Earth Guardian (Deities Series Book 2) Read online

  We all say the words, then file into the smaller blue room. We spread out and search the hieroglyphs, the doctor and Tage taking photos and notes.

  I’ve just finished scanning the first part of a wall when the door slides shut with a boom.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I freeze, glancing at everyone else, suddenly tense. We look around, but nothing happens. On instinct, I walk to the door we just came through and touch the Earth symbol.

  Nothing happens.

  “Ya khara—the door isn’t opening, why isn’t it opening?” I’m trying not to panic.

  “It’s a trap, gotta be,” Torrent says.

  “Okay, everyone, gather together in the middle, face out.” Smoke says.

  “Bring it on,” Ash is in fighting stance.

  “What? Don’t say that,” Tage’s pitch rises. “You’ll fucking curse us …”

  “Shut up, we can handle it.” Ash bounces on her toes.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up, bitch.” Tage blows her a kiss.

  “Geez, you two. Just like in highschool.” Smoke squeezes her hand.

  “Yeah, what are you, a shit-scared pussy?” Ash laughs. Tage joins in.

  “That’s enough, Ashley and Tage.” Dr. Mara is stern. “Stop talking, pay attention.”

  “Fucking pussy,” Ash gets in under her breath.

  “Anytime, girlfriend. Anytime.” Tage has a huge smile on her face.

  Something small hits the floor with a light clink.

  “What the fuck was that?” Tage shouts.

  Torrent reaches down and picks it up. “Look, it’s a stone beetle.” He hands the object, the size of half a lemon, to the doctor.

  “This is one of the scarab charms I told you about.” She passes it around. “See how it’s intricately carved? Beautiful. They would wear these around their necks sometimes, or in a pouch.”

  Another clink and one lands by my feet. I stare at it.

  “Look.” Smoke points up. “They’re falling out of the ceiling.”

  There are many square openings, all along the wall just under the ceiling around the room, about thirty centimeters apart. A blue stone beetle tumbles out of one space, then another from a nearby gap.

  “It’s kinda pretty,” Tage says, examining one that lands by her shoe. “Protection, right?”

  It is beautiful—I hold the first one in my hand, the stone cool. On the flat bottom there are bright, little hieroglyphs.

  Clink, clink, clink—the stone beetles are coming faster, and we cover our heads as they hit several of us.

  “Ow! Fuck.” Ash shifts her pack to her head.

  “Doctor, I suggest you find the confession for this room,” Smoke says.

  “Already on it,” Dr. Mara replies.

  The beetles pour out of all the holes, quickly covering the floor.

  Ya khara—there must be a million of them already. They’re piling up so fast I lose my footing and tumble among the growing pile, along with the rest of the team. We’ve all put our packs on our heads, following Ash’s move. My arms flail as I try to maintain my balance.

  “Help!” Tage is almost buried to her waist. Smoke, Torrent and I reach her and pull with all our might—but without leverage we keep losing our grip on her arms.

  The beetles are halfway up the room and pouring relentlessly like a Biblical plague.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Do you have anything, doctor?” Smoke can’t pull Tage out and now he is getting stuck. The stone bugs are sticking to our legs like glue, cementing each of us in place.

  “No, I can’t read it with them pouring in like this—half the walls are covered.” The doctor’s voice is panicked in a way I’ve never heard before.

  “Ahh.” Tage struggles, but it’s no good.

  “Ridge, the beetles are fucking made of stone—do something!” Ash’s eyes are blazing.

  Stone, these are made of stone—why didn’t I think of it sooner? Closing my eyes, putting my trust in God, I focus my thoughts on the stone beetles pelting us everywhere … I try again, ignoring the rising flood spreading up my chest … the crawling of many tiny feet pinch and tickle and I yelp, opening my eyes.

  The scarabs are shifting and moving—each individual beetle is slithering on tiny legs as if alive. I can’t believe my eyes.

  Tage screams as if she’s being murdered. The scarabs are swarming up our bodies, up the walls, skittering back into the holes above, moving against the ones still dropping out.

  The falling beetles hit the pile in the room, then sprout little legs and crawl toward the walls and back up again.

