THREE
“Winslow!”
Pain.
It coursed through her body. Inside her bones.
Am I dead?
The question made her eyes fly open, only to clench them shut at the bright light that burned in front of her face.
“Ugh,” she moaned.
A soft sigh from next to her before the brightness seemed to dissipate slightly. Blinking her eyes open again, she found Silas kneeling beside her.
There was a dark smudge across one side of his face, and it took her a few bleary moments before she realised it was blood, smeared across his skin, from his temple to his chin. That was when she remembered the hole, the earthquake, falling…
Amelia pushed herself to sit quickly, causing a rush of dizziness to overcome her. She moaned and brought her hands up to her head.
“Careful, Winslow,” Silas said from next to her, “I think you hit your head pretty bad on the way down.”
Amelia quietly assessed herself. She moved her legs, and then her arms before stretching her neck from side to side. Her head pounded, and she seemed to have acquired a few bumps and bruises, but she otherwise felt no major damage to her body. She looked at the deep gash on his temple.
“You’re hurt,” Amelia said, rather stupidly.
He touched briefly where she looked, flinching slightly as his fingers came away red and nodded. “Just a little. Nothing to be concerned with.”
She looked around to find them in the centre of a cavernous hall.
It was poorly lit and lined with pillars, small beams of sun finding their way into the hall through large cracks in the roof.
The floor was made of stone slabs, cracked, and weathered, some looking like they might swallow you.
It was a barren space, without furnishings.
It was just floors and walls and pillars.
It might have been a grand ball room, if that was something the Gemino tribe had participated in.
Glancing up, Amelia could see the hole they had fallen through, far above their heads. Their fall had been broken by a landslide of debris, cascading out onto the floor.
Amelia was surprised they had survived the fall with so few injuries.
“We landed there,” Silas said, as though reading her mind. Amelia found him gesturing to a flattening of fallen stones perhaps three metres down from the chasm and far from where they safely sat.
She looked back at him, surprise flooding her. “Did you carry me all the way down here?”
Silas stood suddenly, brushing dust from his shirt. “Well, I couldn’t risk more of the upper floor falling on top of us.” He picked up his lamp and dangled it from his fingers.
“Thanks,” Amelia said, gingerly getting to her feet and adjusting the pack against her spine with a wince.
He looked at her over his shoulder as though surprised, but then his eyes returned to something at the end of the hall.
“There’s a source of light over there.” Silas pointed as they passed through two thick columns.
At the far end of the hall, a small light pulsated softly like the beat of a heart. That was when she realised, the magic she had been able to feel the moment they entered the temple, resonated through her in time with the light.
She took in a quick breath. “It’s the source of magic,” Amelia said wonderingly. “Can you feel it too?”
Silas didn’t answer as they moved slowly closer to it, their footsteps making little noise as they shifted the dust and debris sprinkled across the stones.
Out of the shadows, appeared stone statues. Amelia glanced at the faces as they passed, taking in the lifelike expressions. She tilted her head, taking in a male depiction, his hand outstretched and face morphed into something she might have described as pain.
Silas had moved ahead, so she left the statues to catch up.
The light was at the top of a set of deep stone steps. Before she could lift her foot for the first step, Silas stopped her.
“You…you should wait here,” he said, turning to face her.
“I should what ?”
Silas pressed his lips together before he answered. “We don’t know it’s safe.”
“Nothing about this expedition, or the Rift, is safe, Finley. That won’t stop me.”
He considered her, his face smoothed of expression. “It would be remiss for us to both be at risk. No one will know where we are if they try to find us.”
“Then you stay here,” Amelia said, folding her arms haughtily, “and I’ll press on.”
Silas shook his head as though she exhausted him. “This is not about competition, you stubborn thing.” He turned away from her and reached up to run a hand through the light strands of his hair, one side now darkened by his blood.
“This is not about stubbornness or beating you out,” she said angrily, bringing his frustrated gaze back to her.
“This is about a lifetime of work. I’ve spent years of my life researching why our magic is destabilising, why our devices are faltering and our Monoliths failing us.
