The Network ( Book One of the Grounders Series )

38

I lay her body softy down across the stone and stand. I force myself to look away from her face.

I walk a few paces to where the griffin carcass lies and rip my blade from its chest.

Then I turn, leaving all the hurt and sorrow behind me, literally, and becoming new. I need to win this battle with Arosi and I can't do that while hanging onto Cicada's life while it's already gone.

I've already figured out the maze. I stand before it patiently and then close my eyes and imagine a dagger in my clenched fist. I open my eyes and raise my new dagger to my wrist and and slice the flesh just above the balls of y hands. A thin trail of blood ran across my palm and down my index finger. I raised my finger to the crack in the door and let my blood, now flowing steadily, drip onto the crack.

Only the blood of Constantine can unlock these doors.

The stream of blood shifts, following the cracks of the maze engraved into the door.

I lowered my hand and bandaged my cut with a leftover strip of my shirt. The red filled the maze from beginning to the end and a loud boom sounded. The doors slid out of their threshold and slide open with just enough room for me to slips through.

I drop the bloody knife and walk through the opening. The doors slide shut behind me. There is no maze, or anything, on the back. In fact, after the door closed the rock formed together so it looks like there's just a wall.

The odor of the room is putrid, like decaying flesh, rotten eggs, and sulfur.

There is a wide corridor down the center of the room, the end lost in some kind of gray gloom. Along the walls there are tiny chambers that look like they were blasted out of the wall. The mouths of the chamber are jagged and uneven. Twisted wrought-iron bars, that are bent and rusted and warped, that must resemble the distorted souls within the cells.

Thin lines of blood covered every surface in sight, and flow down the tunnel.

In the cell closest to me, a large talon wraps around the bar, but the rest of the creature is concealed by the shadows of its chamber.

"You've finally come to meet fate, Alaric." The voice of the creepy is scratchy like nails on a chalkboard, but rough like sandpaper, similar to Arosi's but that's not it. "Alvus would be proud of you to have to courage to step into a place of demented souls and demonic intent, but even he knows that courage comes with a price, and that's idiocy. Only a fool would come here. If you thought that your journey here was hell, you're in for a rude awakening."

A lump forms in my throat but I swallow it down. "Where is Arosi."

The thing laughs. It's like shards of class being shoved into my ears.

The noise seems to wake more prisoners, because a few more substitutes for hands appear.

"You've come for the Dragon! You're more foolish than I thought. You might as well unwrap that bandage on your wrist now and let yourself bleed child, because the Dragon is the devil himself. You just wrote yourself a death sentence, child."

I close my eyes and imagine the bar where the creatures hand is getting red hot. The creature bowls in pain and and releases the bar.

"I asked you a question," I growl.

He chuckles, more softly this time. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you do have some darkness in you. Maybe you belong here with us."

A million thoughts flash through my head.

You're a killer. You let you're friends die, you left Kalin behind. You brought Cicada on this damn quest. You brought her here, right to her death.

You hesitated.

I gasp. That's it. That's why she died. I hesitated to attack the griffin when it lunged. I hesitated to kill it and it killed her.

Arosi's words echo through my skull. Your lack of confidence will be your downfall.

I hesitated because I was afraid I'd fail, because I was afraid if I attacked I would mess up and everything would end.

Suddenly an explosion goes off in the cell next to me. The creature howls in agony. "How dare you!" It screams and wraps its talons around the bars. It rips the warped bars out of wall and steps out of the shadows.

"You've made a mistake."

My eyes widen. I set that explosion off. My nerves made me lose control of my power and I set that off without knowing.

It's not big, but it is threatening. With teeth like tiny individual razors that want to taste my flesh. Scales cover its body. Wings the size of me protrude from its shoulder. It's entire body is wiry with muscles. But the worst part is its eyes, the color of blood with tiny black slits across the middle.

It's a dragon.

"I warned you. The Dragon promised us all freedom when he breaks out of here and I'm not about to let a puny little Grounder boy stop him."

"I promise you I'm anything but puny." I say imagining a dagger into my hand.

I reach into the recesses of my mind and gather all the pent up pain and sorrow and anger and hurt that I've ever felt and bring it forward.

I close my eyes ready to conjure the most gruesome vision and take down this dragon.

In my minds eyes I see the dragon standing there, mocking me as if slowly paces forward.

Fire burst from the ground at its feet and scorches its face. It howls in anger and pain as I open my eyes and lunge, my dagger outstretched.

My blade slashes across its cheek before it orients itself and knocks me hard to the ground with its wing. I roll away from it and close my eyes. My head is beginning to ache from all this conjuring.

I imagine roots sprouting from the ground at the dragon's feet, entangling its ankles and wrapping around its wings.

I realize I can win with just this image.

I make the roots twist its ankles so it falls onto its face, shattering its nose on the ground.

The roots tear through its wing membranes and wrap around the bone in its arm. It's shoulder is ripped from its socket. The dragon screams in agony as the skin around its shoulder rips and its wing is torn from its body.

I can sense his anger, and it's overpowering all of my pent up emotions that I'm using to fuel this torture.

My eyes jerk open as the dragon thrashes and frees itself from my trap. Pieces of roots fly everywhere as it lunges in my direction.

I close my eyes to conjure one last image. I roll over to meet it with my knife posed towards it heart. The blade becomes red hot and Sears easily through its scale amor and pierces its heart.

The dragon and it crumble to the ground, my blade burning a massive hole in its chest. It wails loudly, but gets quieter as the life drains out of it.

I rip my blade frees as the beast dies and stand up straight. The prison has gone quiet but I know that they are all watching.

I look around at all the cells. "Where is Arosi!" I scream so loudly my voice trembles the bars to the cells.

From the gloom at the end of the tunnel, two massive red eyes appear. "I think you're looking for me, boy," the creature growls. I know that voice all too well.