  “Get them off—they’re eating me alive,” Tage screams. Smoke struggles to put his arms around her.

  “No, Tage, look, they’re crawling back out.” He finally gets her calm as she sees what’s happening.

  It looks like there are more pouring in than going out, and the pile is still rising, though more slowly. I close my eyes and pray as I concentrate harder. I can feel the cold stones dropping and raising the beetles up my chest, to my neck … then after, when I’m holding my breath, the rising flood stops and starts to lower.

  Everyone’s eyes are wide as we all try to keep our cool. The lowering of the pile takes so long, but gradually our chests are freed making it easier to breathe, then our hips, then eventually we can lift our legs again and move around. But we stay in place until finally the last beetles crawl up and away back to wherever they came from.

  I wonder what made them leave?

  I collapse on the ground; the others do the same. After a brief drink of water, the doctor gets back up and resumes studying the walls as quickly as she can.

  “Thank you, Ridge.” Torrent shakes my hand.

  “That was savage, how did you fucking do it?” Ash takes a sip of water.

  “I don’t know, I just focused on the stone leaving, I think.” I shrug. “I didn’t expect them to crawl out.”

  “I told you we shouldn’t have come in here.” Tage’s voice is hoarse. “I told you guys—they were as bad as live bugs!”

  “Not quite, and we couldn’t have controlled live bugs anyway.” Smoke squeezes her hand.

  “Look here, this says something about how in this place resides the Test of Earth.” The doctor copies into her notes. “I’d say you passed controlling the bugs, Ridge, good job.”

  I controlled them? Did I send them away?

  “Test of Earth?” Torrent stands. “So, are they will be tested, then? Like besides trying to escape the normal challenge rooms without dying and find the four elemental rituals, we have to pass four tests of the elements?”

  “And we don’t have the Air person.” Smoke finishes his crackers, wipes his pants, and zips his pack before putting it back on.

  “Don’t panic, maybe we won’t even go into all the rooms with the tests. First, we have to find them all in the maze of rooms.” The doctor is back to her stoic self. “Let’s not worry about something before we come to it. But yes, it makes sense for there to be a test for each element in this maze.” She turns back to the walls, moving along. Tage puts her pack on and joins the doctor. “Everyone, please help scan this room for the four elements together. We must do this with every room.” We all get to our feet and take a wall. “Here’s the judge of this room. He is ‘Disturber of Weryt.’’’

  “Fucking disturbing, all right,” Ash says.

  “Everyone repeat after me: ‘Hail, Her-uru, who comest forth from Nehatu, I have terrorized none.’”

  We repeat the words, but nothing happens.

  “Again. I especially want to hear your voice, Ashley. This is for the sin of being hot-tempered.”

  “Wha-at?”

  We all hear her voice loud and clear as we repeat the words after our leader.

  After seconds of awful silence, the far door slowly slides open.

  Chapter Thirty

  We walk out. My steps are heavy, my body bruised. That was like being stoned in ancient times. Good thing we had o
ur full packs on our heads. I continually rub a sore spot on my elbow.

  Ash lights the next chamber. It’s medium-sized with a huge gold statue of a bull dominating the middle of the room, taking up most of the space. It is larger than life-sized, or an awfully big bull. It comes right out of the end wall on some kind of platform, like an altar. The platform is about waist-high. The bull stands with might on its four legs, its huge penis shooting out below. Directly beneath the bull, the altar has a kind of angled slide leading down into a large, shallow golden basin about knee-high. There’s a gaping hole beneath the middle of his chest. His eyes are painted black and his horns curve forward.

  “I bet this is the Apis Bull, the one animal the Egyptians worshipped as a real god. They even mummified the thing. There’s a special tomb just for the sacred bull, called the Serapeum.” The doctor goes to the walls, taking notes and studying, Tage joining her. “Here, it says this is the ‘Chamber of Blood’, see this, Tage?”

  “Uh, excuse me? I don’t like the sound of that.” Ash moves along the idol, running her hand over the smooth gold. “This is real gold, isn’t it?”

  “Chamber of Blood? What does that mean, Chamber of Blood?” Tage asks.

