hat most people don’t realize about plummeting headfirst toward impending death is that it’s kind of hard to yell at the same time. Air is rushing down your throat, and everything is literally the worst, and when you try to holler, you sound like a cat with laryngitis. Aru had this particular thought as she fell, choking on a scream while she tried to see out of the corners of her eyes. She could just barely make out the four fuzzy shapes of her companions falling alongside her. Every time Aru reached for her lightning bolt, the wind ripped it away from her.

“Light up!” commanded Aru.

Vajra responded, flickering brightly. For the first time, Aru could see the ground….

Just as it rose to meet her.

“No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!” she cried, her arms pinwheeling wildly.

She was all set to become Aru pâté when another gust of air caught her tight in a wind funnel. Aru froze, blinking slowly. The ground was a good four inches away from her nose, and her hair trailed on the paved floor of what looked like a giant courtyard.

“I’ve got you, Shah,” called Brynne, parachuting down in the fluffy jacket Nikita had enchanted. “Ready, everyone?”

Aru turned her head a fraction to see that Brynne’s wind had managed to catch not only her, but also Aiden, Rudy, and Mini right before they would’ve cracked open their skulls.

Aru tried to curl into a ball. “Give me a second, I—”

Fwomp. She was dumped on the ground.

“OW!” she yelled, rolling over and clutching her face. “My nose!”

Mini ran over and examined her.

Aru whimpered, and Vajra curled protectively around her wrist.

Mini prodded at Aru’s nose. “Does this hurt?”

“WHAT THE—?”

“Going to take that as a yes,” said Mini in her calmest trust-me-I’m-a-medical-professional voice. “So, there’s good news and bad news.”

“Good news,” moaned Aru.

“It’s not broken!”

“Yay.”

“But it is bruised…and swelling up…” said Mini.

“So basically my face looks like it’s trying to become a melon.”

“I mean…”

Aru wished Mini could lie sometimes. Brynne marched over, hauled Aru to her feet, and inspected her nose.

“Looks the same to me?” said Brynne.

“Spectacular.”

“We can ice it as soon as we get out of here,” said Mini. “That’ll bring down the swelling.”

“We don’t even know how to get out!” said Brynne. “We’re stuck in this…whatever this is. Thanks a lot, Rudy.”

“I didn’t mean to trip the alarm,” he protested. “I…”

Aiden drew his thumb and index finger over his closed lips in a zip-it gesture.

Aru held Vajra aloft, but the air was so murky not even her celestial weapon could provide enough light to illuminate their surroundings fully. Aiden held out his scimitars, Aru electrified them, and together they raised their weapons high like torches. Then they could see that walls of smooth rock stretched nearly three hundred feet above them toward a slice of silver-purple twilit sky that was just barely visible. The ground beneath them was gray marble. It would’ve been kind of pretty if it hadn’t been for one detail.

The bones.

Broken skulls and jumbled skeletons dotted the courtyard in haphazard piles. Here and there treasure glinted in the heaps: bright coins or gems. A handful of charred swords lay still, many of them bearing a final dusty handprint.

Aru shuddered. What had happened to these people? She turned around the space, but the only thing she saw was a huge pillar in the middle of the courtyard bearing a single fracture. Why did she feel as if she’d seen it before?

Brynne whirled around to face Rudy.

“You had one job,” she scolded. “Don’t step on the stupid green tiles! It was so easy anyone could have done it!”

Rudy stood there, his eyes wide with panic, his hands clutching the mechanical bird that—upon third glance—looked like a tiny eagle.

A rush of fury swept over Aru. All that trouble, all that effort they’d gone through to get to the vault…and for what? A wooden toy with a broken voice?

“Brynne,” said Mini firmly. “Stop.”

Brynne fell silent, anger bright on her face, and Aru shook herself. It was her fault, too, she acknowledged with a stab of guilt. She’d been thrown off by the vision of the man who had been her father. She hadn’t expected to see him. Worse, she hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted to see him.

“Rudy…are you okay?” asked Aiden.

The naga boy’s hands trembled. A look of understanding passed over Aiden’s face. He put away his scimitars and stepped toward his cousin, placing a hand on his arm. “What happened back there?”

For a long minute, Rudy stared at the ground. Finally, he raised his chin.

