across sunken rooftops. We balanced atop toppled bridges, those fallen giants that had once spanned raging rivers lost to the ages.
The Lost City hummed with magic, a resonance that buzzed against my skin like the air after a lightning storm. I paused to inhale. A stale, broken scent permeated the ruins—the smell of utter desolation and ultimate defeat. Just standing here, this tale of woe and despair being whispered into my ear, almost made me too depressed to continue.
I shook myself. Whoa, what was that all about?
The city had lain dormant for centuries. It was not alive. It did not think or feel. And it was certainly not whispering to me.
Then why could I hear a quiet battle hymn playing in the distance, a song of ancient battles and earth-shattering, unimaginable magic? Why did I hear gunfire hammering, swords clashing, magic blasting? Why did the final dying shouts of the soldiers echo in my ears? The closer we got to the city center, the louder this symphony of sounds pounded in my head.
“Pandora.”
I jumped at Captain Somerset’s voice. She was looking at me as though I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. No one else seemed to be hearing voices in their head.
“Looking to take a swim?” Her lip twitched.
I looked down at the bubbling pool of thick mystery goo that I’d nearly stepped in. I needed to get my head in the game. This was no time to lose my mind. I fortified my mental shields, a skill I’d built up to block my thoughts from eavesdropping angels, and the sounds of battle faded. Maybe hearing voices from the past was another weird ability I had, along with my unusual reaction to Nectar. They had to be linked, right? The alternative was I was crazy, which sounded way less appealing than cool magic powers.
“The Pilgrims have reason to believe the holy relics are in the sunken sections of the city,” Nero announced. “Get ready to make the descent.”
“Is something wrong, Leda?” Valiant asked me. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“No.”
He looked down into the chasm before us. “I am.” He gave me a sheepish look.
“I’ll be right here beside you.” I attached his rope into the hook in the rock. “Ok?” I smiled at him.
He smiled back. “Ok.”
We took the descent slow.
“How long have you been searching for the relics?” I asked him, trying to keep his mind off the dark abyss beneath us.
“Since I was made immortal. I heard of these objects of power that had the magic to turn day to night and darkness to light.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they possess great magic, and that magic can be used for good or evil.”
“Like most objects of power,” I commented.
Excitement shone in his eyes. “These relics are our salvation. With them, we will drive the monsters from this Earth and reclaim our home.”
“I can’t even imagine a world without monsters. But I do wish I will live to see it.”
“If we are successful, you will get your wish. Ever since the monsters overran our world, I’ve dreamt of this day.”
“Even through all that, all the horrible things, you kept hope? How did you do that? How did you know things would get better?”
“Faith,” he said, echoing Drake’s words from earlier when I’d spoken of the crime lords taking over my town. “You must believe. You must never give up looking for the spark of light in the dark. Speaking of which, I believe we’ve reached the bottom. It appears that I will in fact live to see another day.”
We disconnected ourselves from the ropes.
“How will the relics destroy the monsters?” I asked him as we walked through this sunken section of the city. The buildings and roads were almost perfectly preserved, in far better shape than the ones above ground.
“I haven’t figured that out quite yet. I’ve had to piece this all together from dozens of sources, many of them contradicting one another.”
“So even if we find the relics, we might not be able to use them?”
“Not right away,” he said quickly. “But with time, perhaps.”
I sighed. “I guess I might be waiting awhile on that monster-free world.”
“This isn’t only about using the relics against the monsters. It’s about keeping the relics away from scavengers, from the fiends of hell, from anyone who would use them for evil.” He pointed at a tower of steel and glass. “Look there. The Spiral Tower. We’re getting close to the Treasury.”
“The Treasury?”
“According to my research, the holy relics were kept in a Treasury of magical objects not far from the Spiral Tower. The Treasury is guarded by magic as ancient as the gods.”
“So how do we get through this magic?”
“Well, it’s not—”
A deep roar cut through his words like sharpened steel. The sound bounced off the rocky sky, echoing through the buildings. I saw a flash of movement on the Spiral Tower, then dark shadows jumped down, landing on the street.