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Rick and Fig followed the trail of gore from Cove’s corpse to an archway at the end of the Great Hall.
Their mood was focused, and they moved with even greater caution, inching forwards and checking their surroundings with the meticulous attention of people who knew they were being stalked.
Not only was Slimy Lez down here with them, they knew that they were walking into a trap of his design.
Rick really hoped Fig could deal with Lez when they found him. He knew she was a great fighter, and together they outnumbered the murderous slime, but that didn’t make walking into the unknown any easier.
The Book of the Undying King rustled in his grip, ready to be opened and used. Rick knew that in his caution he had barely scratched the surface of the unholy Book’s power. What dread magic would it supply him if he opened it with the intent to harm or kill?
He didn’t want to find out.
Beyond the archway out of the Great Hall, Cove’s bloody trail led through winding corridors into a wing of Vishrac-Uramis they had yet to explore.
First they found empty bunk-rooms with hollow bed frames by the dozen. Beyond those were store rooms where great barrels of salt, a fortune’s worth, had been abandoned, along with thick rolls of pale fabric for wrapping bodies. Rick turned a roll on its bracket and pulled a length of the fabric free. It was gossamer thin and softer than silk; the dead here received royal treatment. Perhaps they could do the same for Cove once Slimey Lez was dealt with.
Rick withdrew his fingers and the cloth hung from its roll, swaying softly in a breeze so minor he hadn’t realised it was there. Looking about, he saw stone vents in the top corners of the room. Interesting. The air here was able to flow. It wasn’t just dry, it circulated itself, keeping everything inside in a state of incredible preservation. As habitable today as it had been four hundred years ago. What an incredible place to lose to time. What a wealth of materials and knowledge to abandon, even if Cthavaliss fell to ruin.
What truly happened in the Forgotten War to cause this?
‘Let’s keep moving,’ Fig said from the doorway.
Rick stirred from his thoughts and nodded.
The trail led them to an administrative area with long offices filled with writing desks and shelves of records. They found an ancient message etched onto an office blackboard in Eire text, which Rick translated. It was a blunt reminder to “Dispose of your food waste properly to avoid cross contamination in our sterile environments.”
Fig suddenly flattened herself against the wall as they left the office.
‘What is it?’ Rick whispered, hunkering in the doorway.
‘Something just passed the end of the corridor.’ Fig hissed
‘What was it?’ he asked, squinting. Damn his eyesight! He could hardly see the end of the corridor, let alone make out moving shapes in the darkness.
‘I didn’t get a good look.’ Fig said, ‘but I'm sure it wasn’t a person.’
They crept along to the junction at the end of the passageway, shining their light and peering into the gloom as best they could, but in the end they found nothing but the trail of blood sliding further off into darkness.
‘He was here.’ Fig said, ‘I know it. He was watching us from right here!’
‘Why keep stringing us along when he could launch his ambush at any moment?’ Rick asked.
‘I don’t know for sure,’ Fig answered, massaging the knuckles of her sword hand nervously, ‘But he probably wants to frighten us. To split us up. He’ll have something awful planned at the end of this trail.’
She turned to Rick, ‘Whatever you do, don’t leave my side.’
‘I won’t.’ he assured her, though he wanted nothing more than to get out of here as fast as his weakened body could take him.
The further they followed the trail, the worse things got. Fig spotted shadows flickering in the rooms ahead, and phantoms of shapes moving just outside the range of their light.
Each time, Rick and Fig approached with care, not wanting to rush into an ambush, but each time they made it close enough to investigate, there was nothing there.
Lez was playing with them, and they knew it. Fig got more worked up with each passing minute. Rick’s breath caught in his throat. The passages became convoluted and disorienting, each room blended into the last. The only constant was the trail of gore leading them deeper and further from the exit. Their light was slowly waning too, it was noticeably dimmer than when they had started their descent.
I’m going to die down here.
Rick wished he’d left when he had the chance.
They checked every room they passed from top to bottom. Fig didn’t want to leave any unknowns behind them once they progressed. She said they couldn’t rule out the possibility of being outmanoeuvred and ambushed, but they could do their best not to get taken by surprise.
At last they came to a large octagonal Archive room, deep within the administrative wing of the temple.
Their light splashed across the space as they stood in the entranceway.
The Archive had a very high ceiling, and the walls were lined with three ascending floors of scrolls, sat in large wooden shelf units which were each taller than either Rick or Fig.