“I have trouble seeing certain colors,” he said softly. “Yellow and green look kinda reddish to me, and I can’t tell the difference between blue and purple.” He took a deep breath, one corner of his mouth twitching like a snarl. “I wish that wasn’t the case.”

All of them were quiet for a moment until Mini piped up.

“It’s a lot more common than you think,” she said gently. “In fact, deuteranomaly, the most common form of color blindness, affects, like, five percent of the human male population.”

Rudy laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “Human population, sure. But nagas? You know what it means to be a color-blind naga prince?”

Aru thought of all those jewels and riches deep in the naga palaces…. Things that Rudy wouldn’t be able to distinguish.

“Color and magic are basically the same thing for my family,” said Rudy, his words coming out in a rush. “If I had to make a crown that warded off curses, I’d need to cut emeralds and rubies a certain way, arrange them in a pattern…. I can’t do that. Instead, I listen to the sounds inside a stone and make magic that way. But if I had to go by color, I’d put a bunch of topazes and tourmalines in a clump, and probably get someone’s head turned into a jellyfish. Or turn myself into a jellyfish. At least, that’s what my parents think, and that’s why they never let me do anything. They don’t really understand the kind of enchantments I work, and they’re always worried I’m going to mess something up. I know it’s for my own good and all that, but I can do magic. It’s just…different. Anyway, I’m…I’m sorry. I really am.”

Aru remembered when Rudy had rescued them from the naga treasury by playing all that music. His grandfather Takshaka had called him a disgrace. The insult wasn’t because his own grandson was getting in his way, as Aru had thought at the time. It was because of who Rudy was. And Aru finally understood why the naga prince had wanted to join them.

“I know how that feels,” said Mini.

Rudy looked up at her and smiled sadly. “You don’t have to say that, Mini. You guys are Pandavas and”—he nodded at Aiden—“Pandava adjacent. It’s different. Everyone is proud of you.”

“Yeah…not really. People tell us all the time how much we’ve messed up,” said Mini.

“Or that we’re doomed to mess up before we even start,” added Aru.

“Or that we can’t change anything,” said Aiden, quietly running his thumb along the top of his camera.

The anger vanished from Brynne’s face, replaced with frustration. “Truth.”

Aru’s hand went to her mother’s necklace. She couldn’t let Rudy take the fall for everything.

“Listen,” she said. “It’s not Rudy’s fault. I saw something, and—”

Creeeeak.

The five of them froze.

“What was that?” asked Mini, her voice going high.

The stone walls around them rippled as if they were made of cloth and someone on the other side had started to run their fingers across it.

“Silly…”

“Little…”

“Pandava thieves…”

The hairs on the back of Aru’s neck prickled. The yalis bubbled up and disappeared again as they ran just beneath the surface of the stone. Out the corner of her eye, Aru caught sight of a spiked spine and the powerful whip of a crocodile tail.

“You are now in one of our favorite stories….”

Aru really wanted it to be the kind with a happily-ever-after ending, but judging by the pile of skeletons, she didn’t think that was likely.

“We do enjoy what little entertainment we are granted….”

Aru swallowed hard and placed her hand on Vajra. “Entertainment?” she echoed, turning slowly in the same spot. “Have you tried streaming instead? Tons of options.”

“We prefer something…messier.”

“There’s always cable?” tried Aru.

“Get in formation!” yelled Brynne.

At once, the yalis vanished. The ground undulated beneath Aru’s feet.

“Where’s the attack coming from?” asked Mini. “I don’t see anything!”

“Stories…” said Aiden. “Why did they mention stories? Is that a clue, or…Wait.”

Aru craned her neck, squinting. Where had that grate up top come from? She wanted to call out to her soul father, Indra, for help, but the sky beyond the bars looked frozen, still stuck in that moment of purple twilight. She checked behind her.

She knew this courtyard. She knew this exact sky. And, unfortunately, she knew what came next.

“The reflection on the floors of the crypt,” Aru whispered, looking at the others.

The story of Narasimha. The bottled-up wrath that the yalis unleash on thieves.

“Have you ever wondered what a god’s wrath looks like?” whispered a yali.

Out the corner of her eye, Aru saw a pair of glowing eyes melt into the gray marble.

“We can show you,” said another yali.

A dark and scaly tail whipped out of a wall and slammed the pillar that had once held the fearsome lion-headed god.

The column began to crack.