“Let’s just get through this place,” she said. “It literally looks like a horror-movie set.”
Andthen Mini shrieked.
They turned to see her scuttling backward.
“It—it—it talked!” she said, pointing at something on the ground.
The rest of them walked closer to investigate. It was a human skull.
Mini shuddered. “This place is cursed.”
Brynne toed it with her the edge of her sneaker. “Hello?”
The skull did nothing.
“I think you’re hearing things, Mini,” said Brynne.
Mini tiptoed over, bent down, and tappedthe skull gently. “Hi?”
As soon as Mini touched the skull, its jaws snapped open. A faint purple glow, like the light that Dee Dee gave off, bristled along the edges of the bone and lit up the entire courtyard.
Ah … We can strike a bargain, Daughter of Death.
Nearby another skull—or, honestly, little more than a jawbone—laughed and whispered,You seek to undo a great wrong, but you do not knowthe name of the thief…. What good is capturing the soul song without a name to unlock its secrets?
The first skull spoke again. Even though it didn’t have eyeballs left (gross), something about its hollow sockets seemed fixated on Mini.Daughter of Death, you must merely take our burden and we will give you what you seek…. It is the just thing to do. Are you not as just and wise as the Pandavaprince who once held your soul?
The ruins trembled as if in a small earthquake.
“Mini, stop!” called Aiden.
But she ignored him. It looked as if she’d fallen under some kind of enchantment.
“They know the thief’s name…. All those Heartless couldbesaved …” she muttered as she moved in an eerie daze, touching every bone she could find. A multitude of voices rippled into the air.
“Hear ourtale, Pandavas—”
“Arjuna was cursed—”
“Ah, how Queen Uloopi wished to free him—”
“But there was only one way.”
“What?” asked Mini, her voice distant. “What was the way?”
Laughter filled the courtyard.
At first, Aru thought that a lot of skulls had started talking at once. Her immediate reaction was NOPE. But it wasn’t the skulls.
She saw a flicker of movement inside one of the three cavesin the black rock. Was that a tail?
“Brynne, hold Mini!” ordered Aru. She extended her lightning bolt into sword form. Energy crackled through her bones. Aiden moved closer to Aru, and they stood back-to-back, weapons raised. A tail whipped out from the middle cave, about ten feet away. The tail nearly wrapped around Aru’s ankles, but at the last second it recoiled, as if it wasn’t supposed totouch her. Brynne spun her mace. It brought forth a vortex that spun up the debris and skulls in a sandy hurricane.
“Foolish girl. Do you think you can intimidate us? We, who are the guardians of terrible secrets …” came a voice from the first cave.
“And knowledge …” said a voice from the second cave.
“And treasures untold,” a voice from the third cave continued.
