Chapter Twenty-Two—A Gentle Suggestion

Feeling he would be riddled with shafts, Shiro screamed, “Take cover!” and jumped behind one of the massive pillars.

As he suspected, shafts came smacking against the tiles and landed in the elongated pool of water running down the center of the hall.

Ali, with his bright stone in hand, looked across the gap toward Ali. “Good call, my friend. But now what do we do?”

That’s a good question.

He glanced about, unsure. Where could they go? His eyes found the end of the pillared hall, only realizing now that the light their stones gave off had given life to many more stones inside the pool.

“There!” he said emphatically as he pointed to the archway at the end of the hall.

Ali looked at him with concern. “Deeper into the dungeon?”

More arrows came splashing into the pool. Shiro jerked his head back when one glanced off the hard surface of the pillar near his face.

“Are you sure?”

“There’s nowhere else to go!”

Ali shrugged and nodded. “Okay!”

Shiro nodded, took one more glance toward the steps leading down to the hall—those very steps they needed to get out of the dungeon. The small phalanx of demi-snakes had made its way down the steps and was quickly advancing on them.

“Run!” Ali said.

Shiro took off, zigzagging between the pillars so the archers couldn’t get a straight shot on him, and the intersecting path he took gave him intermittent cover against anymore hails of arrows.

Together they reached the arch and Ali quickly hit the lever. They ducked behind the pillars again when more arrows came.

As soon as the door had fallen deep enough into the floor, Ali jumped over it and into the next chamber. Shiro did the same and narrowly missed getting pin cushioned.

This next chamber was nothing more than a very long hallway, water pools on both sides with intermittent statues of horrible monsters with horns wielding jagged swords and between each set of variable statues there were arches gleaming with gilded writings Shiro couldn’t even hope to make out.

“Keep going!” Ali called, running ahead of Shiro. “Don’t stop!”

Those aren’t pools on the sides! Shiro thought, kicking his legs as fast as he could, his muscles aching and burning, his throat parched for water.

“It’s a lake!” Shiro called. “It’s a lake!”

“I can’t heart you!”

They ran for what seemed ages. Shiro started to slow, when they reached the end. They found themselves standing atop a large circular platform, dark waters rippling outward farther than their lights would shine.

“Aggh!” Ali noised, his hands on his knees and breathing heavily.

Shiro fell to the cold stone floor, his sword clattering on the tiles and his chest heaving up and down. He glanced down the thoroughfare, and sure enough, the demi-snakes were there, at the end, visible by the light of the glow stones strewn within the gilded arches.

“Oh no,” he said, breathing heavily. “They’re… they’re still coming.”

“Gah! Of course they are!”

Shiro forced himself to his feet, didn’t even bother picking up his scimitar as he rushed past the statue of the naked woman in the center of the platform to the edge. “Can we swim?”

Ali trotted up behind him. He bent, touched the water. And then something broke the surface. Something lone, full of scales and spines. To Shiro, he got the impression that whatever he had just seen was much larger than the tiny piece that had broken the water.

“That’s a ‘no,’” Ali said.

“Kuso!” Shiro croaked. “We can’t escape.”

“And now…” Ali said. “We’re…”

“Going to die tired.”

“Well… I suppose… there’s worse ways to die. Ahhh!” he fell to his knees. “I don’t want to die today!”

Shiro went back to his sword, picked it up lazily, the tip sliding across the stones loudly. “We can do this. We can… fight them off, Ali.”

Ali laughed. Not in his characteristic good-mannered nature either.

“Well, we can try, my friend.”

“It was good being your adventuring partner, Ali.”

“You too, Shiro. At least I didn’t have to leave you behind to die.”

Shiro laughed. “You’re serious.”

Ali shrugged.

Shiro breathed in heavily, thinking about how they could strategize this fight. “We can go to the arches, hide behind them so we don’t get hit by the incoming arrows. You there,” he pointed, “I’ll be there. We fight on both sides.”

“And when they overtake us?”

“We retreat, behind the statue.”

Ali turned and glanced at the statue. “Wow,” he said.

Shiro regarded the statue again. It was “wow,” and quite rather alluring, actually, full breasted, hips curving perfectly. The statue would have been fully naked except for the green silk shawl draped over it, giving the figure a scanty quality that made the imagination stir.

Who put that there?

“And look,” Ali said, “at that wonderfully legendary piece of loot.”

Shiro frowned as his eyes landed on the piece in the statue’s hands. “A golden lamp? It’s only gold. It can’t be worth that much.”

“That’s a jinni lamp, fool!”

Shiro felt his eyebrows raise. “Then let’s kill these demi-snakes and be done with this dungeon.”

Ali nodded.

“Yes. We’ll be rich! I wonder though…”

“What?”

“Is there a jinni inside that lamp? O’ jinni, come forth, terrible spirit and aid us!”

When nothing happened, Shiro raised an eyebrow.

Ali shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

They both turned to meet their fate. The demi-snakes spread out and would surely overrun them any moment, the only sound they made was a sharp hissing and the leathery movement of their slithering across the dungeon tiles.

“Stop.” A voice said. It was a casual-sounding voice, feminine and melodic—completely at ease. “You can leave these two alone.”

“What?” Shiro barked as the demi-snakes stopped advancing.

Both men whirled to toward the statue—from the direction the disembodied voice had come.