by A. Lawrence
She'd done a pretty horrible job on both fronts.
"That way." Heln's voice cut through her thoughts. His eyes were still closed, but he was pointing slightly to the left. "Feels different that way. I think. It's really hard to describe or be really precise but it's definitely different that way."
"It's a direction." Rhyss apparently didn't want to discuss the finer points of magical sensing. She turned on her heel and started walking where Heln pointed. If there had ever been a path, it was long gone, though Bel thought she glimpsed the occasional stone in the grass. The undergrowth was still mostly clear and the trees around them were huge. It was slightly terrifying that Bel knew none of them came even close to touching the cavern ceiling. The cave was so immense she swore sometimes she saw clouds. Maybe sometimes it rained.
"You're doing great." Bel told Heln once Rhyss was ahead of them. Heln shrugged a little bit and followed Rhyss.
Bel kept up the rear, trying to not step on Heln's heels. No one was talking and it felt too quiet for her to break the silence. Moving forward was good, at least. She actually felt like they were going the right way for the first time since they'd ended up underground.
Despite that, she wanted to go back to the stones. She missed the tranquility. Under the trees, she felt like someone was following them, though she heard nothing and Rhyss never glanced behind them, so she had to assume she was imagining things.
The side effect to actually having a good imagination was that she could place a lot of things under the trees with them. None of them were good.
Bel realized after an hour of wanting to turn around and make sure nothing was there that it was actually what she was supposed to be doing. Rhyss wasn't looking back, she was focused on keeping them safe from the front.
And so Bel steeled herself, trying to ignore every scenario her mind had ran through, before turning around. There was nothing but trees and darkness behind them, but the uneasy feeling inside of her didn't diminish at all.
She already knew being Guard Trainee wasn't in her future. Maybe no one would get mad if she decided to become a scholar, at the very least she really wouldn't mind studying runes. It was surprisingly proving to be a useful thing to know. If she knew runes maybe they wouldn't have been in this mess.
Maybe she would study runes after this. She had a good memory, after all. It never hurt to have a plethora of background knowledge as an Enforcer, either. Especially if she still wanted to be a detective, like her dad.
Her thoughts weren't nearly distracting enough.
Looking back once had ensured that she kept glancing over her shoulder. She thought she heard something, or saw something, or felt something near the back of her neck, always just a breath away.
"Hey." It felt like it had been an eternity since anyone last spoke and Bel honestly could not take another minute. "Can we take a break and then maybe switch it up? I'm dying back here."
"Literally?" Rhyss sounded a little too hopeful.
"Maybe?" Bel tugged her ponytail over her shoulder. It was stiff with dirt, which was an absolute tragedy, but she didn't want to waste her magic on a cleaning script. At this point she doubted it would do much. "Possibly? And Heln should definitely rest."
"I'm fine." Heln sounded tired, but they all did. "You don't have to baby me."
"You are the baby. You're the youngest."
"And the tallest." Heln used her own words against her. If that wasn't just like a little brother. "As you said."
"You're right, and as the shortest—"
"Oh, maybe by like, absolutely nothing, since my boots have a higher heel than yours, and—"
Bel interrupted Rhyss. "As the shortest with the smallest but nicest legs, I am in need of rest and in setting the pace."
Both of the others groaned, and Bel was pretty sure they rolled their eyes. The status quo was restored. Pretending to be selfish, and admittedly actually being a little selfish, was so much easier when she wanted to be nice.
*~*~*
After the shortest break they could possibly have, they were moving forward again. Bel didn't feel like she had to look behind her every second, but being in front was almost as bad.
It didn't help that it was much darker close to the wall. Even with two illumination bubbles it was dim. Here, the trees crowded close, most of them skeletally bare. A pale white mist flowed over the ground, obscuring tree roots and dips in the moss. The damp made everything stink like rot and death and her boots squelched unpleasantly with every step. If Bel hadn't felt like they were going the right way, she would have insisted that they turn around.
"I don't like this." Her voice sounded too loud and too small at the same time.
It had been quiet before, but now the only sounds were their movement and the occasional drip from somewhere in the trees. Silence pressed in her ears and it felt like the moisture in the air was crawling on her skin.
"Just keep moving." Rhyss sounded confident, but when she glanced back at her, she was looking uneasily at the trees.
"I'm with Bel. This part of the forest is obviously dead and that can't be a good thing," Heln said after a few minutes. "I… I think I made a mistake. I must have just felt the difference in the trees. I mean, they're alive everywhere else, they have magic, but here they don't, so…"
"Let's just get to the wall." Rhyss didn't sound completely convinced of her own plan. "If it looks bad we'll just follow the wall to the real exit, or back to the entrance, but if we turn around now we won't have a choice, we'll have to go back to the center. It's gross and… and I don't like it, either, but we have to try."
"I guess." Bel was technically in the lead, and she could decide they should turn around any time. Except, that kind of thinking wasn't what they'd agreed to as a group. "I just think…"
She had turned her head to the side just for a second to listen to Rhyss, and when she turned back there was someone standing in front of her. Bel screeched and threw herself back. Heln caught her by the arms and she flailed for a moment before she realized it wasn't a person at all.
