“I’m using my speed potion!” Vanessa announced.
“You call that speed?” Jinzen mocked. “Quick for a mortal, I suppose.”
Body flexing as if he had joints in the wrong places, Warren swayed to his feet. Kendra heard rushing air, and the mirrors began to fill with an endlessly long golden body in rapid motion. Raxtus thrust Kendra to the floor and disappeared with a noisy crash as a shimmering stream of gold blurred by above her. Manic laughter bombarded her ears from all directions.
When Kendra sat up, Warren and Raxtus were gone. She was alone with thousands of reflections of herself. She heard vicious snarls and claws ringing against hard surfaces.
“This vase looks expensive,” Vanessa called, her voice off in the distance. The remark was followed by a shattering smash. “Whoops!”
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” Jinzen shouted from all sides. “Why?”
“I upgraded my speed,” Tanu announced from a different direction than Vanessa. “Check this out! Who would sculpt a bridge out of jade? The trees on the riverbank look so fragile!” What followed sounded like a baseball bat destroying a chandelier.
“Noooooooo!” Jinzen howled in rage.
Kendra heard a rush of wind and began to see golden flashes in the mirrors. Jinzen was flying her way.
“Look at the fairy treasure I found!” Kendra hollered, raising her hand, closing her eyes, and putting on the ring.
She could feel the light against her skin, and it flared unbelievably bright even with her eyes closed. She forced all the power she could muster into the ring and felt the glare intensify. Then, with a bursting sound, the ring went dark and no longer felt connected to her power.
Jinzen was half roaring, half screaming. Kendra crouched low, hands over her ears.
“My eyes!” Jinzen yelled. “You devils will pay for that trick.” It sounded like he was colliding with mirror after mirror, flopping around haphazardly. “You will pay dearly!”
“Everyone lie low,” Warren shouted. “This overhyped dragon is mine. After I smash more of his things. Where is the little worm? Is he hiding?”
Kendra got down flat on her stomach and pressed into the juncture where the floor met the wall. Glancing at the ring, she noticed that the white stones forming a unicorn were gone, with empty sockets in their place. Somehow her energy had consumed them.
She could see a reflection of Warren walking, clutching two large poleaxes with huge, semicircular blades. Arms unsteadily straining, he dragged the butts of the axes on the floor to manage the weight, keeping one facing ahead of himself, one behind. He chattered nonstop.
“What’s the matter, Jinzen?” Warren taunted. “Do you think if you close your eyes we can’t see you?”
Kendra no longer heard the dragon crashing into things. Was he keeping still? Had his sight returned? Did he have his mirror maze memorized? Gilded lengths of dragon flickered in the mirrors, and Kendra heard a whistling rush of air.
“A lot of dragons get slow in their old age,” Warren heckled, arms wobbling, trying to keep the axes stable. “And they become so fussy about their weird possessions.”
Kendra saw Jinzen speed directly into the ax Warren held behind himself, the dragon splitting down the middle for nearly a third of his length before slamming to the floor, dragging Warren with him. After sliding to a stop, Jinzen did not move.
Arising, Kendra chased the reflections of the motionless dragon in the wrong direction several times before making her way to the actual corpse. She arrived at the same time as Raxtus and found Warren bent sickeningly out of shape.
“I’m okay,” Warren claimed, responding to her expression. “No pain. I’m already regaining my normal form. Great flash, Kendra! I could sense it with my eyes shut. It did the trick.”
“You taunted him into flying right at you,” Kendra said.
“He had flung me into a treasure pile,” Warren said. “I found the axes right after your flash. He could hear which way I was facing and tried to take me from behind. I caught a glimpse of his milky white eyes just before impact. He was blind as a bat. Ran straight into the ax.”
Reflections of Tanu staggered into view. Minutes later, his actual form rounded a nearby corner, peaked and panting. “That speed potion takes a lot out of a guy.”
Somewhere, they heard Vanessa quietly weeping.
Warren scowled, unsteadily rising. “Vanessa?”
She didn’t answer, but the soft crying continued.
“That isn’t like her,” Warren said.
“This way,” Raxtus offered.
The fairy dragon led them through many twists and turns. Kendra kept her eyes on Raxtus and tried to ignore the disorienting parade of reflections. They found Vanessa just outside the maze, in a luxurious area heaped with treasure. The shards of a broken vase lay nearby on the floor.
Vanessa sat on a mound of gold coins, face in her hands, shoulders shaking. Warren went to her, but she swiveled away at his touch.
“Vanessa, what’s wrong?” Warren asked.
“I’m so foolish,” she lamented through her sobs.
“You did great,” Warren said. “We got Jinzen.”
“I knew not to look,” Vanessa said with self-loathing. “I was an instant too late. The whole maze went supernova. I’ve compromised my role on this mission.”
Her hands dropped to reveal her milky white eyes.
Merek stopped just before the stairs led into a circular room littered with bones. Seth stood next to him staring at the morbid jumble of skeletons, some plainly human, others clearly not.
“Is it a lair?” Seth asked.
“See the black stone in the middle of the floor?” Merek asked. “The one rising above the bones?”
“The blocky one?” Seth checked. “With little veins of red?”
“There is something wrong with that stone,” Merek said. “Do you see the dimness around it? As if it pollutes the nearby light. Or maybe absorbs it.”
Testing with his shadow-charming senses, Seth could feel the rock had a deep, though alien, awareness. He perceived no words—just a profound hunger.
“It’s hungry,” Seth said.
“Yes,” Merek