The three floors of scroll shelves were navigated by a series of sliding ladders, and you’d have to move around narrow balconies overlooking the room with flimsy railings in order to reach the highest levels of the Archives.
Around the room were reading desks and chairs, and a larger archivist’s station beside the entrance.
A stone chest hovered in the centre of the room.
This was the artefact Fig had been sent by Mirabelle the Black to recover.
It was completely still, floating a few feet off the ground. The smooth grey stone of the chest’s exterior was unadorned with any kind of markings or sigil. There were no handles and no hinges, just a stone box with a lid that closed so snugly that the seam was a barely visible crack. It was large enough that several people could have climbed inside or ridden on top.
The trail of gore that had wound a horribly long and twisting path through the temple from Cove’s corpse, ended just below the floating chest.
There was no sign of Slimy Lez, the phantom they had been following through the darkness the entire way here. There was also no other way out of the Archive room.
Fig brought them to a halt as they took in the scene.
‘I don’t like this,’ she hissed, and whipped around to look behind them.
Rick tore his eyes away from the Archives, and the strange floating chest, to follow her gaze. Even with their light outstretched, the corridor behind them was a shroud of darkness.
Then he saw it moving.
Not a shroud. A mass, a writhing mass of something dark that blocked the corridor and prevented them from retreating back the way they’d come. It had gathered silently to cut off their escape; they’d been followed, cornered.
‘Fig!’ he gasped.
‘I know,’ she growled back, ‘Stay close to me.’
Fig was taut as a bowstring with her sword held at guard. Rick cowered behind her.
What was that thing in the dark? Slimy Lez wasn’t supposed to be so enormous he could block a temple corridor. Their eyes strained, trying to make out the massive shape, but it was almost totally hidden in shadows.
Fig took a couple of steps towards it and thrust out their light.
‘Shadow take me…’ she cursed under her breath as the mass was illuminated.
There wasn’t one slime blocking the corridor, there were dozens.
Each individual slime in the horde was as large as a person, bulbous and glistening. They rolled and squirmed over each other, filling the space, moving like a wall towards Rick and Fig, ready to consume everything in their path.
‘Oh shit!’ Rick cried.
He clutched the Book, which was vibrating furiously in his hands, and took an unconscious step backwards, away from the monstrous horde of slimy shapes in the corridor. That step took him across the threshold of the Archive for the first time.
He barely felt the tripwire pull tight across his back.
The sound of splintering wood cracked from the balconies above him.
Fig slammed into Rick before he could fully process the sound or what was happening.
She tackled him so hard he was momentarily lifted off his feet before crashing painfully to the ground as Fig rolled both of them clear of the trap and into the centre of the Archive.
Rows upon rows of high shelves above the entranceway had been ripped off the wall by a hidden counterweight, triggered by a tripwire neither of them had noticed until Rick stumbled into it.
The huge wooden shelf units, balconies, and ladders tumbled together and crashed thunderously down where Rick had been standing an instant before.
Clouds of dust and wood chips billowed into the dry air, making both of them cough as they rolled apart on the ground. The deafening impact echoed through the Archive long after the shelves had fallen.
Rick groaned and gasped to recover the air Fig had driven out of him. His joints screamed from the impact on the stone floor, but somehow nothing seemed broken.
Fig had dropped their light when she tackled him. He could hear her cursing nearby as she fished around for it through the nearby debris. Everything was in darkness. Rick scrambled to find his Book. Where had it gone!?
Fig tipped a pile of broken wood, following a faint glint from beneath, and uncovered their light at last. She held it up to reveal the scene, and plucked her dropped cutlass from the ground nearby.
Fallen shelves and broken bannisters formed a tall barricade across the corridor entrance, blocking the way in and out of the Archive. Trapping them temporarily. It didn’t look like it would take long to clear, but long enough that they were sitting ducks in the meantime.
Rick spotted the Book of the Undying King in the wreckage, and pulled it awkwardly free before he heard laughter. It was all wrong. The sound made his skin crawl, what little skin he had left.
Gurgling mirth echoed from the corridor beyond the barrier of broken shelves. It was unmistakably the sound of someone cackling, but strange, bubbling and alien.
‘Well done avoiding my trap! You’re fast, I’ll give you that much,’ that strange gurgling voice spoke from the darkness outside.
There was a sound of squelching and sliding, and three slimes squeezed themselves through the cracks and openings in the tall barricade.
They began reforming in front of Rick and Fig, who backed away holding up their sword and Book. Each of the three slimes were translucent, their bodies made up of shades of murky green.
