Glowly's Arc

Chapter 13 of 16

The dry passage climbed away from the water. Glowly held the pup close and stared up the slope. Her father and sister had gone down, not up. The relic waited somewhere below, in the flooded dark she could not enter. Her blade was the problem. Its runes lit the way, but that same light dragged the crocodile up the stairs. She needed to see the depths without the blade. She had no other torch. She sat on the wet stone and pressed her palms to her eyes. "We can't go down blind," Nova said. She crouched beside Glowly, chalk still white on her fingers. The acrobat had followed her into a sealed ruin for no reason Glowly understood. Now she chewed her lip and studied the black stairs below. "And the second you light that thing, the big one comes." "I know." Glowly's voice was flat. "I've read every account. Nobody ever solved this part. They all needed light. The light killed them." Nova stood. She dug into a pocket of her oversized coat and pulled out a small stone, cracked and scorched. "When I ran the circus tents, I lit the shows," she said. "Not with a blade. With this." She struck the stone against the wall. A ball of flame bloomed in her hand, bright and floating. It hovered off her palm, then drifted a few feet away and stayed. Glowly lifted her head. "You can make it move." "I can throw it," Nova said. "It burns wherever it lands. Doesn't need me to hold it." She looked at the water. "The croc goes for the blade because the blade's on you. What if the light's over there instead?" Glowly stood. Her mind moved fast now, sorting the plan. If the fire floated away from her body, the crocodile would chase the fire, not her. She could descend in the dark beside it, following the glow from a distance. "You throw it down the stairs," she said. "Far as you can. The creature follows the light. We go down behind it, in the shadow." "And when it figures out the fire isn't food?" Nova asked. "Then we throw another one." Glowly wrapped the pup in her coat and set it on the high dry stone. The dragon curled beside it, warm. Both would wait here, safe from the water. Nova drew back her arm. The fireball streaked over the black stairs and struck stone deep below the surface. Light bloomed through the water. Down in the flood, the long shape stirred and slid toward the glow, away from the ledge. "Now," Glowly said. She slid into the water with her dark blade sheathed. Nova followed. They swam down the drowned stairs in the moving light, the crocodile ahead of them, drawn to a fire that was not them. For the first time, the depths lay open. The way down was hers.