So far this is the longest chapter in the story, make of that what you will. I really hope you've been enjoying this!
-owl
There was silence on the pyramid and around the lake. Pure silence from unfiltered fear of the enormous elephant that was now in front of them. Rollan was quaking in fear. There were so many ways the elephant could kill him without barely a thought. Skewered on a tusk, squashed by being stepped on, wrapped up by the trunk as though it was a boa constrictor. Meilin was the first to speak.
She dropped to her knees. "We do not disturb your rest lightly. The crocodiles you surely see in your lake are monsters, mutated with the Bile. We," here she gestured to the group around her, "are emissaries from the Greencloaks, and companions of the four fallen." Now she released Jhi from passive state. The panda had chosen to go dormant when they had begun to climb the pyramid.
Briggan and Uraza moved to sit next to Jhi, and Essix swooped down with a shriek before flying off again.
Dinesh leaned closer, as if to see better. As he did, the whole pyramid groaned under his weight.
"Yes, I see Jhi is your companion; and there is Uraza, who woke me from my quiet contemplation; and Essix, aloof as ever; and Briggan, wanting to bite someone, no doubt... I have not missed them. They are small, but I suppose they might grow."
"Please, Dinesh," Tarik said, drawing the attention to himself. "We want to ask you nicely. The Conquerors that are coming will take, rather than talk."
"Take what?"
Conor spoke this time. "Your talisman, the Slate Elephant."
Dinesh narrowed his eyes. "That will not be so easy for them. But is my talisman not what you are here for as well?"
Abeke nodded. "Yes, but we hope to use it to keep balance in this world. The Devourer only wants to take Erdas for himself."
"So the Devourer has come once again?" Dinesh asked. "Are Kovo and Gerathon free?"
Tarik shook his head. "We do not know. But the enemy has taken over many lands already. They almost got the Iron Boar."
"And you have that along with the Granite Ram, and those of the Four Fallen." Perhaps the Great Elephant could sense the presence of the talismans.
"Please, Dinesh," Conor said, "we desperately need your talisman. If you give it to us we might still be able to—"
"Escape?"
"Use it to fight them," Abeke finished the thought for Conor.
Dinesh smiled — almost. "I may have misjudged you." He was quiet, then, as he surveyed the walls around the crater. The Conquerors were lowering ladders, and hordes of canoes were being lowered onto the lake. The lake itself was now a pale pink and the bodies of what had to be thousands of snakeheads floated at the surface.
"Will you give us your talisman?" Conor asked in a small voice.
Dinesh sighed. "That which you ask of me is no small thing. It is not like asking a human to give you a book, or an ax. Nor is it even like asking a king to give you a duchy. The Great Beasts and our talismans are two sides of a coin, fruit of the same tree. To give it away is almost to fracture our very being. I do suppose, though, that things can not always remain as they have. Change comes, even if we try to escape it, like Suka, in her tomb of ice. Though, I'm not sure avoidance was her true intention."
"Suka the Polar Bear?" Tarik asked. "She is entombed in ice?"
Dinesh nodded, his huge head moving enough of the air around it to send a gentle breeze towards Rollan and the others. "Yes, or at least, she was the last time I heard. I do not keep up much with the rest of the world."
Rollan gestured towards the swarming crater walls with his hand. "Well, I think you're going to be well acquainted with the rest of the world in about five minutes. So are you going to give us the Slate Elephant or not?"
"I will let fate decide," Dinesh said, blinking slowly. "Whoever is left standing at the end of the day will be given my talisman. To make things more fair, I will tell those that chose to be my priests to help you."
Then the massive elephant stood up onto his hind legs and trumpeted loudly, the sound echoing off the crater, even after the elephant had become part of the pyramid once again. Then the Greencloaks realized that it wasn't just an echo, but responding horns from the priests.
The Greencloaks began to scramble down the pyramid. Rollan was glad that gravity was on their side as they hopped from tier to tier, covering ground much faster now than they had on the way up. Unfortunately, it was uncertain whether or not they would make it to their goal — the brass doors at the base of the pyramid — before the two other groups did.
Because, yes, there were three forces rushing to the same place. The Greencloaks, the Bile crocodiles, and the priests. The priests had exchanged their paper elephant masks for metal helmets that had thin, sharp, tusks protruding from them. The Greencloaks managed to reach the brass doors first, just in time to meet the crocodiles. Lumeo and Zhosur burst out in twin flashes of light as they joined the fight.
The first wave of crocodiles was done away with quickly. There were a multitude of ways they came to their end. They were speared, shot, sliced open, cracked almost in half by an ax, clawed, bitten, and stabbed.
With the first wave dispatched so neatly, they had a moment of time to catch their breath before the second wave of crocodiles began to get too close for comfort.
"Inside!" Tarik instructed. "Close the gates behind us!"
Tarik, with the help of a half dozen of the elephant priests were able to painstakingly get the gates closed. Once they were flush with each other, a wooden bar was placed into brackets across both doors, effectively locking them shut.
"Are there arrow ports?" Tarik then asked, turning to the priest that seemed to be in charge.
"Yes," the tall man answered, sliding open a few panels at chest height.
Tarik nodded approvingly. "Abeke, Lishay, find arrows, then get ready to shoot." Then Tarik scanned the room. There were maybe about forty priests in chainmail and helmets, clutching spears and swords. There were also a dozen more that were yet in gray robes, clustered around a huge bronze wheel that stuck out of the wall.
