Morgan Rice: A Realm of Shadows

Yet they were about to learn why Holy and Supreme Ra had never been vanquished. As he walked toward Duncan now, Duncan would give him a very different reception. Duncan would not meet him with a sword and shield, but an embrace, a hug.

For his appearance as he walked this desert was not that of a soldier, not that of the Holy and Supreme Ra – but rather, that of a girl. To the outside world, to even the most trained eye – even her father – he would appear not as the Great Ra.

But as Kyra.

He bore her features, her face, her body, her dress. Khtha had done his work well.

Ra would get close, so close that, in a father’s embrace, he would finally have his chance to kill Duncan once for all.

He did not need his army. Just himself. And a bit of sorcery. Deception, after all, always triumphed over might.

Ra grinned wide.

Wait for me, Father, he thought. Your daughter is coming.

Kyra walked slowly between the soaring pillars, the blackened stone rising to the heavens, and stopped at the threshold of this dead and ancient city of Marda. As she walked, she passed dozens of heads of trolls, of humans, impaled on pikes, to welcome her. It was clearly a sign to beware – yet this city hardly needed any more signs. It was the most ominous place she had ever laid eyes upon. Its buildings looked as if they had been forged from the stones of hell, black as night. A cold, damp draft blew through the empty, rubble-strewn streets, giving her a chill. Somewhere a creature wailed, and she could not tell if it were up ahead, or in the wind. She felt as if she’d entered a city of the dead.

Kyra trod slowly down the broad, main boulevard, feeling this place was abandoned. The dead silence was punctuated only by the occasional calling of a crow, perched high up somewhere, staring down as if mocking her, as if goading her on to her death. Black stone, black doors, windowless buildings lined streets paved in black granite, all of it framed by towering mountains of black. She looked down and saw that, carved into the stone, were five-pointed stars etched in scarlet red. Were they carved of blood? What did they symbolize?

Kyra felt the true presence of evil here, and the deeper she went, the more it clung to her. She had felt safer even in the thicket of thorns, confronting that monster, than she did here in this wide-open city of hell, with all these vacant buildings, all the heads everywhere, dripping blood as if just killed. She felt at every turn as if something were watching her, waiting to pounce. She gripped her staff tight, her knuckles white. What she wouldn’t give to have Andor and Leo by her side now. Not to mention Theon.

Yet Kyra forced herself to be brave, to continue on. She could sense the Staff of Truth lay somewhere up ahead, sense that she had, at last, reached her final destination. She felt it burning in her veins, a sixth sense telling her how close she was, and with every step, it grew stronger. It was like her destiny calling.

Kyra walked cautiously, her staff clicking in the rubble, turning down narrow streets, beneath small stone archways, until finally the city opened in a wide, square plaza. In the center sat a statue of a massive stone gargoyle, scowling down, its mouth a fountain, vomiting lava into a pool as if it were blood. Kyra walked past it and was horrified to see it was real blood, splashing everywhere.

Kyra continued on through the streets, until finally the mountains beyond it loomed larger and she realized she was reaching the end of the city. She saw in the distance a massive stone wall ringing the city, its stones plastered with blood. At the city’s end she spotted a huge arch, an exit gate, leaving the city. A portcullis hovered at its top, its sharpened spikes pointed down, as if waiting to sever the head of whoever passed beneath them, all dripping with blood.

Kyra felt a drop on her shoulder, then another. She held out a palm and examined it. It was red.

She looked up to the sky as more drops fell, and she was shocked to see that it was raining blood.

Kyra walked to the gate, stopped, and examined it. Its opening, she was horrified to see, was stretched with the biggest spider web she had ever seen, fifty feet high and just as wide. It was so massive and thick, at first she thought it was a rope. She stared, horrified, and did not want to ponder what sort of spider had spun it.

Kyra looked past the web, and as she did, her heart stopped. There, on the far side of it, stood a black, granite pedestal rising from the earth. And atop it sat a shining, black staff. Kyra was breathless. The Staff of Truth. She could sense it even from here.

It shone, a beacon in the gloom, lighting up the twilight, sticking straight up to the sky, as if inviting someone to grab it.

Kyra stepped toward the web, tentatively, sensing a trap. She sensed this was her final test – and perhaps her most intense one of all.

Kyra inched closer to the web, breathing hard, and raised her staff. She held it out before her, heart pounding in her throat as she reached out and touched the tip of it to the web. The web was thicker and stickier than she thought, and her staff stuck to it. She pulled back with all her might, and the entire web shook. To her shock, it was so sticky, she could not extract her staff.

Suddenly, without warning, the web recoiled, and Kyra felt herself being pulled, like a spring. A second later she was flying up in the air, and into the web.

Kyra was stunned as she felt herself weightless, and found herself stuck to the web, her back up against it, her arms spread out at her sides like a trapped insect. She writhed, panicked, yet was unable to move. She tried with all her might, yet she could not break free. Her staff lay in the web, too, stuck, several feet away from her, just out of reach.

Panic welled up inside her. She could not fathom how it had all happened so quickly. And the more she struggled, the more entangled she became.

Kyra slowly turned, her hair standing on end, as she heard an awful crawling noise. She looked up, and out of the corner of her eye, she was filled with dread to spot a creature that made her heart stop. There, crawling for her, sharing the same web, was the biggest spider she had ever seen – ten feet wide, with enormous, fuzzy black claws, massive red fangs, and beady red eyes.

Kyra’s eyes widened in terror as it inched toward her, one grotesque claw at a time. She looked around, desperate, and suddenly saw all the bones in the web. She realized hundreds of sojourners had died here, people, like her, who had thought they could retrieve the Staff.

The spider crawled faster, bearing down on her, and Kyra, trapped, knew with a sudden horror that she would die here, in this awful place, by the fangs of this creature, on the edge of hell, where no one would even hear her scream.