Page 30 of Caldar
“Awesome. A jumping puzzle,” she said dryly. One of her least favorite kinds of video game puzzles. Only underwater levels were worse. “Please don’t have an underwater level.”
Sonia methodically moved through the possible glyph combinations. One, two, three, obviously. One, two, one. One, three, two. Rinse and repeat. Stones rose and sank back into the not-water.
Snarling broke her concentration. A person-shaped lump of flesh crept forward on all fours, moving on unsettlingly long fingers and toes. It moved… wrong. Just wrong. Crouched down, the shoulders moved independently of each other. The arms bent wrong. Black straps covered the eyes, wrists, and ankles. The skin was waxy and pale. The jaw bulged forward like the mouth had too many teeth to contain.
That was… a hound? That was something that crawled out of a nightmare.
Another rounded the corner, just as monstrous as the other. Then another. They formed a pack of three. Thick black bands covered their eyes.
The lead hound lifted its head and sniffed the air. Moving as one, the pack turned to Sonia.
It tilted back its head and howled. She saw the flash of teeth. Sharp white teeth.
Sonia swallowed, tasting acid at the back of her throat. She couldn’t do this. She was going to puke all over her shoes, and she was wearing sandals so it would be extra gross, and then she’d slip in her own vomit and be eaten by the hounds.
Do something.
Sonia reached into the jacket pocket and brandished the only thing she found: her pencil.
“Stay back. I’m an artist—I know how to use this,” she said, moving her foot behind her and tapping the next combination.
The stones rose and fell.
She tried again, only tapping the first symbol before the front hound moved closer. Sonia tossed the pencil like a javelin. It bounced off the hound’s disturbingly human face.
Moving before her brain caught up with her feet, she finished the combination.
The stones rose.
And stayed.
She jumped onto the first stone. The bottom of her sandals crackled.
Right. Acid.
Sonia hurried across, her sandals sliding but otherwise not melting off her feet.
A hound tried to follow, jumping onto the stone after her, but it misstepped and a foot hit the water. It howled in pain.
The other two hounds paced on the shore, as if trying to decide if they should risk the jump. The injured hound went back, and as a pack, they left. Sonia felt certain they were going to find another way around. She was running out of time.
The sky lightened to a pearly gray. Dawn was coming. She needed to reach the center of the maze before the hounds caught up with her again.
* * *
“Unbelievable.”
Sonia reached the center of the maze. The hedges ringed the clearing, forming a tidy circle. The center of the clearing held two objects: an emergency pod, all powered up and ready to go, and Caldar, lashed to a table with the slice-and-dice plant. The lights on the pods flashed in a pattern, flickering one by one slowly and until they were all illuminated. The pattern repeated, this time faster.
A countdown.
The same glyphs that were used for the moat puzzle were etched into the ground. Playing a random combination temporarily opened the barrier. There were no glyphs on the other side. Once she crossed the barrier, she was stuck.
The countdown lights on the pod went faster and faster. It was obvious that she wouldn’t have time to free Caldar and reach the pod before launch.
The last puzzle had trained her for this one, and Sonia did not appreciate the feeling of being a mouse in a maze who was rewarded with a hunk of cheese for learning to press a lever.
Yeah. This was some grade-A bull.
