TWO #2
She shifted the muscles in her back as it itched uncomfortably beneath her pack, trying to ignore the lick of pain that tingled up her spine.
Silas caught the movement and raised a brow at her.
He looked like he might comment, but didn’t, to which she was grateful.
Amelia would be ashamed to convey any weakness in front of him.
They were forced to stop before a collapsed wall which blocked their path again. Amelia sighed deeply and took a seat to catch her breath and pull out her water.
Silas stood before the wall, hands on his hips and tilting his head to the side, huffing out a frustrated noise. He walked several paces away, scrutinising crevices as he went. He turned back to Amelia and pointed. “There’s a gap here. I think we could squeeze through.”
Amelia capped her water and shoved it away before standing. She strode over to the gap he had spoken of and peered in before wrinkling her nose. She turned back to him and gave him a once over. “I suppose you’re scrawny enough, but we won’t fit with our packs on.”
She fought back a smile at the affronted look on his face.
“Uh-huh,” was all he said before he pulled his backpack from his shoulders and started to shimmy his way into the small, tilted opening between walls, pushing his gear in front of him.
She swallowed uneasily as she watched him struggle to shuffle through the gap, grunting and using his hands to pull himself further in when needed. He shifted his head to glance back at her. “You coming, Winslow? Or are you going to leave the temple for me to discover?”
She pursed her lips.
The ass knew exactly how to bait her into coming after him.
Amelia took another deep breath before squeezing into the gap.
It was tight in a way that took her breath away, and sent her limbs scrambling, trying to make it through as fast as she could.
Too soon, she caught up to Silas, who was moving with greater care than she was, and she felt the panic rise in her chest.
She felt closed in. Controlled by her surroundings.
Trapped .
Her breathing turned shallow as she was forced to stop.
“Can you hurry it along,” Amelia said, feeling her heart throbbing in her throat as their arms brushed against each other.
She was not a stranger to bouts of panic, but it had never happened in front of him . And she would be damned sure it never would.
Breathe in.
Out.
If he would just move faster .
She gave him another nudge with her shoulder.
Silas looked back at her. His blue eyes searched her face for a moment before glancing down at where their arms touched. A small smile broke across his face. “Well, Winslow,” he said, “I always suspected you wanted to be closer to me, but this is a little excessive.”
Amelia rolled her eyes and pushed harder at his shoulder. “Shut up and keep moving.”
Silas continued forwards, but still managed to send her a smirk. “You know, I believe I read somewhere that prolonged exposure and proximity between individuals increases attraction towards one another.”
Amelia shifted along the rock wall behind him, her anger helping to quell some of her panic as she quipped back, “and I read somewhere that strangling a colleague may be legally justifiable in certain circumstances.”
Silas chuckled and then he was turning his body as the gap in the wall widened, and he stepped out into a clearing. He turned back to her. “No need for violence, Winslow. I promise that if you die in here, I’ll let you take all the credit for discovering the temple first.”
Amelia felt an immediate sense of relief as she was freed. She stood briefly, head tipped back, taking in a deep breath. When she had gathered herself, she found Silas watching her with a strange expression. Almost curious, penetrative, his eyes searching her face.
She frowned at him. “What?”
A small tilt to his lips had him looking like his usual self once again. “I’ll even have them write it on your tombstone,” he said with a wicked grin. “I do know how you love taking credit where it isn’t at all due.”
Amelia ignored him, brushing past him to where a large series of steps lead to the temple, intent on being the first to enter the ancient building.
It wasn’t until she neared the top step, breathless and sweaty, that she noticed it. The pulsing of something in the air that Amelia could feel inside her chest, could taste on her tongue. It was an otherness, something unnatural that seemed to breathe around them.
It was magic.
She swallowed as Silas caught up to her and they stood shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the gaping hole that must once have been a grand entrance to the temple before them.
“Do you feel that?” she asked quietly.
