Birthright (The Technomage Archive, Book 1)
Page 53
Chapter Twenty-five
Ceril’s first thought was that he had gone blind. His second was how much his whole body tingled, like he was just waking up from a lengthy nap and had to get his blood circulating again.
“Saryn? Chuckie?” he asked aloud and got no answer. “You there?”
He quickly Conjured a light in the palm of his hand to see if his vision really was gone. It wasn’t. Wherever he was, there was simply no light anywhere. He extended the Conjuring, until he wore it on both hands like gloves made of light.
He was in no pain, so he picked himself up and tested his arms and legs.
Good. They all moved.
He remembered walking along…and then…falling? The ground must have given way beneath him as he walked. The ruins of Meshin were apparently in worse shape than they looked. He hoped that Saryn and Chuckie were okay.
He looked around, and all he could see was rubble; a dome of dirt and stone surrounded him, and he knew that he was lucky in that none of the bigger stones had landed on top of him. In fact, they had fallen so perfectly that he actually had enough room to sit up and move around, but not to stand completely. He could see purple dust floating in the air, especially around his hands. His Conjured breather would protect his lungs from the irritants, but not his eyes, so he Conjured a protective coating for his eyeballs.
He had to get out of there. His air would eventually run out, and he had to find out about the rest of his team. Chuckie was tough; he could take care of himself. But Ceril’s heart began to beat a little faster when he thought about Saryn falling through the ground the way he had. She wasn’t trained like Chuckie was. He had to make sure she was okay.
At the far end of the rubble dome, Ceril noticed a gap between stones that was slightly wider than the rest of the barrier. It was a potential way out. He lay on his back and kicked at the stone that partially blocked the opening, careful to place his force so that he would not topple the larger blocks above him.
A smile crossed his face as he did so. The concept he was using to free himself was not very different from a game that he and Gramps used to play. His grandfather had stacked different sizes of blocks in a tower a couple of feet high, and they would get points for pulling them out of the tower without making it topple. Larger blocks were worth more points, but were generally more dangerous to remove. Ceril loved the game, even though he had never been terribly good at it. He always wanted the high-point blocks even though they typically supported too much weight to be removed. He was always the reason Gramps had to rebuild the tower.
In his current situation, if he toppled the tower, he would do more than lose the game.
He carefully kicked the block to create an opening just big enough for him to squeeze through. He removed his pack and pushed himself through the tiny opening. Once Ceril was on the other side of the rubble, he carefully snaked his arm back through to grab his pack.
Even though he had spent very little time in the cramped little chamber, being able to stand up straight and stretch out was ecstasy. Once he had enjoyed just standing upright for a moment, Ceril called out to his friends again.
And once again, he got no response. He looked around, and he saw purple light above him. That must be the hole he had fallen through. He was too far below, however, for the sunlight to illuminate anything but dust particles in the air. Ceril boggled for a moment on how he had survived a fall from that height, but he pushed the thought from his mind. There would be time to dwell on that later.
The opening was way too high for any hope of climbing out, so Ceril had to make a choice: either he could wait for his friends to rescue him, or he could explore the chamber he had fallen into and try to find his own way out.
He opted for exploration, as there was no indication that Saryn and Chuckie were able to stage a rescue. The darkness around him was oppressive, but his Conjured light-gloves illuminated a decent radius around him. The ground, he noticed for the first time, wasn’t a typical cave floor. It was tiled with octagonal blocks, each containing a single symbol.
Ceril's brow furrowed as he knelt down to investigate the tiles. He traced his fingers along their edges and the symbols. He didn’t recognize the runes, but they felt familiar to him somehow. The tiles were not embossed or engraved, but completely smooth. Their most striking quality, though, was their color: the tiles were golden and the symbols were shiny silver. Not purple. Nothing was purple in here except for the dust and rubble that fell from above.
In a world that had been so permeated by a single color, its absence was shocking. He crawled along, looking at the tiles. Each one was decorated with a different symbol. He crawled for a while, and he never found even one that repeated.
Even more interesting than that, the symbols were not on the tower above, and therefore, not a part of the Jaronya’s Text. He could see no relationship to modern Erlonian scripts, nor ancient, nor any other languages he had researched. Intriguing, he thought and his heart raced as his mind raced with possible explanations.
Ceril stood up and secured his pack. He chose a direction at random and began walking. He soon came to a wall, golden like the floor, but not made of tiles. It was blank except for a silver strip that ran horizontally in two directions. Ceril chose to follow it to the left.