36 | Dwarven Trapdoor

Pacing before a wall, Eli grumbles to himself, picking leftover sprinters 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 earring?”

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—

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.