Bryan Davis - Eye of the Oracle

Acacia, now standing in ankle-deep water, cradled the Ovulum in her palm. “Yes! He’s talking to me.” She held her firebrand up and spoke to the glass shell. “Like this?” The Ovulum seemed to nod as it wobbled in her hand. Acacia lifted her head toward the stick and shouted, “Flames, come to my firebrand!” The stick immediately flashed with fire.

Sapphira backed toward the water, still thrusting her firebrand at the dog. With each step she took, the dog took its own step closer, staying low. When her feet touched the cold swamp, she gave the dog a last lunging thrust, then lifted her stick high and spun it in a fast orbit. She yelled, “Give me a firestorm!”

The dog lunged. A twisting wall of flames encircled the two girls, throwing the dog back. A yelp and a splash followed, then silence.

Sapphira peered through slender gaps in the orbiting wall. The dog crouched at the edge of the swamp, as if waiting for the slightest opportunity to pounce again. She hooked her arm around Acacia’s elbow and edged farther out into the mire. There was no going back now.

The wall of fire dipped into the water and raised thick plumes of steam. The wall fizzled, becoming thin and transparent as it cooled. Three snake bodies humped over the water’s surface about four paces in front of them. The dog crowded the bank and growled, his lip curling away from his teeth. A trio of scaly heads popped up from the swamp, their mouths open and fangs bared.

Sapphira waved her stick faster, nearly knocking it into Acacia’s tiny flame. Sapphira slid her arm around her sister’s waist. “We need more power! Call for a firestorm!”

The chilly water seemed to consume their dwindling wall. The dog waded toward them, closing in. One of the snakes swam through a gap in the flames and slithered around Acacia’s legs. As it traveled up her body, it wound her in tight coils, and when it reached her chest, its head swung around to the front, ready to strike.

Nearly blinded by steamy vapor, Sapphira grabbed the snake’s neck and wrestled it with one arm while trying to keep her firebrand rotating. The struggle jostled Acacia’s arm, knocking the Ovulum into the water.

The other two snakes swam around them in a slow orbit, drawing closer with each revolution. Pushing with all her might, Sapphira wrenched the snake’s neck toward the swamp’s muddy bed. She shoved her toe into the wet sand and nudged the Ovulum onto the top of her foot, raising it to the water’s surface, but with neither hand free, she couldn’t grab it.

Acacia reached for the egg, but the snake’s thick coils kept her from bending. She grunted, her voice breaking. “I. . can’t. . reach it!”

The other two snakes turned toward them and broke through the fire. Sapphira screamed at the Ovulum as it rocked precariously on her foot. “Elohim! Help us!”

The Ovulum slipped off Sapphira’s foot, and its splash erupted in a gigantic spray that wrapped around the girls in a tight waterspout. As the other two snakes spun away, the swamp dried at the girls’ feet. The Ovulum sat next to Sapphira’s toes, pulsing crimson halos that seemed to spin the water around, making a vacuum that drew everything upward, including the girls’ hair and their drenched clothing.

Sapphira’s arms ached, but she kept her grip on the serpent, still coiled around Acacia as it snapped with its needle-like fangs. Lifting her firebrand higher, Sapphira shouted, “Give me a new firestorm! I need all the power I can get!”

Tongues of fire leaped from her hand, and the stick exploded in a shower of streaming flames. The fire expanded into a new spinning wall that circled around them inside the waterspout. Sapphira’s vision suddenly sharpened. Sadness crept through her mind. There was no doubt; a new portal window was taking shape, but, with her arms throbbing, could she keep the writhing snake at bay?

Air rushed upward, and the sunlight winked out. They zoomed down, the whole world plunging so fast their bodies seemed to lift off the ground and hover in midair. The walls of fire and water blended together into billowing clouds of vapor. Then, in a splash of fire and steam, they crashed into a shallow bed of water that cushioned the blow of the rocky ground below. Sapphira lunged for the snake, but it had slipped from her hand. Now crawling on all fours on wet stone, she groped for its neck. When she finally found it, she jerked it up, but its limp body lay loose within her fingers. The snake’s head had been crushed.

Sapphira glanced around. Elam stood next to her holding a thick scroll. “That snake won’t bother anyone,” he said, smacking the scroll’s heavy dowel against his palm.

The portal’s column of light flickered between blue and orange and finally settled on a muted orange hue. Acacia stirred next to Sapphira, trying to push the serpent’s coils down to her ankles. With her soaked white hair plastered against her pale face, she looked like a frazzled ghost.

At Sapphira’s feet lay the Ovulum, cold and dark, but unharmed. She breathed a long sigh and gazed at Elam, barely able to whisper, “Thank you.” She reached over and helped Acacia unwind the snake’s coils. A dozen more hands joined in, one pair wringing out Sapphira’s dress, another combing through Acacia’s hair.

Acacia pulled her clinging sleeve away from her skin. “We need to get out of these wet things.”

“You know,” Elam said, pointing his thumb at the exit corridor, “with Morgan gone now, I think it’s safe to explore. There are quite a few rooms I was never able to see.”

Sapphira smiled. Elam’s chivalry never seemed to falter. She nodded toward a lantern near the museum door. “Give me light!” she called out. The lantern’s wick ignited. “There. Come back when the fuel’s about half gone and tell us what you find.”

Elam winked at her and draped the dead snake over his shoulder. “Got it.” He strode to the corridor and dropped the serpent’s body at the entrance. “I’ll leave it here. It shouldn’t stink too bad this far away.” He smiled and disappeared under the arch.

Sapphira pointed at a pile of scrolls stacked against the museum’s outer wall. “Could some of you girls bring about ten of those scrolls over here? That’s my throwaway pile, and they’ll be good for building a fire.” She pulled her outer dress over her head and stuffed the Ovulum into its pocket.

Acacia stripped her outer dress off as well. As she rung out the excess water, her eyes followed the three girls who began building a stack of scrolls. “Why would you want to burn scrolls?” she asked.

“If you knew what was in them, you’d want to burn them, too.” Sapphira nudged a scroll with her toe. “One is Nimrod’s account of his temple activities, and another describes how to prepare human sacrifices for the idols in Shinar. The others are just as bad or worse.”

Acacia picked up one of the scrolls and scowled at it. “Ignite!” One end burst into flames, and she threw it back into the pile. The fire quickly spread to the other scrolls.

Sapphira laughed. “I think you’re getting it!”

Acacia pulled off her inner tunic. One of the girls removed her own outer dress and handed it to Acacia, then helped her stretch it over her head.

Acacia smiled. “Thank you, Yara.”

Yara, now wearing only her inner tunic, spread Acacia’s wet clothes over two broken ladder pieces. She grinned bashfully at Sapphira. “Your turn.”

A taller girl, also dressed only in an inner tunic, presented Sapphira with an outer dress. Sapphira peeled off her underclothes and slipped on the dry outer tunic, letting the bottom hem drop to her ankles. “Thank you, uh. .”