Boys! Why did they have to go to such melodramatic lengths to try and make themselves look impressive? Phoenie was surprised Joel Gibson had the strength to lift the laser cutter, let alone the skill to use it, and his under qualified bravado had almost sliced both John and Theseus in two. Even so, his yellow teeth were grinning with a smug satisfaction as if he were the hero of the hour – an honour that belonged to John. Dangling helplessly from the cavern ceiling, he was now using his numerous gadgets to help define a path down into the darkness for his friends to follow. Such bravery and dedication to the cause deserved more recognition than any Phoenie could bestow upon him.

And then, thanks as always to the eternal realist Andromeda, the truth of the situation sank in.

“If people didn’t know we were coming, they’re going to now,” she said, “I just hope they don’t have an army of those rock soldiers,”

“Bring it on,” said Joel, “We’ll slice ‘em and blast ‘em and pummel ‘em into dirt,” His girlfriend placed a calming hand on his forearm, perhaps as a reminder not to let himself get cocky.

Phoenie turned her attention to the path ahead. The cavern was smothered in shadow, their flashlights barely cutting the darkness as they swept across rocky outcroppings and stalactites. John was busy carving a trail of light into the rock with some gadget or another, marking out the boundary between safe path and bottomless abyss. Somewhere, in the distance, the faint flickering glow of firelight illuminated the depths of the cavern – no doubt that would be their destination, and they needed to get there ASAP.

John’s voice echoed around them, hissing through their cells half a second before it reached them naturally. “Path’s all set. Whatever you do, keep to it! There’s a thirty metre drop if you don’t,”

“So, you guys ready for a bit more exercise?” asked Theseus, the first to leave the relative shelter of the tunnel and step out onto the path of light, his mobile armoury scuttering along in front, as if to test the safety of the path ahead.

“The things we do for the sake of journalism,” said Phoenie as she dragged herself down a set of steps hewn into the rock face. Whether they were natural of the result of human hands she couldn’t guess, but the twisting downward slope was perhaps too convenient to be a natural occurrence.

By the time they’d reached the cavern floor, John had lowed himself from his vantage point and was standing over the sparking, crackling remains of his jetpack, which bore three deep claw-marks through its tough metal casing. Andromeda and Kat were quick to throw their arms around him, while Phoenie stood back and shook his hand when the opportunity presented itself.

“That golem thing was way tougher than it looked,” he explained, “I’d have never expected reactions like that. It was almost like it really could bend the laws of science to its whim…”

“Well whatever it could do, its vaporised now,” said Theseus, clapping his companion on the back, “And we’re lucky you’re crazy prepared, or else you would’ve been splattered over this damn place by now,”

“My old man always taught me to be ready for anything and everything,” said John, laughing nervously at his brush with death. Who could have thought the short, gadget-obsessed boy could do something as heroic as go toe-to-toe with a demon? The girls had a lot of catching up to do if they had any hope of outclassing the boys on this one – with the exception of Joel Gibson, anyway. His blundering could have cost the real heroes their lives, and now he was moping around behind everyone, a useless tag along with a brightly coloured toy weapon strapped to his back.

Chapter 50
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