Fifteen
When we reached the top of the mountain, it was to find the most perfect of sun-cycles that I had ever seen in Minatsol. The sky was clear and the air was crisp. There was warmth to the sun, but it wasn’t overly hot or uncomfortable. Just perfect.
“It’s like Minatsol got a makeover,” I half joked to Coen. “It’s a new place.”
“Its energy returning is exactly what it needed. The land was dying, and I have no idea how much longer it would have lasted.”
That was a scary thought. The Abcurses were my home, but I also considered Minatsol to be home as well. I couldn’t imagine it just … gone. Along with all the dwellers and sols that lived here.
The broad shoulders of Rome were the first sign of the others. It looked like they were all on the far side of the cliff, staring out across where trees and valleys should have been, but was now just masses of water.
Coen and I picked up the pace then, hurrying to stand with them. “Hey,” I called, distracting them from their silent staring.
A few of them turned in my direction, and I blinked at their expressions. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Is the water still rising?”
Siret shook his head. “No, the water level is dropping, but it’s not shifting out into the ocean like we expected. Instead it’s being absorbed into the ground at a rapid rate.”
“We’ve been watching it all morning,” Yael added. “The water is definitely not following the normal path I would have expected.”
I stepped closer to the edge of the mountain, staring down at the water world below. It had fully reached this section of Minatsol now; below us, in some areas, only the tops of the tallest trees were still visible. In other places the water line looked to almost be at ground level. It was immediately obvious what had them so confused, because the water was pooling oddly in areas, even when there was no visible barrier that would keep that particular spot so high. Why wasn’t the water spreading out in normal water behaviour?
It was almost like it was moving itself to the places it needed to be, assessing where things were the worst.
We remained where we were as the water continued to settle, and when Emmy and Cyrus joined us, Siret explained what was happening again.
“This isn’t normal.” Cyrus sounded apprehensive. “The water is supposed to have powers beyond our comprehension, but it still runs like water. The only time its course is ever disrupted is when one ofus—namely Staviti—disrupts it.”
“Do you think this is his contingency plan?” I asked, frowning. “To redirect the water back to Topia somehow?”
“That would have been my first guess, but the water isn’t going to get back to Topia by sinking into the land here,” Cyrus replied. “Everyone, get your shit together. Something is going on here and we might need to leave immediately.”
“Let’s be quick,” Coen agreed.
We all turned our backs on the strange scene and hurried toward the stairs—though I still slowed as I always did when I reached the stairs, since they seemed to be constantly dampened by rain, sleet, or sea-mist, and the danger of me slipping and somehow falling right off the mountain felt pretty high.
“It must be part of Staviti’s plan,” Aros was mumbling as we reached the first level down and hurried into the lit corridor. “He’s the only one strong enough to completely redirect the water like that without evenbeinghere.”
Cyrus and Emmy were a few steps ahead of us and they ran straight past Cyrus’s room, so I assumed that we were all headed to the shared common room—where we had left the supplies from the previous sun-cycle. We were dressed already, and none of us had brought any personal effects, so all that remained were the pilfered supplies from the night before.
“Take the smallest knife, Willa,” Cyrus ordered, pulling a little dagger from one of the bulging packs and tossing it to me.
He was clearly in panic mode, because no person in their right mind would ever toss a knife at me expecting me to catch it without at least one death occurring in the room. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one thinking that, because Rome quickly reached out and plucked the knife from the air before I’d even had a chance to try and catch it. He placed it safely in my hand, and then moved to the pack beside Cyrus, untying a large axe that I hadn’t even noticed attached to the side of the bag. He tested it out by tossing it gently into the air and catching it again, before slipping the cord that had been securing it to the bag around his hips, securing the axe to his person that way. Cyrus handed out weapons to the others, and they all used makeshift fastenings to secure the weapons to their bodies the way Rome had. Siret ended up with two short, curved knives, Yael a fire poker, Aros the top half of a broken spear, and Coen a butter knife. I watched, confused, as Coen slipped the butter knife into his pocket.
“That one definitely looked smaller than mine,” I noted, waving my little dagger towards Coen’s pocket.
Cyrus didn’t even look up from where he was securing a small blacksmith’s hammer to Emmy’s belt. “If I give him anything more dangerous than that, he’ll become a liability. We want to protect ourselves, but we don’t want to be killing people left and right. At least they stand a chance against him when he’s only armed with that.”
“Don’t worry, Rocks,” Siret consoled me, taking the knife from me so that he could tie it with a cord around my hips. “You’re the second-most deadly person in the room—that’s why you get the second-smallest knife.”
“That definitely wasn’t why—” Cyrus started, but five simultaneous voices cut him off.
“Shut up,” they all ordered, causing me to grin.
As soon as we were all armed, we sorted through the remaining food and the few extra items of clothing that we still had between us, before packing it all into one of the bags. Cyrus took the burden of carrying that on his back.
After our rest, we had enough power to head back to Topia and meet up with the other Original Gods, but none of us were going to leave until we could figure out exactly what Staviti’s contingency plan was, and what strange activity the water was up to. Once we knew what we were up against, we would call in the reinforcements.
It seemed we were all thinking the same thing, because the mood grew quickly sombre as we hurried back out to the stone hallway and up the mountain steps. Once on top, we walked straight to the edge, peering down at the water. The level was lower again and it seemed to be sinking faster than was even natural, considering it had taken all night to stop rising.
