Spear of Destiny James Baldwin (free romance novels .TXT) 📖

from the low, rumbling sky. The bodies of the Napathian undead were gone: pixelated into nothingness, or eaten by the local wildlife. There was just the stone ring standing there like a stargate, framing the brooding, dim entry to the temple.

“Okay! Well, now that’s done… as soon as we fire up this portal, I’m going first.” Rin stepped up beside me as I dug moss and mud out of the small pedestal in front of the portal frame: the lock for the Spear. “Alone.”

“Alone?” Gar frowned. “You can’t go in there alone.”

“Yes, I can. I can’t drown and I have crush resistance, so if the vault is underwater, it won’t kill me,” she replied, quickly slotting new vials of mana into her spellglove. “Mercurions don’t NEED to breathe. I just breathe to talk, so if there’s no air down there, I’ll be fine.”

“Well, shit.” Suri said. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“Think of what?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Still don’t know how to swim.”

“You can’t swim?” Gar squinted at her. “You got bigger muscles than I do.”

“I grew up in the middle of the desert. Underground.” Suri said sourly. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

Gar shrugged. “Texas ain’t exactly a goddamn beach resort. Still learned how to swim.”

“What do you want from me? A trophy?” Suri asked sweetly. “I can carve you a wooden dick and nail it to your head.”

“I figured you’d use it to peg your damn hookwing,” Gar retorted.

“Guys, focus.” Karalti scowled at them. “Rin, you tell us first thing if you need any help on the other side of the portal. Okay?”

“Sure.” Rin swelled up a little. “Fire it up!”

Once the activation slot was cleared, I inserted the blade of the Spear. Seams of brilliant orange energy flowed from the Clinohumite of Loving Embrace, pulsing down the blade and haft. The mechanism sucked at it, drawing the mana into itself, just before the portal ignited with a WHUMPH. The howling maelstrom glitched slightly as it drew the air in like a vacuum cleaner. No water sprayed out, but I could smell the ocean.

“Okay. See you on the other side!” Rin gestured to her turrets, and hesitantly stepped forward, vanishing into the whirling vortex of energy.

We held our breaths, waiting for the notification that she’d died. But as the minutes passed, nothing happened.

“She alright?” Gar fidgeted, flipping a coin over and around his fingers. “It’s been a while.”

“Hang on: let me check.” I tagged her in our group PM. “Rin? How’s it going in there?”

Another couple of minutes passed before she replied. “Oh! Sorry! I was using Hopper to scout the corridor. It’s fine! There’s a lot of salt buildup, but the place seems to have held together. It looks like it sunk into a giant coral system, and the coral grew over it. You can come over!”

“Roger that.” I cracked my neck in anticipation. “You guys all ready?”

“Me first!” Karalti bounded forward and leaped through the portal before I’d finished pulling the Spear free. I went next, with Suri and Gar following up.

Warping by portal was a lot faster than teleporting. There was a nearly instantaneous transition between the dark, humid jungle, and the cold, blue-lit cavern. The exit portal was on an angle under a broken archway, its mana conduit pipes exposed to the air. A short set of broken steps led to a waterlogged tunnel that was definitely off kilter. Everything was tipped to the right: the floor, the broken walls and piles of rubble. White, fossilized coral held everything together like duct tape. The only level surface was the knee-deep water ahead.

“Crap.” Gar groaned, flailing out to clutch at my arm.

I jumped at the unexpected touch. “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t much like small spaces underground,” he muttered. “Makes me think of a coffin. Being buried alive.”

“Finally, something we can agree on.” Behind me, Suri lit a torch, throwing the hallway into weird angles and deep, sharp shadows.

“Ooh, spooky.” Karalti was in water up to thighs, as was Rin, but they led the way forward. “I smell all kinds of neat stuff, though. Lots of fish, and maybe a dead whale?”

“Archemi has whales?” I rested the Spear over my shoulders, watching my Stamina run down at high speed. Walking in water past a certain depth caused Stamina to deplete twice as fast as normal.

“Course Archemi has whales,” Gar muttered. “Whales don’t give a shit about the waves. They just swim under ‘em.”

“Yeah!” Karalti replied. “Mmm, I bet they’re delicious. All that fat and meat and… nyyargh.”

“Hungry again?” I asked her, privately.

“More like, still hungry,” she replied. “I feel like I want to eat all the time.”

I took a deep, reassuring breath. “We’ll handle your heat better this time. No assassin interruptus.”

“Shh, don’t talk about that now. I’ll blush.” Karalti giggled. “I’ve got to be on my game here. What if a delicious, tender whale broke in and tried to kidnap you?”

“Then we’d all drown.”

There was a dull crack from somewhere far above our heads. Gar audibly winced.

“It’s fine. This place has been standing for five thousand years. We aren’t gonna be the ones to bring it down,” Suri said. She had unequipped her armor down to her underwear, her axes in her hands.

The tunnel eventually got wider, opening up into a tumbled ruin of stone, bleached coral, and hills of sand. There was a doorway in the wall, still intact: though it, and the hall beyond, were laying on their sides. The space was utterly dark.

“Ooh.” Karalti stuck her head in. “This one’s EXTRA spooky.”

I looked back. Suri had the bland, stoic expression of a veteran soldier on the field. Gar was pale. Rin, surprisingly, looked unconcerned.

“I’ll take point. I’ve got Darkvision,” I said. “Let me scout down and make sure there’s nothing in