“Our undeniable chemistry?” Silas said, but his voice held none if its usual humour. He slid her a glance. “You must stop hitting on me, Winslow, it’s getting sad.”
She bit back a smile and shook her head at him. His ability to draw on humour even in such circumstances was beyond her, a trait that had always been out of her reach.
Amelia set her gaze back to the entrance and steadied herself. Gripping onto the straps of her backpack, she started forwards. Silas followed her, both of them alert to the pulsing of magic growing stronger.
Uncovering a new source of magic, one that might not belong to the Monoliths, would be the greatest coup in her lifetime and likely even beyond that. Magic, the one they had known for hundreds of years, was unravelling, and it was slowly consuming sections of their once beautiful landscapes.
Finding a way to stop the decay in the magic and the blight over the land was the highest priority among scientists and scholars all over Aethrial.
If she… they , were to discover a new source of magic, they may have a way to combat the growing darkness of the Rift, to stabilise their connection to the arcane and find a way to save them all.
They stopped just before the entrance, staring into the deep, dark cavern of the inner temple. It was an all-consuming darkness beyond, Amelia squinting to see beyond the two columns she could identify just inside.
She was terrified, yet her foot started forwards, eagerness for discovery compelling her.
A firm grip on her upper arm stopped her and Amelia turned to see Silas frowning into the dark opening of the temple.
“Wait, you utter moron,” he muttered, before he let her go.
He shrugged off his pack and knelt to the floor.
Amelia scowled at the top of his head as he rifled around and pulled out a small arcane lamp.
The soft golden glow washed around them as he stood and held it up, before sending her a dry look.
“Did you not consider for a moment where Rift Crawlers might dwell when the sun is out?”
Her mouth opened, a new fear injecting through her.
“I…I suppose I—”
“Didn’t think,” he finished for her, stepping past Amelia to head inside. “Always moving with your sheer competitiveness instead of using your head.”
She gripped the straps of her pack and glared at his back as he led them into the temple. Silas would never understand what truly drove her ambition. He would guess that it was all about him, the competitiveness between them, the arrogant man that he was.
They moved slowly, Silas holding the lamp high, inspecting the entrance walls and columns for any signs of the Gemino Tribe.
The pulsing magic became thick, as though dampening the dry air of the desert.
“Where do you think it’s originating?” she asked quietly.
“I couldn’t say, but it’s making me feel jittery,” Silas said in an equally soft voice.
Amelia looked at him, surprised. She was so used to the snarky comments and sarcastic smirks that a true statement of feeling was as odd as the magic she felt around her.
“There must be a source here, in this temple,” Amelia mused, bypassing the odd moment. “It’s getting stronger as we move deeper. If it isn’t the Monolith’s power…there must be a secondary source we aren’t aware of.” Her own voice sounded awed and excited to her own ears.
“Mm,” he agreed softly. “That would be something.”
“It could be dangerous to get too close, as it is with the Monoliths.”
“Yes, let’s be wary.”
“I am wary,” Amelia said indignantly. A rattling noise made her jump and pause, heart spiking in her chest, only for her to realise she had kicked a loose rock and it had ricocheted off the temple wall noisily.
“As you should be,” Silas said with humoured scorn.
“I don’t need you to tell me to be careful.”
“Oh?” he said, pausing in front of what might have once been a large painting across a stone wall.
There were hints of colour swirled around, and perhaps a hand that Amelia could see, though the rest of the art was lost to time.
She looked at it sadly. “Was that not you about to plough in here with absolutely no sense of self-preservation?”
Amelia turned from the wall and kept moving, forcing Silas to join her with the lamp. He strode quickly past her, keeping the lighting raised to guide them.
“I let my eagerness blind me for a mere moment,” Amelia admitted begrudgingly, “but shall I remind you of the time you raced me into that cave in the Shadowlands?”
“I didn’t race you, Winslow. I take longer strides than you, and it happened to aid me in beating you to our destination.”
