Rose let out a deep breath as she gathered herself, still a little shaken from the guardian beams. Parek held an arm out and she took it, retrieving her fallen staff as she stood.

  “At least we know Elliott’s shield works,” he grinned. Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one who had taken the hit full in the face. Both beams. She gave him a restrained smile, the memory of the heat and pressure still fresh in her mind. He was only trying to make her feel better. As she dusted herself off, Elsie clambered onto her shoulder.

  “You ready to move?” Parek asked. Rose nodded and he led the way across the room to the golden key – about the size of a hand – rotating gently in the air. Beyond it, a gap had opened up and she could see a room with a stone path that led to a plinth. Parek plucked the key out of the air and they walked through.

  The room beyond was circular, cut into thirds by two other paths, each leading to a door flanked by flickering torches to either side that bathed the room in a dull red glow. Vines crawled along the ceiling a few feet above their heads and snaked down the walls between the doors, with moss wedged in the gaps between the stone. Arched stone slabs lined the perimeter of the room, and the triangular spaces between the paths were covered with rectangular slabs that led to the circular plinth. There was a musky, damp smell in the air and the quiet chitter of insects scurrying across the floor.

  “There,” Rose said, pointing at the plinth. It wasn’t too dissimilar to a dark grey metal bollard, almost as tall as she was, with a keyhole near the top. They walked towards it and around it, noticing two more keyholes at the points where the paths met the plinth.

  Parek took the oversized key and inserted it into the keyhole on the side of the plinth where they had entered. The key slotted in and he turned it to the left. It rotated with a large click. Groans echoed around the chamber, the ceiling, the walls. Rose darted her head left and right. Parek looked up to the ceiling. Elsie looked down at the floor. The distinct sound of stone grating on stone, like fingernails clawing on a chalkboard, reverberated around the room though it was impossible to pinpoint from exactly where.

  As the grating sound continued, below the keyhole, letters began to form in a dull light-grey at first, the glow intensifying until the words blazed in liquid silver and the room fell into silence.

  Two shall rise, blessed of one

  Neither damned nor truly free

  Children of light, love within

  Hell's Throne shall cease to be

  Rose was drawn to the markings, reaching out with her hand to trace the letters but before she could understand the words, another groan echoed through the room, from the end of the path leading to their right. A chunk of the wall came away towards them and slid to the side, revealing a black gap.

  “I guess that’s where we’re going next,” Parek said.

  “I guess so,” she said, taking another look at the glowing words on the plinth but there’d be time to understand them later. Complete the mission first. She gripped her staff firmly. “Let’s go.”

  They walked across the floor towards where the wall had opened and plunged into the darkness.

  Rose emerged on the other side, Elsie on her shoulder, Parek right behind her. They stood on a ledge that stretched the width of the room but only extended a couple of metres ahead. There was a similar ledge on the far side of the room and between both – and the walls to either side – lay a carpet of golden-red lava, strands of molten fire licking the air, as bubbles popped and hissed on its surface.

  Her eyes were drawn to the cube stone platforms that hovered above the lava. There were nine in total – roughly five metres to a side – each platform at a different height and position from the others. Seven of the platforms were moving, either between the ledges or the walls, though not all of them traversed the entire distance and no two travelled at the same speed. The final two cubes – the one closest and lowest to them and the one furthest and highest away – were static.

  The puzzle was obvious. Use the cubes to get across the lava and to an alcove in the top-right corner of the room, where Rose could see another rotating key – this one was a metallic red, as large as the previous one. It sounded simple enough except for the mob of stone soldiers that protected each platform.

  All but one of them had nine armoured statues, standing around ten feet tall and evenly spread in rows of three. They held spears in their right hands, swords belted to the left side of their waists and had their eyes fixed on the wall behind Rose. The final platform, the one closest to the alcove had a stone statue on each corner and one enormous statue – twice as big as the rest – in the middle.

  “Well, this one’s definitely the first one we need to get on, right?” Parek said, pointing at the platform to their far left – the closest one, at a height with the ledge.

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  “Elsie,” Rose said, turning her head to her left shoulder and offering a smile.

  Elsie didn’t need to be told twice, grinning at Rose before shooting off.

  She ran onto the platform in the blink of an eye but as soon as she stepped onto it, the stone soldiers moved as one, nine spears poking at the space Elsie stood and passing through air as she leapt. She summoned her pin sw– Rose blinked. She had expected her to summon her signature black pin swords, but instead she held tiny mallets. Elsie jumped onto the shoulders of one of the soldiers and clattered the side of his granite face.

  The head toppled, bouncing to the floor before rolling into the lava, molten flame clutching the stone and dragging it below. The body crumbled upon itself, becoming dust before it had even had the chance to fall.

  Elsie had already moved to the next one.

