“We need to stop, Kat. This isn’t working,” Vlakas said after I banged my knee on some rubble under the water for probably the fifth time.
I sighed. He was right. Once we lost the flashlights our exploration of the tunnels had slowed to a crawl. To be able to use our powers to keep the map of the area visible in our heads we had to enter a trance. We hadn’t yet mastered the ability to trance and walk at the same time.
“Okay, let’s camp for a few,” I said. “Can you start a fire?”
In response a deep red glow appeared in the darkness outlining Vlakas’ hands. I had been worried about finding a way to get heat and cook food down here, until Vlakas had reminded me that he could make metal and stone red hot.
He said he wasn’t using flame to heat it externally like a Fire Mageia would. He tried to explain it to me as vibrating tinypieces of the metal and stone together to create friction, then heat. He insisted that if I learned the differences between the components of the air I would be able to create water. I wasn’t stupid by any means, but sometimes his explanations made my head hurt.
We scrambled up onto one of the landings that seemed to appear every hundred feet or so. Water squished in my boots as I sorted through the pack for some dry tinder I’d been hauling, and Vlakas soon had a small fire burning.
We’d had no further sightings of our silver-eyed intruder, but remained alert, regardless. As we’d moved closer to the surface we’d seen boot tracks in places and signs of passage indicating someone had been through here. Whether it was Mageia our mystery guess was uncertain.
“So, do you want the bad news, or the worse news?” Vlakas asked after rummaging through our backpacks.
“Isn’t that really just saying it’s all bad news?”
He shrugged. “I’m an optimist. I try to find good in anything,” he said.
“The good news is, we are deep enough that we haven’t seen any competitors for a few days,” he began. “The bad news is we are out of food and low on water.”
I nodded. I knew all of that.
“So we need to go up, and risk running into other Mageia,” I concluded.
Vlakas nodded.
“Is that really such a bad thing, Kat?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“If we were sure they would join up with us? No, not at all. But I can’t think of any way of confirming their willingness without talking to them, and talking to them exposes us,” I said. “If they don’t decide to join us, we’d have to kill them.”
“Do you know any of the others in the Machi?”
I nodded.
“Not many, but a couple of them have attended our joint training sessions,” I said. “The problem is, we don’t really have a way of knowing if someone will join us until we are vulnerable.”
“Let’s set that aside for a moment,” he said. “If we want to pass the Machi, we need to get at least three medallions each. Since we agreed we would rather not take them from the corpses of our people, we need to hunt some of the beasts released on the island.”
“In order to do that…” he trailed off.
“We need to go up. Fine,” I huffed. “Let’s start looking for a path up.”
He grinned.
“Hey, where did you find the book?” I asked as I took a drink.
“What book?”
“The one from the first night. I found it on the floor in the room and packed it in the bag.”
He sifted through the items in the backpack before taking the wrapped bundle out.
“This?”
I nodded.
