“Let’s just pick one and go for it. Maybe they all lead to the same place,” says Quinn, reaching down to remove her boots.
“Wait.” Ronan reaches out with his shadow tendril, dunking it beneath the surface. “We can find a path.”
Ronan and I follow the walls and navigate the passages with our shadows. “We have to hurry,” I say. “I’m almost out of magic.”
The right passage—the one Seth wanted—leads to a dead end fairly quickly. But the other two go for much longer, so far that we reach the end of the range of our magic with no definitive answer.
“Flip a coin?” suggests Quinn.
“The middle one,” I say. “It has fewer completely submerged sections.”
I’ve chosen right. We swim through the passages without incident, our only concern being the torch, which goes out when under water, but we’re able to use the shadow tendrils to navigate through the most difficult sections, and the torch reignites once we reach the next chamber.
Well, mostly without incident. We’re soaked to the bone. Quinn and Seth use their flames to dry at least our socks and shoes, not wanting to use up more magic than necessary, but all of us agreeing that we’d just about rather die than have wet feet.
“More than halfway there, if we’re following the schools of magic from the Codex,” says Ronan.
And it seems that we are. The chamber at the end of the flooded section slopes upward, narrowing as we climb closer to the surface.
“This isn’t so bad,” says Quinn. “Maybe the trap broke.”
Unfortunately, she spoke too soon. We pass through an archway marked with the triangle with a line through it, the wind magic symbol, and it becomes immediately apparent what the challenge is when we’re thrown back through the threshold by an enormous gust.
“Fuck, I should have brought along some of that vine,” says Quinn. “My cane will help, but we’re going to have to use your shadows again. Do you have any magic left?”
“Not much,” I say.
“I’m out,” says Ronan. “I’ve been pulling on the torch since halfway through the water room, and I don’t know how long that will keep working.”
“That’s probably by design,” says Seth. “Leave you weakened and out of magic so you can’t face whatever is waiting at the end.”
“Thank you once again for making me glad we brought you along,” I say, gesturing rudely at him.
He sighs. “I’m saying that you should reserve your magic if you can. One of us should stay behind here.”
“No one stays behind,” says Ronan. “Not if there’s another choice. We’ll just have to dig deep and get through this.”
“Very inspiring. You’re about to inspire us all the way to an early grave,” says Seth.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I throw my shadows up the ramp in the next chamber, straining against the wind. Ronan follows suit. “Quinn, grab onto me. We’ll go together.”
Quinn uses the leverage from her cane to help pull us forward into the narrow passage as I pull us up with my shadows. We make it to the top in about half the time it takes the boys, but that’s mostly because Seth fights against Ronan’s help.
“Stop being an idiot and let him carry you!” I shout down at him, a part of me enjoying Seth’s humiliation at being carried along by my husband.
I almost yell something about how strong and wonderful my husband is just to piss Seth off when a strong burst of wind blows out the torch.
“Ronan!” I throw my shadows out to catch him, but my magic is dangerously low. Exhaustion starts to set in before I can get them close enough to the top for us to reach them.
In the satchel, the sickle stirs.
It’s quieter than the torch, far less needy and demanding much less attention, but it’s there too, something sentient lurking inside of it with power of its own.
“Help me,” I whisper to it. “I need him.” And then, rolling my eyes a little at having to say it because Seth’s really pissing me off right now, I say, “I need them both.”
A shadow extends from the sickle, reaching down the ramp and grabbing hold of Ronan. I’m controlling it, but yet I’m not. The sickle has a will of its own, but it adapts to me, allowing me to work with it to do what I need.
I pull Ronan and Seth along with him up with the shadow, extending an arm out to pull them stumbling into the room beyond.
