We passed the husks of old buildings blast apart two hundred years ago in the battle to decide the fate of the Earth. Time had slowly eaten away at what was left, corroding, decaying, corrupting. The streets were split open, their dirty guts exposed. At least what was left of the streets. The ground had swallowed up most of the city’s paved surfaces. We sidestepped potholes and craters. We walked across sunken rooftops. We balanced atop toppled bridges, those fallen giants that had once spanned raging rivers lost to the ages.
The Lost City hummed with magic, a resonance that buzzed against my skin like the air after a lightning storm. I paused to inhale. A stale, broken scent permeated the ruins—the smell of utter desolation and ultimate defeat. Just standing here, this tale of woe and despair being whispered into my ear, almost made me too depressed to continue.
I shook myself. Whoa, what was that all about?
The city had lain dormant for centuries. It was not alive. It did not think or feel. And it was certainly not whispering to me.
Then why could I hear a quiet battle hymn playing in the distance, a song of ancient battles and earth-shattering, unimaginable magic? Why did I hear gunfire hammering, swords clashing, magic blasting? Why did the final dying shouts of the soldiers echo in my ears? The closer we got to the city center, the louder this symphony of sounds pounded in my head.
“Pandora.”
I jumped at Captain Somerset’s voice. She was looking at me as though I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. No one else seemed to be hearing voices in their head.
“Looking to take a swim?” Her lip twitched.
I looked down at the bubbling pool of thick mystery goo that I’d nearly stepped in. I needed to get my head in the game. This was no time to lose my mind. I fortified my mental shields, a skill I’d built up to block my thoughts from eavesdropping angels, and the sounds of battle faded. Maybe hearing voices from the past was another weird ability I had, along with my unusual reaction to Nectar. They had to be linked, right? The alternative was I was crazy, which sounded way less appealing than cool magic powers.
“The Pilgrims have reason to believe the holy relics are in the sunken sections of the city,” Nero announced. “Get ready to make the descent.”
“Is something wrong, Leda?” Valiant asked me. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“No.”
He looked down into the chasm before us. “I am.” He gave me a sheepish look.
“I’ll be right here beside you.” I attached his rope into the hook in the rock. “Ok?” I smiled at him.
He smiled back. “Ok.”
We took the descent slow.
“How long have you been searching for the relics?” I asked him, trying to keep his mind off the dark abyss beneath us.
“Since I was made immortal. I heard of these objects of power that had the magic to turn day to night and darkness to light.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they possess great magic, and that magic can be used for good or evil.”
“Like most objects of power,” I commented.
Excitement shone in his eyes. “These relics are our salvation. With them, we will drive the monsters from this Earth and reclaim our home.”
“I can’t even imagine a world without monsters. But I do wish I will live to see it.”
“If we are successful, you will get your wish. Ever since the monsters overran our world, I’ve dreamt of this day.”
“Even through all that, all the horrible things, you kept hope? How did you do that? How did you know things would get better?”
“Faith,” he said, echoing Drake’s words from earlier when I’d spoken of the crime lords taking over my town. “You must believe. You must never give up looking for the spark of light in the dark. Speaking of which, I believe we’ve reached the bottom. It appears that I will in fact live to see another day.”
We disconnected ourselves from the ropes.
“How will the relics destroy the monsters?” I asked him as we walked through this sunken section of the city. The buildings and roads were almost perfectly preserved, in far better shape than the ones above ground.
“I haven’t figured that out quite yet. I’ve had to piece this all together from dozens of sources, many of them contradicting one another.”
“So even if we find the relics, we might not be able to use them?”
“Not right away,” he said quickly. “But with time, perhaps.”
I sighed. “I guess I might be waiting awhile on that monster-free world.”
“This isn’t only about using the relics against the monsters. It’s about keeping the relics away from scavengers, from the fiends of hell, from anyone who would use them for evil.” He pointed at a tower of steel and glass. “Look there. The Spiral Tower. We’re getting close to the Treasury.”
“The Treasury?”
“According to my research, the holy relics were kept in a Treasury of magical objects not far from the Spiral Tower. The Treasury is guarded by magic as ancient as the gods.”
“So how do we get through this magic?”
“Well, it’s not—”
A deep roar cut through his words like sharpened steel. The sound bounced off the rocky sky, echoing through the buildings. I saw a flash of movement on the Spiral Tower, then dark shadows jumped down, landing on the street.
“What the hell?” Morrows muttered from in front of me.