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  The sound reminded her of the merchant parties her parents threw where she would perform for the guests. Sephonei played many instruments, but she preferred the strings above the rest. Sephonei had a talent for creating; she could draw just as well as she could play any instrument. Sephonei reached back into her worn satchel. Good, it was still there. The familiar leather binding of her sketchbook was in its rightful place: by her side.

  Ku-aya stopped midway through the cavern and stamped her foot. “Here we are. There’s your door. Come back when you have it.” She pointed to a large stone opening at the end of the even larger cavern.

  Sephonei looked at Ku-aya. “Aren’t you comin’ in?”

  Ku-aya shook her head. “No. This is all yours, kid.”

  She reached into her satchel, pulled out a metallic orb, and handed it to Sephonei. Tiny stones were fused to the sphere, creating patterns around its poles. A fine line circled the center of the sphere.

  Sephonei spun it in her hand. “What’s this?”

  Ku-aya tapped her foot and squinted. “What did they teach you in orientation? This is bloody ladgeful. What’s the Order comin’ to?” She paused, then crossed her arms. “That is a mech container. Remember when I said not to touch the stones? We use this device to contain the stone’s power. When you get close to the stone, it will light up and open. Once it’s open, you carefully encase the eternal stone, an’ the unit will snap shut. Then you bring the mech container to me, yaa?”

  Sephonei looked to the door and gulped as the knot in her belly returned. The opening at the end of the cavern was pitch black. She circled around the edge of the room and tried to peer in—she saw and heard nothing. She stepped in and walked to the end of the room. There was a carved stone door blocking her from entering. She felt around for a latch or something to push. A stone plate sunk as her hand brushed against it, and the stone door lurched open. A damp draft blew out of the room, making Sephonei shiver.

  She stepped into the room, and the stone door slammed shut behind her.

  She heard Abil call out, “Ai, li’l fistler! Don’t die in there! I don’t want to have to watch another apprentice traipse down the crevasse wall so daintily again…”

  Sephonei heard the sound of leather on leather as Ku-aya clubbed Abil.

  The room was black and silent, save for a low hum that permeated the darkness. Inching forward, Sephonei extended her hands, probing for an obstruction. She stumbled and kicked a hard object, sending it into motion. The object clanked and rattled as it sailed into the darkness. A clunking noise echoed off the far wall and reverberated through the small room, halting Sephonei in her tracks.

  The hum intensified. A dim glow lit in the darkest corner and made its way across the room until it surrounded her. Sephonei stopped breathing as the light revealed the source of the humming.

  Hundreds of hard-shelled creatures, half her size, clung to the darkened stone walls. Their transparent wings beat together, the force of the collisions sparking and lighting the room with a blue glow.

  A stone pedestal stood prominently in the center of the room. On it was a pale blue, stringed instrument. It resembled her lute she was forced to leave at home, but the shape, size, and color were different. It was more elegant than any she had ever seen. The wood on the face of the instrument was etched with intricate white heart-shaped decals.

  Sephonei stood motionless as a secondary rhythm became audible—a tonal pattern emerged from the clacking of the winged creatures’ mandibles.

  Clack, clack, clack.

  Sephonei felt paralyzed as the clacking intensified.

  What was she supposed to do? She stood still. The creatures didn’t seem to notice her, save for the winged beats and the clacking. What was the instrument here for? What was this test? Her eyes moved to the corners of the room where wall met floor. Bones were stacked on the ground, some piles more recognizable than others. Seated in the corner was a dusty skeleton with a dagger in hand. The cobwebs were so thick that only half of the bones were visible.

  Glancing down, Sephonei caught sight of the rock she had kicked. Turned out it was a skull.

  She gulped and made eye contact with one of the winged creatures next to her. It turned its head. Thousands of tiny red cells formed the huge, bulging eyes of the creature; Sephonei saw her own image reflected thousands of times. The creature’s mandibles snapped.

  Sephonei launched herself into the center of the room, and her back slammed against the pedestal and slid down. A flurry of blue sparks erupted when the creatures’ wings collided as they became more agitated, and the room filled with blinding blue light. The flapping sound of the wings echoed and intensified throughout the chamber. She held her hands to her ears—then the creatures were airborne.

