With no good reason to keep holding hands, Jake let Marika’s go. He pointed to a broken archway to his left. “Looks like there’s an entrance over there.”

They set off along the curve of the wall. Large sections had caved in; others had been blackened by ancient fires.

“The storm didn’t do this,” Marika said.

Jake agreed. “Looks like a war was fought here.”

At the archway, massive wooden doors had been shattered into splinters. Jake swore he could hear that ancient blast even now. The three of them picked their way through the rubble and found the city in no better shape.

A central street cut across the ruins, but only a few homes and structures had escaped damage. Wreckage filled entire blocks. Some buildings were nothing but burned shells. But worst of all were the skeletons, sprawled where people fell, the cause of death plain: crushed or missing skulls, broken limbs, rib cages still pierced by spears. One courtyard was filled only with human teeth.

Aghast at the horror, no one spoke, and their pace quickened. Jake tried to understand the slaughter here. How could his beautiful mother have played any part in this?

At last, they reached the city’s central square. Bathed in bright moonlight, it was as large as ten city blocks, centered on the stepped pyramid. The city’s temple rose in ten giant tiers. Near the top was a circular opening similar to that of the pyramid in Calypsos. If the third timestone was still in the city, Jake was sure it would be found inside.

Still, the pyramid failed to hold Jake’s full attention. Instead he stared at the battle being waged at the foot of the temple. It was frozen in stone, like a life-sized diorama. Warriors from a mix of Egyptian and other tribes guarded the foot of the stairs leading to the pyramid’s entrance. It was plainly a desperate last stand. Many other warriors littered the square, crushed or torn apart.

Only yards from the pyramid, a massive creature—also stone—stood reared up on two legs, wings spread as wide as half a soccer field. Its long neck ended at an anvil-shaped head with a long crocodilian snout. Its massive jaws screamed at the skies as if summoning forth the storm to help it do battle.

“What is it?” Marika asked.

Jake knew but couldn’t speak for a moment. He’d seen this creature before, both in the fossil record and as a living specimen racing over the treetops of the Sacred Woods of Calypsos. It was the monster of all winged dinosaurs, the pteranodon. When last he’d seen such a creature, the beast had been armored in shadows and ridden by the Skull King. It seemed impossible for it to be here, centuries in the past, but Jake knew it to be the same beast.

He turned to Marika and choked out the impossible words. “That’s the Skull King’s mount!”

The confusion in Marika’s face changed to disbelief.

But Jake knew it to be true. Back in Calypsos, he had stared into the beast’s eyes. Though hardened now into a pair of black diamonds, they were the same. Stone or not, they still opened into a bottomless well of flowing blood and tortured cries. He could never forget such a sight.