Page 63 of Tiger's Destiny
“Perhaps.” We walked in silence for a moment and then I added, “The Phoenix didn’t ask more of me than it expected from itself though.”
“What do you mean?”
“When the night comet streaked across the sky, I watched it burn. Sunset gave its life so the new Phoenix, Sunrise, could be born.”
Ren’s eyes fixed on me briefly, and then he looked away. Gently, he inquired, “What did he ask you, Kelsey?”
I let out a soft sigh and walked beside him quietly for a few seconds. He didn’t press me while I considered how much to share with him.
Finally, I responded, “My heart has been hurting for a long time, and I’ve clung to the pain. The Phoenix made me face that. And now that I’ve recognized it, I’m trying to figure out my next steps. As for the questions he asked me . . .” I stopped walking and reached for his hand. “I want to keep that to myself for a while. I promise that I will tell you about it someday. Just not right now.”
Ren lifted my hand to his lips and pressed a soft kiss on my fingers. “Then I’ll just have to wait for someday.”
Six hours later the tunnel widened, and my golden snake suddenly came alive. Fanindra brushed her head against my cheek and squeezed my upper arm with her coils, an unnerving sensation I still hadn’t gotten used to. She peered into the darkness ahead of us and flicked her tongue in and out several times. When she angled her head toward the ground, I crouched down and set her onto the gritty black path.
Lifting her head, Fanindra opened her hood and swayed back and forth as she studied the terrain ahead. Then she hissed slightly and moved off in a different direction. We followed her across a rugged trail that was covered with sharp black stones. Her golden body wove between the rocks, and though we lost speed, we all agreed it was safer to follow the snake.
Soon we felt a change in our surroundings. The tunnel opened into a large cavern. Echoes of our voices bounced around us. As we progressed farther forward, I felt a cold wind brush against me and then disappear abruptly. Goose bumps fanned out on my arms, and I rubbed them anxiously.
The movement of cold air was strange enough in the fire world, but it was also accompanied by several unnerving noises. The current of air twisted through holes in the rocks, creating a soft rattling, or fluttering, noise, and the rocks slowly strangulated with dull gasping sounds. The wind continued to brush against my new skin with long intervals in between, and I conjured up the image of a dying colossus exhaling his last cold breath.
Fanindra stopped abruptly and lifted her head, sensing something we couldn’t. Not even Ren or Kishan could hear or see far beyond the light cast by the golden cobra. All of us sensed danger. Ren responded by unhooking the sword from his belt. As he grasped the hilt, it lengthened into its full span. With a twist of his wrist, the sword separated into two blades. He handed one to Kishan and by unspoken agreement, both brothers moved slightly ahead of me.
After an hour of this slow movement, I felt the energy drain from my body again. I’d just uncorked the stopper to take a sip of the firefruit juice when Fanindra suddenly coiled and elevated almost the entire upper half of her body. She spread the ribs below her head wider than she ever had before, which showed off the elaborate coloring of her hood and made her look three times larger than she was.
She spat a loud series of hisses in warning, either for us or to try and scare off whatever was frightening her. Her mouth opened and closed several times as if tasting the wind. Her forked tongue tickled the air over and over, waving vertically like a loose ribbon in the breeze as she tried to get a sense of her surroundings.
A pop on our left, like that of a rock falling, echoed through the cavern, startling us. Not a moment later, we heard the quick skittering sound of something being dragged across rocks. It continued to move, circling closer, and the noise reminded me of a child carelessly dragging a heavy toy down stairs. The rhythmic thumps fell in sequence on the landscape, and I felt like something evil was tapping a jittery rhythm down my spine. My vertebrae pinged in sequence with the noise.
Kishan tensed. “Do you smell that?”
“Smell what?” I whispered.
Grimly, Ren nodded. “The stench of death.”
Ren reached behind him and took my hand. He nestled me between his strong back and Kishan’s. That’s when the smell hit me. I gagged immediately, and my eyes began watering. A vapor of decay encircled us, and I had to cover my mouth and nose with my hand. Ren’s nostrils flared, but that was the only sign that either brother was uncomfortable.
The smell was worse than a ripe garbage dump. A dead animal would be a pleasant perfume compared to it. It was almost tangible. I could even taste the stench on my tongue and feel it permeate my clothing and my hair. It was a smoldering, caustic, corruption—a sticky, biting tang that was somehow both toxic and sickly sweet at the same time.
The thumping noise came closer and suddenly stopped. The thick air made my eyes sting from the gassy vinegar smell. Fanindra’s body waved briefly and then she struck at something in the darkness. She hissed and struck again. I peered into the blackness ahead of her and felt Kishan tense.
A ghostly gray shape shuffled slowly toward us. The hairs on my body stood on end as I realized it was a corpse. The body moved stiffly. The belly was grotesquely distended, and the mouth gaped open slackly. Where there should have been gums was the white jaw of a skeleton. I shuddered when I saw that the skin around the rotting flesh was bloated around the face and was blackened, as if bruised.
Hair hung limply from what remained of the scalp, and I quivered and moved closer to Kishan’s back as the creature scratched its forehead, and the scalp slipped, exposing part of its white skull.
Ren spoke first. “What are you? What do you want from us?”
The creature hesitated briefly but began moving toward us again. It seemed fascinated with Fanindra. The snake struck at the creature several times, but it was either unaffected by the poison of her bites or couldn’t feel them. When it reached down to take hold of her, she quickly slithered out of its grasp and wound back toward me, wrapping around my leg.
I picked Fanindra up, and she immediately coiled into her jeweled armband shape. Placing her on my arm, I noticed the walking corpse straighten its body and move toward us. Its rheumy white eyes were fixed on Fanindra and me.
Ren raised his sword. “Stop! If you continue to approach, we’ll injure you.”
The walking corpse didn’t even look at him. Ren raised his sword and hacked violently at the creature, slicing cleanly through its right arm. The moldering limb fell to the ground but the lifeless being was only slightly hindered by the lost appendage as the arm slid away from its body. It obviously felt no pain.
Kishan leapt forward then and drew his blade across the corpse’s distended belly, splitting open its midsection with a liquid pop. Biting fumes and a thick liquid gushed out. The smell of putrefaction and raw sewage eddied through the air, and as I raised my hand to blast it with lightning power, the corpse clamped its hand on my wrist.
With a strong tug, I escaped its grasp. But to my horror, its skin peeled off and stuck to my wrist. I screamed and flung my arm about, trying to dislodge the fluttering gray epidermis. Calmly, Ren took my arm and peeled off the glove of skin that had slipped cleanly from the gleaming white bones of the corpse’s hand.
