“It’s almost as if you trust me.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Fritz laughed and waded in after him. The sun was starting to set now, and away from the perpetual burning braziers of the temple, darkness descended quickly. Which was for the best, cause then he couldn’t get a good look at the chunks floating by in the water. The water was up to his waist by the time they reached the grate, and Erich could see it had already been snapped apart like brittle twigs. Apart from where it broke, the metal looked new without corrosion, and he concluded Fritz had come early to make way.
Fritz climbed up into the man-sized hole first, then turned to offer Erich a hand up, even though he was twice Fritz’s size and just as likely to pull him back down. Erich grasped the edges of the gap and pulled himself up, his feet slipping in the sludge pouring from the grate. It took him a moment to stabilize his footing. Once he got inside, he couldn’t stand up all the way and had to stoop over as he wiped thick slime onto the dry part of his tunic. He’d have to burn it all later; the stench would never come out. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he realized the pipe they were standing in was very old, seemingly carved from the stone with thousands of chisel marks.
“Where I’m from, pipes like this carry warm air to heat homes and buildings,” Fritz explained. “It would have gone to houses that were here before, but those routes are closed now, but the one leading into the temple is still open.”
“How do you know it’s the same here?”
Fritz touched a marking in the wall, worn and covered in grime. But when his finger brushed over it, a rune faded briefly in the dim light.
“A warming enchantment, faded into nothing now. But the tunnel is full of them, and the temple is the only building that remains from before the fall.” For a moment, Fritz’s eyes glowed gold, reminding him that his companion wasn’t human.
Without another word, Fritz headed down the tunnel, footsteps splashing softly, and Erich pushed away questions about the temple and tunnel’s origins. As Fritz said, the tunnels branched in many directions, some collapsed, others slanting upward and dripping sludge. Every so often, he felt a prickle of magic and found some half-eroded rune carved into the wall. As curious as he was, the pungent odor stinging his nostrils kept him moving, and they traveled deeper. They’d taken several turns, his back ached from stooping, and he was starting to fear they’d never escape those infernal tunnels when Fritz stopped suddenly.
“That’s our way up,” Fritz said.
That one didn’t have sludge oozing down it, a small mercy. Bracing their legs on the sides, they shimmied up as the incline grew steeper, and by the time they reached the top, Erich’s legs and arms were trembling with exertion when Fritz stopped and pressed his hands against something. Stone scraped seconds before light poured into their tunnel, and Erich blinked in the sudden light. Fritz climbed out first, and Erich a second later.
It brought them to what appeared to be a washing room. Large steaming vats sat on ashen coals, and lines of linen crisscrossed the room covered in dangling wet robes, dripping onto the flagstone. Though the fires beneath the vats weren’t lit, a lingering heat remained. Beyond the hanging clothes, neat piles of folded robes and sheets lay on a table.
“We can’t walk around smelly and leaving muddy footprints giving us away,” Fritz said, tossing Erich a set of priest’s robes.
“Couldn’t you have found a vent that led directly into where they’re keeping the sword?” Getting into costume and sneaking around might be the elf’s thing, but Erich preferred the more direct route.
“They’re too smart for that, I’m afraid. That tunnel collapsed long ago.”
Shedding his clothes, Erich yanked on the robe, which was a bit too small for his bulky frame, the sleeves cutting off above his wrist, and squeezed his biceps. Fritz’s robes, on the other hand, fit him perfectly.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” Erich asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
“It’s important to know your enemy,” Fritz admitted, flashing him a grin beneath the priest’s veil.
He wondered how much time the elf spent in this temple, investigating the cracks and crevices, flushing out their secrets. When he’d run into him in the infirmary, he thought it was a one-time exception, but perhaps he’d been here more times than Erich realized.
Pulling down his own veil, he was surprised it didn’t block his vision as he feared. By some clever invention, the layers of sheer fabric stopped others from seeing his eyes, but he could see out without much obstruction. The discovery left him unsettled. Though he didn’t worship the goddess Cyra, it felt sacrilegious to uncover one of the mysteries of their temple.
“Now, keep close, walk slow, and don’t talk to anyone,” Fritz instructed.
Erich nodded his head. He knew what he was here for. The muscle. Fritz never needed him to steal the sword; he was a security measure. If anything went wrong, he was there to ensure they got out alive.
Fritz guided him out of the laundry, up a set of stairs, and down a corridor that ended at the door opening onto a wider hallway. When he was certain there was no one there, they stepped out. As they turned a corner, two priests approached from the other way. Without speaking, Erich and Fritz bobbed their heads in greeting, and the priests returned it without a second glance. Once they were past them, Erich let go of a breath he’d been holding. They’d passed the first test. Now to get the sword.
Down the second set of stairs that ended in a long, darkened passageway, Erich felt a prickle of magic race up his spine. Double doors, taller than him, blocked the passage, and more surprising were the runes burned into the wood. He didn’t recognize any of them, but he presumed they made the wood impervious to burning or prevented break-ins.
“The church banned the use of runes,” Erich said, hand hovering over the markings. They were charged with magic that warmed him, like the brush of an animal against his palm.
For as long as he could remember, he’d felt a sort of kinship to the markings; they drew him instinctively in ways he could not explain. But just as someone cursed as he was by corruption, he’d learned to fear them as well. Erich withdrew his hand, but Fritz did not share his hesitation and pressed the flat of his palm against the runes. They glowed beneath his touch, shifted along the wood, circling around him like eager hounds. He’d never seen that before; it was as if they were alive.
“For the same reason, they’ve gathered up seers and magic adept to their cause, for their own gains,” Fritz remarked, his concentration focused on the door.
“What do you mean—” Erich started to ask, when a high-pitch whine filled the room. It was coming from the door.
“Damn. I set off one of the triggers. Cover me; I need to focus to disarm it.” Fritz put his second hand on the door, and runes started to swirl, faster and faster, blurring together, creating several concentric rings before closing in around his hand, and when they touched Fritz, he hissed in pain. The runes started inching up his arms, then their colors shifted to red, then to blue, and back to gold.
The colors pulsed, swirling and mesmerizing, and Erich had to tear his eyes away to not get pulled into them as well. Hand on his dagger, Erich ran to the end of the hall, ears pricked for any approaching footsteps, but it was hard to hear anything with the screeching door in the background.
