I was too nice--or too spineless, depending on how you looked at it. Either way, aching calves and countless bug bites made me regret accepting Grace’s birthday invite. Sure, she was the only cousin I had who was near my age, and sure, we usually got along well, but accepting an invite to hike and camp in the middle of nowhere? I must’ve been drugged--or concussed--to accept her invitation. Camping was all bugs and noxious bug spray fumes from bug spray and sweaty people in a tiny tent with no showers for miles. Unless you counted the icy cold stream. Which I didn’t. 

That all would’ve been bad enough, but this wasn’t just a tent in the park. Oh no, that would’ve been too easy to weasel myself out of. Grace had brought me and half her hiking club—that was eight strangers—on a five hour trek into the wilderness. I’d already had to pee in the woods, feet away from strangers. The thorny, bug-infested woods. Then I had to carry the used toilet paper around in my bag because apparently, it didn’t matter that paper was biodegradable because burying it was still littering. 

As I sat in a tent and rubbed benadryl cream on my many bites—which had happened despite the horrid bug spray because I was irresistible to mosquitoes—I desperately prayed that I hadn’t collected any ticks. Parasites were literally my worst nightmare. Well, my worst realistic nightmare. My actual worst nightmare had to do with being eaten by a bus-sized snake. Not bus-sized as in a bus-long snake, more like a snake as big around as a bus. It was a weird dream. 

Anyway, I really really hoped I hadn’t gotten any ticks, because I’d read way too much about Lyme disease and that weird tick virus that made you allergic to meat. Not to mention the inherent horror of having another organism latched onto your body. I tried not to think about skin mites. But now that I was thinking about them, I was even itchier. 

I needed to relax and recuperate for what little time I had left before Grace dragged me out of the tent to do some more ‘fun bonding activities.’ Art supplies had been too heavy to add on top of everything else I’d brought, so the only relaxing thing I had was my imagination. Sitting cross-legged, I rested my hands on my knees and closed my eyes. The first image that popped in my mind was the handsome alien man I’d been dreaming about for months. It was weird; he seemed to remember our previous conversations, and he always looked freakishly realistic for a dream. 

The Mark in my imagination was a lithe, blue-skinned man with feathers on his head and down his spine, all the way to the end of his tail. I’d drawn and painted him so many times that Grace could probably draw him from memory—if she were interested in drawing. She definitely knew a lot of trivia about him from the short comics I’d done, and she’d even volunteered to write the script for a comic about him. I’d turned her down. It wasn’t that she was bad at writing, just…  

Well, the long and short of it was that she had a very different taste in literature than I did. We both liked fantasy, but her fantasy had a lot more brooding vampires and steamy romance scenes than mine did. I wasn’t super comfortable drawing anyone in steamy scenes, especially not the hot alien I was dating in my dreams. 

Not that Grace knew I was dating Mark. It was way too awkward to share with her, and she would tease me about it for ages. Even if it was in good fun, I wasn’t great at taking teasing without my pale, freckled face lighting up like a Christmas tree. 

The cousin in question poked her head through the tent flap. Her waist length black braid slipped forward over her shoulder. “You ready? Everyone’s itching to get to the ruins and tell scary stories.” She wiggled her fingers in what I assumed was supposed to be a spooky way. 

“What ruin-” My heat-addled brain took a moment to remember the plan. We’d hiked all the way out here to be near some stupid ruins James had found. Normally, I would’ve been excited to take pictures of them and do some sketches, but I didn’t fancy following James anywhere. The whole way here, he kept hinting that he’d found something that would change my mind about not wanting to go out with him. 

Grace grabbed my arm and tried to drag me out of the tent. “Come on, everyone’s waiting.”

“I’m not going. My feet are killing me, I’m sick of the bugs, and I’m sick of-” -the people. But I couldn’t tell her that, because they were her friends, and she would take it way too personally if I told her I didn’t like making small talk with eight strangers who had nothing in common with me. 

She pouted. “Liiiza, you promised.”

“I promised to come on a ‘small hike.’ I didn’t promise to walk my feet off.”

“But it’s just half an hour, twenty minutes if we’re quick.”

“That’s an hour round trip.” 

She batted her eyelashes. “Pretty please, for the birthday girl? I know you’ll love it. The ruins are so cool, just like the stuff you paint all the time. You’ve got to see them.”

I wanted to tell her to take a picture for me, but I was too exhausted to argue. Even walking for another hour seemed less exhausting than arguing with her. “Fine, but you’re carrying my water bottle.” I pulled it out of my pack and offered it to her. 

“Oh, you can just use mine. It’s plenty big.”

I hated drinking after people, and I was pretty sure I’d told her that at some point. Not that it really mattered; I could go an hour without drinking. Setting aside my water bottle, I stood--with some difficulty, because my calves really were killing me--and followed her out of the tent. 

James jogged over to us, ever a boundless fount of energy. Since he was a couple inches taller than me and we were on level ground, I could only assume his hiking boots were secretly platforms. As if three inches of height would make up for his personality. 

“You ready for this?” He grabbed my shoulder and shook me like he was trying to jazz me up or something. As muscular as he was, the shaking only made me feel kinda nauseous. I was already so sore and unsteady from walking that I couldn’t stand it. 

