42. Jasmine

Jasmine was afraid to let herself get excited about the unassuming-looking mountain that her scrying stick was adamantly pointing to.

It couldn"t be that easy.

She"d expected to trek through these mountains for weeks. They all had. Could their search be over as soon as they reached that mountain?

She started walking, but Aru"s hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Not so fast," he said. "I know you are eager to walk, but I need you to get into the harness."

"Why? My ankle doesn"t hurt anymore. I don"t know how it suddenly got better, but I"m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, right?"

She looked for any sign that he was somehow involved in her rapid healing, some flicker of amusement or guilt, but the god"s expression didn"t reveal a thing.

"I know that your ankle feels better at the moment, but it"s not smart for you to hike up a mountain and put stress on the injury. Besides, you would slow us down even if you were completely healed. It"s better all round if you take advantage of the harness."

As much as Jasmine hated to admit it, he was right. The last thing she wanted was to slow them down or reinjure herself and become an even greater burden.

With a sigh of resignation, she nodded. "You"re right."

Negal put the harness on and crouched. "Up you go," he encouraged.

Dagor gave her a sympathetic smile as he helped her back into the harness on Negal"s back. "Don"t feel bad. Without you, we would have been searching these mountains for decades, and there was no guarantee that we would have found anything."

Jasmine managed a weak smile in return. "You had some clues from your previous visit. Otherwise, you wouldn"t have been heading to Tibet in the first place."

"True." Dagor arranged the straps around her. "We have trekked through a different part of Tibet before, but we were chasing unsubstantiated rumors because we had nothing better to go on."

"Funny that you would say that. A vision and a scrying stick are not exactly scientific methods either."

"I agree." Negal stood up with ease. "On the other hand, if the pods were easy to find, we wouldn"t have found so many other wonderful things while looking for them."

He adjusted the harness"s straps to distribute her weight more evenly and walked up to Aru, who was waiting with two backpacks strapped on, one on his back and the other on his front.

He looked like a pack mule, and so did Dagor once he hefted the other two backpacks, but they still moved fluidly and gracefully despite the weight and how cumbersome it was to walk with double the burden.

The mile-long journey to the cliff face was grueling. The steep incline and uneven terrain made every step a challenge. Jasmine clung to Negal"s back, her fingers digging into the thick fabric of his jacket as she tried to keep herself steady.

The landscape around them was a breathtaking tableau of rugged beauty, with snow-capped peaks looming in the distance like silent sentinels. But Jasmine had little attention to spare for the scenery, her mind consumed with thoughts of what they might find when they reached their destination.

When they crested the top of the mountain an hour later, the sun was high in the sky and beating down on her head, and even though she hadn"t exerted herself, she was experiencing a shortness of breath. It could be the thin air, or it could be excitement mingled with fear.

The sweat trickling down her back despite the chill wind whipping at her clothes could be the result of either, but she was betting on the latter.

They pressed on, picking their way carefully across the rocky plateau until they came to the edge of a gaping chasm. It was smaller than Jasmine had expected, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet across and seventy or eighty feet wide, but it looked impossibly deep, the bottom lost in shadow.

Aru took out his scanner, pointed it down, and shook his head. "I"m still getting nothing."

Jasmine tapped Negal"s shoulder. "Can you let me down?"

He obliged, crouching low so Dagor could help her disentangle herself from the harness.

As soon as her feet touched the ground, Jasmine walked towards the edge of the void and peered into the depths, but all she saw was darkness.

"Can you see anything?" she asked, glancing back at the gods who had come to stand beside her after dropping the backpacks in a pile on the ground.

Aru shook his head. "It"s too deep and too dark. We"ll need to send something down there for a better look."

He walked back to where they had left their backpacks, crouched next to one, and, after rummaging inside, withdrew a small metal container.

When he opened it, she saw it contained what looked like a mechanical insect. "What is that?"

"It"s a drone." Aru removed the device from the box and placed the bee-sized craft in the palm of his hand. "And it"s not even the smallest we have. We have spy drones that are the size of a small mosquito. But their range is very limited. This one is less so."

Dagor pulled out a laptop and began tapping away at the keys, his fingers flying over the keyboard with dizzying speed. A moment later, the drone whirred to life, rising from Aru"s palm and hovering in midair.

It zipped towards the chasm at Dagor"s command, disappearing into the darkness below.

Jasmine craned her neck, trying to glimpse the laptop screen, but the three gods had clustered around it, their broad shoulders blocking her view.

"Can I see?" she asked.

Negal glanced up at her, an apologetic smile tugging at his lips. "Sorry, of course." He moved slightly to the side while Dagor angled the laptop towards her.

Jasmine leaned in, her eyes widening as she took in the crystal-clear image on the screen.

The drone"s camera was unlike anything she had ever seen, the high-resolution feed cutting through the darkness as if it were broad daylight. She watched in rapt attention as the rocky walls of the chasm scrolled by, the drone descending deeper and deeper into the earth.

And then, there it was.

At first, it was little more than a shadowy shape, half-buried beneath a layer of dirt and debris. But as the drone drew closer, the image sharpened, resolving into the unmistakable form of a sleek metallic pod.

Jasmine sucked in a sharp breath, her heart hammering against her ribs as she stared at the screen. The craft was covered in grime and battered by the ravages of time, but there was no mistaking the smooth, rounded contours that could only have been manmade, or rather god-made.

A rush of elation surged through her, tempered only by the realization of the daunting task of reaching the pod.

The chasm"s walls were almost sheer, and the depth was dizzying.