As they approached the light, it was faintly possible to see small shards of bone floating inside of them; Rick even thought he saw a tooth.
Two of the slimes were globular and rotund, they glistened and squelched as they oozed their bodies over the broken wood.
The slime in the centre however took a bipedal shape as it formed inside the Archive, and crossed its arms while it observed Rick and Fig.
Its surface was smooth and it had no facial features, but Rick could see an undulating tube writhing within its form, which it used to draw air in from its back and spit out through a hole in its face to form words. No wonder it sounded so wrong.
‘Before we eat you, I’m very curious,’ said the bipedal slime, ‘We haven’t had visitors in centuries, who are you and what brings you to Vishrac-Uramis?’
‘Slimy Lez, I presume?’ asked Fig as she ushered Rick to stand behind her.
Rick sensed Fig was working hard to position herself so the flanking slimes couldn’t easily encircle them, for all the good it would do. More slimes were beginning to ooze themselves through the barricade as they spoke.
The two of them were hopelessly outnumbered.
‘So you’ve heard of me.’ said Lez.
‘You’ve been listening in on us since we arrived,’ said Fig, sticking up her chin, ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know why we’re here!’
‘When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me,’ tutted Lez, ‘I’m just being polite, giving you a chance to get some last words in before the end.’
‘Well then, Mirabelle the Black sends her regards, and politely requests that you return her treasure chest,’ Fig hissed.
‘Finders keepers,’ he chuckled, ‘ It was never hers to begin with, and my family needs it far more than she does. It’s their ticket out of his damned tomb.’
Rick looked behind Lez. The slime horde was making its way through, reforming on this side of the barricade, slowly advancing and spreading out as Lez chatted all the while.
‘And aren’t you unlucky,’ Lez gloated, ‘You came here just for me. You had no idea there was an entire colony of us living in the depths of Sumat’s abandoned corpse disposal warehouse.’
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Shit, shit, shit.
The Book squirmed violently in his hands, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the slimes.
‘Why’d you turn on your team, Lez?’ Fig asked. Rick could tell she was stalling for time, looking for some way out, ‘Cove was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die like that.’
‘My goodness, I’m so sorry!’ Lez said, putting a jellied hand to his mouth hole ‘If I’d known you and Cove were close I never would have eaten his legs. Please forgive me.’
He started laughing again, his whole body wobbling with the sound.
‘Bastard.’ Fig muttered.
‘Oh, you’re no fun at all,’ Lez sighed, ‘If you must know, this enchanted chest was just too good an opportunity to turn up.’
He indicated to the slimes surrounding him. They moved sluggishly, but another minute or so would see Fig and Rick completely surrounded as they continued to back across the Archives, looking for some escape.
The ladders up to the balconies had all fallen. They couldn’t even climb to buy time.
‘You see, I’m somewhat unique among my brethren.’ Lez continued, ‘They don’t share my intellect, or my advanced skill at shaping my body. I still don’t know why, I guess I’m just special.’
He shrugged.
‘I can wear layers and protect myself from the rain to come and go from Vishrac-Uramis as I please. So I did; I got out to see the world and made some coin along the way,’ Lez patted one of his fellow slimes and it nuzzled into his hand.
‘My witless siblings aren’t so lucky. If they stray outside during the storms that sweep across this jungle every few hours, they’ll be washed away. It’s kept them trapped here,’ Lez gestured at the floating chest in the centre of the room, ‘But now I have a way to save my family and bring them to the wider world. That wonderful artefact is as unique as I am; an impenetrable lair and a mobile larder all wrapped into one.’
Rick could hear Fig hyperventilating. At first he thought she was panicking, but when he glanced up and saw her focused expression he realised she was deliberately fuelling up her body for a fight. Lez’s gloating monologue could only last so long, and there was no way out.
She met his eyes. The look was sheer desperation. She needed him to help, to do something.
Rick crammed down his terror and looked away from the slimes. The Book of the Undying King drew his gaze to itself, and filled his view. The sound of the world around him muted slightly as the Book purred, waiting for him to open it. Power lay just inside the cover. Would it be enough?
‘Can you believe, the acolytes of Sumat used to use us for food disposal!?’ Lez raged, ‘They threw us scraps. When they left, we were abandoned, slowly starving in the dark for centuries! Mummified bodies taste disgusting, but we rationed, and hibernated, and made do with what we had. Now, at last, my family has been enjoying the long awaited feast I brought them. They’re rebuilding their strength, and preparing to depart this wretched place for the lands of plenty beyond!’
