To say we were in deep trouble was an understatement. We had temporarily stopped the smoke-that-thunders residue by blocking its exit but how temporary was temporary? We didn’t know. The hyena cries echoing through the tunnels were another problem entirely which I had no hope of handling. Then, as I turned to look back the way we had come, I realized I had been stupid. I hadn’t marked our path. Trouble never came in twos, it came in threes.

  “Uh, Jena, do you know the way back out?” I had hoped the ancient dragon had a plan up his sleeve. As usual, Jena didn’t disappoint, though he sounded far less confident than I would have liked.

  “I think so,” he said hesitantly. “I can scent trail our way back, but this place is a maze. We backtracked several times on the way in.” He grinned. “Don’t worry. I should be able to find our way out.”

  Not to worry? Even if we could find the exit, how was I supposed to stay calm with hyenas echoing through the tunnel? I hate the useless platitudes people throw around when you’re in trouble. Jena seemed to sense my mood because he quickly turned to leave. “Let’s go!” he said

  “Wait! What about the hyenas? If you can smell us, so can they.” To me, Jena seemed far less troubled by our situation than I was. Where as I was shaking with fear. All the other times today, I had been afraid, but I knew Jena could simply teleport me away. In these ruins, there was no easy escape route like that because Jena’s teleportation didn’t work in here. Which was strange because if the hyenas could get in now, shouldn't it meant that the magic for the barrier was down. So why couldn’t Jena teleport work?

  “All the more reason to hurry!” Jena was saying.

  “And meet them half way?” I was confused. Didn’t he understand the danger we were in?

  “If I have my way, we should meet them more than halfway. Think about it. The closer we are to the exit, the greater our chance of survival. Besides, remember, they didn’t need to smell you before. They could just find you.” He was right, of course. Those mist-residue collars must have been responsible for their uncanny magic.

  “The mist isn’t moving like it was. I think it’s lost its power. That might be why the hyenas can enter now. Maybe their collars have lost their power too, and they can’t track me by magic anymore,” I said to Jena.

  “We don’t know that. What I know for sure is, if we keep chatting away like old ladies, we’re going to find out! Here!” He pointed to the floor, "away from the exit."

  “We are both old, and I am a lady. Let’s chat away,” I said with a grim smile, as I ran after him him, straight towards the danger. He just snorted and continued running.

  The darkness pressed in as heavily as before, and I was still intimidated and afraid. The lamps couldn’t push it back very far enough which I supposed was a good thing; at least we weren’t shining like a beacon.

  The sound of hyena-laughter grew louder and louder; closer and closer.

  “We have to look for a place for you to hide,” said Jena.

  We were thinking on our feet, literally, and I hated the plan we came up with. But I didn’t have a better one. I had to hide somewhere, and Jena would scout to see what was going on with the hyenas. So far, I hadn’t seen any place that I could hide. We stopped running, slowing into a fast walk and started looking for crevices, crawl spaces, narrow shelves — anything I could fit. The higher, the better. I didn’t think hyenas could climb, but these were mutated hyenas, who knew what they could do?

  When we came in looking for the source, I had basically concentrated on trailing the mist. I hadn’t been very observant. I hadn’t taken the time to really look at the tunnels, especially the walls. Also, the lamp light didn’t reach very far, so it was hard to study the walls. I had thought the tunnel were like animal tunnels, burrowed in a circular way by the weird mist. They were covered in dirt-like mud, but when I touched the them, the dirt crumbled to the ground, revealing not an animal-made wall but granite stone knit together. Definitely, human made.

  My lair looked like it was carved from one huge stone, making one smooth, continuous surface. The cavern with the opening where the residue was leaking from had looked like one huge rock hollowed out, with a slab closing the side with the residue opening. These tunnels were nothing like that. Weathered granite rocks were curved into ovals, circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, and all sorts of shapes, which were perfectly interlocked with each other to form a smooth wall. On closer examination, I could easily see that they were forming intricate patterns. No animal or mist had made these tunnel walls. Someone had deliberately, skillfully, and patiently made these tunnels. Who and What for?

  “Jena, what is this?” I asked, awe overriding my fear.

  “It’s a wall,” Jena said matter-of-factly, his mind clearly on track looking for a place for me to hide.

  “I know, but this is Nyadzire Ruins. What is Nyadzire Ruins? It’s too…” I said, waving my hands to indicate the patterned walls. I didn’t know how to describe them. In a magical land, maybe beautiful walls were normal? Still, who would build intricate tunnels in a mountain and abandon them?

  “I really can’t say. It must have been before me and old Jena’s time.” Said Jena.

  “But the Mist source is here. If Jena fought the Grootslang, and if the Mist is tied to the Grootslang, surely you must have heard of this place?”

  “The Mist came after the Grootslang. And I’m sure this isn’t the only Mist gate there is.” Mist gate? Was that what we were calling it now? At least he hadn’t named it the Nyadzire Gate. Jena and his old mage were bad at naming things.

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  “Is that why this is only temporary? Closing the gate, I mean. Because there are others? Do you know how many gates they are?”

  “Before today, I didn’t even know these gates existed. I’m only guessing based on what Matemai said about the Mist not being confined to this area alone.”

  “It’s just that you called them gates like you know something I didn’t.”

  “Well, I don’t. I am just clever.” Jena grinned with a freighted, put-upon sigh. If he meant his grin to be a smile, it was a fail. He just looked menacing in a cute baby dragon sort of way. I opened my mouth to point that out.

  “Focus, Anesu! We need to find you somewhere safe. We can debate theories later. And for the record, I am just as clueless as you about what is going on. This is all new to me too.”

