Dusk Falling (Book 1) (39 page)

“I guess that’s that then.” Serrtin said, drawing all eyes. She dusted off her hands, kicking away the corpse at her feet. “We will just wait until you can make it.”

“I… but…” SkyRift began, not finding the words.

“You what? We are all tired. I for one need to relax for a moment before I even consider another floor in this place.” She sat gingerly, hand still on her midriff. “We’re not splitting up now.”

The dragon did not know what to say in response. He lowered his head in acquiescence and gratitude.

~ ~ ~

The next floor was met with much more caution than the first, even from the recalcitrant Genlo. Wary for any noise or movement, with all senses (mage-trained or not) straining, they paced into the chamber. They crossed to the center than the latter part. They made it to the stairs. Still, nothing had gone awry.

The fourth and fifth floors were met with the same wary mindframes and still nothing happened. But they knew better than to let down their guard, the Sigilarian Stairwell would offer no easy route and the moment they forgot that was when they knew the next trap would be sprung.

The sixth floor was to be different. The team knew it upon entering. This chamber was not going to surprise them with a hidden trap; its puzzle was waiting for them when they arrived.

In the center lay five spheres set at precise intervals before a steel-banded door. The door was shut, the ceiling low. Each rounded object was about the size of a Focus sphere and swirled with a deep inner light. The team approached.

Chipped into the stone of the ground was another cryptic message: To Each Lock Exists A Key.

“So we are going to need a key to get past the door? Then what are these sphere’s for?” Serrtin questioned outloud.

“I think that maybe,” Agemeer mused. “the sphere’s
are
the key.”

“All five of them?”

“I am unsure…” The Wulf padded forward and carefully inspected the center sphere. He even went so far as to gently touch it with his foot. The sphere did not react. “Five spheres. Five of us.” He looked past the line of spheres to the door. “Look. There are five alcoves on the wall along side the door.”

It did not take much reasoning for them to come to a conclusion. Each of them were to place a sphere into an alcove. It seemed so simple and too easy to be true.

With a sphere in hand, the five placed their individual keys into a lock. Being the tallest, Serrtin took the one over the door.

Realizing they had made a mistake was something they all concluded much at the same instance in time. It happened quicker than the blink of an eye and their startled intakes of breath were loud.

The floor was suddenly the ceiling and they found themselves looking down where they had moments before been standing. Though their bodies were unaffected by gravity, their clothing and hair was not and while they sought to get a handle on the situation, their affects sought the ground.

Heart fluttering like a captured butterfly, Aya stated the obvious.

“True, the placement was incorrect but look, one sphere is glowing!” Agemeer pointed out. As the scholar said, one sphere indeed was glowing. It was Genlo’s placed key on the farthest right and it swirled a merry rose color. “We must try it again.”

“Can’t wait to see what happens if we mess up the order again…” Serrtin muttered, not finding one iota of humor in the situation.

Trading spots, they tried again in order from left to right Aya, SkyRift, Agemeer, then Serrtin. The mage sat her sphere last with a tense gulp of breath.

Aya would have been thankful for that deep intake of breath if she had time to consider but the moment she sat the sphere in the recess on the wall, the chamber was suddenly engulfed in water. The water did not trickle in or pour in; it simply
was
. It was a mad swimming dash to take up one’s sphere once more and change positions. Lungs aching, minds frantic, the team switched. None of their spheres had so much as glimmered. Under the water, Genlo’s shined on. Changing to Agemeer, Serrtin, Aya then SkyRift saw the water blink out of existence as fast as it had come.

They dropped unceremoniously to the floor, dry as when they had first entered.

Three spheres were lit. Despite the obviousness of the last place setting, Serrtin and SkyRift were slow to add their keys to the locks. All the spheres glowed their respective colors and the only reward they received was the click of a lock tumbler. The door slowly swung open on its hinges.

As anti-climatic as it was, they took the offer of proceeding to the next floor.

