Chapter Thirty-Five
The shadows dance down the stairs beyond the door, vanishing after a couple dozen steps into inky darkness.
“I can’t see what’s down there,” I say. The feeling is alarming. I’ve been able to see in total darkness for years. What I can see is not always detailed, but I should be able to see the steps and walls, at least.
“I’ll go first,” says Ronan, leading the way with the torch.
We descend the steps slowly, the air cooling and shifting as we delve deeper into the earth. I look back once we’re ten steps down, and I can’t see the doorway behind us either.
Is my magic not working? I reach out with my shadow tendrils, and they form without issue. If anything, they’re stronger here, easier to summon, splitting without being forced or requiring me to pull on Ronan’s magic.
“Everything alright?” asks Ronan as I touch his arm with a tendril.
“Just testing.”
Quinn ignites a flame on her fingertip, and Seth lights a larger flame in his palm. “Show off,” she mutters as both of their flames extinguish once they’re out of the torchlight.
Ronan sends forth an orb of light into the darkness, but it, too, goes out the moment it’s outside of the torch’s range.
“So the torch is the only thing that can cut through this darkness,” I say.
“We’ll have to stay close,” says Ronan, pulling me to him by the waist.
“Great,” says Seth. “Just great.”
At the bottom of the stairs is a large, open chamber similar to the one we came from, only this one is made up of walls of stacked stone with a tiled stone floor.
“Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” asks Quinn.
She’s right. The temperature is much higher in here than in the stairway, which seems strange given that there doesn’t appear to be anything in the room at all.
“Well, there’s only one way forward,” says Seth, stepping out onto the tile floor.
The tile shatters the moment his foot touches it.
“Seth!” I drop the sickle and rush forward as he stumbles, trying to right himself. His legs slip, but I catch him by the chest, yanking him backward.
Ronan drops the torch and pulls me back to him, the three of us falling back to the floor in a heap.
Then the torch flickers out.
“Hello? Are you still there?” calls Quinn.
“Quinn, don’t move. The floor can’t hold our weight.” I untangle myself from Ronan and Seth. Then they help me up—ironically, thanks to years of relying on my gift, I’m more disoriented than anyone in the darkness.
“I’m by the hole Seth opened for us with his body,” says Quinn. “It’s a long way down. And I think that’s fire at the bottom?”
“Keep away from it,” says Ronan, pulling me along towards her voice. I reach out a hand to Seth, who grumbles but takes it. When we get within a foot of the hole in the floor, I can see a faint glow deep down.
“That’s not fire,” says Seth. “It’s lava.”
“I see what they were saying with the ‘all shall perish’ thing,” says Quinn. “Whoever made this really didn’t want anyone to come here.”
Behind us, the torch flickers back to life and then extinguishes again. Ronan approaches it, leading the four of us in a chain so he can retrieve it.
“It’s trying to work, but something is fighting it.”
“It’s this room,” I say. “This magical darkness that I can’t see through.” I’m not certain how I know it, but it feels right as I say it. I reach down, using the flickering light to find the sickle. “We have to get through here before it extinguishes the torch for good.”
“I say we run for it,” says Seth. “If we go fast enough over the floor, we could make it before it collapses.”
Quinn taps her cane. “I guess this is where my journey ends.”
“Wait,” I say. I approach the tiles again. There are symbols carved into them. In the remaining four tiles in the first row, there are four symbols, all different. “A moon, a sun, a triangle with a bar in it. A triangle without a bar.”
“Alchemical symbols. The schools of magic,” says Seth.
Ronan extends his hand, holding the torch out until the next part of the floor is visible. “It’s a puzzle. The symbols must make a path.”
“But which ones do we follow?” I ask.
“My time to shine,” says Seth. He directs Ronan to point the torch in varying directions, illuminating as many tiles as we can reach. “There are two possibilities from this point, assuming we follow one set of symbols only. Suns or moons both lead forward.”
“Suns make the most sense,” I say. “Light in darkness.”
“Hold my hips,” says Seth, leaning forward.
I yank him back. “No! I barely got you the last time.”
“I’ve got an idea,” says Quinn. She steps forward with her cane and presses it down onto the first sun tile.
