Rising Shards

By the time I reached Iris and Maia, I could kind of tell what happened, even if it didn’t make any sense. That scary girl Scrungy was there, bubbled by Caya again, and Maia was on the ground, bleeding with a swollen black eye, with Iris knelt sobbing next to her.

“Ugh, this is all going to hell,” Diast said as she checked over Maia. “Maybe we need to regroup and—”

“I’m not going back without my daughter.” Mahina said.

“I know, but..." Diast started. "Well, these two definitely need to head back." She glanced at Caya chewing out Scrungy as she held the Kanibari girl up in an energy ball. “Make that three.”

“How’d she get here?” I asked. “Wasn’t the library supposed to be safe from jumping over here?”

“She could’ve snuck off.” Oka said.

I hoped Stella wouldn’t get blamed for this. More importantly, that Maia was OK. She stirred on the ground, but still was clearly out of it. Seeing Iris bawling over her wounded friend, I suddenly understood how Oka must have felt when I got into a fight with Ovie and she found me all bloodied afterward.

“I’ll take them back,” Caya said, plotting a route back on her wristband. She got out gate rosin as well.

“Right, Maia's out of it but moving her back shouldn't cause any issues,” Diast said, not wasting time debating it. I sighed in relief, worried I’d lose Diast for even a bit.

Caya scraped her fang as she held onto Iris, Maia, and Scrungy. “Five minutes, tops.”

The instant Caya’s group vanished back home, the ground shook. A garage door-like gate closed over the mouth of the cave. Red lights turned on across the cave walls, giving the sense that Caya’s departure triggered something, like walking through the security gates at a store when they go off. In addition to the lights, a voice spoke in a language I didn’t understand, repeating a phrase over and over.

“That doesn’t sound great, not gonna lie.” Ko said.

“Some kind of security system, perhaps?” Lillia said.

“Yeah, seems like the cave doesn’t like us jumping back, neat.” Diast said.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Well, let’s hope this group of Sharai weren’t fond of spiky death traps—”

I was about to tell her not to say that, because that would of course bring on the spiky death traps. But instead, the cave had other plans, as the floor opened beneath us in panels. Ko and Mahina fell first, then Lillia and Oka on another panel, then Diast, Marmalade and I on a third.

There wasn’t a spiky death trap beneath us at least, but I immediately flailed and thrashed about as we plunged into water, rapidly moving downward. It was similar to a slide at a water park, a pitch black one with much more ferocious water, with sharp turns that I had no idea how to brace myself for, dipping me underwater and pushing me above water rapidly. It felt like the big tubes we took into the void one time that felt like being dropped into an elevator shaft filled with water, but one that felt like it had twelve loops in it. I couldn’t see where Diast and Marmalade were either, so I hoped I wouldn’t smash into them with my attempts to make it through the trip.

I was able to scream as soon as I could see again as we slid into another dark cavern, landing with a thud. Diast stopped behind me, and Oka and Lillia burst through next to us, the water splashing across the ground.

“Hey…we made it…” Oka said. Our backpacks and bloodsabers (thankfully the swords stayed in their sheaths) moved a bit with the water sloshing on the ground.

“I um…” Marmalade said, leaning forward with her hands in water, her long hair covering her face. “Yeah, that’s a new one for me.”

“Where’d Ko and Mahina end up?” Diast groaned as she cracked her back.

Lillia immediately began pacing and searching for Ko.

“And where’d we end up?” I asked. “Is this like a Sharai prison?”

“It didn’t immediately plunge us to our dooms, so that’s something,” Diast said. “Maybe it was a defense mechanism for intruders. The system might’ve thought we were the ones being invaded, so it dropped us to a safe room.”

“So Ko and Mahina are probably in one too,” I said.

The musty room did seem somewhat like it could be a safe room. There wasn’t an immediately noticeable way out beside the slides we came in on. Lillia found a console with retro looking monitors on it that she began studying, assessing that it was safe before she tried to get it to turn on. I still needed a few moments to gather my bearings and wasn’t much help. Marmalade looked like she needed a lot more moments to gather her bearings. Diast tried to find the signals of the others to get in touch with them.

“Wahhhh!” Oka said. “Look!”

On one side of the safe room were rows of stables. I assumed they’d be empty, but a few had horses in them. A ping from Oka’s wristband gave the horses the yellowish hue that the other retention sprites had.

“Horse retention sprites?” I asked. “Can they even make those?”

“They tend to be called steed sprites,” Diast said. “If you can get them to like you, they’re pretty useful. But that’s more of a second-year level skill for Cani, so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t get em to like you right away.”

Oka held her hand out to the one she decided she liked the most, one with a white coat and a black mane. It leaned its head forward, allowing Oka to gently pat it.

“It feels really weird,” Oka said. “Like it’s there, but it’s not…it’s OK, big guy, I won’t judge you for being a ghost of an old horse…I’ll still be nice, see?”

I smiled at Oka’s natural warmth, even for something that was pretty much just a void monster taking the shape of a long gone animal.

“I found them!” Lillia called out.

We rushed to the console, where Lillia pointed at one of the screens, which now had a ceiling view of another room, where Mahina and Ko clearly were.

“Great work, Lillia,” Diast said. She noticed that Mahina and Ko each had their wrists tied together. “Terrific.”

09 finished tying the two up before standing and shaking water off her hands.

“Think that’s good?” 09 asked. Her voice came through somewhat garbled by the speakers, but clear enough that we could understand her fine.

“Probably, whatever,” Ovie said. “Just put them with the others, I guess. But not too close together. He said he’s almost here, so I don’t want them getting any bright ideas.”

“Right.” 09 said.

09 led Ko and Mahina to a corner and left the camera view. She returned guiding two more tied up Cani along.

“Kalei!” I said. “There she is!”

The clybrid Cani didn’t have an easy time leading Kalei along, or the other girl, who looked vaguely familiar. Then Kalei froze when she saw the others.

“Ma?” Kalei asked.

“Hi dear,” Mahina said. “Sorry this isn’t the best rescue.”

“It’s OK…I’m really glad to see you.” Kalei said.

“I’m here too,” Ko said. “My reflexes failed me. They got us right as we came out of the slides.”

“Right…slides.” Kalei said. “Is that why the floor’s all wet?”

“Can you all shut up?” Ovie snapped. “He’s here.”

The far side of their room got brighter; I assumed a door opening.

Before the “he” Ovie talked about walked into frame, I could almost sense who it was. Maybe it was just fear. Maybe it was some cosmic thing. A Cani power of sensing I wasn’t aware of. Maybe it was my imagination coming up with the worst possible scenario for the guest that ended up being immediately and terribly correct. I just knew.

With a small box in his hands, my father entered the room, casually approaching Ovie and 09.