This right here,” Amelia said, gesturing up to the source, throbbing with its own life, “could be the key to solving everything. I am not about to let you take all the risks to discover it. We do it together because…it is our discovery.”
The word ‘our’ left her mouth with displeasure, feeling wrong on her tongue, but it was no lie. They had both found this place, and it would mean that whatever they found would be theirs to share, for better or worse.
Silas’ blue eyes roamed over her face, taken aback. After a pause, he said, “fine, if you insist.” He gestured for them to continue together, and so they did.
As they started up the deep steps that led up to the beating pulse of light, Amelia felt the magical signature thicken around them. It was cloying and consuming, buzzing beneath her skin.
They took the steps slowly, moving with caution.
The source of light, white and blinding, sat upon a stone pedestal in the centre of the raised platform. When they reached the top, they both paused, the pedestal sitting before them.
The light surrounded two objects sitting across the uneven stone. There wasn’t a scrap of dust upon the surface which they sat, the orb of light around the items pulsating steadily.
“It’s…” She took another step closer.
“Blades,” Silas finished for her as they neared.
Two small daggers lay neatly side by side.
The golden metal of the cross-guard and hilts shone brilliantly in the light they produced.
However, as Amelia looked closer, she saw that the blades of each dagger vastly differed from one another.
One made of a silvery gold that was smooth and sleek.
The other, made of a dark material, almost completely black and was as jagged and uneven as its counterpart was smooth.
“My word,” Silas said wonderingly. “They’re crafted from the Monoliths.”
Amelia’s soft gasp echoed in the quiet chamber.
“That’s…impossible. Anyone who has ever tried to harness the power of the Monoliths were consumed by the raw magic.
” Even as she said the words, she realised he was correct.
The differences in the blades were as stark as the North and South Monoliths in appearance.
“I know. It’s historically proven to be impossible to smith with Monolith stone, but…look at them.”
“You’re right,” Amelia whispered, awed, her eyes set upon the daggers as though she never wanted to look away.
“This is a very odd day,” Silas said.
“It is…this discovery will change the way we look at magic and the Monoliths. The implications this could have…”
Silas chuckled. “No, not that. You admitting that I’m right.”
Amelia laughed before she could stop herself, feeling slightly hysterical as she looked over to him. “You have to be kidding me.”
“Not even a little.”
She ignored him and looked back to the daggers. “We should get the team in here,” Amelia said excitedly, “and begin documenting this place, what we’ve found. We could disrupt their power if we move them.”
Silas glanced down at his watch. “And we should be heading back, it’s going to be dark too soon for my liking. I’d rather not be wandering the ruins when that happens.”
Amelia nodded her agreement. “Alright, let’s—”
The rumbling started around them once again, and she couldn’t stop the groan of frustration and fear that left her throat. They both looked around as the deep sound thundered in her ears, right before the ground began to shake.
Silas swore as they both stumbled on the rocking surface of the dais.
Amelia lost her balance and grabbed for the pedestal, her hands entering the orb of magical light surrounding the daggers.
The sense of something entering her elicited a loud, unrestrained gasp.
It started as a stillness, like a breath held for too long.
Then it poured into her, threads of heat lacing through her veins, burning in her blood.
It didn’t just feel like an energy, as she might have expected. It was something alive, writhing with intent, like it wanted something from her.
The pedestal rocked roughly under her hands.
She was breathing heavily, trying not to picture the roof caving in on her from above.
A sharp sound, stone on stone, crunched before her, and Amelia’s eyes widened as she realised the pedestal was cracking apart. It split between her hands and tore apart just as she cried out with shock, stumbling back.
“The ground!” Silas cried out with alarm.
Amelia’s body lurched sideways, the stones under them tearing in two and shifting apart. She screamed as she staggered away from the hole that was yawning open.
She looked over just as the light from the daggers winked out and began to shift slowly towards the crevice with the incessant swaying of the pedestal.
“Finley!” Amelia said, panicked. “The daggers will fall in!”
They were on opposite sides of the split, and so they both lunged towards their halves of the pedestal, a dagger laying on each side while moving precariously towards the gaping drop.