Here's the next chapter! :D Please vote and comment for it! :D I really hope you guys like it! I'm still dedicating the chapters to my loyal readers so please vote and comment for it to identify yourselves to me! :D The picture on the side is of Troy! :D
Chapter 36
The trio’s frantic screams did nothing but distract them from the incoming danger of the vines. Possibly the vines could sense that Dahlia’s voice was the most dangerous; they looped around her mouth, cutting off her shouts.
“Let go of her!” Troy shouted; he swiped his sword at the vine, cutting it off in the middle, not daring to swing his sword near Dahlia’s face.
Kayla yelped as the vines pinned her arms to her sides; she could not swing her spear. The vines tightened until she could barely feel her arms, much less move them about. She could practically sense the bruises that were going to form all over her arms and torso. Despite her frantic struggles, she could not get free.
Once again, Troy came to her rescue, swinging his sword frantically in an attempt to cut her free. His sword nicked her side, but Kayla ignored the stinging pain as a trickle of blood ran down her arm. With her free hand, she sheathed Excalibur from its sheath, halting as a particularly spiky vine tangled and trapped her wrist. Swearing, she groaned as the thorns in the vine drew blood.
Neither Troy nor Dahlia came to her rescue; Troy was swinging his sword at vines threateningly, almost like a baseball bat and Dahlia was playing cat and mouse with a particularly vicious cluster of vines that looked almost alive.
With both hands trapped, Kayla lashed out with a frustrated kick, only to get it tangled up too. It took all of her self-control not to scream in pain because that was the leg that had gotten burned by lava from the river. The vines tugged, sending Kayla crashing onto the floor, wincing as the vines pulled her spear one way and her body the other.
The next second, the pain around her waist eased as Dahlia drove her dagger through one of her restraints. Troy stood around them, sweeping his sword back and forth in an attempt to keep the vines at bay.
“Get up,” Troy growled as he hacked through the greenery that was pulling her spear away from her.
Irritation at his attitude, Kayla forced herself to her feet, using Excalibur to cut away the last vine around her leg. Dahlia and Troy stood around her, trying to deflect the vines and cut them apart faster than the treacherous plants could ensnare them.
Finally, Kayla gained her feet again and started advancing on the vines, hacking them away with Excalibur, rather than her spear. Troy followed, using his sword- it had a longer reach than Dahlia’s daggers- to cut away the ones that Kayla missed. Dahlia brought up the rear, keeping close to Troy.
Kayla gasped in surprise the second Excalibur came into contact with the vines. They recoiled from her blade and sunk back into the wall. Within a minute or two, the only vines threatening them were the ones in front of Kayla; neither Troy nor Dahlia was in any danger from the plants anymore.
“What’s going on?” Troy asked suddenly after walking three steps without being attacked by the creeping plants.
“Kayla’s doing something to the vines,” Dahlia said slowly, surprise evident in her voice despite the fact that the light was so dim that they could barely see one another.
“Excalibur,” Kayla exclaimed. “It’s absorbing the power from the vines! I knew it could do that, but I never realized that it could do that to non-humans…”
“The next trap will be activated soon,” Troy warned. “Seeing as we’ve faced Dahlia’s fear, it stands to reason that we’ll be attacked by one of ours next, Kayla. What are you afraid of?”
Kayla gritted her teeth, anger lurching in her stomach at Troy’s casual attempt to find out her secrets. She knew perfectly well that he had no malicious intent, but it was not easy for her to relinquish the truth.
“It might just as well be another of mine,” Dahlia warned wearily. “No one has just one fear anyway.”
“And we’ve lost our scout,” Kayla reminded her, grateful at the quick change of subject; Tamarak was particularly good at spotting concealed traps for his invisibility power enabled him to see camouflaged things with ease.
Kayla was concentrating so hard on preventing the vines from tangling any of them that she almost walked past the other corridor. Troy spotted it first and called her name.
“Kayla, there’s another corridor,” he said, gripping his sword. “It’s in the direction of the exit. We should try it. It can’t be any worse than this.”
Kayla nodded as carefully as she could without upsetting her balance of her sword. Sweat poured off her face and her arms ached. Before Troy could step towards it, Dahlia grabbed his arm.
“Chances are higher than it’s your fear or Kayla’s that we’re going to face next,” she said. “Let me go first.”
Troy’s face tightened up, but all three of them knew perfectly well that now was not the time for a quarrel. Against his better judgement, he nodded, sucking in his stomach and stepping as close as he could to the wall without actually touching it to let Dahlia pass. She stepped gingerly into the tunnel…
And nothing happened.
All of them exhaled a mutual sigh of relief.
“Come on,” Dahlia said, turning to face them. “It’s fine.”
“Good,” Troy said, relieved. “Kayla-”
He was cut off by Dahlia’s surprised scream as the floor beneath her feet gave way and she fell, shrieking at the top of her lungs.