The entire horde was through the barricade, lined up ready to feast between their prey and the door. Rick and Fig were nearly backed against the far wall and surrounded. There was nowhere else to retreat.
‘The late Cove Barksole was supposed to be one of our snacks for the journey,’ Lez pointed to Rick and Fig, ‘You two are going to take his place.’
A slime to Lez’s left lurched at Fig.
She raised her sword to keep it at bay, slashing through the slime’s gelatinous body. It was a mighty swing with the cleaving cutlass blade. The slime fell back gurgling angrily, almost severed in two, only to be enveloped as three more slimes slid over it and the entire horde rolled forward to attack.
Rick snapped open the Book of the Undying King. A sickly green light glowed from the page.
Fig cut and slashed at the horde, desperately trying to keep them at bay. She was so fast, but it meant nothing against the sheer weight of oozing bodies. She called out to Rick, but he was already moving.
The Book of the Undying King lay in his outstretched hand, the text swirled across the pages and projected glowing symbols across his face. It understood what he needed. A passage of text rose to the fore, words that spoke of overwhelming force.
Rick read aloud from the Book, a short incantation that hissed from his lipless mouth, and a profound disturbance rippled in the ethereal fabric around him.
Even their enchanted light distorted around his body as a knot of unholy potential gathered from that tumultuous veil of ether and reality, swirling into his free hand.
He raised it in front of him.
For a moment the room seemed silent and distant. There was only this feeling, taking a hold of the world and forcing it to change. The power in his hand writhed, willing him to shape it, to release it.
Rick stood at the centre of a field of distortion, dust and debris swirled at his feet and the whole room seemed gripped by a storm as he held the restless energy in his fist. The wall of slimes seemed frozen before him.
It was not his. This power did not belong to him; he was nothing but a conduit for its will, and he wasn’t sure he could bear it. His whole body trembled beneath its enormous weight. Another moment and he would be torn asunder, dissembled down to every component part and scattered to the winds. Rick felt ultimate despair.
Someone was shouting his name.
‘Rick!’ Fig screamed in front of him, jarring him back to his senses.
The slimes were almost upon them, graceless and slow, but as inevitable as the tides. They filled his field of view.
Fig whirled with her sword, cutting them apart. The sheer weight of slime bodies pressed her back by inches, but she’d held her ground against those insurmountable odds for so much longer than should have been possible. She was astounding.
The Book’s power threatened to crush him, but Rick looked to Fig inspired, and stood strong.
‘Down!’ he roared at Fig with his broken voice. She dropped to the ground without a moment’s hesitation.
He stepped over her and let the magic loose.
Boom! A shockwave rocked through the Archive. The slime that had been inches away from Rick’s outstretched hand was ripped violently apart and splattered across the walls and ceiling.
The horde behind fared little better as a wave of raw power tore through every one of them. Their disintegrated matter flew back into the barrier beyond, which broke under the force of the blast, demolished and strewn into the corridor.
In that instant, the entire wall of slimes was reduced to mulch.
Rick collapsed to his knees.
The Book fell from his hands. His body felt numb. Every sensation was an echo from a distant room besides the overwhelming pressure in his head. He tore the scarf from his mouth and heaved. He had a vague awareness of Fig shaking his shoulder and calling his name.
He caught himself on his elbows and tried to rise. The whine in his ears was slowly fading, but numbness was replaced by exhaustion that went far beyond the physical. It was hard to gather his thoughts, let alone enough coordination to stand.
He saw Fig’s boots, moving away from him. She was covered in dust and had cuts on her face from the flying debris, but she still held their light. She cast it about to check the wreckage of his spell.
Sprays and puddles of slime were splattered across the walls of the Archive and the corridor beyond. He could see it squirming in droplets, trying to coalesce and reform.
Rick realised with sinking dread that the slimes were not dead, just dismantled and slowed down. All that power, released for nothing if Rick and Fig couldn’t find a permanent solution fast.
Only the floating stone treasure chest seemed entirely unaffected by the shockwave.
Most of the slimes were having little luck rebuilding themselves, moving incrementally and without direction, but rising out of a forming pile of fast wriggling tendrils of green goo was the articulated shape of Slimy Lez.
He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he was the best at shaping and reforming his body.