The Stairwell did not give them another set of empty floors in which to rest. Floor number seven had no puzzle to figure out, it was simply a test of surviving to make it to the next door. It only took one set of footsteps to
awaken the multitude of red-eyed spider-like creatures. They leaped from the ceilings, the beams supporting the ceiling, the walls. Half-supporting, half-dragging SkyRift, Serrtin lead the way, heedlessly hauling him along whether he could keep up in his shape or not. Seeing the Elf stumble, Aya caught up his other arm and ran along. Genlo used his claws to keep the nasty creatures from sinking their fangs into him.

When they got the opposite door, they rushed up the stairs without pause, glad to see it was open and not locked like the last one. Another floor past, leading them to worry how many more they could handle without going insane. The next floor had them pulling up sharp. The room was like the others, rectangle in shape, stone, with nothing in it. However this one was different in the fact it had no way out.

“This isn’t possible. What the hell are we supposed to do now?” Serrtin said, exasperated. She tossed her hands up.

“Could it be we are at the end and the Stairwell does not wish us to proceed?” Agemeer queried, nosing around the chamber walls. Serrtin looked pointedly at SkyRift but the Elf had no answer to give. He shook his head apologetically.

“This can’t be the end. We passed the last test.” Aya said, searching the farthest wall where the door should have been. There were no creases, no hidden catches. She tried searching with her mind’s eye, letting her senses drift over the wall to try and find what she unaided could not. Instead of an energy signature in front of her, she felt one welling up behind her. She looked over her shoulder plate at Genlo.

“I will not be stopped by a
wall
.” The Jrahda-trethen had formed a darkness sphere in his right hand.

“Wait!” Aya cried out, holding out her hands. “You can’t just go and-”

“Are you telling me what I can and can’t do?”

“I’m saying that it can be dangerous. This place has already proved its power. If you do something like that, it may have adverse consequences.”

“Then I will deal with them when they come. Now move.” He had been relatively innocuous after the incident on the second floor. By the eighth floor, he had his second wind.

“No.” Aya said sternly, not backing down. “You don’t know what could happen. What if the Stairwell has precautions against such things? What if this is another trick?”

“Then leave it to me to find out.” Genlo looked beyond the girl to the wall. When she refused to move, his eyes slid icily back to her.

“We need to think this through.”

Agemeer, Serrtin and SkyRift looked on, eyes going from one to the other without interruption.

“What exactly about me makes you think I do things that way?” Genlo retorted, preparing for another seriously unpleasant argument.

“And what about me makes you think I will let you endanger my friends?” came Aya’s response. Genlo’s mouth downturned. “Or yourself. There are things worse than sleep spells.”

The remark threw him off. Anger, resentment- that he could handle so he responded the only way he knew how. “Get out of my way, girl. I don’t know any sleep spells.”

Threats. Aya was beginning to see the pattern. When he didn’t know how to deal with something, he resorted to violence or threats of violence. Well, if that’s how he felt about it, fine. The mage stepped aside, gesturing for him to do what he felt so passionately about doing. Genlo gave pause as if thinking the girl was up to something. He looked down at the black sphere in his hands and when it did not flux in power or disappear all together, he launched it at the wall, making his own doorway.

Once her ears stopped ringing and it was safe to re-open her eyes without fear of dust and bits of stone, Aya was met by an arrogantly superior smile. The sphere had detonated without causing much uncontained damage; his control of the sphere’s strength was admirable.

No matter his control of the spell it was still an explosion and it did not help the staircase that lay just beyond. The stairs were in terrible shape, as if the spell that kept the chambers ‘alive’ failed to include it. Crumbled rock and debris littered the split and chipped stone steps. The walls were cracked and marked. The team was forced to duck a length of rotted wood in order to pass, the beam had been a support beam keeping the falling ceiling from completely crashing down.

Serrtin was barely able to squeeze by as she led the way up the rickety stairs. Agemeer assisted SkyRift, trailed by Genlo and Aya.

It wasn’t till Agemeer’s gray tail disappeared behind the beam, did it finally give way. In a cacophony of sound, dust and falling rock, the stairwell collapsed.

Aya could not react in the breaths span but Genlo could. He shoved the girl into what protection could be found in the staircase’s corner.

When the air began to settle, the mage slowly lowered her arms from over her head and opened her eyes.

