Chapter 15

15

Keys

I’d metKeys a few times back in my former life as the Princess of Laelia. Looking up at the mage now, I hardly recognized him. The Keys I’d known had always been bursting with energy and enthusiasm; the man staring down at us now had one foot in the grave. He looked as frail as a skeleton.

It wasn’t just his starved appearance. Or his dirty, unkempt hair. Or even his torn clothes. His eyes were unfocused, suffering from a persistent twitch—and a spark of madness.

“Keys,” Ariella said, calling up to the man on the cliff.

Keys let out a goofy laugh. “Uh, hello there. Do I know you? I hope you’re not going to try to eat me.”

“No one here is eating anyone,” I assured him.

“Are you really absolutely positively sure?” asked Keys. “Because that’s what they all said.”

“Who said?”

“Oh, you know, the dragons, the beasts, the birds, the machines…all of them.”

“They talked to you?” I asked.

“Of course. Didn’t they talk to you? Those beasties and machines have such silver tongues, you see. They speak such nice words, smile such sweet smiles, and then…boom! They go in for the kill.”

“He’s gone mad,” Ariella muttered.

“Why don’t you come down here, Keys, and we’ll talk about it,” Father said. His voice echoed off the golden cliffs. “I promise we’ll protect you from any machines or beasts that try to eat you.”

“Well…all right then. But I warn you, I’m armed. So don’t try anything funny.”

His head ducked out of sight. Rock scraped against rock as he stumbled his way down the backside of the hill. Less than a minute later, he squeezed through a sliver between two rock faces, sliding to a stop in front of us.

His gaze danced about from one thing to the next. Once, his eyes had been a perfect color match to his hair. But now his hair was caked with oily dirt and his eyes alight with madness.

“You’re here,” he said brightly. “How do you like my new home? It’s here and there. There and here. Over and over again, always in circles.”

“You have traveled through the Hellean portals,” said Father.

“Portals, yet not really portals. There’s no magic in them.” Keys yanked his fingers through his hair in jerky strokes. Again and again and again. “They wanted to know how to make portals.”

“The Helleans?” I asked.

Keys bobbed his head up and down.

“You were trying to make portals,” Ariella reminded him.

“I tried with magic. The Helleans did not. Their portals aren’t natural. They made them with flashy, bouncy bursts of energy. Technology made to imitate magic.” He shook his head. “But they aren’t the same. Not the same at all.”

“You made a portal,” I said. “And it brought you here.”

“It wasn’t supposed to do that.” He frowned. “This is a bad place. Many, many days and nights. Running, running, running. Always running.”

I caught him as he stumbled forward. Keys stank like old sweat and fresh blood. And like madness. Most of all like madness.

“The portal went pop. Sucked me up and spat me out. I fell in the water. In this very city.” He pointed at the lake below. “The fish tried to burn me. Men in white pulled me out like a fish caught on a hook.”

“So, the portal dropped you in here, and the Helleans pulled you out,” I said, hoping the repetition would ground his scattered mind in reality.

“Yes. Men in white. Men living in the darkness of space. Bad men. Very, very bad men. They wanted to know about portals.” His voice shook. “All about portals. Only about portals. They asked and asked and asked. They wanted some of their own.”

Jason looked him over. “The dirt and blood are a couple months old, but the crack in his mind is even older. They tortured him.”

Keys pushed back, out of my arms. “So many times they asked. I said nothing. They hurt me. Still, I said nothing. Then they brought out the serums. Vile, horrible potions.” Tears gathered in his eyes and he looked down, shame oozing off of him like thick sludge. “I was too weak.”

“It’s not your fault.” When I set my hand on his shoulder, Keys recoiled. He ran over to the rocks and slid down until he was sitting on the rocky ground, his head buried in his knees.

“So the Hellean portals are new,” Father said. “That would explain why we’ve never heard of them before.”

“The Helleans have many secrets unknown to the rest of us,” I said.

Father nodded. “Too true. And troubling.”

“They used Keys’s knowledge to make their portals.” I knelt down beside Keys, whose shoulders shook as he sobbed. “Keys.”

He continued to shake and sob, as though he hadn’t heard me. He looked up at Father. “I failed you, my king.”

Father gave him a kind smile. “I’m not a king anymore.”

“Yes, of course.” His shoulders slouched. “You must forgive me, Your Highness.”

Father extended his hand to him. “We’re here to help you.”

Keys looked at his hand, then grabbed onto it like it was a lifeline.

