Nicola's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Nicola waded on, fork submerged, the flame's pulse tapping in her chest. The red-lit water thickened around her legs. Her own glow, faint as it was, still showed her — a pale smear of feather and scale in a black river. Shapes moved toward the light. She counted three, then five, then more. Long bodies slid under the surface. Pale eyes broke the water and sank again. She was the brightest thing here, and that was the problem. She stopped on a flat stone. If she kept walking lit, they would reach her before the next bend. If she doused her glow, she would lose the fork's rhythm and the heartbeat with it. She needed to hide the light without killing it. She pulled the folded cloth from her harness — a dark cloak given to her long ago, silvery-black, made to drink light and hold it close. She threw it over her shoulders. The hood swallowed her head. She felt her own shine press against the inside of the fabric and stay there. The water around her went dim. The pale eyes drifted, confused, searching where she had been. But hiding was not enough. One would find her by scent or sound, and she could not swing the tuning fork as a weapon without breaking the note again. She needed something else in her free hand. She pictured the flame she was walking toward. She pictured her own glow, the part of it she had spent her whole life carrying. She drew a slow breath and pulled that light out through her palm, the way you pull thread through a needle. It gathered. It hardened. A blade of cyan fire lit in her fist, humming like river water over stone, sparks trailing along its length. The cloak held her body glow in. The blade let out only what she chose to spend. The first shape came fast, jaws wide. She stepped and cut. The blade passed through it and the water hissed. The shape came apart. A second lunged from her left. She turned and cut again. Steam rose. The pale eyes pulled back. She walked. Cloak forward, blade low, fork under the surface in her other hand. The heartbeat kept time. The dark things followed at a distance now, watching, unwilling to close. She had bought herself the corridor she needed. At the next bend, the river opened into a wide black pool ringed with cracked stones. Embers pulsed red under the water at its center. The heartbeat here was louder than she had ever felt it, and slower. This was the place. The flame lay under that pool. She stopped at the edge. The cloak steamed. The blade sang in her hand. She had reached the door. She had not yet found how to open it.