Shorter chapter, don't shoot me! I had to cut it off here because the next chapter really needed its own section.
Chapter Three: Lake of Fire
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"So, explain to me again why Tucker isn't coming?" Sam asked, for the third time since they'd left her apartment.
"I already told you," Danny repeated, "he's at work. Plus this way we don't have to take the Specter Speeder since it's just us."
Presently, the two of them were flying deeper into the swirling gray-green sky of the Ghost Zone, leaving the Fenton portal swiftly behind.
Team Phantom had definitely grown in the years since the Disastroid, when nearly sixty people had found out about his powers, his parents and Valerie included. He was grateful for the help from his family and Val most of the time, but every so often it felt nice to be on a mission with the original team: just him, Sam, and Tucker. Which was probably why Sam was so interested in the fact that Danny had left their best friend behind on this one.
"We could've just waited till Tucker got off work," Sam needled. "Besides I heard Jazz in the kitchen asking you if she could come along. I'm beginning to think this is all just a ploy to get me alone, Ghost Boy. Do I need to call for help?" She grinned at him with stunning sarcasm, resting her hand innocently on the 'talk' button on her earpiece.
Should have guessed she was too smart to fall for his enigmatic answers. He rolled with it. "Call for help if you want," he shrugged. "But if I really wanted to kidnap you, do you think anyone in your contacts could save you?" He let his eyes flare up green and bared his teeth sardonically.
"Oh shut up, Danny," she laughed. "It's kind of sad how not scary you are, to be honest."
"Hey, I'm terrifying," he insisted, pouting.
"So where are we going again?" she said, ignoring his pout. "And if you answer me cryptically one more time I'm going to hurl."
Danny pulled the torn pages from their place tucked into his white belt. He'd actually been astonished when Frostbite had ripped them from the book and handed them to him. Defacing an ancient text? But then Frostbite had laughed, assuring Danny that the Archives housed hundreds of copies of that book.
"Do you really think speaking to Narira will help me?" Danny had asked, taking the map from his friend uncertainly. "Can't I speak with Icehand himself? Does he still live in the Far Frozen, or with Narira?"
Frostbite's expression had fallen. "Regretfully, Icehand is not with us in the Ghost Zone. His spirit moved on long, long ago."
Oh.
Danny clung to his last hope. "But that necklace," he implored, "couldn't your forgers make another one? For me?"
"We would if we were able, Great One," Frostbite said sadly, "but our remarkably capable forgers died out long ago as well. Gone are the days when our people could create such objects of power."
Danny pointed out to Sam the flame drawn at the center of the page. "That's our destination." He didn't know what it was he hoped to gain by speaking with Narira. Maybe advice? Help? Direction? Beg her for her necklace? Maybe he wouldn't gain anything by going there at all, but he'd be damned if he wasn't going to try.
As for bringing Sam… At first he'd planned on going alone, and he'd actually started on the flight alone, but he'd turned back halfway there. It just felt wrong. This was something the two of them needed to do together. What he hadn't anticipated was how much he'd trip over trying to explain to Sam what kind of a mission they were on.
Oddly shaped doors drifted past them as they floated through the eerie perpetual twilight. They knew from experience how different the dimension behind every closed door was, but even so, they always piqued his curiosity when he visited the Ghost Zone. After all they'd only ever gone into a couple dozen, and the number of doorways in here was infinite.
Though at the surface level they appeared to be arranged randomly, intricate maps picked out subtle coagulations of road-like patterns in both the doorways and the concentration of the ectoplasmic atmosphere, almost like tides and currents in an ocean. Right now they were following a thick central vein, branching out into smaller capillaries, one of which eventually led to Narira's domain.
"There's someone in there that I have to speak to," Danny answered Sam's questioning look. "Frostbite sent me," he added, hoping that was enough to allay her curiosity. "Could you hang onto this?" he asked quickly, folding the map and handing it to her. "You can direct me where to go so I can focus on steering."
"Frostbite?" she said with surprise, not distracted by his change of subject. "I didn't know you talked to him recently."
"Yeah, uh, just yesterday."
He concentrated on flying while Sam continued studying the withered map.
Today was their lucky day because they made it down the central vein without attack or incident, which wasn't unheard of for a trip into the Ghost Zone but was rare enough to be noted and appreciated. The flight had only taken thirty minutes, so Danny wasn't even a little tired.
The door that loomed up before them seemed to be forged from volcanic rock. It was arguably more formidable than any other door he'd seen in here.
"This is where we're going?" Sam said incredulously. "You probably should have warned me to pack more than just a few light weapons. What is this place anyway?" She added as Danny swung open the heavy door.
"A ghost named Narira lives here."