  “I don’t know, let’s keep reading.”

  I follow Ash—the gold warms my hand and arm. I love the feel of gold … it’s tingly and zippy. Could my earth affinity be connecting to it?

  “Whoa, doggy.” Ash is holding the beast’s spear, laughing.

  “That’s enough, Ashley, we don’t want to set off any traps,” Dr. Mara says.

  “A trap set off by the penis? Nice …” But Ash lets go and starts scanning the walls, floor, and ceiling.

  “Wait, this is interesting,” Dr. Mara is reading a wall text. “This says that when the pharaoh dies, he actually becomes the pyramid in which he is buried—so that when you look at the Great Pyramid, you are looking at the god Khufu from then on. The people must have actually prayed to him as the pyramid, I bet. It was a living god.”

  “Really?” Tage moves closer to her teacher.

  “Yes, see this painting here? It even shows how the Grand Gallery represents his ribcage, the Queen’s Chamber behind it in the place of the heart, the King’s Chamber is the head and brain. Hmmm, I wonder if the underground chamber was the stomach then …”

  “Here’s a clue,” Torrent shouts. We join him near the corner. Sure enough, the four element signs are there together. The doctor gets close to read it aloud.

  “’Fire, Air, Water, Earth Rite lives in the Chamber of Holy Serpent.’” Torrent, Smoke and Tage are all writing the clue down.

  “Chamber of Holy Serpent?” Ash asks. “No, I can’t do snakes. No fucking way on that one.”

  “We have to, we need the Earth Rite,” I remind her. “Besides, it’ll be me who has to do it and I’m not afraid of snakes. I just passed the elemental earth challenge with the bugs.”

  “Plus, it’s the first elemental Rite,” Smoke says. “Ridge will have to perform it, not you Ash.”

  “Thank god.” Ask shivers.

  “I hate this place,” Tage mutters.

  “Okay, everyone,” Smoke reads from his notes. “Keep your eyes out for the Wind of Amenti’s Night and the Chamber of Holy Serpent. We’ve got two clues to memorize now.”

  The doctor and Tage return to their wall. I remove my water flask and take a small swig.

  “I found the judge of this room,” the doctor calls out. “‘Blood-Eater of the Shambles.’ The sin he represents is ‘killing a sacred bull.’”

  “Well, at least we’re safe from this one,” Ash says.

  “It describes it here—this reads: ‘I killed the sacred bull and ate its heart, but this is an … abomination.’”

  “What was that sound?” Smoke asks.

  I stand still and I hear it—distant gurgling and clicking. They grow louder and then blood pours in force from out of the chest of the bull, flowing down the altar depression and into the wide, gold basin.

  “Eww, that’s so gross.” Tage plugs her nose while coming over to see.

  “It’s like the bull is being sacrificed,” Torrent says.

  “Yes, but we didn’t do anything.” Dr. Mara comes to the basin. “Right?”

  “Except reading … you read those words aloud, Doctor,” Smoke says. “What if the Blood-Eater actually thinks you were confessing to killing the bull?”

  “I was just reading it.”

  “But it sounded like you were confessing.”

  “Oh God.”

  We turn to the door just as it grinds shut—we hadn’t heard it. I run to the door on the other end of the room, placing my hand on the earth symbol. Nothing happens.

  “Fuck. Do you think that’s real?” Ash peers into the basin. The blood is almost to the top. “Stop, stop, stop!”

  The red liquid pours out of the bull like a raging river of red, overflowing the basin and running onto the floor, quickly spilling across the room.

  “Ow, shit!” Torrent jumps out of the blood pooled under his feet. “This better be fake. Fuck, it ate the bottom of my boots. This isn’t blood—it’s acid. How the hell can this acid still be potent after all these years?” The sole of his boots are eaten away, revealing red skin through what’s left of his socks. Ash and Tage run to the doors and begin pounding and shouting.

  What are they doing? I run to join the rest squeezing against the wall with the doctor. This isn’t any better.

  The blood acid races toward us, flowing across the entire room.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Who controls blood? Is it water, Tor?” Smoke cries out.

