“They can...Well, it’s sort of self-explanatory, isn’t it? They can sense the stone. Feel it. Hear it. It’s not unlike wildshaping magic.” She looked at Elyria with an odd expression. “The stone speaks to him, in a way, and so he can sense where it might change, end, lead.”
“Stone sense, nightwielding, telepathy...” Cyren’s shoulders heaved with a dramatic sigh as the group ventured into the right-hand tunnel. “Anyone else feel like revealing their secret power to the rest of the class?”
“If only,” Kit said with a snort.
“Wasn’t a secret.” Thraigg let out a grunt of amusement. “Not my fault ye’re all so uncultured ye don’t know boots from beard when it comes to my people.”
“Yer people,” Cyren said in a disastrous impression of Thraigg’s accent that had Elyria choking back a laugh, “absolutely keep secrets. It’s why your smithing skills have remained unmatched throughout the millennia. Why do you think the rest of the realm is always clamoring for dwarven-made steel?”
Thraigg grinned as he reached up to clap the fae on the shoulder. “That’s just good business.”
The group ambled along,the walls continuing to shift every so often, Thraigg stopping each time in response—sensingwhere to go next. Elyria couldn’t help watching Gael out of the corner of her eye as they went. The flamecaller was little more than a specter, face blank, steps slow and measured as she shuffled along behind Cyren. Elyria’s chest ached at the sight, and she found herself purposefully falling to the back of the group. As if she needed to put physical distance between herself and Gael—the embodiment of her guilt.
She hadn’t meant to hurt Gael.
Shehadmeant to hurt Belien.
She felt guilty about both for different reasons.
And she didn’t quite know where that left her.
Dawdling several yards behind the rest of the champions, Elyria trailed one hand along the luminescent walls.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Tenebris Nox stepped out of a shadow and took up pace next to Elyria, startling her.
“Don’t do that,” she said with a scowl.
Nox lifted their hands in supplication. “Sorry, old habits.”
“And feel what?” she asked.
“The magic trapped in the labyrinth walls,” they said.
“Trapped?”
“Trapped, placed there. Pick your phrasing. But I am relatively confident that it wasn’t always like this.”
“What makes you so certain?”
“Shadows talk,” they said. “You’ll see.”
“Stop doing that too.”
“What?”
“Fixating on my...” She gestured to herself, waving her arm up and down her front. “All this.”
“I’m fixating?”
She levied a pointed look at them. “ ‘Why don’t you use your shadows, Elyria?’ ‘You’re a nightwielder, Elyria.’ ‘Your shadows are strong, why don’t you try them on the wall, Elyria?’ ”
Nox chuckled. “Fair point. But I’d still hardly call that fixation. It is simply...interesting to me.”
“What is?”
“You have all this power at your literal fingertips yet are so reluctant to use it.”
“Who says I don’t use it? Hells, you saw what happened back there.”