Fig dashed forward as he reformed, slicing him apart with her cutlass. The sword tugged and slowed as Lez tried to cling onto the blade when it passed through him. Rick worried the slime was going to rip it out of her hands. But Fig clearly knew how to leverage her strength and momentum when she cut. She slashed through the thick translucent matter of Lez’s body with clean strokes, and the sword never broke its slicing rhythm.
Fig worked with furious efficiency, breaking his body down into wriggling parts. But fast as she was, it was a losing battle. Lez was able to move disparate parts of himself around on the ground, reforming portions of his body far away from Fig while she was distracted by others.
One of the piles broke free long enough to form a hand and hurl a shard of broken wood at her. She deflected it and slashed the arm to pieces, dashing between the shifting piles of goo as quickly as she could, but she was already exhausted and slowing down.
All the while, the other slimes were working to put themselves back together.
Through the flashes of illumination and darkness, as Fig spun and fought with their enchanted light in her hand, Rick saw one of the faster slimes had reformed to the size of a melon already. It was making a beeline towards him, rolling across the ground.
Despite the waves of nausea washing over him, Rick forced himself to his feet and skittered away from the slime, picking up his Book as he went.
The slime’s bulbous form followed him around the Archive, growing larger as it rolled over disparate parts of itself. Rick limped heavily. He’d lost his walking stick in the commotion and was having a hard time moving at any real pace.
He wasn’t fast enough to flee this place, even with Fig’s assistance. The slimes would catch up to him once they fully reformed. There had to be another way to beat these things. They couldn’t be killed by blades or pure magical force, what else could he do?
Now there were three half formed slimes following him, and more were pulling themselves together across the room.
This is a nightmare.
Rick was forced to head towards Fig’s battle with Lez. He tripped on something, and went sprawling.
The marble floor of the Archive had cracked and shattered from the impact of his previous spell. Rick’s foot had broken through that crack into a hollow that ran beneath the floor.
Fig left the pieces of Slimy Lez to help Rick. She ran over, slashed through the train of pursuing slimes in a flurry, and pulled him to his feet again.
‘Come on, we have to get out of here!’ she shouted, holding her light to shine the way out of the Archives.
The corridor beyond was already full of reforming slimes. It was a fool’s hope. Besides, Rick was staring at the floor.
Their light illuminated an exposed flow of burbling clean water, running through a channel beneath the floor. He’d cracked their way through to the plumbing.
‘Rick, there’s no hope of beating these things,’ Fig tried to drag him away, ‘We’re outnumbered. We have to run!’
‘You said water could kill them?’ he asked.
She followed his gaze to the broken floor and the water below, ‘In theory.’
‘Protect me while I cast a spell,’ he said, and knelt down by the cracked floor with his Book held open before him.
Slimy Lez had used the time Fig was distracted to almost entirely rebuild himself in the mouth of the corridor. He staggered towards them holding a shard of broken wood like a spear.
Fig cursed and looked torn between bolting and staying.
‘Are you sure?’ She demanded, turning to face Lez with her sword raised.
‘I’m too slow. I’ll never make it out of here if we run,’ Rick hissed, ‘I can do this, just don’t let them reach me.’
She made her decision, ‘I’ll try,’ Fig muttered as she stepped forward and neatly sliced through a partially formed slime, dividing it into two wriggling puddles.
Lez, whipped out his arms, thin and extended to a ridiculous length, with the makeshift spear outstretched. Fig severed the weapon with a swing of her cutlass and began lopping off Lez’s limbs almost faster than he could regrow them.
Half formed slimes tried to bog down her movements, they came to Lez’s aid, approaching Fig from all angles, but she spun around them with the grace of a dancer, and her blade sent sprays of goo across the walls. Rick doubted she could keep it up for much longer.
As the battle raged behind him, Rick stared at the book.
‘Please,’ he whispered, ‘Please. I don’t want to die, not again.’
The letters swam on the page, breaking apart and reforming.
[You need not die.]
The words on the page mirrored a voice he’d heard before amidst the cries of the dying. Now it spoke to him again, quiet as a whisper, yet it reverberated through his skull.
A half formed slime dropped from the wall and crawled towards him. Fig backed up from Lez and slashed the slime apart. She was a better fighter than Lez by far, but she was outnumbered and hindered while trying to protect Rick.
Lez used the distraction to lash her with an extended tendril which wrapped around her wrist and pulled her towards him. She used the momentum for a great swing with her cutlass, but Lez was ready. He looped his torso around the blade until he was too thick to slice through, and then wrenched the sword from Fig’s hand. It floated inside him, out of reach. Disarmed and grappled, she struggled to escape as Lez expanded and began to flow over her.