The doorway led to the top of a steep rocky hill. The sky above them swirled black and grey and purple, lighting up every so often with distant lightning. The first thing that hit Danny was a massive wave of heat. It wasn't overwhelming but it sure slowed him down. The two of them held hands for balance as they picked their way down the craggy hillside. Danny didn't want to overuse his strength here, not even by flying. He remembered what Frostbite had said about Narira and her home. No one could stand near her for fear of burning alive, and people of my own species could not even enter her realm. Too much of Danny's power stemmed from his icy core for him to take chances.
They came over a crest and Sam gasped. Below them was a wide lake of molten lava, or what remained of it. It looked… ancient. Very ancient. Whole islands in the lake were solidified and darkened with hard rock, with small fountains of lava shooting up through cracks. Short cliffs rose up on all sides, making it appear that the lake had once been much more massive but was slowly dwindling away. For some reason the place struck Danny as something to be pitied. On the very center island rose an enormous spired castle, forged from the same black volcanic rock as the hill they stood on.
They barely had time to take in this mystical scene before shit hit the fan.
Sam noticed them first. "Danny," she said, alarm coloring her voice as she pulled out a metal tube of 'lipstick.' "Lava monsters, twelve o'clock."
Small dripping gobs of lava were rising from the lake below, converging at the base of their hill.
"I thought Frostbite said she lived here alone?" he wondered aloud. "I'm hardly going to get a welcome party if I start by destroying all her subjects!"
"Maybe they're not sentient?" Sam offered. "I mean look-" Even as she said that Danny saw several of the gobs combine to create bigger blobs of lava, and saw several more dissipate into nothing, trailing back down the side of the hill in thick molten streams.
"That's enough for me," he said, aiming his hand at the nearest chunk of animate lava. He fired up a charge of ectoplasm and hit his target, sending the lava spraying in every direction.
"Danny, careful!" Sam yelled as flecks of lava flew at them. He quickly turned them intangible just in time for the lava to fly through them.
By now there were at least ten lava goons nearly upon them. So he kept his hand on Sam's arm, retaining their intangibility, and fired blast after blast of ectoplasm around them, scattering the lava into pools. But no matter how many times he blasted, they kept remerging into new groups, rising up again for another attack.
"This isn't working," Sam said urgently. "Got any better ideas?"
"One," Danny said, but he didn't like the thought of it. It struck him as a bad idea, to use his ice powers here in Narira's domain. But without another option, he went for it. He felt inside for that roiling energy, and let it loose in a blizzard around them. The creatures shrieked as they both solidified into rock and sizzled away, steam rolling thickly into the night air. They ran swiftly down the hillside as more began to rise from the lake of fire to take their place. He leaped off the edge, soaring over the bubbling lava beasts, careful to keep Sam out of their reach.
They landed at the foot of her castle steps which were jagged and misshapen, cracked and crumbling.
"So this is Narira's castle," Sam mused, gazing upward at the dark spires that rose into the cloudy sky. "It's a good story," she said innocently, pulling the folded map out of her pocket and handing it back to Danny.
Danny was about to say 'What?' but then he saw what she meant on the backside of the folded page. He'd forgotten that the map was printed on the other side of the actual page in the book that had told the story of Narira and Icehand. "Oh, you uh… you read that, huh?" He said, his hand resting on the back of his neck sheepishly.
"I don't know why you didn't just tell me," she said, crossing her arms indignantly. "Especially since you brought me along. What, did you think I wouldn't understand?"
Danny faltered. He should have seen this coming. "No I… I don't know why I didn't tell you." Embarrassment? Uncertainty? Worry that she'd reject this idea? "I guess I was worried about what you might think, about whether this is even a good idea in the first place, worried about.. well everything. I just, I need this to work, Sam. Especially after the other day. I can't lose control like that again, I can't even imagine what I would do if I accidentally hurt you." His head hung low, and his hands ran through his messy hair despairingly.
She surprised him by placing both hands on his shoulders, shocking him into looking up at her. She was glaring straight into his eyes. "Danny, listen to me. You don't have to take on everything alone. I know what this has been doing to you but it doesn't help if you won't talk to me about it. It's not something you're struggling through alone. We are going to overcome it together, okay? And I know you know I'm right, otherwise you wouldn't have brought me along." The finality and harshness in her tone stunned him. "So stop beating yourself up about this! And don't tell me you're not, because I'm not stupid. You never stop vilifying yourself for things beyond your control! The way you look at yourself in the mirror…. It's killing me, Danny." Her expression looked pained.
He blinked at her in shock.
"So let's go talk to this Narira chick already," she said, suddenly smiling. She indicated the lake behind them with a thumb when she added, "I hope she's nicer than her friends back there." The harshness was gone from her voice. She took Danny by the hand and practically dragged him up the cracked stone steps, the ghost boy trailing numbly behind her.
See you next chapter! Oh and.. if you like this story, please read my other DP stories!
Peace out