  The room was filled with a dark blue hue. Bodies zinged by. One connected with her, its mandible snapping shut against her side. The cloth of her shirt tore as the creature yanked down. Sephonei scrambled up and swatted at the surrounding calamity, her hand swiped and caught the hard shell of the creature.

  FLAP.

  The creature pitched sideways and flew into the wall. It burst on impact—a glowing, green liquid pasted the wall and oozed in gobs to the floor.

  Sephonei screamed and stumbled back, knocking the pedestal again. The stringed instrument fell to the floor, the stone muting the wood’s hollow ringing. Sephonei felt a blunt impact as one of the creatures slammed into the back of her head. She crumpled to the ground.

  When she opened her eyes, the stringed instrument’s handle lay on the floor near her face. The metallic fret markers glinted blue and off-green, and the etched markings were more intricate than any she had ever seen in the merchant district. The creatures scuttled around her, biting at her leather slippers and her clothes, but she could only focus on the instrument.

  She reached for it, and several creatures came into view, lurching for her face. The pull of the instrument helped her to remain calm. When she finally grasped it in her hands, the instrument felt cool to the touch, then it warmed and seemed to glow. She instinctively strummed it once, then again and again.

  When she opened her eyes, the surrounding hum had ceased. The creatures did not flutter anymore; they did not move at all. Instead, they watched. Sephonei stood and strummed, not losing her beat. She eyed the room and found the door. How long could she hold their attention? She stepped backwards to the door and hit it with her back.

  CLICK.

  The door swung open. She passed through the threshold and pressed the door shut. She relaxed her hand and turned to see Abil and Ku-aya standing there, stunned.

  Sephonei stumbled towards them, holding out the stringed instrument. “This is all I found.”

  Abil threw his hands in the air, kicked at the dirt, then pivoted. “We are gonna get flogged for this. Where is the stone?”

  Ku-aya tore the instrument from Sephonei’s hands. She held it to her face, rotating it like a piece of pork on a spit. “This is it? What else was in the room?”

  Sephonei shrugged. “This was it. There was nothin’ else in the room, other than hundreds of giant beetles that sparked when their wings clicked together.”

  “So, how d'you escape?” Ku-aya asked.

  Sephonei shrugged again. She paused and reached for her ribbon. “I played the instrument—”

  Abil laughed coldly. “You sang to them? That’s it? That’s ladgeful, li’l fistler. We can’t go back to Sin empty handed. But I’m done with this place.” He stalked through the tunnel where they had come.

  Ku-aya tossed the instrument to the floor and stalked after Abil. “Ai, boyo, stop! Come back here! You can leave when I say so—”

  BOOM.

  The cave shook. Stones and rubble fell from the cavern walls. Sephonei braced herself but fell, anyway.

  Ku-aya scanned the room, then yelled, “Run! The cavern is collapsin’!”

  Through the turmoil, Sephonei heard the distinct rhythm of the wing
ed creatures as they burst through the rubble of the collapsed stone door. Hesitating for only a second to grab the lute from the floor, she turned and fled.

  Boulders crashed and dust billowed around Sephonei as she scrambled up the knotted rope. Abil raced ahead without looking back. Sephonei and Ku-aya pushed onward, not sparing a glance behind them. Sephonei’s legs burned—she hadn’t realized when they entered the cavern that they had been walking downhill the whole time. Her pace slowed, and Ku-aya and Abil ran ahead.

  A large boulder dropped in front of Sephonei, rolling towards her. There was no room in the tight tunnel to go around the boulder, and she couldn’t outrun it. She turned, and up ahead there was a small notch in the tunnel; it looked just big enough for her to fit. She pitched ahead and squeezed into the notch before the stone whipped by. She poked her head out to see if the way was clear. A small boulder struck Sephonei’s head, and she buckled.

  When Sephonei opened her eyes, she was on the stone floor in the tunnel with her feet tucked into the notch. “Ku-aya! Abil! Help!”

  Abil turned and saw her on the ground, looked at the collapsing tunnel behind them, made a series of faces, and kept running.

