“Oh, you’re welcome, Sir Holy Knight,” the sword obliged with a volume and cadence meant to fill up the whole cavern.
Celeste was still standing a foot or so into the tunnel, hands fidgeting with one another as she stared down at her bare feet in the sand. Her face was as red as he assumed his was. “Um, well, thank you?” Her voice shook, and then with a deep breath, she turned and trotted off into the dark.
“I hope I did that okay,” he whispered, strapping his baldric over his chest followed by the satchel.
“I’d be a fair bit more worried about these dark chambers than hers,” said the sword, and Reeve wished Sid would just support his decisions, dumb or otherwise.
The kiss had felt okay to Reeve, anyway. Very okay. So okay that there was a headiness rising in his chest reminiscent of the night before when he’d only had an ale and a half.
He hurried after where she went, the tunnel narrow, but when he squeezed through it, Celeste’s hand slapped against his chest with none of the tenderness she’d just had.
“Don’t go near it,” she hissed, fingers splayed over his heart, nails digging in to hold him at bay.
The next chamber was much larger, massive really, and Reeve could barely believe what he was seeing. Arcana could defy the natural, it did every day, but he had never seen a lake turned upside down.
Above them, water spread out like a sky, a small ring of light flickering in the center of the gentle waves like a far off sun. The arcanely suspended pool lapped at the edges of the cavern some twenty feet overhead, and the rivulets of teal funneled upward into it, presumably continuing to the surface.
The walls of the new chamber had many tunnels boring away from it, too many openings to choose from and explore, their ceilings not quite reaching where the pool was suspended. At the chamber’s center rose a basin from the rocky earth. It was set far from them and only a few feet across, but it loomed there in the midst of the wide, empty space like an unspoken threat. A shield surrounded the anomaly, glinting with golden light that ran in scars as it sparked, magic agitated by what was held within.
Celeste was paler than Reeve had ever seen, the blue and golden lights washing out the color that had so recently been in her cheeks. Her eyes were unblinking, fixed on the chamber’s center.
“What is it?” Reeve’s chest thrummed. He wrapped a hand around his pommel, but he didn’t have to cast, the divine arcana from the chamber’s center reaching out on its own to meet him. The familiar magic worked ferociously to contain what was trapped beneath it, and Reeve could feel the touch of other Valcordians gone past.
“It’s noxscura,” said Celeste, stepping back and pulling him with her.
He had no idea why she was so afraid, even he wasn’t unnerved by hearing the word any longer. “But—”
“It’s not like this,” she husked, eyes brimming with tears as she squeezed her locket. Tendrils of smoky blackness spread out from her fist, and at first, Reeve’s instinct was to cut through them, but as he watched them wrap around her limbs, he saw that they were there to protect her from this thing that made her tremble.
Reeve brandished the Obsidian Widow Maker and took a wide stance, eyeing the basin and the dome over it. There was familiarity in that dome, but beneath it lay something else, something murky, and when it splashed up to beat against the shield, it was alarmingly silver. If it frightened her, endangered her, even if she simply did not like it, he would destroy it.
“No, don’t,” Celeste whispered, eyes finally flicking away from the basin and to him, or rather, to Sid. “I think you have the only thing that might be able to break through, and it can’t be let out.”
Muscles tense, Reeve was not keen to put down his weapon, but the noxscura from her locket was moving again, slipping away to crawl along the cavern wall behind them. They watched it snake away, Celeste equally interested in what it might do as if she were not commanding it at all. It pressed itself into the crevices until a pattern formed.
“More sigils?” Celeste was unable to move.
Reeve kept Sid aloft but took her hand from his chest, guiding her toward where her arcana had converged and keeping himself between her and the basin. Her noxscura painted itself into the circular symbols on the wall, in the center, a deeper crack, teal glowing from inside.
“That’s another sieve,” said Reeve, instantly recognizing the movement of the thing through the fissure in the stone.
“Like in the forge?” Celeste’s voice was small, eyes darting between the far-off basin and the sigils just beside them.
Reeve nodded. “It looks like it’s trying to get out.”
“They locked them away…”
Reeve watched her reach out for the creature trapped in stone. Well, not a creature, Geezer had said it wasn’t that, but it still seemed to have a will, sloshing up against the wall as if it longed to be free.
Her noxscura moved through the sigils until they were filled, and Celeste brought the tip of her finger to the wall. It was only when the stone cracked loudly into the cavern that a pit of ominousness dropped into Reeve’s gut.
A rush of wind at their backs sent them both crashing into the wall just as the stone shattered. The two were flung away from one another, and the sieve was free. The glowing, blue blob bounced to the edge of the alcove it had been trapped in, and as it teetered there, a familiar black haze coalesced before it.
Reeve was on his feet again and swinging. He sliced through the amorphous form coming together, and a scream roared through the cavern as the smoke split in two. A fiery glow was revealed through his slash, and he knew it was the sieve from the forge, but it was swallowed up by the haze again, faster this time to come together, and then there was a face, a thing that could only be Syphon.
A wall of fire burst into life before Reeve. He stumbled backward, away from the flames, searching for Celeste. She had to be on the crackling wall’s other side, but the flames rose all the way to the water above and were headed for the cavern’s middle and the basin.
He tightened his grip on the Obsidian Widow Maker, and his own flames jumped along the blade, glinting with the golden light of divinity. The cavern rumbled, and he sprinted along the outer edge of it, intent on reaching Celeste as he dodged the rocks dislodging themselves from above.
