The End of Time by P. W. Catanese, David Ho

corridor that led to the chamber where the sorceress Turiana was kept prisoner.
    “Wait,” Hap said. Lady Truden, who held a jar of glimmer-worms to light her way, peered over her shoulder at him. “We’re not going to see the sorceress, are we?” he asked. That was perhaps the last thing on earth he wanted to do. Turiana had terrified him the only time he’d met her, when Umber brought him to her chamber seeking answers to Hap’s origins. It wasn’t just her ghastly appearance that bothered Hap. It was the way she taunted him, hinting that he was dead, which turned out to be at least partly true. And it was the scary knack she had for picking thoughts out of the minds of her visitors.
    Lady Tru pursed her lips and frowned. “No. I don’t want to visit that chamber any more than I have to. It’s my job to care for that abomination, you know. There’s no point to it, if you ask me. She stays in a trance all the while, and never eats the food I bring.” She moved on, still talking. “I want to show you something in the caverns. You can still see in the dark, I presume?”
    “Um. Yes,” Hap said.
    “Good,” Lady Tru said. “Strange boy,” she added under her breath.
    They walked through the caverns, winding among undulating pillars of rock. Countless more glimmer-worms crawled over the walls and ceiling, filling the space with a rainbow of dim light. The air was damp with the mineral scent of the underworld. They walked by the subterranean pond, where drops from the toothy stone above plunked musically into the water and transparent fish glided near the surface.
    The massive portcullis was ahead: a fanged iron gate with thick, tightly spaced bars that blocked the passage leading deeper under the earth. It held back the terrible creatures that lurked on the other side. They had served the sorceress when she held the city in the grip of terror, before Umber stripped her of her dark powers and locked her away in the Aerie.
    Before Lady Truden reached the portcullis, she ducked behind one of the largest stone pillars and beckoned for Hap and Sophie to join her. Sophie’s jaw tensed. On her damaged arm, where her hand should have been, she had strapped the pronged device that held the bow Umber had designed for her. The bow was already locked in place, and she reached over her shoulder and plucked an arrow from the quiver. Hap watched her, amazed at how her timid nature vanished at moments like these, when she transformed into a fierce defender. “What is it, Lady Truden?” Sophie asked.
    Lady Truden put a finger to her lips. “Wait,” she said. She peered around the edge of the pillar. “Do you smell that?” she said.
    “Ugh,” Sophie replied. Hap smelled it as well—something rotten and foul. His throat knotted.
    “I hear something too,” Sophie whispered. “Hap, do you?”
    Hap turned his head. He heard drops of water spattering stones all around. And something else: a sound from the darkness beyond the gate. It was slow, labored breathing, rasping in and gurgling out, at a deep pitch that suggested enormous lungs. Something big, he thought.
    “I brought you here because of your eyes,” Lady Truden hissed at him. “Why don’t you use them?”
    Hap swallowed—not an easy thing to do with his mouth so dry. He eased his head out from behind the pillar to look.
    It was dark beyond the portcullis. The glimmer-worms that roamed everywhere on the Aerie’s side of the gate did not venture past the iron bars, as if they sensed something wicked and dangerous there. His eyes penetrated the darkness and saw the natural tunnel that plunged deep into the rock and twisted to hide its depths from sight. With the cones of rock stabbing up from the floor and down from the ceiling—stalactites and stalagmites, Umber called them—the tunnel looked eerily like a throat, and those pointed stones like teeth.
    More thick columns, where the tapering stones had touched and merged over the eons, stood before the dark