“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.