“Dahlia!” Troy shouted, panic evident in his voice and lunging for her. It was too late; she was gone. Before Kayla could stop him, he jumped after her.
Kayla swore again, still cutting back vines. Her hands were shaking; it was clear that the hole into which they had gone into was a drop with nothing to hold onto. Heights were something that every Magician of Earth was afraid of, but unlike Dahlia’s fear earlier, she had no help of any kind from her friends, nor could she allow them to be separated. Hating herself, she twisted away from the vines and jumped into the hole after Troy.
For a second, she free-fell, shrieking at the top of her lungs. The next second, she landed painfully on a slide- she was pretty sure that she would end up with a massive bruise on her backside- and started hurtling down it. Just below her, Troy was sliding deeper and deeper into the chasm, with Dahlia even further down, only noticeable by her pale blonde hair.
Up ahead, the slide forked into two different exits. Dahlia hurtled down the one on the right; her light weight caused her to angle into that one. Due to their heavier masses, Troy and Kayla were both sent spinning into the left slide.
“Troy!”
“Dahlia!”
The duo shrieked each other’s names at the same time as they were split up, both trying to grab onto anything to halt their slide. Kayla clutched Excalibur to her chest, trying to prevent the sword from stabbing Troy as he tried to stop their fall.
“Kayla, do something!” Troy yelled frantically.
“What?” Kayla demanded.
“Anything!” he shouted back.
Before Kayla could do anything as Troy said, the slide levelled out and they flew through the air once more. Kayla’s shriek of terror was cut off as they crashed straight into an ice-cold lake that immediately made Kayla’s teeth chatter with cold as she sank. Frantically swimming against the cold dead weight of her silver weapons, she struck out desperately for the surface, unaware of where Troy was.
For a brief second, she thought that she would not be able to reach the surface, but with a pop, the water surface yielded and her head broke the surface. Gasping for air, she treaded water desperately, trying to swim in a circle to find Troy.
“Troy!” she shouted.
There was no response. Dread filled Kayla as she realized just how paralyzing Troy’s fear of the water probably was, considering how afraid Dahlia was of fire. Panic blazed through her like a warm fire. The next second, Excalibur was ablaze, lit up above the water surface.
“Bloo-” Kayla began and then she gasped as the light illuminated Troy’s body beneath the water surface.
All shock about Excalibur’s fire, she dove for him, surprised at how the flame stayed alight even though she was beneath the water surface. Troy was sinking, but unlike Dahlia, he was trying to swim against the heavy water current although it was clear that he was not a strong swimmer.
Kayla grabbed his hand to try and pull him up, but they were too heavy for either of them to swim up to the surface again. Lungs burning, Kayla attempted to swim upwards. The weight of their weapons was so heavy that neither of them was able to rise. Bubbles rising in the water above her mouth, Kayla instinctively opened her mouth to breathe. Water rushed in and she started choking and coughing.
The next second, they shot out of the water like a torpedo. The second they broke the surface, Kayla gasped desperately for air, relief flooding through her as her lungs filled with air. Choking and coughing on the water that still flooded her lung, she vomited up whatever water and food that remained in her stomach.
“Kayla! Are you alright?” Troy gasped, still gagging on water.
The duo smacked back into the water, but this time, nearer the surface. The next second, the water swirled, sending them spinning through it like rubbish in a fiercely-powered water chute. Kayla yelled Troy’s name, trying to grab hold of her brother. He seized her arm, grimacing as his injured palms made contact with her arm. Without time to ask him was wrong, they went back under the water surface.
They were tossed about every which way, unable to make sense of what was up and what was down, where was right and where was left. Every time they broke the surface of the water, they gasped for breath, just enough to stay alive until their next surface.
“Hang on!” Kayla spluttered, in her next breath, but there was not much they could do.
Troy gasped suddenly as a new water current sucked on his legs, pulling him downward faster than they could swim away. With another gasp of air, Troy shouted, “Whirlpool!”
“Troy!”
Kayla managed to free herself from the whirlpool’s clutches before it got a firm grasp on her, but it refused to relinquish Troy. The tighter Kayla held on, the faster the whirlpool threatened to suck her in too.
“Kayla, let go!” Troy shouted, full of idiotic bravery for Kayla knew that he could not swim. “This is my challenge! You have to let go! You’re going to get sucked in too!”
“No!” Kayla’s protest was cut off by another wave that swept her underwater again. Clawing herself back to the surface, she gripped Troy’s hand as tightly as possible, although she could already feel herself being tugged into the whirlpool.
“Sorry, sis,” Troy panted and the next second, she felt a sharp pain in her injured leg. With a cry of pain, she released his arm. Too late, she realized the trap that she had fallen into.
“Troy!”
Her yell was full of rage, but it was too late; she was knocked away from Troy as he was sucked into the middle of the whirlpool and the siblings were separated.