Father pulled him to his feet. “Please tell us what you know.”

Keys shook.

“Pull yourself together.” Jason’s voice cut like glass. “We need answers.”

“Leave him be,” I said. “Can’t you see there’s nothing left of him? His mind is gone.”

Jason ignored me. “Keys, when the Helleans got everything they wanted from you, they threw you in here, didn’t they?”

Tears streamed down Keys’s dirty face, streaking his cheeks with twisted lines. “Yes. To see how long I’d survive in their laboratories.”

“Laboratories? You mean these strange environments?” Marin asked.

Keys nodded. “So many monsters. So many machines. They want to eat me.”

“What’s the purpose of these laboratories?” Father asked him.

“They are breeding magic. I don’t know why,” he replied. “And combining magic with technology. And experimenting on mages.”

“There are more mages in here?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes. There were six. But only three of us survived. From us survivors, the other two fought hard, but they could not hold out. The Helleans control them now. Their minds are gone. But my mind is still sound. Because I ran.”

I met his mad eyes. “Are the Helleans trying to get more mages?”

“Yes. And they also have the twin princes. Half mage, half vampire.”

A cold chill shivered down my spine. “We need to find them.”

Keys continued to nod. “Yes, yes. They are not warriors. They will not last long.”

“How did they get here?”

“They were brought here by Nemesis.” He shuddered, as though her name were a curse.

“The Helleans are working with the witches?” Father asked.

Nemesis and the other mages of Sienna were close allies with the witches.

“Yes,” said Keys. “The men in white gave the witches weapons and other technological trinkets in exchange for the princes.”

Two years ago, Jason and I had exposed the source of the witches’ magic: for centuries, they’d secretly enslaved fairies, a race thought to be extinct. The witches had trapped them in their beast form. Fairies were the galaxy’s original werewolves, as a madman had once said. In their beast form, the witches had extracted their venom and used it to power their potions.

After we’d exposed them, they’d lost their magic—and their guard dogs. The witches and vampires had been mortal enemies for five hundred years. When the witches lost their magic, they found themselves on the losing side of the conflict. The witches’ technology was inferior to the vampires. But if the witches had just made a deal with the Helleans for advanced technology, we were all in a lot of trouble.

“We have to hurry and save the princes,” I said.

Keys’s eyes widened, and he screamed out in terror.

I heard them coming. The scrape of flapping metal wings hummed in my ears, growing louder as the flock swarmed in. I turned to look, my gaze falling upon their smooth silver bodies and dagger wings. The eagles were back.

“I think we’re going to need some more of those bombs, Leonidas,” I said, my eyes locked on the birds.

The swarm was twice as big this time. They’d be here in seconds.

“The portal is close,” Jason said.

I felt it too, the hum in my ears, the buzz against my skin. That familiar weight in the air. My fingers tingled with prickles of dancing energy.

“Let’s go, everyone,” I said.

Father lifted Keys onto his back, and we all ran, following Jason into the portal. The pressure on my head increased, and everything began to shift around me. The sky’s indigo was melting away, giving way to a pale blue. The golden rocks were fading into a patchwork of white and brown, and the warm humid air was hardening to an icy chill.

A cold wind swallowed us up, puffing and howling as ice particles crept through the tightly-woven synthetic threads of my clothes. Funnels of snow danced all around me, whirling and twirling toward the ice-blue sky. A mixture of frozen mud and crushed slush crunched under my boots.

A frozen wasteland stretched as far as I could see. Even catching the sparkling reflection of snow against metal beams high up in the sky—even knowing we were standing inside yet another simulated environment in a floating city—it was easy to forget we weren’t lost on a forsaken tundra.

Wet with sweat and the humid air of the previous city, our clothes began to steam, cloaking us behind a partial layer of fog. I squinted, trying to see past the dancing snowflakes and steam soup.

A gap in the fog opened, just large enough for me to make out a tall metal structure standing directly in our path. I looked up the rounded grey-black surface. My eyes panned higher, putting together the pieces of a puzzle I did not want to solve. Feet, legs, torso, arms, hands…a neckless, horned head screwed directly onto wide shoulders.

A golem. Four meters tall, the hunk of polished metal was masterfully constructed. And it could crush us flat with a single stomp.

I looked past the golem, across the field that spread out in front of us. Three identical constructs lined both sides of the wide path, six together. That was seven counting the giant towering over us. Seven golems.

I’d read about golems. To face one was a death sentence. Seven, on the other hand… Seven was an all-out apocalypse.