28 | Dwarven Trapdoor

Pacing before a wall, Eli grumbles to himself, picking leftover splinters from his beard and daring a glance at Klia. The girl sits in a crook of the wall, chin in her hands, gazing at him sadly. They have walked too far for both an old man and a young girl.

Until the tunnel has ended of its own accord.

Eli doesn’t know where the damn breeze is coming from. Not for the first time in the last few minutes, he presses his palms to the circle of stone. No cracks indicate it is a door. As with the other tunnels, there are runes carved in a loop over the top, but as with all the others, he cannot read them. They are not even close to any language he has learned or heard of. After all this, he wonders if dwarves even carved this place as the stories say. He has seen no indication of their existence—no bones or leftover artifacts, just the architecture and strange monsters.

If there are markings for a key in this place, he cannot find it.

Cursing ancient races and the mutated magic, Eli paces back down the tunnel, squinting at the end of the tunnel from a distance, as if it will reveal its secrets from afar. Twirling the shimmering orb in his palm, he holds it up, stuck on the idea that it will once again save them, but lost as to how. He hums a few notes to it, and it glows brighter, but this does nothing more than illuminate the dark tunnel and reveal only more gray rock, carved cobblestones, and the same runes. No keyhole, no handle, no anything.

If Eli had a better concept of whether this is the work of the dwarves or the mutated Order, perhaps he would have better solutions, though he knows not how.

“Do you see anything other than the runes above the door?” he asks Klia, for her strange indication that perhaps she can see better in the dark—he has not put aside that the magic shows her things it does not show Eli. “All I see is stone and the carvings, do you see anything else?”

Carefully, the girl gets to her feet, shoulders dragging in exhaustion, and looks at the door the same as Eli has, head tipped back. Brushing her little fingers across it, she pokes and prods at all the runes she can reach. Eli dares to hold his breath, praying perhaps even her touch will open it. It is a fool’s hope, but monsters of this world are determined to take these children hostage, so who is he to doubt?

Under her fingers, the stone is quiet as ever, and Eli huffs to himself. Klia wanders the edges of it, gazing back at him helplessly.

Stubbornly, Eli holds up the little glass orb between his thumb and forefinger, squinting at it, then at the door. Perhaps it is only for light, but the magic gave it to him, somehow, if only by way of him killing the floating Unknown. There is no particular logic that says it must be a solution to everything, but something in Eli’s mind insists upon it.

With irritation, he claps his hands as he once did to call upon his magic. This time, he gets nothing at all in response, not even the new set of words and numbers he is provided.

“Klia, is there any sort of command to identify things you can see?”

She stares at him as if he’s spoken another language.

He wrinkles his nose. “Before the Order was changed, I was able to look at something, like this door or a tree, anything with magic in it, and the Order would provide an explanation for what I’m looking at. It does so now, but only when it wants to. Is there any way to force it to tell me what I’m looking at?”

Klia cocks her head, staring into the distance in thought, then her expression brightens. Digging her book out of her bag—now dry but permanently wrinkled from its time in the water—she starts scribbling in it. Returning to her, Eli glances over her shoulder.

Soulsight.

“Soulsight?” he repeats. “What is that?”

Stem.

A stem. One of the skills earned, like Bladewielder or Minddreamer. Eli tries to hide his excitement. She’s actually telling him something about her magic, even if it is only because she thinks he must have it as well.

“This skill…er, stem. It lets you see explanations for things?”

She nods, then makes a side-to-side gesture with her hand as if to say sort of. Yes, it is likely a little strange for her as well, as the rest of the magic is for Eli. He wonders why he sees some identifying information at certain times, but cannot gain this skill…Stem.

“Were you born with it, or is it something you remember earning?”

It’s always been here.

Well, this will not help Eli earn that Stem for his own. Once again, he wonders what else the girl is not telling him about.

Carefully, he asks, “Is there a way to show me what you’re seeing with Soulsight, like when you unlocked my magic for me?”

She looks at him precisely as if she knows what he is doing, and he wonders what is her great distrust about telling him what her magic entails. He cannot imagine Abner would have caused such hesitancy, but perhaps other people have treated her badly for it. A sudden fire lights in Eli’s chest at the very idea, though he has not a scrap of proof of it being true, and he gives her hair a gentle pet.

Wrinkling her nose back at him, she grasps his hand and points at the door. He is startled, when he looks up, to find words shimmering there.

