He needed help, but he also knew asking an adult for it would have led to some awkward questions. The god had made it clear that nobody was supposed to know about the mission, so that wasn’t an option. Tailyn was going to have to figure something out himself.
But how? His first thought was to head back to the city, stop by the temple, and entreat the god to unlock strength for him. It was a required skill for guards, miners, blacksmiths, and everyone else who had heavy things to lift as part of their job, but the question was what Master Forian would say. The last thing Tailyn wanted was to upset his tutor. He’d already lost the ring, and he didn’t want to lose his spot next to the mage, too.
Suddenly, he realized what to do. As he was going through his inventory, his gaze fell on the rope. Eureka! He could tie one end of it to the ladder, pull the end up, and drop it down into the cave. Then, when he needed the ladder back, he could just pull the rope up. The plan was a good one.
Tailyn loved the idea he’d come up with, and he didn’t even bother to look around. Tying one end of the rope around his waist, he tied the other to a rung, hauled the other edge to the hole, and lifted his side with a heavy grunt. The ladder’s own weight began pulling it down into the hole. Slowly at first, it began picking up speed, and the boy barely had time to let go of the rung before it yanked him into the hole. The ladder was vertical.
Proud of his own ingenuity, Tailyn gripped the rope. It was plenty long enough to make sure the long wooden ladder didn’t pull him in. Standing on the edge, he began pulling it back up, the going easy before it tightened. It was time to pull up the ladder. And Tailyn already knew how he was going to do that. There was a small tree growing nearby, and wrapping the rope around it a few times the way construction workers did when they were erecting buildings would take some of the load off.
Tailyn began stepping slowly away from the edge, keeping the rope tight, when something happened that he wasn’t prepared for. The ladder began slipping farther in, and the boy was pulled toward the hole. Letting go, Tailyn watched as the rope slithered farther and farther away. What was going on? And then, he looked down at himself and blanched. He’d tied the rope around himself. Fingers shaking, he tried to untie the knot, but it was too late—the rope was all the way underground, and he was being hauled along with it. The boy fought back for a little while, gripping the rocks around him, but it was like someone was yanking away down below. Finally, Tailyn flew head-first over the edge with a loud scream. The impact of hitting the earthen incline just about wiped out his shield and knocked the wind out of him. His head spun, stars danced in front of him, he had a hard time breathing, and a darkness gradually slipped over him.
Ka-Do-Gir, a level three lix and commander of one of the many squads assigned to the Culmart raid, was hovering over the boy. He recognized him immediately—the boy was the one who’d used the magic that had helped the city wipe out almost the entire first wave and necessitated the second. Drool formed. The lix hadn’t eaten in five days, and his inner animal was doing battle with his rational side. The former demanded meat, the food that would buy it another couple days. But he also knew that killing the boy right then would just postpone his own death. If they could come to an agreement, on the other hand, he had a shot at surviving despite the broken hind legs that were causing so much pain. He snarled. Without food, he couldn’t heal itself, and his inner animal was starting to get the upper hand. But it was right then that the string bean in front of him opened his eyes.
The impenetrable darkness Tailyn found himself in was filled with an unbearable stench. Grimacing, he opened his eyes slightly only to have them widen when he saw the drooling lix standing menacingly over him. The throaty growl and bared teeth boded nothing good, and the boy froze as motionless as one of the many statues in the god’s temple. Only his wildly beating heart spoke to the fact that he was still in the land of the living.
His foe’s behavior very nearly snapped the tenuous reins Ka-Do-Gir was using to keep his inner animal under control. The latter sensed prey, sensed its prey’s fear. It longed to feast on the boy, and it took an unearthly feat of will for the lix to regain control. He wasn’t some digital beast. No, he was a commander. And even though his troops were all dead, that didn’t change his status or rank. Doing his best not to frighten the boy, he retreated, still ready to leap forward the moment he saw a magic card. The child wasn’t a threat without it. With it, on the other hand, Ka-Do-Gir was a goner. And it couldn’t let that happen.
Tailyn’s brain was overwhelmed with fear. He’d already reconciled himself to the fact that he was going to die, said goodbye to his friends and mentor, cursed the day he’d gotten the stupid mission, regretted ever being born… Eventually his thoughts began running in circles until he realized something: he was still live. Not only that, but the lix had backed off. Its growl was still just as menacing, only something about it suddenly didn’t seem as terrifying. A thought crossed his mind—the creature wanted to defeat him in battle like a true warrior.
Ka-Do-Gir sensed the changes in the boy at once. Really, even little mages like that couldn’t stay scared for long, and that left the most important part. They had to figure out how to communicate. The lix wasn’t a tutor and couldn’t give Tailyn the linguist skill. On the other hand, there was a way around that, and it wasn’t even far off. The lix had spent the five days he’d had been in the cave going over it backwards and forwards in search of a way out, and he’d found something interesting on the other side of some debris. He could sense a crystal they could dig out and use to teach the skill to the boy. Just as long as the latter didn’t pull out his card. If he did that, it was all over.
As he prepared himself mentally for the final battle, Tailyn pulled himself to his feet. The most important thing he’d learned from Motar is that warriors did their best not to die without a fight. If you did put up a fight, you got to go somewhere nice after you died, even if nobody knew exactly where that was. But everyone did know that it was for those who died well. And it was a great place. The fear gripped his body, and his legs were weak, but the boy was able to straighten up and even look around. The ladder was lying not far away. The rope was being gripped tightly by the lix, as it had apparently pulled the boy down. His virtual inventory appeared in front of him; the lix stepped forward, fangs bared. It obviously didn’t like what Tailyn had in mind.
Ka-Do-Gir knew all too well what it meant when a mage’s gaze went slightly blank. Their clan’s wizard did the exact same thing when it was reaching into the god’s storage. While the boy had been unconscious, the lix had checked all his pockets, not finding a single card. And that was why he tensed up when the boy’s eyes lost focus—while he didn’t have much strength left, he did have enough for one last attack.
A sixth sense told the boy that if he materialized one of his cards, the battle would be over before it ever began. He wouldn’t get a second chance. But while the odd lix didn’t attack, he could keep himself alive, and that meant he was going to have to get by without his cards. Somehow, just making that decision gave him a kind of confidence. He stared over at the lix, the latter getting less and less aggressive as time went on. In fact, as soon as he decided not to materialize his cards, his foe calmed down. That was interesting. Apparently, he didn’t want to kill Tailyn in battle.