Genlo stood over her, so close she could feel the warmth of the arms on either side of her head. His limbs were trembling, his breathing hoarse. A gash near his hairline bled a stream down is cheek. He hissed through clenched teeth as the rubble shifted at his back. All that had kept her from being crushed to death under the wreckage was the Jrahda-trethen’s reaction. The realization drew a breath from her lips in astonishment.

Unable to clear his vision of blood, Genlo looked at her with only one eye. The runes written down the length of his arms flared under his gloves as he drew upon their power to keep his arms from buckling under the pressure. Similar runes down his back and chest were next. His spine ached, his thighs burned.

“Wh-why? Why did you…” Aya asked softly, staring into the face of an unlikely rescuer.

“J-just be quiet… I can’t hold this… forever.” A drop of perspiration ran down the side of his face to mingle with the blood from the scalp wound. The rubble shifted behind him and he grunted as the weight increased.

“But why would you put yourself in danger like this… for me?”

“Idiot.” He shut his eye, lips pulled back from clenched teeth. His body shook from strain, eating up the energy pulled from the misuse of his spell runes. Slowly he got his foot up on the stone wall in front of him beside Aya to take some of the pressure off his arms. “I’m only doing this… to make sure you… keep your promises. You said you wanted… to see this through, didn’t you?”

“Genlo…”

“Seeing as to how I am… indisposed at the moment,” He grunted as a sharp rock hit him between the shoulder blades. “you’ll have to see us out of here.”

“How?”

“Put your hands on the… rock behind me. You’re going to have to concentrate your energy. It has to be precise. And Aya…”

Her eyes glittered in the darkness. Had he ever called her by her name before?

“Try not to flay the skin off my back in the process.”

“But I don’t think I can-”

“Concentrate. Small at first, then expand.” Genlo instructed calmly, chin dropping to his chest. He kept his amber eyes shut.

Voices of their comrades called to them; Agemeer’s the clearest. Aya told them to get back, to climb the stairs to a safe location. Slowly, she reached out and gingerly placed her fingertips on the rubble behind Genlo,
consciously aware of the heaving chest between her arms. She could feel his breath stirring her hair. “I don’t think I can do this without causing all of this to come crashing down on y- us.”

“Then we will be crushed to death because I can’t hold this forever.”

Aya’s eyes dropped to no where in particular.

“Yukarim could do this.” Genlo said lowly. He opened his eyes to see if his words had awoken anything within the mage.

They had. Aya gave a determined nod and placed her hands flat.

“I think all that could fall already has. Don’t worry about causing anymore just get rid of what’s here.”

“Understood.”

“Aim upwards so you don’t destroy what is left of the stairs. I don’t want to backtrack up if we were to fall through.”

“Right.” Aya didn’t want to say their chances of falling without injury were slim to impossible. She took a steadying breath. Images of her brother when she was a child flickered in her memory, of his smiling face so natural and genuine. She recalled how he secretly taught her the Ebon Cutter despite her teacher’s forbiddance.

Aya did not ask for Yukarim’s help this time, only that he watch her well.

Bracing herself, she centered her energies and squashed her fear of falling short. She focused more on that Genlo needed her to do her best for his continued health was on the line as well. It was imperative. The power was not the Ebon Cutter nor was it her temperamental fire spell, it was something new she had never tried before.

Pure energy, strong and bright like sunlight magnified under glass.

Her hands warmed and then grew painfully hot and tingly.

“Project it. Don’t try to contain it.” Genlo instructed. “You’re bottling it your hands when you only need to use your hands as a conduit.”

Aya nodded. Genlo did not see the gesture but could feel the energies shift around him. The light burrowed through the wreckage, slowly gaining speed till it burst into open air. The Bren could not get the energy to obey as precise as she would have liked but she managed to get the twin beams to expand. The light whined, its pitch almost too high to be heard, as it incinerated rock and wood alike.

More rubble shifted, particles cascaded, but no more fell down as Genlo had said it would not. The light was bright and it was the intensity of that light that caused Aya to open her eyes. Dropping the spell, she could see an exit.