Dwarven Trapdoor

-

Lock yourself within this room—unlock its song or spell your doom—

He cannot see any of Klia’s skills or other displays of numbers, but that is perfectly alright for now. He snorts. It is slightly more straightforward than he anticipated, at least with the title, but the description is less so. No wonder Klia doesn’t know what to make of it. The girl blinks up at him.

“Let me think a moment,” he murmurs, still rolling the orb between the fingers of his free hand.

Unlock its song…

Again, he holds up the little round glass. Humming to it does nothing more than light it up again. Hesitant to lose it but knowing they will get nowhere trapped down here, he squints at the shimmering words. It is almost as if they sit within the wall itself—

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Leaning forward, Eli pushes the softly glowing glass into the spot on the wall where song shimmers.

It disappears into the stone with a clink.

Everything goes dark as their only light is dragged away. Klia gasps and clings tighter. Going still, Eli holds his breath and squeezes her hand, listening. Something shifts within the stone, slivers of a crack appearing beneath his fingertips, and the stone rolls aside.

Digging a few of the petrified bees out of his pocket, he casts a little light into the room and finds the pathway unbarred. Klia takes out her own bee, not much light, but she seems to find it comforting. When he glances down, he finds her grinning at him in satisfaction.

“You did very nicely,” he tells her, slipping his pack back over his shoulder. “Let’s be careful now, we have less light.”

Nodding, she practically drags him in. Instead of another endless tunnel, Eli is greeted with something he didn’t realize how desperately he wished to see: a set of stairs. Stone steps carved into the earth lead up and up at a rather sharp angle. It’s going to be nearly as strenuous as that tree climb, and who knows how far up it goes, but it is going up. It must lead up to the main halls at some point.

Klia is climbing them with both her hands and feet, as if it is a sloping ladder, without bothering to wait for Eli. As quickly as he can, he follows.

* * *

Eli doesn’t dare allow them to stop and sleep on the steps, both for how narrow they are and how impossibly steep the fall. So, he encourages and encourages Klia onward, ignoring his own exhaustion, until his hand comes into contact with a true trapdoor.

Wood. He never expected something to be made of wood down here, even with the sprouting trees. It’s heavier than it has any right to be, and he sets aside his pack on the narrow step, putting his shoulder and all his strength into it. It creaks open with a groan and a splintering of ancient, dusty wood.

And Eli is greeted by sunlight.

Eyes aching with the sudden light after so long in near darkness, Eli blinks and blinks. Klia pushes up in front of him, her head bumping into the underside of his chin as she shoves aside his beard. He lets her scramble out into the chamber.

Elijah Jyce

the Reaper, the Unknown, the Elder

-

30/97 Buds | 2/10 Roots | 2/5 Filaments

-

Stems

Bladewielder (15), Minddreamer (2)

Well, that’s helpful. He wishes his physical abilities and health—rather, Roots, he needs to become accustomed to the new words—would raise, but how should he expect them to under such circumstances? Perhaps the next skill he will learn shall be Soulsight, as Klia’s is.

Eli pushes out into the chamber, dragging his bag along behind, stepping away from the steep stairs.

Once, it may have been a library.

Vast towers of carved stone reach the likewise decorated ceiling. Bottles and jars decorate many of the lower shelves, some smashed beyond recognition, whatever contents they once maintained spilled out and spoiled forever. Anything stored on the higher levels has been cleared out, at least in these first aisles Eli can see, but the shape and stature of them certainly suggest books or scrolls may have once been housed in their shelter.

Much to Eli’s joy and relief, he is able to see all this from a shaft of sunlight beating down into the room, misty and pale as it always is, swallowed by magic, but it is bright, brighter than he’s seen in many a day. A hole in the cavern roof must go all the way out onto the surface. Eli cannot imagine how long a fall down it must be, and stands in a pile of dead leaves directly in the beam of warmth. Little twigs and other such debris have fallen, and Eli is more than a bit surprised to not find animal bones from some unfortunate critter wandering too close.

Perhaps this will be their way out. He knows not how, for it is so high up to even reach the crack in the ceiling, let alone the climb it would be after, but an old man can hope.

Klia is scurrying in and among the isles, exhaustion momentarily forgotten. Eli seats himself against the nearest stone shelving, still in the sun, closing his eyes. He hears the girl crunch through the leaves, and she digs around in his bag for some of the berries. Next, the rustle of her book and the soft scratch of her pencil on the wrinkled paper. It’s quite a bit of writing.

Eli cracks an eye open before he falls asleep.