I stepped back out of his reach. “Don’t touch me.” I felt his shock and Grace’s disappointment boring into me, but all I could do was surreptitiously rub my shoulder and hope they turned their attention to someone else already. 

“Did that hurt?” Grace asked, eyes wide. 

“Yeah, I guess. Let’s just go.” I walked toward the others, wishing she would stop staring. 

Both of them sped up to walk beside me. 

James raised his hands in surrender. “Whoah, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Your shoulder sore or something?”

I’d tripped and nearly wrenched my shoulder catching myself on a tree earlier, so it definitely wasn’t feeling good. “Something like that.”  

“You okay?” James asked.

“I’m fine.” I hated strangers doting over me. I barely tolerated my friends doing it. Not that I had more than one friend, really, unless you counted my mom. 

Grace stepped in front of me, forcing me to stop before I could reach the others. “If you’re really hurting, you don’t have to come.”

I wished it was that easy. Sure, she said it was okay to stay behind now, but she would spend the next week or even month telling me about how cool the ruins had been and how I should’ve seen them--just like she was constantly telling me about how awesome hiking was and how I would love it if I just gave it a chance. 

“I’m fine.” I fought to keep from snapping. “Let’s go.”

She didn’t seem convinced, but at least she turned to James instead of arguing. “Lead the way.” 

James was not a good choice for a leader, since he wanted to walk by me and I had no desire to walk at the front of the group, but he was the only one of us who’d actually gone to the ruins. So he led us, more or less, through the darkness for half an hour. At least half an hour--it might’ve been an hour, but I was too focused on not groaning with every step to count the minutes. 

Finally, we reached our destination. It was underwhelming. At first glance, it was a stone slab with some symbols carved into it. It could’ve been the floor of a building at one point, but there was nothing else to imply where the walls might’ve been. I guessed it was weird that it hadn’t gotten buried after all this time. Really weird, actually--it barely had a few leaves and a little dirt on it. Had James come up to sweep it earlier? 

“Everyone stand in the little circles,” James called as he gestured at the stone. 

“Why?” a petite girl asked. 

He shook his head. “Trust me, this’ll blow your mind.” He moved to stand on one of the circles. 

As I moved to a circle of my own, I looked closer at the design. There were ten feet-sized circles around a larger circle that had symbolic writing in it. I vaguely recognized the writing’s meaning. 

We Ortai now claim our weapons. Return us to Vangorn.

How did I know that? I didn’t remember studying the language. I must’ve read those exact phrases in one of Grandma’s old books before she told me not to stick my nose in her things. It was weird that the words had stuck with me all this time. 

“Now hold hands,” James called. 

I scowled. Holding hands with sweaty people was almost as bad as drinking after people. I did it anyway, and we all formed a perfect circle. A perfect- wait, there were ten people here and ten small circles exactly. 

I leaned toward Grace to whisper, “Did you make sure there were ten people just so we could do some-” I wanted to call it a ‘stupid ritual,’ but I didn’t want to upset her. “-interesting bonding activities?”

“Huh? No, James organized it all.” She shrugged. “He said ten people was the perfect amount for what he had planned.”

“Weird.”

“Repeat after me. Make sure you say it right, or we’ll have to start over.” James paused to make sure he had our attention. “Vis Ortai te osal-”

I repeated with the others, curious as to what he hoped to achieve. There were some odd superstitions about the ruins, but none of them had to do with standing in circles or summoning a demon--which was what it sounded like we were trying to do. 

“-na kesam-”

We repeated. 

“-visi letat.”

Again, we repeated, and I thought that would be it. But apparently not. 

“Osalka vis na Vangorn!”

As soon as ‘Vangorn’ left our mouths, the letters carved in the stone began shining with an otherworldly violet light. Several people cursed and moved like they were trying to back up, but they stayed in their circles. I let go of sweaty hands to try myself, but my feet might as well have been glued to the stone for all they moved. 

“What the f--- did you do, James?” a guy shouted. 

James grinned at me from across the circle. “Hey Liza, you know that place you’re always painting--the one with dragons and lizard people-”

I was going to kill Grace for showing him my sketchbook.

“-well, it’s all real.” He laughed, even as the light in the stone was growing too bright to look at. “All we needed were ten descendants of the Ortai, and we can actually go there. We can be gods! And goddesses, of course.”

Everyone was looking at him like he was crazy, which he definitely was. He’d just put super glue on the ground and hidden LED lights everywhere. That was it. He couldn’t actually-

A howling wind whipped around the inside--and only the inside--of the circle. Objects rose up from the stone, bathed in violet light. They looked like medieval weapons circling with the wind. A pickaxe flew toward the petite girl. As soon as it touched her, she disappeared. 

Two other people disappeared in similar fashion before the screaming started. Our voices barely rose above the howling wind as we fought to move away. I tried yanking my feet out of my shoes, but my feet were fused to my shoes. 

I glanced up just in time to see a lance touch Grace’s outstretched hand. She disappeared. James, myself, and two other people were the only ones left. As soon as I’d counted, another one disappeared. Then James. Then a pole with a metal disk at the end flew toward me, and everything went dark.