Rapunzel and the princes stood in the quieted hall, each catching their breath. As Kaplonkas went on nuzzling Rapunzel’s leg, Rockie headed for the nearest wall, reached up to grab a few torches, lit them with the burning rug and passed them out to everyone.
“Thank you sir,” Davido said, bowing his head to the knight. Rockie grunted back at him.
“Right, so, um…” Rapunzel began, the torch lowering in her hand as she pondered her next words, “did I really blow out the sun?”
“We’ll know when we get out of here,” said Iden.
With torches held high, the five of them explored the grand rooms and long, twisting hallways of what could only be an underground castle. Kaplonkas trundled along behind them, always looking to nuzzle Rapunzel or headbutt Rockie.
The castle was huge, but suddenly empty of people. Rapunzel saw dishes in the kitchen sink, clothes draped across chairs, weapons discarded on the floors — cheap weapons, she observed, not worth picking up. She imagined the vampires pouring out into the world above, ready to wreak havoc.
And she found herself wondering how she felt about that.
She’d never known other people before, not until the princes had showed up. Were all other people like they were? Brash, clumsy, vaguely creepy or way too charming? Or were they more like the vampires, insidious and violent, but with really good cake? She supposed she’d have to find her way out of the castle and see for herself.
“Who built this place?” Davido asked as they turned yet another corner.
“And how’d it get underground?” Rockie wondered out loud.
“Magic, of course,” said Carrow.
“Yes, that’s another thing,” said Iden, looking Carrow’s way. “That Krauthammer fellow sounded like he knew you.”
“He knows my last name,” said Carrow, waving off what could have been an accusation. “There’s a story…”
“Oh, great,” Rockie grumbled, “another story.”
“I want to hear this,” said Iden.
“Yeah,” Carrow went on, “supposedly we have vampire blood in our lineage. The story goes, some princess disappeared ages ago, right before Longnight—”
“Longnight?” Davido asked.
“The longest night of the year,” said Carrow. “You guys call it the Solstice, I think. Anyway, Princess…Rosemary, I think, was walking in the royal garden at sunset when she just disappeared. They looked everywhere, but they couldn’t find her, until she showed up again right before morning, looking all pale and weak. They say she never left her room again — they even had to hold her wedding right there — and her prince only stopped by to sire children every once in a while. There were weirder rumors too, about how she wouldn’t eat regular food anymore and lived on mice or something.”
“Mice?” Rockie asked, then rubbed his chin. “Wait a minute. Mice have blood! Not a lot, but…”
“Yes, Rockie,” Carrow said as he would to a particularly slow child, “they turned her into a vampire. Supposedly.”
“I think we’re well past ‘supposedly’ now,” said Iden.
Davido slowed his walk, looking back at Carrow and raising a brow. “Then pardon me for asking, sir, but what does that make you?”
“Oh, look,” said Carrow, “new door.”
Double doors, each twenty feet tall and eight feet wide, loomed in front of them at the end of the wide stone corridor. Twin brass handles, ornately carved into the shape of scythes, stuck out at the height of Rockie’s shoulder. Above the doors, barely visible in the flickering torchlight, a stone relief of a sharp, sinister face leered down at them.
“Well, this looks important,” Rockie said, then gripped the doors’ handles, pulling until the doors groaned and parted.
They emerged into starlight — no, into something else entirely.
Squeezing through the partly-opened doors, Rapunzel and the princes found themselves in a huge, dome-shaped room, two hundred feet across by fifty feet high at the top. Their torchlight didn’t reach the ceiling, but it didn’t need to — the ceiling itself was alight and moving.
Rapunzel didn’t know what she was looking at. Craning her neck, and shifting to see past all the taller princes who were doing the same thing, she stared agape at the ceiling, beholding what she could only call a living picture.
The picture shone down with many bright stars, all twinkling in the black sheet of night. Then, all at once, the stars moved, streaking down toward the edges of the image as if she were flying through them — and as she looked up enraptured, she almost felt like she was.
As the stars continued to fly by, looking so close that Rapunzel tried to reach up and touch one, a figure appeared in one corner of the image, bathed in golden light. He was broad and heavyset, and not quite human, with broad ears folding back over his shoulders like a cape and long tusks curving out from his face.
“That’s Ypstam,” said Carrow. Kaplonkas seemed to recognize him, dancing around on his four happy feet and tooting out a greeting.