  “I am looking! I am looking!” I said, patting down the wall. I wasn’t even sure what I expected to find. Plumes of dust drifted downward, only to billow back up into my face.That had been a very stupid idea. A coughing fit seized me as the cloud rose around us.

  At the first sound of my sneeze, the hyena laughter abruptly cut off. For a moment, I tried to hold in another sneeze, but it was impossible. A loud and long sneeze tore out of me, which I tried to muffle by covering my mouth. Just as abruptly as it had cut off, the laughter started up again. The hyenas had honed in on me by my sound. I had just run out of time.

  The good news was, I now knew they couldn’t track me by magic anymore. It also seemed like they were not scent trailing me either. Before the sneeze, their laughter had echoed all over the tunnels; now it felt like it was coming directly towards us. Or were they just as turned about as we were? If this was true, then maybe I could hide and be safe long enough to give Jena a chance to scout ahead for a secure way out.

  “Anesu!” cried Jena urgently.“This way!” he said, pointing to a tunnel branching off to the right. I could hear faint hyena echoes in that direction.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea! Can’t you hear the laughter from in there?”

  “I can, but there are fewer that way. Also, we haven’t used that direction yet. Hopefully, the ones that get here will go the way we came.”

  “But won’t our scent be fresher in this direction?”

  “That’s a chance we will have to take unless you have a better idea.” Of course I didn’t, and a few hyenas sounded better than many hyenas.

  “I don’t. I am just scared.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “Me too, but you will have to trust me just a little bit more. What scares me more than these hyenas is how powerless I am. I can do absolutely nothing except run around in circles. When we get out of here, promise me, Anesu, your awakening is going to be your priority.”

  “You know it’s already a priority. And it wouldn’t change anything. Even if I had awakened, I still wouldn’t fight these hyenas, even though they aren’t sentient.”

  “But I could have teleported us out of this place! I should have done more. I should have taken you out of the lair sooner.” Frustration edged his voice, threaded with guilt. It rang clearly through our bond.

  “Jena, you can’t blame yourself for this. Imagine if we had come here before I was physically fit. Who knows how anything could have worked out? I don’t blame you and you shouldn’t blame yourself either.”

  We were both frustrated and scared, a bad mix of feelings in a dangerous situation. We needed to stay level-headed, so I tried to ease the tension by saying, “Just continue being your clever self, and we will be out of here in no time.”

  Jena snorted, a Jena-standard answer. I smiled through the uncertainty. I hoped we would be okay. And Jena was right, my awakening had to be more than a priority, from now on.

  We picked up speed, running along the tunnel, stopping once in a while to poke at a protruding stone, looking for any openings. After a short while, we finally found one. It wasn’t an opening, but a ledge high up the wall. I could scale the wall and sit on it to wait out the hyenas. But if I could scale the wall, so could the hyenas. I needed to make it so that they didn’t stop here. Jena suggested I roll in the dust to blend in with the walls. Then, when I scaled the wall and was at the ledge, I was to collapse all the dust as far as I could reach.

  “Wouldn’t this make it obvious that we are here?”

  “To people, yes. To hyenas, maybe. But what else can we do?” He was right, we had to do what we could. I tore one of my tunic sleeves off to make a mask to cover my mouth and nose. I went to work. After collapsing as much of the wall as I could before scaling the wall, I didn’t need to roll in the dust after all. I was a walking dust ghost.

  I had barely settled on the ledge when the first mutated hyena arrived. The first thing I noticed was the absence of a collar. Then I looked around. At some point, the mist had vanished and I hadn’t even realized it. The question about the collar magic was answered.

  The hyena lumbered on its disproportionate hind legs but didn’t stop. It just barreled past, and so did the next five. They too didn’t have mist-collars. Then seven more, minus mist collars, came; these were walking slowly, sniffing around. That was not good. They sniffed everything; the wall, the floor, and the air itself. They must have snorted some of the dust because at least three of them started wheezing. Then they started sneezing. I didn’t know hyenas could sneeze. After a few tense moments, they lumbered their sneezing selves away. Not even once did they look up at me. Phew!

  “Get down!” Jena startled me a few moments later. “It’s clear, but I don’t know for how long!”

  I jumped down and landed on my feet like a cat. This never gets old! This was the new and improved me. I could climb walls and jump like a cat. I liked this so much. This would have been far more fun without the hyenas, I thought.

  “Stop admiring yourself. You can do that at home. Let’s go!” Jena whisper-shouted at me. Was I admiring myself? But seriously, who wouldn’t after getting a full-body renovation, so to speak? This was the first time I had seriously tested it outside the lair.

  And off we went, straight to the exit! I could literally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and unfortunately, I could see moving objects too. I should have known things couldn’t be that easy. By the entrance were hyenas, minus mist-collars, lounging around. Some were nursing, and cubs were tumbling over each other, playing. It was disconcerting. I thought they were hunting for me, but maybe they were not.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jena said. “What matters is what you’re about to do. None of those hyenas seem to notice you’re here. Move slowly toward the exit. When I say run, you run as fast as you can. Don’t hesitate. I repeat, don’t hesitate.”

  It was a solid plan. Physically, I could do it. But there was an entire pride of hyenas between me and freedom. One wrong step, one sound, one twitch, and this would turn ugly very fast. Adrenaline surged through me. I was ready. After everything we’d survived so far, I wasn’t about to fail now. I could do this.

  I very slowly sidled closer and closer to the exit along the wall. This was crazy. How could they not see or hear me? Then my foot scraped a loose stone that rolled away. Everything stopped. Even the cubs froze. How did they even hear that in the middle of their lounging about? I had no time to ponder this before Jena shouted, “Run!” I bolted as fast as I could to the exit, and I didn’t even have enough time to realize that I was out before I found myself by the pool in our lair.

  “Thank you, Jena!” I wheezed.