  Ku-aya looked over her shoulder. “Dammit.” She skidded to a stop and raced back, grabbing Sephonei and dragging her to the light at the end of the cavern. The noise of the falling rubble drowned out Ku-aya’s yelling. Her face contorted through a series of exaggerated expressions—Sephonei knew there should be sound, but all she heard was the booming of the chaos behind them. As they stumbled out of the cavern and collapsed onto the ground, the blinding light of midday stole their vision.

  The three Crystal Hunters sprawled outside the cave entrance, gasping for breath. The cavern crumpled in on itself, blocking any future entry back into the cave.

  Ku-aya broke the silence long after the last rock had settled. “This was not supposed to happen like this. Sin’ll be furious. I am not sure how we left the stone behind, but we better get on the same page about what happened in there. Sin doesn’t put up with failure, an’ that was a monumental failure.”

  Sephonei sat up and glared at Abil. “You left me! I saw you look back, an’ you left me lyin’ there…”

  Abil sat up and glowered at Sephonei. “Ai. It was your fault, you li’l fistler. You grabbed a lute instead of the stone—you might as well have let that rock crush your head ’cause it’s better than what Sin’ll do to you.

  ROEG

  Great Spirit Clan

  A

  cross the Atlantean sea, stood a boy with a spear in his hand. His shock of blue hair danced in the early morning breeze. A village of mammoth bone huts surrounded a smoldering cookfire in the valley below, and waves of the Great Spirit Sea crashed against the cliffs that hugged the coast of the village.

  Roeg was always alone during the early light of day, when the Great Fire above peaked over the river east of the village. Rays of light cascaded down in a rainbow of color, seeming to melt the misty salt-brined air.

  As he stood above the village, Roeg watched as the hunters prepared their spears for the day’s hunt, and the gatherers collected their satchels to head to the waterhole. A cluster of fire-haired younglings broke from the group, jostling and playing—Roeg’s shoulders slouched, and he let out a long, slow sigh.

  He looked down at his hand; the discoloration reminding him of the stones he found at the river’s edge. But his hand was not smooth like a stone. It was jagged and marred, with deep crevices that gnawed with pain when he moved it. It felt heavy, stiff, and numb, making it useless for spear throwing. The clan shaman, Unn, told a story of how it had happened: As a youngling, Roeg had stuck his hand in the cookfire.

  Unn, also the clan elder, had taken Roeg in as a baby. While on a Spirit Walk on the Great Spirit Mountain thirteen seasons past, Unn had met a woman with a child. She begged Unn to take the baby and keep him safe, insisting she had no choice but to abandon him. She was fleeing from her people and feared her baby was not safe with her and would be safer with the clan. Unn agreed, and Roeg had been in his care since.

  Roeg knew two things about his mother: She had the same blue hair he did, and she left him with a fire-red stone. His mother had insisted the stone was powerful and warned Unn never to let anyone touch it. As he thought about this, Roeg thumbed the stone absently. He wasn’t sure why others couldn’t touch it; it felt warm to him but not dangerous. He trusted Unn, so he kept it under his hide covering when he was around the clan.

  Custom called for clan members to earn their second name by an act of bravery, and it was Unn who decided what that name would be. Roeg’s second name had nothing to do with bravery. He had earned it by accident. Roeg released another long breath and watched the mist escape his lips.

  Roeg eyed a tree in the distance, dark splotches dappling the white wood. He gritted his teeth, as he forced his hand to close slowly on the shaft of his spear. He would hit his target today and finally show the other clan members he belonged. One knot bound the tree’s two halves together. That was where he would aim.

  As he ran toward his target and neared the imaginary line where he would release the spear, he reviewed the movements in his mind once more. The actions felt familiar to him, but making his arm respond was not so easy.

  The slippery morning dew slowed his approach, but he continued toward his target, twisting his body and raising the spear above his shoulder. A sharp pain jolted through him, causing him to wince, but he kept moving. This was the moment of truth, his chance to prove to the clan he could be a hunter.

