“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.”