Did Fa send us to you because he loves us?

Eli has to blink several times to ensure he’s reading correctly. He scoots into a sitting position and takes the book, staring at the words. For a girl who’s barely interacted with him and written very little even once they found the book, it certainly is a deep question with which to start.

“Don’t you know he loves you?” he asks gently.

She nods with such an expression Eli believes she does indeed know. Still, it seems wrong to leave her words so permanent when his are spoken to the air. He takes her pencil and writes under the words. I know, even with just meeting you, that your Fa loves you more than anything.

She smiles a little and points at the question again.

“I don’t know why he sent you here. He must have wished to protect you from something, which means that yes, it was because of love.” He can only guess what might have happened, but this seems a reasonable enough guess. He knows his son enough for such belief. “Why do you ask such a thing?”

She stares at the book for a while, before writing again. I thought he would come find us by now.

Eli feels his face twist but forces the expression away. “I don’t know what happened before you two were sent here, but I’m sure if he could come to find you, he would. Maybe he is. There is no reliable way to transport through the air, you understand? I’m not even certain how he did it with you, he probably can’t do it with himself. So, it would take him quite a long time to get here.”

She nods, fiddling with the corner of the book, staring at the ground.

“There is a good chance he may be stuck in Monsetyra, so we’ll have to go get him together after we get Thistle back.”

Again, she nods, and Eli doesn’t know how else to comfort her. He knows so little about the situation, not enough to answer honestly. He doesn’t wish to lie, even to make her feel better in the moment.

“Klia,” he says gently. “We’re going to find your brother, and I’m not going to leave either of you, I swear it.”

Finally, she looks him in the eye, then crawls into his lap. Growing more accustomed to having a person close to him once again, he tucks her into his arms. She wiggles around so she can sit and write in her book while staying in his hold.

I still don’t hear him.

“It’s alright, we’ll keep going up. You picked him off from far away, we’re bound to run into it again. Even if we don’t, we’ll keep hunting.” His fingers catch in her hair, and he frowns at it, trying it back with a string off his pack before it gets more tangled. He’ll have to figure out a way to comb it out. “Is there anything you can tell me about what happened before your father sent you here?”

She twirls the pencil between her fingers for a while before writing. He was very upset.

This much, Eli gathered from Thistle's anger. “Do you know why?”

She shakes her head. He was talking about fixing the magic. He said it used to be good. I don’t remember it being good.

“It was before your time,” Eli murmurs.

He was working on it with the others. But they left. We’ve been alone. Fa did not give up, but he was very upset.

Eli nods against the side of her head, not knowing what to say.

The city was shaking. There was light. Thistle yelled a lot. Then we met you.

Earthquakes are quite a bit more common after the mutation of the magic, Eli imagines more so at the heart of the city where it all began. He thinks of the light on Thistle's skin.

“Was your brother causing the light?”

Not that time.

Eli nods. Something else is at play. He tries to recall his son’s many notes and experiments and obsessions, but cannot bring them all to mind. Sunlight, in particular, he considers, but though he remembers in general Abner speaking of light and plants, he can call nothing to mind specific enough to be of use. He shall ask Thistle. He is likely to know more, even if the struggle will be to get the kid to reveal secrets to his grandfather.

“Is that all you know about how you came to the monastery?”

She nods, and under her other writings, puts, We just came.

Eli pats her head. “Thank you. We should sleep a tiny bit, but not too long this time, alright?”

Again, the girl stays curled up in Eli’s arms while she naps. Lyra would adore her, he tells himself. Eli doesn’t sleep much, nodding off here and there, troubled and unable to clear his mind even though exhaustion. The rest is enough. He inspects the stone pillars and their shelves, observing the fading of the light as the short days of sun in the above world fade quickly. He does not wish to leave this place, to return to the oppressive dark and cold, but they have little choice.

When Klia stirs from sleep of her own accord, they get to their feet with little said. He does not need to encourage or pester her to get going, but she keeps tight hold of his hand still, careful of his injured arm. Tired of carrying his pack, Eli holds it loose in his stronger hand, leaving the weak shaft of sunlight still shining through and heading deeper into the library. There are indeed books sprinkled here or there, ancient, so much so Eli is frightened to touch them, even if they were low enough to reach. Through each aisle, he checks for doors in the walls, hidden and closed or otherwise, but keeps up a steady pace toward the front of the hall.

Finally, the stone pillars shrink, and a massive archway of carved stone opens before them.