Another figure appeared in the opposite corner, this one feline and feminine, but still bearing that same golden light. She wore a red cloak, which hid most but not all of her sleek gray fur.
“That must be Morna,” said Davido.
In a third corner of the image, a golden bull-man appeared, burly and surly. He looked down at the five of them and snorted out a challenge.
“Oh, I know him!” said Rockie. “That’s Dhantor! Hi, Dhantor!”
“I don’t think he can see you,” said Iden.
Finally, a fourth figure appeared, squaring off the image. This one, also gold, had the body of a particularly handsome man and the head of a good-looking falcon.
“Masellan,” said Iden.
“Are those your countries’ gods or something?” Rapunzel asked. “Do I get one?”
In the center of the image, four ghostly wise men appeared, all with beards nearly as long as their robes, standing in an inward-facing circle. Each of them raised an idol of their respective god. Suddenly, as if the four of them were all standing on one large wheel, they spun in a circle, faster and faster — until, with an impossibly bright flash, Rapunzel witnessed the birth of the sun.
For a moment, she couldn’t see. For a longer moment, she feared she’d gone blind. Then the sun faded into a gentle flame, beaming down from a tall white candle.
The image slowly faded to black, then repeated from the start.
“Wow,” said Rockie. “What the hell is this room?”
“Oh, I’m sure there’s a fascinating story behind it,” said Carrow, “but right now, shouldn’t we be going?” He gestured toward the far side of the dome, where, behind an iron gate, a short stairway led up into open air.
One minute later, Rockie finished boasting about being able to tear the gate off its hinges. Eight minutes later, he was still trying. Three minutes after that, Rapunzel got tired of sitting around and asked the others to help him. No luck; all four princes combined couldn’t lift the gate an inch.
Even if they could, Rapunzel observed, there was another gate up at the top of the stairs, barring off the open sky she could barely see beyond it. In between the two gates was a switch on the wall, which she assumed would lift them both, but it was much too far away to reach, even with Rockie’s sword.
Iden stopped shaking the bars and looked past Rockie’s shoulder at Carrow. “Carrow, can you…?”
“Can I what?” Carrow asked, stopping in turn to look back.
“You know,” Iden said, and he made a quick gesture with his hand. “Whoosh.”
“Oh,” said Carrow. “Not when people are watching.”
“I see,” Iden said with a nod, then turned around. “How about now?”
“They’re still watching,” Carrow said.
“All right,” said Rapunzel, “everybody look the other way.”
Davido turned around immediately, just as Rockie knelt down, gripped the gate’s bottom bar, and shouted, “Uh-uh! I got this!”
“Okay,” Rapunzel told him, “could you at least ‘get it’ with your eyes closed?”
“Fine…” Rockie groaned, and went on heaving his hardest at the implacable iron barricade.
Halfway satisfied with that, Carrow raised a brow at Rapunzel. “You too, Princess.”
“I kinda want to see how you do this,” she said.
“Not today,” he told her, and with a smile and a half shrug, she turned…most of the way around.
He was gone with a whoosh before she looked back, and the next thing anyone knew, both gates clicked, clacked and rose on their own. Carrow came down the stairs with an easygoing wave, nodding toward the outside.
With a rush of cold air in her face, Rapunzel stepped out into the night, Kaplonkas and the princes filing in behind her. They stood on a grassy hill, the gateway behind them hidden behind tall, speckled boulders. Looking out on the horizon, they saw a blood-red line of fire, the wind carrying both smoke and screams their way.
Above, in the center of the sky, was the sun. Or rather, what had been the sun. It was dark now, nearly as black as the night sky itself. And it was cold, very, very cold.
“We need to fix this,” said Rapunzel. “I need to fix this.”
“Indeed,” said Davido, “but how?”
“Well,” said Carrow, “you saw that little show back there. We make a new candle, like the old one.”
Iden gave a mock nod. “Just like that, you say.”
“Pretty much,” said Carrow. “We need four people, with four golden idols of the gods…” He pulled out the golden “Kaplonkas” he’d brought to the tower. “And as it happens, we already have one.”
“Hmm!” This time, Iden’s nod was genuine.
Rapunzel thought that over. “Good thing I didn’t tell you to find the Golden Gargleblatt.”
Davido raised a finger. “Actually, that means—”
“I don’t care,” said Rapunzel. “So! Which way are we going first?”
Rapunzel the Shinobi 