Christina Pirkle's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

The venom in Christina Pirkle's blood had already stolen the feeling from two fingers. She sat on the cold floor and stared at the flower that had poisoned her. Its petals burned pink and purple, streaked with a green that glowed even in dim light. She had picked it three days ago, not knowing it would kill her slowly. Now she knew one thing for certain. The same flower that carried the poison also carried the cure. She only had to brew it right. But a cure needed careful work, and she had nowhere careful to work. She was crouched inside a hollow structure built like a squat dome, its dark stone cracked and veined with sickly green light. A carved skull leered above the archway. Toxin ran through the whole place like it belonged there. The floor tilted. The ground was gritty and uneven. One clumsy pour of her mixture would splash back on her skin, and her body could not take more poison. Christina flexed her numb fingers and forced herself to think. She could not brew on a bad surface. So she would build a good one. She crawled to the archway and dragged loose stones from the base of the wall. She stacked them flat, testing each one with her palm until they stopped rocking. It took an hour. Sweat stung her eyes. Twice her numb hand dropped a stone, and she bit down on a curse and picked it up again. When the platform held level, she pressed her weight on it. It did not shift. She needed a clean vessel next. Near the wall she found a narrow flask, its glass stained but whole. She scrubbed it with grit and spit until the inside ran clear. Then she set it dead center on her stone platform, where a spill would fall away from her, not toward her. Her hands shook as she pulled a petal from the flower. She held it over the flask and squeezed. A single drop of green fluid slid down the glass and pooled at the bottom. No splash. No spill. It landed exactly where she meant it to. Christina let out a breath she had held too long. For the first time since the flower cut her, she had a place to work. The platform was steady. The flask was clean. She could brew. Then she looked at the flower in her lap and understood the next problem. One drop had barely stained the glass. A true antidote would need far more of the plant's fluid than this single bloom could give. She turned toward the dark mouth of the archway, where more of the toxic flowers grew somewhere in the deeper hollow. She would have to go in and gather them, with two dead fingers and poison climbing toward her heart.