Page 92 of Dragon’s Rogue

“When there was a full complement of Guardians here, there were two of them on watch in this room 24/7,” Zane added. “This lever over here activates the portal.”

It was a brass rod about three feet high set into a half-circle of gears on the floor, so that you had to shove it from one side of the circle to the other. It looked like the lever a cartoon supervillain would use to open a trapdoor to drop his enemies into a dungeon.

The lever was canted to one side, obviously in the “off” position. Thorne went over and shoved it to the other side.

There was a grinding of gears, and a circle of darkness appeared in the wall to one side of the lever. The circle spiraled out like a camera lens, and suddenly a dark shimmering doorway appeared in the wall.

They stepped through—Thorne first, then Blaze with Zane following, his hand reassuringly on her back. Tyr brought up the rear.

Blaze felt something cool and clammy brush over her skin, like walking through damp clothing hanging from a clothesline. She felt a sense of vertigo, and then she took another step and she was inside the cavern.

She sucked in her breath. Seeing the tomb on the viewing screen was nothing to seeing it in real life.

The cavern spread out into the distance, so vast she couldn’t even see where it ended in the dim light. On the far side was a tunnel opening—she guessed that was the original entrance. The roof soared above her, at least forty feet high. The stalagmites growing out of the floor were as big around as her whole body.

And then there was the Draken.

Zane, in dragon form, was as big as a good-sized RV. Thorne had filled the backyard of a small house.

Vyrkos could fill a football field.

He lay on his side, encased in that glassy lake like an insect caught in clear amber. His head was the size of a school bus, his giant closed eye the size of a truck tire.

Blaze had faced down a lot of scary things in her life, and she wasn’t easily spooked. But Vyrkos terrified her. It was as if she knew, down to her DNA, that this creature here was her greatest enemy.

Maybe even her doom.

Then she felt Zane’s hand resting on the back of her neck. Whatever happens, we’ll be together. We’ll fight together. Win together.

Die together. The words weren’t spoken, but they hovered in the air between them.

She moved closer, leaning her head briefly on his shoulder.

Then she followed Thorne over to one side of the chamber.

Set in the wall was a six-pointed star about three feet across, made of brass engraved with symbols and letters, most of which she didn’t understand. Three of the points had gold symbols inlaid in them.

The other three—the top point, and the bottom ones on either side—had rounded depressions about three inches deep and as big around as her palm, going through the brass into the stone wall. The top one had a dragonfly carved inside it. The one on the bottom left was carved with a dolphin, and the one on the bottom right with a phoenix.

This was where the Seals went. She ran her fingers over the place where the Dragonfly Seal would go, feeling the tingle of magic.

This brass star was by far the most powerful magical artifact she’d ever touched. Somehow, she was supposed to transfer the energy of the Seal from inside her to this container, so that it meshed with the star’s power.

She just had no idea how.

She started with the simple transfer spell her mother had used, placing her hands on the empty space in the brass star where the Seal was supposed to go.

She wasn’t surprised when it didn’t work. That spell was designed to transfer energy between living people, not between people and artifacts.

After that, she tried various spells she knew that transferred magical energy into artifacts. None of them had any effect on the Seal.

As a last resort, she tried a rare spell used to transfer a portion of a person’s life energy into an artifact, focusing it on the Seal.

Instead, it tried to transfer her own energy, which almost made her pass out. Zane moved in behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “That’s enough,” he said angrily to Thorne. “She’s barely recovered from the last few days. She—”

The rest of what he was about to say was drowned in a deep rumble. The floor shook as though they were having an earthquake, and a large crack snaked across the thick glassy surface of Vyrkos’ tomb.

Chapter 41