“Well, your longer strides had you entering that cave with little thought, and tell me…what was it you found?”
Silas turned to face her, taking small steps backwards as he held the lamp between them. Amelia squinted against the light directly in her face. “Yes, yes, I came across a bear. An unfortunate outcome, but—”
Amelia gasped, heart in her throat as she saw the crumbling stone floor giving way into a deep hole directly behind Silas’s slowly shuffling footsteps.
“Finley!” Her hands shot out, grabbing for his raised arm holding the lamp.
At the same moment, his heel found the gaping hole and his balance became compromised, a look of terrified surprise morphing his features in the glowing light.
Amelia’s hand swiped at his hanging sleeve, while the other managed to take hold of his extended wrist. His body shifted worryingly backwards, but her hold on him was firm.
She took a lunging step back and pulled him with her.
Silas stumbled forwards, the lamp falling from his fingers to clatter noisily to the floor as he regained his balance, his own hands shooting out to take her shoulders.
The lamp flickered worryingly at their feet, making their surroundings jump in and out of focus. They both breathed heavily into the thick air of the temple as the light pulsed on and off before it decided to remain, their safe perimeter of light returning.
His grip on her shoulders was tight, and her hand still circled his wrist firmly. The blue of his eyes seemed brighter, even in the darkness, as Silas stared at her with a heaving chest.
She blew out a rough breath. “What was it you were saying about self-preservation?”
His face relaxed at her words, a smirk returning as he shook his head at her and stepped to the side, hands sliding away from her shoulders. He turned to observe the hole he had almost tumbled into. “Truly, right now I’m wondering how either of us have survived our occupations so far.”
Amelia bent to retrieve the lamp and checked the runed crystal inside. It looked unharmed, but the flickering had worried her. She handed it back to Silas. “I have a spare crystal if we run into trouble.”
He nodded, taking the lamp. Together they moved forwards carefully and inspected the chasm in the floor. It spanned across the entire walkway, blocking their path. Silas knelt before the opening and tried to shine the light into the cavernous hole, but there didn’t seem to be a visible bottom.
“Hmm,” he hummed as he stood and took several steps away from the danger. “We may have to find another way around.”
Amelia sighed. “I’ve seen no other doorways or openings on our way through.” She would be crushed for this to be the end of today’s exploring.
Silas looked back at the gap, lips twisted to the side in thought. “It might only be two or three metres. We could jump?”
Amelia rolled her eyes and shoved a piece of her dark hair away from her face. “Are we already going to start again on self-preservation, because that is not jumpable.” She gestured irritatingly at the large hole, knowing very well it was more than three metres straight across.
“Oh, Winslow,” he teased with a grin, “where’s the sense of adventure?”
A deep rumble echoed around the temple, resonating in her ears. Amelia held her breath as she glanced worriedly up at the high ceiling of the temple hallway, seeing trickles of dust being dislodged as the ground began to tremble beneath her feet.
They were far from the entrance, and she suddenly felt the urge to retreat, the fear of being buried under collapsed temple walls filling her mind.
“We should go,” he said quickly, mirroring her inner thoughts.
Amelia swallowed and nodded, but before they could move a single step back in the direction they had come, the ground shifted with a lurch, sending her careening to the side.
Her shoulder hit the wall forcefully, before she fell to her hands and knees, unable to regain stability with the rocking of the stone floor.
The floor began to crumble at the edges of the wide chasm, large slabs of rock breaking away with a resounding cracking noise and falling heavily into the deep darkness of the hole.
A piece broke off right next to her splayed fingers and Amelia whimpered in fear.
She started to shuffle away from the opening hastily.
Hands took her under her arms, hauling Amelia to her feet.
Silas was yelling in her ear, but fear morphed the noise into something nonsensical.
She stumbled against him at the force of the quake, and then with a piercing scream, the stones gave way beneath her feet, and she tumbled down, down, down…
Until darkness was all around, consuming her.