"What's that wheel?"
"It opens the water gate." What had to be the youngest of the priests spoke. He wore only robes, and no helmet. Rollan was impressed that the boy didn't give away that he might be stressed or worried from the way the day had changed so rapidly. "It drains the lake."
Tarik frowned. "How quickly would that happen?"
One of the other priests shook his head. "We have no idea. It is to be used as a last resort."
"If it were fast enough," Conor mused, "it could take away the Conquerors! Just suck them under."
Tarik looked pensive for a moment. "That could work. Is there any way to see out? We need to know how far across the lake they are."
Another one of the priests pointed at a stairwell to their left. "There's disguised viewing ports at every step. Be careful, though. Once they're open, they can be spotted from the outside."
"Rollan, go, see what you can."
Rollan nodded and took off towards the stairs. Conor followed him. Once Rollan deemed that they had gotten high enough, he found one of the viewing ports and opened it.
Looking out over the lake was disheartening, to say the least. The lake was swarming with not only crocodiles but now boats as well. What had to be nearly half of the opposing force was already on the water. The second wave of crocodiles had now been joined by a third, and they were all trying to break down the brass gates. Rollan could see arrows being shot at the crocodiles, but they did nothing to stop or even hinder the beasts.
"I don't like the look of that," Conor said. "Look at that one croc!"
Rollan looked where Conor was pointing. There indeed was a huge crocodile. It was as big as the Bile-enhanced crocs, but had none of the disfiguration that denoted them as such.
"We'd better go tell Tarik."
Conor nodded and the boys rushed back down the stairs. Conor was the first to speak.
"There's a huge crocodile there. As big as the Bile ones, but it isn't a Bile croc! I've seen one like it in my visions, a few times. Only with the Devourer. In other news, nearly half the Conquerors are already on the lake."
"I fear, therefore, that the Devourer is here," Tarik said, an indescribable expression on his face, something between fear and displeasure. "Open the water gate!"
Immediately the priests at the wheel grabbed it and pulled it. Then they pushed it. After trying to pull it once again, they came to the conclusion that it was well and truly stuck.
"Everyone but Lishay and Abeke, to the wheel. Priests, stand back," Tarik commanded.
Everyone rushed to heed the orders they were given. Within half a minute, Rollan was clutching a spoke of the wheel, Conor in front of him and Meilin behind him.
"Draw upon the strength of your spirit animal!" Tarik said.
It still wasn't enough.
"Jhi! Come help us!" Meilin cried.
Jhi lumbered over to the wheel and carefully placed her paws on one of the spokes. Rollan had not seen the true strength of the panda, though Meilin had told him about the time in the Great Bamboo Maze. Now, with the added strength of the panda, the wheel moved, the rust that had glued it together breaking.
The wheel then began to spin faster, and faster, and faster, until it was essentially spinning on its own. One by one the Greencloaks had to throw themselves away from the wheel before it caught them and dragged them with it. Of course the moment the wheel had begun to turn, the crocs had finally burst open the doors.
"Rollan, go see if that did anything," Tarik panted, drawing his sword. "Everyone else, prepare for attack."
He nodded and began to scale the stairs once again. This time he went twice as high as he had with Conor. Taking a deep breath to try to recover from running up the many, many stairs, Rollan pushed open the viewing port.
Looking out, he could see that even more of the Conquerors had made it onto the lake. That wasn't good. What should have been good, but really only concerned Rollan more, was that he could no longer see the crocodile that had to belong to the Devourer. He didn't see anything different with the lake though.
With a sigh, Rollan closed the viewport and, staying on the same level, he looked out a viewport on a different side of the pyramid.
This time Essix landed right outside the viewport. And, in the space of a single blink, Rollan suddenly could see the minute details of the stones that made up the pyramid. And one of those stones was a different color. It was the same shade of gray as Dinesh's disguise as the top of the pyramid. Looking closer, Rollan saw a small elephant carving.
He reached out and pressed it.
With a small pop, the carving slid out from the rest of the stone. The carving was the end of a pocket of stone, in which was an intricately carved elephant on a golden chain. It was the talisman! If he grabbed it, they could hopefully get to the boat and away from here without needing to fight the Conquerors, giving them a much better chance of getting back to Greenhaven safely.
Dinesh's talisman... The elephant himself was powerful. What could the talisman do? But, it wasn't theirs, it wasn't given to them. This would be stealing. And Rollan had a rule about stealing, back when he was on the streets of Concorba. He knew that if he didn't follow them, he could only grow up to be a hardened criminal.
Never take from the poor, sick, and never if there was another way.
With great dismay, and an anxious feeling that he was doing something stupid, Rollan gently pushed the pocket of stone back into the brick it was part of.
Good. Dinesh said. If you had taken the talisman against my will, you would be my enemy. As it is, you are my friend.
Essix screeched approvingly, and Rollan sighed in relief.
"So is there any chance we can get some help?" Rollan asked Dinesh.
Help is coming. Look to the west.
Looking out the viewport to the west, Rollan could see three things. One, the lake was draining, but very slowly. Two, the Rhino Riders were approaching. And, three, there was a group of Zhongese soldiers with the Rhino Riders, wearing silver and crimson.