Glowly's Arc

Chapter 10 of 16

The tunnel forked. Glowly lifted her blade, and the blue runes threw light on two black openings. One dropped into flooded steps. The water there was still and deep. The other passage stayed dry and sloped up. She could not tell which way led deeper into the ruin. "Which one?" Nova asked. She wiped her chalky hands on her patched coat, the huge sleeves dripping. "Pick wrong and we waste air we don't have." Glowly held the blade close to the flooded fork. The glow died at the surface. Past it, only black water. She thought of every account she had read. People went down and stayed down. Maybe they had guessed here too. "The steps go down," she said. "The relic is below the drowned steps. That's the way." The wolf pup growled low. Its shadow-dark fur bristled. It stared not at the water but at the dry passage above. Glowly followed its gaze. Two yellow eyes floated in the dark. A cave panther stepped into her light, sleek and striped, shoulders rolling. It had come down through some crack the tide could not reach. It blocked the dry path. Glowly raised the blade. The runes flared bright. The panther flinched but did not run. It crouched, tail flicking, ready to spring. "It won't back off," Nova whispered. "There's no cluster to scare it with. Just us." The dragon left Glowly's shoulder. It spread its small wings and dropped in front of the panther. Then it opened its mouth and breathed heat. A wave of hot air rolled off its body, the same warmth that had healed her ankle. The panther jerked back from the blast. Its ears flattened. It hissed, spun, and fled up the dry slope into the dark. Glowly let out her breath. The dragon flew back and gripped her shoulder, sides heaving. "Good," she told it. "Good." But the panther's flight showed her something. It had climbed down the dry passage. That passage led up and out, toward air. The flooded steps led the other way. Down. She turned back to the black water. "Down is right," she said. "The dry path just goes back toward the surface." Nova stared at the flooded fork. "You want to swim into that? Blind?" "I have light." Glowly gripped the spear and the glowing blade. "I hold the runes under. They'll shine through the water. We follow them down." She waded to the first drowned step and lowered the blade beneath the surface. The runes glowed on. Blue light spread through the water, and she saw stone steps falling away below her feet, down and down into the deep. She could see the way now. Glowly took a breath and pulled the pup close. "One line, one knot," she said. Then she stepped off the edge and swam down into the lit water, into the ruin's throat, with no way back but forward.