  Rose and Parek ran over, ready to step onto the platform once Elsie was done. The soldiers didn’t pay them any attention, only thrusting their spears at Elsie, but always just that little bit too late. The soldiers dropped their spears, unsheathing their swords instead. They were fast – almost as fast as Elsie, though they didn’t seem as powerful. Even so, the area on the platform was cramped enough that Elsie couldn’t avoid taking a swipe or two, but even if they struck her, it had no effect on her momentum. She crashed a mallet through a stone leg with one hand, the soldier falling to its knee as she brought the other mallet down on its chest. Without looking, she nonchalantly swung the first mallet into the nose of another soldier, sending its head rolling through the air to fall into the lava with a plop.

  Both soldiers disappeared in a cloud of dust as another managed to strike Elsie, an audible clang in the air like it had struck metal. Elsie spun in its direction, leaping for its face and swinging both mallets inwards, smashing them into opposite sides of the soldier’s head, the upper portion flying off to the left, as the lower portion soared to the right.

  Elsie hammered through four more soldiers in quick succession, and just as Rose and Parek stepped onto the platform, Elsie drop-kicked the last one. It sailed through the air like it was diving backwards before its head hit the lava. Flames roared as they covered the stone soldier and pulled it under.

  Rose fixed her eyes on the next platform, one level higher, coming towards them but still halfway across the room. Before it had completed its journey, Elsie leapt across to it, mallets out, and began hammering away at the next set of stone soldiers.

  “Let’s wait until she’s done,” Rose said to Parek. She had no inclination to be hit again. They might not bother Elsie, but for all she knew, they could be hitting as hard as the guardian beams earlier. Besides, on that cramped space, all it would take is a slight shove and either her or Parek would be burnt alive. Or both. She glanced at the molten hot liquid. At least it looked like it would be quick.

  The platform reached them and hovered for all of a second before moving back towards the ledge on the far side.

  Then Rose felt a small rumble, like the beginnings of an earthquake. She stumbled as she felt the platform beneath her shift, her eyes darting to the lava that surrounded them.

  “Did you feel that?” Parek said, glancing down.

  Rose groaned. The platform was sinking. Without hesitation, they both leapt back to the ledge, watching as the platform sunk into the lava that bubbled around it until it was fully submerged.

  “They never work as you want them to.” Rose said, exasperation in her voice. She turned to Elsie and yelled. “Elsie, don’t kill them all!”

  Too late.

  Elsie had cleared eight of the soldiers and was standing on the neck of the final one, placing her tiny hands on the side of the soldier’s face and pulling his head clean off. It crumbled into dust as she delicately fell to the platform and faced them. She smiled as if she’d just completed her first day at school and was mightily pleased with herself. Then she frowned, noticing the empty space where the first platform had been.

  Elsie’s platform was two thirds of the way into the room, on its way back towards Rose and Parek. Rose could see it clearly. It fell slowly, a slight shift downwards, before it gained speed. Elsie bent her knees, sprang from the platform to the nearest wall and ran at an incredible speed to defy gravity. A moment later, the platform plummeted into the lava below as Elsie somersaulted towards them, landing on Rose’s shoulder better than an Olympic gymnast.

  “Well, that’s just great,” Rose spat. She turned to Parek. “The second platform fell faster, right?”

  “Yeah, it looked like it.”

  “So, it will probably be something like the first room. Each platform falls quicker than the one before.”

  “Do you have a way to get to that platform?” Parek asked, eyes on the third platform, which was moving from side to side, about ten metres ahead of them and ten metres above. She could have [Blinked] if the platform was at the same height that she was or [Floated] across the lava, but neither spell was able to move vertically. [Teleport] was beyond her level and she’d not earned a [Levitation] scroll back on Earth.

  She shook her head at him. “You?”

  “I should be able to.”

  Rose glanced at Elsie who was smiling with glee and gesturing that she could get her there.

  “We need to plan our path,” Rose said, turning back to the platforms. There were six left before the final one.

  “Maybe we don’t need to clear each platform,” Parek offered. “If we time it, we jump to the first one, clear the mobs. Jump to the fourth one. Clear. Then jump to the final one?”

  She was watching the platforms as he spoke. The first one – the third one really - was moving side-to-side between the walls. The fourth platform beyond that was moving between the ledge on the opposite side and them, though it only came as far as halfway.

  “But say if we have to clear each one? In the guardian room, all the guardians needed to be taken down to clear.”

  “You have a point,” Parek agreed. He watched the platforms before speaking again.

  “Okay, we clear each one but it looks like the timer for the platform to fall starts when the last statue is cleared. So, we stay on the platform and wait for the next one to align before killing the last soldier and jumping?”

  “Yes. But the platforms are dropping faster. The last one with the boss might drop almost immediately after we clear it, and we have to leap to the alcove so be prepared.”

  “Agreed.”

  Elsie nodded her approval and gestured to Rose to put her hand out. She did, and Elsie rolled down her arm and into the palm of her left hand. Rose felt flows of mana from Elsie and the feeling of something settling snug around her waist. All of them kept their eyes on the platform as it began to return from the wall to their right.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Elsie,” Rose said.

  The platform passed by ahead of them and touched the wall to the left, hovered there for a second, then started back towards the other wall.

  Just when it was almost directly ahead of them, Elsie leapt.