to pay the price?
As if that were a real question. With each passing minute the Sleeper grew more powerful. And if they didn’t find the real Kalpavriksha, he could win the war. Aru only had to shut her eyes for her mind to conjure images of the Otherworld laid to waste. The beautiful tents of the Night Bazaar ripped open like sacks of grain. The heavens on fire. Her friends and family…gone.
“Yes,” she said.
Vishwakarma bowed his heads, and the walls of the office drew closer together.
“Very well,” he said from all four mouths. “In this part of the world, payment must be made in advance. If you can capture the key, it is yours.”
The walls shimmered, so bright they were almost impossible to look at. Aru shielded her eyes, blinking rapidly. When she could open them again, she was in an entirely different room.
The god had vanished, and so had the walls and the windows with their views of distant cities.
Aru looked down to see cold rock beneath her feet.
The five of them had been plunged into an area that resembled a crypt. It was lit by a handful of candles mounted in niches of the rock wall, and slick, leafy vines netted nearly everything. When the candlelight flickered across them, it almost looked as if the plants were moving.
Aru detected a slight flutter in the corner of her vision. Was that a moth? No, she realized as she looked closer. It was a small white flower hopping along a vine.
At the very center of the room stood a glass column. And within it hovered the shimmering orb containing the golden key.
Brynne took one look at the column and raised her mace. “We just have to break it and—”
“No!” cried Mini, grabbing hold of Brynne’s arm. “If we do that, Mr. V will know we’re Pandavas.”
Brynne frowned momentarily before flashing a grin. “Then we’ll try brute force.”
She walked over, revved up her arm, and punched the glass. Inside, the key trembled but didn’t move. Something else did.
From overhead came a terrible creaking sound.
“You broke the room!” exclaimed Rudy.
Aru looked up. The ceiling bore the likenesses of Vishwakarma’s four faces, all of them carved from stone and fixed with identical stern expressions.
“Can I be excused?” called Rudy loudly. “I’m not the one paying for the key—they are!”
“You’re the one who wanted to be part of this quest,” said Aiden.
“Yeah, quest, not fatal shopping experience!”
“I’ve seen the Kingdom of Death,” said Mini. “It’s not that bad.”
Rudy whimpered, calling out, “Helloooo?!”
Something broke off from the ceiling, clinking on the ground like a pebble. Aru crouched to pick it up…. It was a pebble. More and more pelted down on them, accompanied by an eerie groaning sound, like someone was moving a heavy boulder into place.
“Guys…” said Aiden. “Is the ceiling collapsing?”
Sure enough, the four faces of Vishwakarma had slowly begun to descend. The glass column holding the golden key shrank little by little, and Aru realized what Mr. V had planned for them:
Death by architecture. He was going to squish them.
“Better he finds out who we are when we’re alive and not dead,” said Brynne, raising her mace once more. She looked up at Aru and Mini. “Any other ideas?”
“I just…” Aru started, then paused.
Something struck her, and it wasn’t a rock. The key in the center of the room…The falling ceiling…The way Vishwakarma’s voice had twisted when he spoke of the key as alive…
“What?” yelled Aiden, but then the ceiling groaned once more and Aru lost her train of thought.
“We don’t have time to talk! Let’s break the glass!” said Brynne, baring her teeth.
Mini nodded, sweeping Dee Dee to the right. Her Death Danda turned into a long, blunt hammer. Aru flexed her fingers, and Vajra shot into her hand as a lightning bolt. Aiden pushed a button on Shadowfax, and the camera folded up and disappeared as two long, shining scimitars grew from the bands around his wrists.
Beside them, Rudy’s eyes widened. He awkwardly patted the front of his jacket. “Huh,” he said. “I think I missed the memo about carrying a concealed weapon. Can I borrow one?”
“Can you even fight?” demanded Brynne.
“Um, yes,” said Rudy, holding his hand to his heart. “I am a trained prince of my realm, after all.”
Aiden pulled a short dagger from his satchel. He tossed it to Rudy, who reached out, failed to catch it, and scrambled to pick it up off the floor.
“How do I—?”
“Pointy end out!” yelled Brynne.
Brynne waved her wind mace overhead,