NIGHT by I Rin (best books to read .TXT) 📕

few seconds, Prince Edward came to our heroes.

“Prince!” cried the girl. “How did you get here?!”

“How can I trust you such a serious matter?” the prince smiled. “Besides, unlike you, I picked up something with me.”

Edward showed them the rope that was wrapped around his waist.

“And you, Angelica, stay here and keep an eye on Margo,” ordered the Prince Night. “Otherwise, spiders will eat her. Swein, do you agree?!”

The Goblins’ King nodded and said:

“We have to hurry! The Prince of Vampires won’t be able to withstand the onslaught of monsters too long.”

And the men headed towards the abyss.

“Wait!” exclaimed Lica.

She rushed to the Prince and the King and hugged them both.

“Be careful!” she whispered through tears.

Edward ran his hand through her hair and smiled. Swein kissed her hand. After that, the prince and the king left. Lica went back to Margo.

“Water...” whispered the witch.

“Damn!” cursed the girl. “I have nothing with me in what I could get water!”

Then she remembered that the people in the desert used their clothes to collect rainwater. They just spread it during the rain and then twisted into the vessel and get water.

“Margo, dear, wait a little!” Angelica muttered. “I'll bring the water!”

The girl dragged her closer to the wall and put quite weigh stones around.

“If a spider wanted to walk down the corridor, he would hardly notice her,” Lica was talking to herself.

Then she took the sword in her right hand and went back down the corridor by feel. She remembered that somewhere near must be a room with a creek... There she first met the bride of Prince Edward, when she and Henry were running from the vile web. Indeed, shortly ahead she heard the sound of bubbling water. Angelica could see absolutely nothing, but she felt as if the walls of the corridor widened and it became easier to breathe.”

“I am in the room with a creek!” she guessed.

She got on her knees crawling forward and feeling everything with her hands. Suddenly her hand became wet.

“Hooray! Water!” whispered Lica in delight.

She pulled the sleeves of her shirt and ripped them. Then she soaked them in water and crawled back.

“Why is it so quiet?” she was thinking on the way. “This silence scares me!”

Lica got to Margo and twisted water into her mouth.

“Thank you,” said the witch quietly, coming to life. “Angelica, listen to me! Only you will be able to finish the ritual!”

“Margo, you are crazy, I'm not Huron!”

“Angelica, without your help Swein and Edward will die in the abyss. They’re energetically powerless against the monsters of the other world!”

“And me? What can I do?”

“You must hold a ceremony and open the third stage!”

“To call the elements?” horrified Lica. “But I'm not a witch, I cannot...”

“Don’t interrupt me! It's hard to speak!”

Margo took a few deep breaths and continued:

“We had prepared everything for the ritual. At the edge of the abyss there is a pentagram, the spell is written there. You have to get closer to it and insert the crystal ball, which my brother and I had brought, in the center of it. The bag with the crystal must be somewhere there - among the rocks! Then you have to stand up in the center of the pentagram, and read the spell then put some of your blood on the crystal. Thus, you will call the element of air, fire and water.”

“What to do then? I do not know how to control them,” she murmured.

“It does not matter. You should call them or we all will die!”

Angelica nodded. She tried to pull herself together and headed for the abyss. A strange glow was coming from the abyss and illuminating everything around.

“At least I can see everything!” the girl calmed herself down.

She walked to the end of the corridor and began to look for the pentagram on the floor. On the left – in the wall where was the laboratory of the old sorcerer, on the floor she saw a big picture. It was a circle with an inverted star inside. In the center of the star was deepening, probably for the crystal. There was a long Latin inscription on the rim of the circle.

“God!” Angelica gasped. “I do not know Latin! And where the bag with the crystal is?!”

She began walking among the rocks, trying to find the sorcerers’ things. At this time, the light coming out of the abyss began to pulse. She suddenly felt terribly cold, and heard a terrible roar.

“God help me!” the girl wailed. “Where is this stupid bag?!”

She repeatedly sought through all the stones but couldn’t find the sorcerer’s bag. Suddenly she had an idea.

“Margo said that Huron had been dragged into the abyss,” Lica began to think. “The bag might have fallen down! I have to go down immediately and look for it there!”

Angelica remembered that near the bottom there was a small ledge leading to the hiding place where the Book of Destiny was. The girl came close to the cliff on the left, sat on the edge of the abyss and looked down. The hiding place was still there.

Lica did not think how she was going to climb out and jumped on that stone island...

Part 11

The ritual

Glaring light was streaming from the abyss. Angelica cautiously came to the edge of the ledge and looked down. She couldn’t see the bottom but just next to her she noticed another ledge, a bit smaller than one she was standing on.

“Well, I have to remember the skills of a young tourist,” whispered Lica.

She calculated the distance to the lower ledge, then stepped back a little and jumped... she landed exactly in the center of the small ledge. Angelica looked down again but did not see other ledges. However, the walls of the abyss here were quite prominent. The walls were with cracks and crevices and stones were butting out from the rock everywhere.