  Finally, he commanded his hand to release the spear. His fingers refused to listen and continued to cling to the wood. The tip of the spear dropped, catching in the ground and catapulting Roeg through the air. He flipped over twice and landed on his back, no longer holding the spear.

  Roeg tried to catch his breath, gasping deeply. The wetness from the grass soaked through his hide coverings and sent chills through him. He raised his hand glaring at it.

  Roeg earned his name by default: His hand looked like a stone. Who, in their right mind, put their hand in a cookfire? He couldn’t even hit a tree with a spear. He had no way to prove his worth to the clan, and he couldn’t hunt. His name, Roeg Stonehold’r, would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Roeg heard footsteps clomping toward him. He turned his head, letting the dew soak his face. Two blurry figures clambered up the steep foothill from the village. Tsisa and Ookum elbowed and pushed at one another, until they burst into a race. Tsisa lowered her head and charged. Ookum reached out and tried to slow her progress but missed. They shot forward, and Roeg felt the ground shift under his sprawled body. He scrambled to his feet to avoid being trampled.

  Ookum and Tsisa were born on the same day and looked strikingly similar. Although Roeg was the same age, he was a head taller.

  Tsisa tore ahead and only slowed when she burst past Roeg.

  “I win!” she grunted, letting it ring longer than necessary.

  Ookum hunched over with his hands on his knees, gasping for air. “No fair. You had a head start.”

  Tsisa came over to Roeg and eyed him from head to toe. “Why are you covered in grass? You’re all wet!” she growled, hitting him in the shoulder.

  “Ouch,” Roeg yelped, rubbing his arm.

  “Don’t be a baby,” Tsisa said, pretending to rock a baby.

  The clan had a unique way of communicating. They knew words like “fire,” “sun,” “moon,” and “sky,” but mostly they communicated using hand gestures, grunts, groans, and clicks. Clicks signified movement; grunts and groans signified moods. Changes in volume, order, and tone defined the meaning. This confused Roeg. He preferred to use words, rather than the clicks and grunts of the clan. Each tribe had their own variation of clicks, grunts, and words, but used together, they understood each other enough to trade or tell stories.

  Ookum caught his breath. “Krukk said if we practice, we will be…” he paused a
nd bent to catch his breath. He straightened and puffed, “able to go on the Great Hunt!”

  Roeg looked to Tsisa, who stood with her hands on her hips as if she had just earned her second name.

  She beamed at Roeg. “Even you, f’sure.”

  “F’sure?” Roeg’s head nodded as his heart thumped in his chest. Krukk was Ookum and Tsisa’s father. He was the best hunter in the clan, and only he decided who could go on the Great Hunt. Aside from providing the clan with enough food to last the rainy season, the Hunt was a rite of passage. Until you joined the Hunt, the clan deemed you a youngling. It was expected that all members of the clan were to contribute. Roeg wanted Krukk and the clan to accept him as a hunter. He was tired of being different and tired of Krukk’s anger toward his difference.

  Ookum strode over to Roeg. “Krukk said there will be a challenge, and anyone can join. If you pass, you can go on the Great Hunt!”

  Roeg looked to Tsisa, and she nodded.

  Tsisa picked up Roeg’s spear. “All you have to do is throw a spear, and hit the target. Like this!” In one smooth motion, the spear ripped out of her hand and pierced the black knot in the tree, splitting the trunk.

  Roeg’s heart sank, and his shoulders slumped at the news.

  Tsisa marched back, grinning from ear-to-ear. Her tangle of wooly red hair bobbed with each step.

  “Show off!” Ookum said.

  Tsisa eyed her brother, scrunched her face, and stuck out her tongue. “You’re jealous, Ookum-with-no-second-name! F’sure, just jealous.”

  Ookum grimaced, lowered his head, and fiddled with his sling’r.

  He scowled back at her. “Don’t tease me about that.” He turned and picked up a dark gray stone, half the size of his fist. He gripped his sling’r and lodged the stone into the small hide pocket that connected two straps of sinew. Tsisa and Roeg watched, as he stretched the sinew to its max and released the stone with a loud snap. The stone zinged through the air and struck the tree. A thunderous crack echoed through the valley.