It shatters.
“Not suns,” she says.
“Moons it is,” says Ronan. “Shadow magic. The door said Seven aspects.”
“Seven types of magic. Seven traps,” says Seth, as if it were completely obvious, and the rest of us are fools for only now realizing it. “Let’s go.”
Quinn shoves him back. “I’m going first.”
“Suit yourself.”
Quinn presses her cane into the first moon tile, and we all hold our breath as she pushes harder and harder.
“There’s our answer.”
We inch forward across the room, Quinn testing a tile and then the rest of us trailing closely behind her. The further we go, the more the torch gutters.
“We’ve got to go faster,” I say. “If the torch goes out, we’ll be stuck going on feel alone.”
Seth pushes forward. “We know the pattern. Stick to the moons, stay close enough so we can see.” He steps out onto the next moon tile alone, and it holds.
“How long do you think it goes for?” asks Quinn as we follow him.
“No idea. I still can’t see the—ahh!”
Seth’s foot breaks through a tile. Ronan grabs him by the wrist and pulls him back, but he collides into Quinn, who stumbles to the side, shattering a tile with the vessel symbol of nature magic. I grab her arm and pull her onto my moon tile.
“That was a moon!” says Seth. “I swear it.”
“You should have let me lead,” snaps Quinn, navigating the empty spaces to get back to him. Everywhere the floor shatters, heat rises. Sweat drips down my neck as I crowd next to Ronan.
“How was I supposed to know the pattern would change?”
“What are our options now? If we break too many more tiles, I don’t know if I can stand the heat,” I say.
“Too bad we don’t have Taran. I’m so thirsty,” says Quinn, wiping the back of her neck.
“Sun, triangle, upside-down triangle.”
“Triangle—that’s fire. There’s fire down there,” reasons Quinn, pressing it with her cane.
It shatters.
“Nope.”
Water, the upside-down triangle, is also incorrect, leaving only one tile remaining: the sun tile.
“I’m leading now,” says Quinn with finality. “Stay close, but do not get ahead of me.”
“Yes, your majesty,” says Seth.
We cross several more rows without incident, the sun tiles holding our weight, before the torch flickers out for good, plunging us into total darkness.
I squeeze Ronan’s hand to confirm he’s still with me. “It’s alright,” he whispers. “We’re almost there.”
He has absolutely no way of knowing that, but I appreciate his optimism.
“Great,” says Seth. He tries his fire magic, but it extinguishes immediately, and the dim light from the broken tiles isn’t enough for us to see the way forward.
“Not a problem,” says Quinn. “You can still hear me, right? Follow my voice.” She taps on a tile in front of her, but it shatters.
“There are only three choices from a given tile. Front, left, or right. One of them has to work. And think of this—once we have the path, we’ll just follow it back out. ”
I smile. Quinn is having fun, and her fun is always contagious. “I’m glad you have that cane,” I say.
“You know what? For the first time, me too.”
We cross several more rows this way, the air heating with our failures, but otherwise, there doesn’t seem to be any danger.
“I see the end!” says Quinn.
We follow her off the tile floor onto a dirt path beyond it. The moment that we leave the tile, the torch reignites.
“That wasn’t so bad,” says Ronan. “At least the puzzle was fair.”
“Changing from shadow to light halfway through was pretty cheap,” says Seth.
Light and shadow. Julia and Leander. Ronan and me.
We’re certainly in the right place.
“Where do we go from here, though?” says Quinn.
Ronan shines the torch around the chamber. The walls are the same as the tiled area, but there’s no obvious way forward. No door in the back wall like I’d expected.
“Probably another latch,” says Seth, approaching the wall and feeling around the stones.
“Or maybe a hidden button,” says Quinn.
“There,” I say, pointing to a stone near the middle of the wall. It has a symbol carved into it—an upside-down triangle with a line near the bottom.
Earth magic.
“Damn, we should have brought Larus,” says Seth. “Maybe we need one of everyone to continue.”
“My shadow magic wasn’t any good in the last room. What if we just try—” I press on the stone, and the sand collapses beneath us, sending us plunging below.