  Torrent shuts his eyes for a moment. Nothing changes. “Shit, I can’t control it.”

  “Come on, this way.” The doctor inches along the wall following a narrow ledge, leading them away from the bull and toward the end of the room. We follow.

  “Girls, over here,” Smoke shouts. They skirt along a different area of the wall to join us on the other side of the bull. It takes Ash a second to vault up on top of the statue to where we are, her boots smoking. Tage climbs onto the platform, but can’t get her body up—she carefully crawls under the bull. We help Torrent climb, then all three of us guys lift the doctor.

  Fire slices my feet. The acid has reached me—I scream and hop, trying to squeeze onto the platform with Smoke and Tage.

  We’re all shouting as Smoke and I throw Tage up, where hopefully someone catches her. Smoke goes next, then arms pull me up as I straddle the back of the bull. My feet have a thousand knives stabbing them; I think I’m going to pass out.

  Once I’m on top of the bull’s head, Torrent pours blessed cool water over my feet and carefully does the same to Smoke’s. He balances past the doctor so she doesn’t have to move. My head clears but my feet are still burning with unquenching fire. I blink water from my eyes. I don’t know if I’ll survive this …

  Blissful relief floods my body as a pair of icy cool slippers encase my feet. Relief floods me; I slump into Smoke’s back. “Thank you, Torrent. Thank you, God.”

  When I open my eyes, I watch the acid flowing across the floor and draining out of small holes in the four corners. We hadn’t noticed those before, but it’s not the relief it should be since acid still pours out of the bull.

  Smoke’s feet are also covered with ice. In front of him is Tage, then the doctor, then Torrent. Ash straddles the bull in the front, holding the horns.

  Ash removes her ruined shoe and tosses it to the floor. It bubbles and hisses into nothing. She removes her other shoe and socks, throwing them in as well.

  The doctor is the only one with her boots still intact. She’s studying the walls, trying to read them from up here. “Is everyone okay? How are the ice shoes working?”

  Tage’s and Smoke’s feet drip along with mine as the ice slowly melts.

  “Heavenly,” I say.

  “Thank you, Tor,” Smoke says.

  “Thanks.” Tage shifts. “Can you freeze the ac
id, too?”

  “No, I have no control over this stuff. Maybe if it was real blood …”

  “Ughh,” Tage says. “But that would be better than this, for Chrissake. Why did we come this way? We should have stuck to the hallway. At least there we could choose. How can we get back now?”

  “We can’t, Tage, not from here. But we wouldn’t have found the clue if we hadn’t come this way.” The doctor continues reading the walls and ceiling. “No, I’m sure this was the right way … there it is—there. I found the confession. Everyone repeat after me: ‘Hail Basti, who comest forth from Bast, I have not killed the sacred bull.’”

  We have to repeat it three times before the blood slows to a trickle. We wait, our ice shoes melting, as the acid slowly recedes from the room.

  Torrent manipulates water from his extra flask to wash the floor clean. At last, we gingerly climb down, trying not to slide everywhere. It’s tricky standing on my uneven ice shoes, and the pain stabs my feet. Dr. Mara checks the floor—the dampness is only water.

  “Sit down, all of you, let me give you proper medical attention.”

  We remove what’s left of our socks and shoes after Torrent disintegrates the ice. The doctor bandages our feet with aloe and triple-antibiotic ointment. The aloe is cool, but it hurts having the bandage tight against the bottom of my burned feet.

  Smoke takes his footwear and drops them into the golden basin, full to the brim. It bubbles and eats his shoes. “A sore leg and now sore feet.” He sighs.

  I do the same—remove my boots and socks and watch them sink to nothing under the nasty red liquid. Limping on my tender feet, I walk to the door leading out. This time when I touch the symbol, it grates open.

  Thank you, God.

  “Thank God.” Ash walks through, lighting a long hallway leading away from the door.

  Ancient Egyptian coffins made of vibrantly painted stone line the wall on both sides, each pair facing each other, leaving a narrow space in the middle. The coffins are the shape of a person, just like the pictures I’d seen of King Tut. Golden faces stare out at us as we walk, one by one, down the hall.