“Perhaps I'll be able to go down here,” the girl decided. “I had more challenging routes in competitions on climbing, hadn’t I?”

Lica looked carefully and began to go below. She put her foot on the quite large stone and caught hold a deep crevice in the wall. The girl was finding more and more new footings moving nonstop to the bottom of the abyss. The lower she went, the more clearly she heard strange and at the same time horrible sounds. They sounded like a roar of a wounded animal or a noise of the storm or a crack of the stones. The air was filled with the sickening smell of blood. The girl started to feel dizzy but she tried to pull herself together.

Angelica looked down, the bottom was quite close and she could see pieces of monsters’ chopped tentacles and bodies.

“It looks like Edward and Swein have already been here,” thought Lica.

She tried to look for a clean place below to jump. But jumped, she got into a bloody mess with her left foot.

“Yak! Damn!” cursed Angelica, trying to shake blood clots off her sneaker.

Then she looked around. The piles of bloody remains exuding the stench were everywhere.

“Where will I look for the magic crystal?” terrified the girl. “This dirt is everything here!”

She was jumping over the bodies parts, trying to see anything resembling the sorcerer’s bag among them. Suddenly she heard a mournful howl ahead.

“What’s next?” said Lica through clenched teeth. “God, blind me if any monster decided to walk here!”

As if to answer to her the soil under the girl quaked. Lica couldn’t keep her feet and fell down. Suddenly she noticed a gray object, stuck between the stones. Angelica immediately scrabbled closer to it and saw that it was Huron’s bag; it was in the deep crevice. She tried to pull it out, but couldn’t. At this minute, the soil quaked again and she heard such a terrible roar that it took her breath away.

“It looks like this monster is coming here,” the girl whispered to herself. “I must hurry up!”

She held on to the bag again and shook it trying to take it out of the stones. But nothing helped. The soil quaked again and it seemed to the girl that the light in the abyss wasn’t as bright as before.

“I think it's time to make off!” said Angelica. “But the crystal?”

She thought for a moment, then waved her hand and said:

“Huron and Margo, forgive me, but I cannot save all your things! I need only the crystal.”

Holding the bag on one side she put the other hand into the split and felt the bag rope. Lica gently tugged at the one end and when the rope was untied, she put her hand into the bag as deeply as she could. The girl was very afraid that if the crystal rolled out to the crevice then she would never get it, so she was very careful with the things in the bag. There were some plants, bottles and stones. Which of these stones was the crystal - Lica did not know. So she took a few stones in a handful and pulled them out. The girl carefully examined her prey but concluded that the crystal was not among them. She remembered the deepening in the pentagram. It was much bigger than all these stones. Therefore, Angelica decided to get into the bag again.

Again there was a terrible howl and something huge and dark seemed far ahead. She couldn’t clearly see what was it but Lica decided to hurry.

She put her hand into the bag again. Now first she decided to touch all the stones inside. She was gently touching them with her fingers but all of them weren’t what she needed. Some of them were too stretched; others angular and the other were too small for the pentagram. Then, in the corner, Angelica felt for another stone. As soon as she touched it with her fingers, she felt it as the electric shock. Lica slowly began to pull it out and then it was another earthquake and the cleft, holding the bag started moving and getting wider. The cleft was expanding rapidly. The magical items were falling out of the bag. The stone, which Lica was trying to get, also tumbled down into the abyss. With some incredible effort Lica managed to drop the bag a side and fell to the edge of the cleft she stretched her hand. The stone jumped, hit the rock and fell right into Angelica’s hand.

The girl knew immediately that it is exactly what she needed. Absolutely smooth, black crystal was sparkling in her hand. It had some strange energy because Lica was feeling tingling in her fingers.

“Now to the top!” commanded the girl to herself.

She stood up and suddenly noticed the rope, which she hadn’t seen before.

“Apparently, the Prince and the Goblins’ King used it,” decided Angelica.

She hid the stone in her pullover sleeve, because it was too big for her jeans pocket, and quickly began to climb up the rope. The rocks were shaking.

“The monster must be very close,” Lica thought. “I have to finish the ritual!”

The girl could not remember how she got out of the abyss. She quickly found the pentagram, pulled the crystal out of her sleeve and inserted it in the center. Then she removed the sword from its sheath and slightly cut her hand. Red blood came out. Angelica bent over the black stone and a few drops of blood fell on the stone. Then she tried to read aloud the Latin words. Alas, but nothing happened.

“Margo! I need Margo’s help!” she cried desperately. “I do not know Latin!”

She ran into the dark corridor - where she left the wounded witch. After a few minutes, Lica got to her but Margo was unconscious.

“Margo, dear,” cried the girl, “wake up, please?! Without you, we will die! The Kingdom will die! Margo, wake up, please!”

Suddenly the witch moaned.

“Angelica,” she whispered, “have you found the crystal?”

“Yes! I have set it in the pentagram, dripped my blood and read a spell! But nothing happened. I do not know