Page 6 of Phoenix Chosen 2
He looks at me with wide eyes. “Yo, man, I don’t want any trouble.”
“That word,” I say. “Cheesus.How do you know that word?”
He shakes his head. “Jesus, everybody knows Jesus. I don’t understand your accent, man.”
I release him and push him away. He falls onto the bench. The other prisoners move away and glare miserably at me like I’m some kind of monster.
Cheesus is Tyler’s word. Does that mean…?
What I remember is Tyler defeating the soul reaver on the hill outside of Athenos, and the appearance of a new, more powerful presence. The monster’s master? Their aura was different from the reaver. Dark, but without the empty coldness found in shades. There was something oddly familiar about them. In the brief moment they appeared before us, though they kept themselves obscured in shadow, it was as though I was looking into a deep, glassy pool. Like I was looking at myself.
And then the world had folded around me, swirling like a terrible whirlpool. I’d watched as Tyler was dragged into the maw, and when I reached for him, I felt myself lifted from the ground—or maybe the world was sucked away from beneath my feet. My powers were useless, blocked by an unknown force. My body was separated into grains of sand blown into oblivion, and all of my memories, too. When I came to, it felt as though I was waking up from a thousand-year sleep. Everything was a haze—and then I found myself staring up into the face of an Erpetosi frog man trying to rob my lifeless body.
I’d reacted immediately by sweeping their legs from under them and locking them down by straddling their body. They were oddly furry, not slippery and slimy like every other Erpetosi. I’d reached for a dagger and found all of them missing—in fact, the entire top of my chiton had been ripped from my body, leaving just a scrap of orange cloth barely wrapped around my waist. Without wasting a moment for a counterattack, Ipunched the Erpetosi in the nose and, to my surprise, knocked his head off.
Except, it wasn’t his head at all. It was a strange, soft helmet, and there was a terrified human underneath shouting incomprehensible words at me.
That was when I realized where I was. A world of stone, chaos, and deafening noise. There were humans everywhere, and it seemed as though every single one of them was staring at me like I’d alerted my presence to a den of starving ghouls.
A nightmare. Or hell.
When two men had tried to pull me away from the imposter frog, I put them both onto the ground with force. Others were shouting at me but seemed afraid to approach. Then, a terrible howling filled the air, and some kind of large chariot arrived at a speed and force much greater than was possible from even the fastest flier cart or horse-drawn wagon from my realm. Two men emerged from its gleaming belly, and before I knew it, I was on the ground, my body struck by some kind of crackling energy. My phoenix powers were depleted or blocked. I had no way to defend against their magic.
“Hey! Settle the fuck down in there,” a guard shouts through the bars of the cage.
“Take it easy, fella,” a bearded man says to me with an easy smile. “We’re all gonna be stuck in here together for a while, so we best play nice. What are you in for? Impersonating a Greek god?” He laughs. “Yeah, you were on the news, right? Naked guy assaults Kermit the Frog.”
“I’m falsely imprisoned,” I grunt.
He chuckles. “Yeah, you and everyone else here.”
I stand and walk to the cell’s metal bars and give them a test shake with my hands. Solid. I walk around the room, examining the space. Some of the men glare at me as I pass, others move away or look at the floor. I’ve escaped from my fair share of prison cells, but none like this. It’s a much easier task when I have Alyx around to help me steal the key.
“You look like a cat testing its cage,” the bearded man says. “Good luck. I think we’ve all had that delusion our first time in. Not gonna happen, buddy. Not unless you’re fuckin’ Superman or Houdini or something.”
I ignore the man’s incomprehensible raving and observe as two new prisoners are brought into the room just outside the cell. I watch the routine of the guards—where they go, how they open the doors, where they keep the keys to the cage. First step is to take the keys without them realizing it. Easy.
They open the cage and usher the two new men inside. It’s my time to act.
Or…it was my time to act. My powers are still useless. I can’t access them.
The gate shuts with a heavy clang.
The bearded man cackles. “So, what do you have planned? Let me in on it. I want out.”
“Just tell me one thing,” I say, sitting down on the bench across from him. “How do the guards open that door?” I point at the door to the room outside the cell, which doesn’t appear to have a keyhole or handle, and yet is obviously locked.
He looks at me like he’s humoring a child asking ridiculous questions. “Well, you see that desk there with the buttons on it? One of those opens the door. And another opens the other door to get out into the hallway.”
“Bahtuns. Is it some kind of key?” I ask, looking in the direction he’s pointing. I see the desk, but nothing that resembles a key. I do, however, see the guards touching what look like finely cut gemstones jutting out from its surface.
“Uh, yeah,” he says. “The buttons are like a key. Where are you from, anyway? Are you European, or something?”
I’m now watching those gemstones with a close eye. Some of them seem to glow with an inner light. This world has strange magic.
For a while, nothing happens. The guards are entranced by small pieces of polished stone or metal that they hold in their hands and sit poking at them with their fingertips. One of the prisoners is shouting something at the top of his lungs, but no one is paying him any attention.
“My name’s Nelly. What’s yours?” my unwanted bearded companion asks. “At least tell me that.”