"I knew that was a statue." She looked up at Heln.
"Uh huh." Heln clearly believed her.
"I wasn't scared."
"Right. Get up or I'll drop you."
It took some shuffling but Bel got back on her feet and no one was dropped in a pile of long rotted leaves. Rhyss was already inspecting the statue.
Bel rubbed her chest. Her heart had pounded so hard it actually hurt. She had thought she understood what the phrase 'frightened half to death' meant, but she hadn't, not until that very moment. "Who? Who puts a creepy statue in the middle of a bunch of dead trees? Huh? That's just wrong. Ugh. I hate this place."
"I thought you weren't scared." Heln gave her a bit of a grin. "Impressive bit of screaming there, by the way."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure anything that didn't know we were here definitely knows we are now, so we should get a move on," Rhyss muttered, but she didn't move away from the statue.
"So, who in Eleti's name is so important that she has a statue in the worst place in the world?" Bel asked. The statue itself actually wasn't that creepy. It looked like it might have been painted once, but now it was mostly smooth, white stone. There were some dark spots on it, lichen and rot spreading across the stone, but the face was clear. It was a person in full battle armor, their expression determined as they looked out onto the forest. Despite the short hair of the statue, Bel got the distinct feeling it was supposed to be a woman. She had a sword in one hand and her other held a helmet against her hip.
"Well." Rhyss gestured to the writing at the base of the statue. "I don't think it's just Eleti's name. I think this is supposed to be Eleti herself."
"Nah," Bel said, but it was an automatic response, arguing with Rhyss. "She's supposed to have like… a dress."
"We all know that the depictions in any illustration of Eleti are grossly inaccurate." Heln was referencing of course the beautiful figure of Eleti standing in a dark field, shining
with white light, from her pale blue hair to her long, flowing white dress. "Eleti was a war general so… this… makes more sense."
"Hmph." Bel knew he was right. After all, they'd taken the same history class. It was one thing that anyone who had even the most basic understanding of history agreed on — Eleti probably didn't look like any artistic interpretation of her, but no one actually knew what she looked like, and she had been dead for a thousand years, so no harm was really done by the image. "Well, one mystery down, Heln. Now we know what the bringer of magic looks like so that's neat. Not that anyone will believe us. It's like having a secret club."
"It's not like that at all." Rhyss straightened. "There's a door behind the statue, by the way."
Bel hadn't even realized they'd reached the wall, but there it was, rising sharply into darkness. Rhyss pointed to a stone door that was blooming with mold and nearly completely encompassed by dead, blackened vines. "Bel, I'm probably going to need your help to get it open."
"In case you missed it, my specialty happens to be barriers."
"Yes, but you can still help me."
Bel took one last look at the statue's stern face. She looked so distant and cold, nothing at all like any other statue of Eleti that Bel had ever seen. The actual Eleti was probably buried somewhere above them, enshrined at the Temple. Maybe even directly above them.
She shuddered and hurried over to help Rhyss.
The vines were easy to remove, but slimy, falling apart like overcooked noodles. Bel grimaced and wiped her hands on her already filthy pants, looking at their handiwork.
The door was either made of darker stone than the rest of the cavern or it had been completely ravaged by decay. It was simple and crude. It had been carved with magical script, though some of them obscured by mold and moss. The clear ones were all sealing script.
"How active is this script?" Rhyss asked.
Heln put a hand to the door, disregarding anything actually on the door. Bel tried to not make a face. Clearly, she didn't succeed, judging by the expression Rhyss gave her in return.
"It's sort of like the tunnels, script layered on script. Whoever put this up really didn't want this door coming down. It wasn't the same people as the other tunnels, that's… that's strange." Heln frowned, moving his hand away. "It's weaker than the tunnels, I think whatever is killing the trees could be causing it, but I honestly don't really know."
"Not clairvoyant, we know." Bel nodded.
"All I want to know is if I can break it down."
Heln stared at Rhyss. "I think so? But I don't know if you want to. Whatever is causing all of this could be on the other side of this door and it's probably dampened by the seals, but it could be a really, really bad idea. It could be another magic eater. Actually, it could be something worse."
"What could be worse?"
Heln actually cracked a smile. "You in the morning."
"Rude, but true, I'm probably much deadlier."
Rhyss looked steadily less patient by the second. "Right. Bel, pay attention, if I unseal the door, can you redo the seals?"
"Give me a minute and I can tell you." Bel focused on the magical script, what they were doing, rather than the mold and rot, or the way it looked like the door was really more of a roughhewn slab that had been shoved into a hole as quickly as possible. That had been probably hundreds of years ago, anyway, and if anything was on the other side of the door, it was a skeleton at best.
The scripts were all ones that she'd covered in class and in her readings, though she'd never actually worked with them herself. Sealing magic ranged from the very simple, things like preservation script on food jars, to the very complicated, typically used on family tombs of the rich and not particularly fiscally aware. This was somewhere between the two, like someone had slapped it on and hoped it held.
No wonder it was falling apart.
