There was something strange about the floor. As if it hadreadtheir presence. But he couldn’t stop Laila in time. She landed with both feet on the ground. That same tremor returned, shaking the stairs this time. Enrique tripped, his arms flailing as he landed on the hard earth. Zofia fell beside him, her flare rolling across the ground.
Light—far too grand to belong to Zofia’s pendant flare—streamed across the floor.
Slowly, Enrique lifted his gaze. The tunnel was gradually brightening. Where there had been one torch, now there were hundreds. And they weren’t alone. That tremor belonged to something… a great stone ball rolling through the tunnel. With each rotation, it caught fire from the torches, blazing hot and illuminating the stone atrium. Enrique scanned the rest of the atrium. A grooved, spiral path wrapped around the room, winding to the center.
Enrique pushed himself off the ground. “On second thought, I’m completely fine with the dark and cold.”
Laila grabbed his and Zofia’s wrists, tugging them to the other side of the atrium.
“If we just move out of its trajectory, then it can crash into the wall, and we run to the tunnel and get to the door,” she said. “It’s not as if the floor is going to—”
The floor snapped.
Enrique’s shoe snagged on a crack in the ground that had not been there a moment ago. The crack spidered across the stone floor, as if it were nothing more than a pane of ice. Enrique fell hard. He scuttled backward, only for his hand to slip.
Inches from his fingers was a plummeting drop. An icy river flowed beneath the ground, rushing dark and roaring. The floor plan must have been Forged to fit together like a puzzle piece, framed above a river so that any trespassers would either die by fire or by water. The only good thing that could be said about the fireball moving closer was that at least he could see what was around him.
“We’re moving!” called Zofia.
She was sprawled on a narrow slab of rock not too far from him. Laila stood on the other side, lightly balancing on a piece of the floor no bigger than a dining plate. Far in the tunnel, the fireball gained speed, following a corkscrew pattern that would soon catch up to them.
Enrique glanced at the river. His position had changed. He watched as the room slowly turned. All of the shattered pieces, including the ones they perched on, drifted in a slow rotation around the pedestal in the center of the room.
“All defensive Forged things legally have a somno!” he shouted over the din of the river and the fireball. “We just have to find it! That center pedestal must be the key. Laila, you’re getting to the pedestal first. Be ready to tell us what it says!”
Laila nodded. She leapt again, gracefully springing from one slab of rock to another, closing the distance to the pedestal.
Enrique cast about the room. This was not like the auction’s holding room. There was no onyx bear with its teeth caught around someone’s wrist. No stone body to skim his hands over and find the divots and markings of a release. He was too far away from the cavewalls to see if they had any writing. And the rock slabs, as far as he could tell, were nothing but rock.
“Chin up!” called Zofia.
“This really isn’t the time for tired motivational phrases!”
“Enrique.There’s writing up there.”
Enrique looked up. On their way down the steps, he hadn’t noticed anything above them but roots dangling from the ceiling. With the light from the fireball, he could see more of it, and there was a pattern hacked into the roots… a precise arrangement of letters. The rock he stood on spun faster, and Enrique had to pivot on his heels, trying to suss out the words—
E? Mut? Surg?
He squinted.
He looked back at Zofia, thinking she might be able to help, but she was sitting cross-legged on the rock, as comfortable as if she were inside L’Eden’s stargazing room. Her gaze was unfocused as she looked around her, her fingers slowly tracing a spiral in the air. Ahead, Laila was getting close to the pedestal.
Enrique’s rock moved faster, spinning around the room as it drew ever closer to the pedestal. He craned his neck up, catching the letters as fast as he could, until he saw them fully.
EADEM MUTATA RESURGO
“What does it say?” called Zofia.
The language was Latin. And the phrase somewhat familiar, though he could not tell where he had heard it…
“It means…although changed, I arise the same.”
“Zofia! Enrique!” shouted Laila. She waved her hands, pointing at the pedestal. “There’s thirteen levers with numbers on them! Theyseem attached to some kind of… dial? I think? I… I can’t see it anymore, but you’re going to be coming up on it soon!”
Levers.
That was a somewhat heartening fact because it meant it could be controlled.
