Hand-written blue lettering covered the card. There was no title, just a few lines of description, and then the bottom of the paper was taken up with several detailed drawings.

Familiar drawings. Precise, twisting lines, loops and curls that didn't look like anything in particular until you focused on them.

Hina didn't focus on them. Not yet. She wasn't going to make that mistake twice.

The instructions explained how to generate an indirect light within the practitioner's ambit, using the signs. And how to vary the strength of the light. And the circumstances under which to apply each of the five variations of the design.

The efficiency would vary depending on the phases of the moons, how far underground the practitioner was, and the distance from the nearest body of water.

Hina read through the card several times, and considered the circumstances. Ofelia was waxing—just a sliver visible in the sky last night. Throne was full and would be for another few days, while Archer was fully dark.

The nearest significant body of water was the river, which was days away.

Based on those details and the remaining criteria, Hina selected the fourth design from the card.

She studied it, tracing the twisted lines with her eyes, measuring the turns and twists and kinks. When she thought she had a feel for it, she stopped.

Her inner well felt near to empty, after last night's emergency barrier. Fixing that was the first step.

Hina felt for the energy in the world outside herself, drawing potentia with every in-breath and releasing it with every out-breath, keeping a tiny fraction for herself as power.

A pressure built gradually in her chest, until she was holding all that she could hold.

Looking at the paper again, Hina summoned the shape of the fourth design into her mind. It popped into her head, lines writhing slightly. It was big, far bigger than the symbols from her barrier working.

With a flex of her will, she held the symbol still and unchanging within her mind.

It took some effort to hold it there. Yes—it was a strain, but she could manage it. It would get harder as soon as she fed it power, but her practice with the barrier patterns applied directly to this part of the working, and she was stronger for it.

She fed the tiniest of trickles of power into the sign, and it brightened, shifting and twisting within her. She held it still, and a sense of blooming fullness began to grow.

It wanted an expression. Carefully balancing the sign and the thread of power, Hina allowed it an outlet within her ambit above her right hand.

Light blossomed. A soft, diffuse glow that lit up the ground under her hand.

The sign within her mind flexed and shifted, trying to shake itself free. Hina held it still, clamping down with her will. The shifting ceased.

It was a strain to hold it in place, but she could do it. She was doing it.

She allowed herself a smile of satisfaction as she dismissed the working.

So long as the moons were in the right place, and she was slightly underground and near a river, she would never be without light again.

Hina was going to need to memorise the rest of those patterns. Or at least find a way to copy the instructions.

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She repeated the process three more times, lighting up the ground under her in flashes, until she was sure that she could reliably remember this variant without referring to the card.

After a short rest, Hina stretched and stood up. "Thank you. I can take over for a while when you need a break."

Olivia nodded. "I'm going to need that back."

"Oh. Right." Hina looked down at the card in her hand. "Here." She handed it over.

Olivia put the card back into her satchel. "Shall we go and look for a way out? Or do you two want to wait here and rest?"

"Let's all go," Kai said.

Olivia stood.

The path down to the other side of the chamber was stepped, with sudden, sharp changes in elevation. Easy enough to climb down, but Hina didn't want to have to go back up.

And for all that she'd pretended to be confident, she suspected that clearing the rubble from the collapsed entrance would be beyond them.

There had to be another way out. There had to be.

The far wall came into view. Uneven, orange stones jutted out, casting strange shadows. Off to the right, one of the shadows was deeper than the others. A path forward?

"Passage over here," Kai said, looking towards the other side of the room.

"There's one here, too," said Hina. She stepped closer to peer down it. She wished she'd kept the light working going—but there was no sense in wasting her reserves while Olivia had hers lit. "It's dark, but it looks like it runs straight."

"This one slopes down," Kai said. "It's steep."

"We don't want to go any further down. Let's try this one first."

Olivia didn't say anything, but she followed as Hina led the way down the passage, holding her arm up to provide light.

Around a bend, Hina ducked under a place where the roof dipped down to below the height of her chest. The passage broadened, sides curving away into the dark.

Loose stones crunched underfoot as the path descended. A hint of brightness glowed, far in the distance, at the other end of a wide cavern.

A dark shape moved out of sight around a corner at the edge of Hina's vision.

The rocks were uneven, jutting up and out, with person sized—and larger—boulders scattered about the space. A light breeze whistled past them.

The rotting, sweaty smell from the entrance was back, and stronger than before.

Hina climbed down a steep section of rock into a bowl shaped cavity near the center of the cave. The ground crunched again, and she looked down.

Bones. There were bones everywhere, animal bones and some that were bigger.

And there, a human skull, half buried in the dirt. They'd stumbled into some kind of predator's nest.

A large shape shifted against the rock face. A human-sized figure. Another lay on the ground ahead of them—this one bigger. And a third, much larger, was over to the left.

Hina stopped. She grabbed Kai and Olivia. "Light!" she whispered.

The light went out.

Hina held her breath, listening. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light from the cave mouth ahead.

The whistling breeze shifted and changed. Stones clattered in the darkness.

Hina crept forward, pulling Olivia and Kai forward. The way out had to be ahead—she couldn't see it, but the light must be coming from outside.

Beasts didn't build fires.

Figures shifted slightly in the darkness to either side. Breathing with faint hissing, whistling voices.

Tip-toeing through the center of the cave, Hina kept her eyes on the light ahead.

A hissing exhalation changed pitch and something shuffled in the darkness. Stones—or bones—clattered as something moved. One of the figures was standing up, the faint light catching dark fur.

They had to go. They had get out of here right now.

No longer worrying about minor sounds, Hina pulled the others forward and then let go. She scuttled over bones and rocks like a crab, using her hands as much as her feet.

Hina headed towards the light. The clatter of her companions' movements followed her.

Over a rise in the rock she saw it. The way out. Light cascaded through the trees of the forest outside. They were nearly there.

The sounds behind her were getting louder. Not just the clatter of small people moving swiftly anymore, the thunk and thud of bigger creatures standing, shifting boulders with their weight.

Something huge rose up in the darkness, extending itself to full height. The light from the cave mouth reflected from its eyes. The sunlight showed its outline—a brighter shadow among shadows—too big. Much too big. Bigger than ten of Hina, or twenty, or more.

Heart pounded in her chest, Hina ran. She sprinted over the uneven ground, which grew brighter with every step. Leaping from boulder to boulder, spurred on by fear and adrenaline.

A deep voice bellowed and Hina felt the force of it in her chest.

Other voices rose from the darkness behind her to join it in a chorus of monstrous rage.

The ground shook with a series of heavy impacts. The creatures were coming after them.

On her next leap, Hina's feet landed in the soil of the forest. The earth soft and yielding under her feet. Maybe in the trees, maybe they could lose them.

Another great voice bellowed from within the forest ahead of them.