Calico hesitated there for some time, looking intently between the three passages. The rest of them collectively held their breath, wondering what he would choose—hoping his choice would be correct.
Several minutes passed, and Calico turned his back on the passage to the left, as if ruling it out. Now it was right or forward. James felt the urge to voice his opinion, to say he voted they should continue forward. Part of him feared the descending passage to the right, feared continuing down even farther underground. Even farther from safety.
Of course, Calico went right.
The ground sloped down beneath their feet. This passage was smaller, barely wide enough for James’s shoulders to pass through. And as they went down, it seemed to get narrower, the walls reaching toward them, threatening to close in, to trap them. Panic bubbled in James’s stomach as they descended farther and farther. How far underground must they be now? Hundreds of feet? The air felt thin, like there wasn’t quite enough of it to go around. There were too many of them in such a small space, fighting for limited air. James’s chest tightened. He couldn’t breathe. He had to get out of there. They were going to die in this tiny tunnel, far beneath the earth, and nobody would find them...
Before he realized it, the ground leveled and the tunnel fell away around them. He came to a sudden stop, and Katie bumped into his back. The walls around him were gone, swallowed by darkness. He’d stepped into a great void. Nothing existed but Calico’s dim light, which illuminated a small ring on the ground around the Super. And even it was weak against the vastness around them. Calico stepped forward, and James followed, afraid of losing the small light. He was a sailor floating in a vast, dark sea, and Calico was a lighthouse, guiding him, preventing him from being sucked into the waves and lost to the darkness forever.
Calico stopped again, and James felt the others stop around him, heard the rustle of their clothes, the intake of breath. Calico turned and squinted toward them, his eyes white orbs reflecting the light. “Can you manage a flare, Mungus?” Though he spoke quietly, his voice echoed, dispersing into the darkness around them.
“Give me a second.” Mungus’s voice came from James’s left.
For a few moments, there was nothing but silence, and James imagined Mungus straining, fighting against whatever force was diminishing his powers. Finally, a brilliant red light appeared, brighter than Calico’s. James blinked, temporarily blinded. When the spots cleared, he saw the outline of Mungus reach back and throw the light like a football.
The red light arched through the air, a shooting star in the night sky. It went up and up—much higher than James thought possible—until finally crashing into the high roof of the cavern. When it made contact, it exploded like a firework. Dozens of smaller lights arced out from that spot, falling in every direction. As they fell, they illuminated the cavern in red. James gasped at the sight.
The falling red lights revealed what James could only describe as an underground city. Dozens of stone buildings rose from the ground, none over two stories tall. They were scattered around with seemingly no organization, except for a clear space cutting through the middle, like the main road through town. At the farthest end, James could make out a massive, looming structure, larger than the rest, but he couldn’t tell what it was. The falling red lights gave the underground city an eerie atmosphere, the buildings mere silhouettes on a red backdrop. They were like missiles bombarding the ancient, dead city.
Soon, though, they hit the ground and went out, one by one. The darkness rushed in like a tsunami, swallowing everything in its path. The city disappeared. The only evidence it existed at all was the red imprint in James’s eyes, which disappeared with every passing blink, a ghost fading to nothing.
“That was...” Rocky’s voice came from next to James. “That was a whole city.”
“Indeed,” Calico said, still holding his orb of light. “Jalung Phodrang.”
A chill ran down James’s back. Jalung Phodrang. The city Ernst Shäfer searched for almost a hundred years ago. The German had come up short, but here they stood. In an ancient city hidden beneath the sands. Supposedly the hiding place of the mythological Chintamani Stone. Though James had allowed himself to fantasize about the stone, he’d still doubted its existence. Part of him still did. But after what he’d seen today...
Most importantly, Derek and the others could be somewhere in the city, trapped by whatever ancient force was now diminishing the Supers’ powers. James fought the urge to yell out for Derek. He didn’t like the idea of his voice echoing to every corner of the dark cavern. To whatever might be waiting in the darkness.
Calico started forward, and the other Supers followed, conjuring lights of their own. James noticed that theirs were all dimmer than Calico’s. Weaker. Mungus’s was barely there at all, a tiny dot in his hand, giving off less light than a phone screen. The Super also moved slowly, his shoulders bowed and his feet dragging, like the effort of conjuring the flare had completely exhausted him. The thought terrified James.
The combined lights of the Supers were enough to fend off the darkness around them as they stepped into the city. They made their way down the main road. Some of the buildings around them had collapsed, mere rubble, but a surprising number were still intact, preserved in this sealed tomb beneath the ground. They were built crudely, with stones stacked haphazardly together. They seemed frail and unsteady, like one push could knock the whole thing over. And yet, countless centuries later, they still stood.
This wasn’t a buried city,