The Book of the Undying King assembled an invocation of shifting letters, different to the one he’d used before. It glowed, bathing his face from below with unholy light. Once more, Rick felt that power that was not his.
I don’t want to die.
In desperation he seized what the Book offered.
This time, there was no holding his ground, no bearing the weight of the power. It overwhelmed him the instant he touched it.
The words of the invocation burst from his lips almost unbidden, and his voice turned to a tortured wail as a gruesome transformation overtook him.
The rags that clothed him were ripped from his body by a sudden whirl of force, along with the patch he wore over his missing eye. A couple of approaching slimes were forced back by the surge.
Naked, Rick convulsed and clutched at his face.
What’s happening to me!
[You are mine, Rickard Crichét… Body and soul.]
Those words…
He remembered the moment he’d died.
Green flames erupted from his empty eye socket, spilling through his grasping fingers to envelop every inch of his naked form.
Rick screamed his throat raw in the throes of that terrible necrotic fire. Echos of his death tore through his mind, the agony and fear he felt at the end. But those feelings were phantom memories.
These green flames did not burn him. They filled him with such power that his frail form could barely contain it. They rippled over his skin and swept to the ground where they formed a flaming Eire sigil that etched itself onto the floor.
The cracks in the marble floor wrenched themselves open, wider and wider. Water bubbled from below and lapped at his feet. Even as it rose and flowed, it could not extinguish the green flame sigil.
Rick saw Lez halt in the middle of enveloping Fig. Her upper half, still free of the slime, turned toward Rick. The blazing glow of his magic lit up the room with unholy radiance. He could see every line of Fig’s face as her eyes widened, reflecting his green flames. He saw a depth of fear in her expression. Fear of Rick. There was no mistaking it.
[End these vermin and live.]
The Book showed him how, and Rick could not disobey. Reaching down, he called to the water lying dormant in the vast reservoir deep beneath their feet, and to the fresh rainfall still filtering through miles of pipes throughout Vishrac-Uramis.
His fingers curled into haggard claws as he wrenched it all upwards, bringing to bear the full force of the Book’s power.
There was barely a moment to feel the crippling fatigue that followed before the entire temple rumbled and began shaking
Like a geyser, water erupted from the floor, breaking through stone and filling the Archives with a violent torrent that shot all the way to the ceiling.
Half-formed slimes by their dozens sank beneath crushing waves that swelled and swept all in their path as they hunted for a way out of the room.
In a daze, Rick saw Lez turn and try to flee, abandoning Fig on the ground. The deluge overtook them both and carried them away.
The flames winked out, leaving Rick cold and naked before the flood. He curled into a ball with the Book clutched to his chest as he was torn off his feet.
The torrent slammed him into the floor and dragged him along the ground. Then he was lifted and lost all sense of up or down. He floated in a daze, bumping into debris, and vaguely aware of being carried some distance by the flood. Something clamped tightly around his legs, but the feeling swiftly got weaker and disappeared. Then he felt a hand fishing into the water to grab a hold of his arm.
Rick’s head broke the surface with a gasp.
‘I’ve got you!’ Fig pulled him towards her, holding onto a doorway for dear life as the flood surged down the corridor towards the distant Great Hall.
Their light washed away and all was in darkness.
They clung there for several minutes as an entire monsoon’s worth of water flowed through the corridor.
Rick’s senses were still reeling from the sheer magnitude of ether he’d tried to control. He could barely move, let alone resist the pull of the current.
If it weren’t for Fig’s unrelenting grip on him, he knew he would have been carried off into whatever depth of the temple was drawing the tide downwards. More likely he would have simply drowned.
Eventually the current eased, lowering them both gradually back to the floor where they lay coughing and exhausted, aching all over from their injuries.
[You are mine Rickard Crichét… Body and soul.]
The words were branded on his mind, they rang in his ears and would not fade.
The temple’s drainage slowly allowed the overflow to return to the reservoir until it left them lying in the few inches of water that stubbornly refused to drain away.
Eventually, Fig rolled away from Rick in the darkness and he heard her splash to her feet.
He stayed curled around the Book, his lifeline and his master, still clutched in his arms. He was a burnt out husk, too dazed to rise.
Fig’s footsteps squelched away, and he was in no shape to follow.
[End of Chapter 4]