Supposedly sealing scripts were once used against things that went bump in the night, but she'd only read about that. The only threat to Ihale City were the things in the forest, old war machines and magically altered creatures. No one had used a sealing script on anything in living memory.
"I'm pretty sure I've got this." She must have sounded more confident than she felt because Rhyss nodded and slammed the pommel of her dagger into the door. It let out a soft, echoing boom.
The door fell into the tunnel with a much louder sound. Dust rushed over them and Bel threw up her arms to guard her face against it.
The air settled and the dust did, too. The door had broken in two when it fell, the upper righthand corner lying a good foot away from the rest of it.
"Well, now I'm not so sure." She looked at Rhyss. "Think that could have been any louder? And you were yelling at me? Honestly."
"Shut up." Rhyss was absolutely coated in gray dust and looked like her own vengeful ghost.
Beyond the door it was pitch black. Bel sent her bubble of magic light forward, slowly. It lit up a tunnel like the ones they had left, but this one had been better sealed. There were no tree roots or moss, just bare stretches of walls between crude pillars. The mist trickled in across the floor, spreading out like a blanket.
She felt strangely excited.
"Ladies first." Heln offered.
"Guard Trainees first." Bel grinned at Rhyss, who glared at her but took the lead.
Chapter Thirteen
Heln did not like the new tunnel.
Not that he had cared for the other ones, but they had at least had some sign of life. The new one was all dust and stale, flat air. If the other parts of the cave had some sort of sentience then this was where it was dying. The sealing scripts felt old and slightly faded, underneath those it felt more like the rest of the ruins. He even thought he recognized some of the magical signatures, like faded pictures of people that died long before he was born. "I think this tunnel was resealed."
"What gave you your first clue?" Bel huffed a bit. They had abandoned walking single file. The tunnel was more than wide enough for all three of them. "Was it the weird door? The statue? The writing on the wall that said 'and ye that breaketh the door shall unleasheth a great evil uponeth the world'?"
"It didn't say that." Rhyss glared at her around Heln.
"Oh really? Well, it probably should have."
"I don't even think half of what you said were real words."
"Well, maybe they should be."
"Look I'm sorry I broke the door, okay? I didn't mean to." Rhyss didn't look at all sorry. "I thought that the seals would be stronger so I may have overdone it a little bit."
"Wow, Rhyss, and you're usually so reserved." Heln nearly tripped when she almost smiled at that. "It's done, Bel, we just have to… hope this is the right way. And if it's not then I'm very sorry."
"Well, it's not your fault." Bel folded her arms. "It's not actually anyone's fault. Probably. I just… I feel like this is the right way, but I have a bad feeling, too. It's just, y'know, sealing scripts are usually set in place for a reason. Usually the reason is preservation these days but… oh man, oh man what if there are dead bodies down here? I have dealt with enough. I am not dealing with dead bodies. Or the undead. Especially not the undead."
"Well, how about you practice being quiet just in case of zombies?" Rhyss did smile this time, but in a way that made Heln wish they were walking single file again. He preferred being behind her, where it was much harder for her to hit him or something else equally unpleasant to happen.
"Okay, first off, zombies are fictional. Flesh constructs, however aren't! Those are a thing! Second of all, me talking after you knocked a stone door down is really what's going to get us killed." Bel gestured wildly with her hands. "Third, I think they'd hunt by scent, not by sound, so it doesn't matter how loud I am, we're the only tasty morsels down here."
"Please let that go."
"Oh, like you let the door go?"
"I apologized for that."
"You did, so now don't tell me I can't talk."
Heln decided
to ignore the continued flirting between them and extended his senses instead. Anything he could find in here would provide both more vital and more interesting information to him. He doubted that there was any variety of undead in the tunnels, but it wouldn't hurt to be prepared for anything. There was so much magic, it was hard to pinpoint one particular thing. The illumination bubbles stood out because they were new, warm and calming. Bel's signature was familiar and Rhyss's was much gentler than she was. His light stick still felt like his dad's magic and so did Bel's crystal. Rhyss's guard plate was a bare trace of magic in comparison. He yanked his awareness away from them.
Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. As far as he could tell, so at least there was one good thing. It was possible they were too far away from whoever or whatever had sent them in the first place. Especially if Bel's theory was right. The cavern with the trees had been enormous, and they were deeper than they had been at any other point, he could feel it, like every ounce of dirt above them was pressing against his awareness.
Something touched his shoulder and he yelped and stepped back into Rhyss, who pushed him forward again. He stayed on his feet, somehow, but it was a close thing.
Bel snatched her hand back, her eyes wide. "Sorry. I was just going to ask if you felt anything."
"No, it's okay." He shook his head like he was trying to clear cobwebs. His brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton from the cocoon of magic around them. "I was… well, actually I don't sense anything. There's just too much magic, it's like… trying to see in thick fog."
Rhyss and Bel nodded like they understood, but Heln used to live next to a river in the industry sector. Whenever the wind had changed direction, the steam and smoke from the factories would drift sluggishly through the streets, turning the world into a muted, ghostly wonderland of milky-white. He'd had to wear a cloth over his face when that happened. Just stepping into it had meant that every part of him was damp almost instantly.