“I can’t get the door open,” Reyla said softly, sheathing her blade. She strode to the bunk and sat, placing her palms on the blanket beside her thighs.
“Look at this.” I pointed.
She leaned close, reading. “How is that possible?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
She lifted her hand and lit her finger, a slick smile growing on her face. “We’re not so helpless this time, however.” Her eyes widened, and she lowered her voice. “Can you flit?”
I laid my hand on her arm and cast the spell, but we remained inside the dungeon.
“A malfunction or do you think it’s blocked?” she asked.
I tried again. Over and over until she laid a hand on my arm.
“Stop.”
“I can’t find any power to fuel the spell,” I said with a snarl.
“We’ll figure this out. We beat the labyrinth, and we’ll beat them too.” She hurried back to the door and focused her lightning on the lock.
But when footsteps echoed in the hall, her head lifted, and she bit off the lightning as she gaped to the right.
A guard walked into view, his armor gleaming in the flickering light, the sigil on his right chest showing he belonged to Irridain Court, the only difference so far from the labyrinth. He passed with a slow gait, his hand resting against the hilt of his blade strapped to his side, magic hissing between the fingers of his other hand. He continued to the end of the hall and turned the corner.
A few minutes later, the same guard reappeared from the opposite end of the hall.
“Another loop.” Reyla turned her head to watch him pass.
I joined her at the bars. “They may want us to think that.”
“I’ll test it.” She dug a small stone out of a loose area in the floor, palmed it, and waited.
When the guard appeared like clockwork, striding past us, she tossed it at him, hitting him in the back.
He kept walking as if nothing had happened.
“Maybe he didn’t feel it.” She pulled the small blade from its sheath in her boot, staring at it for a long while. “We have only a few weapons unless you listened to your wife and started carrying your own hidden blades.”
“Someone I know is going to be quite angry with me.”
She rolled her eyes before focusing them on the hall again. “I’ll throw mine. It’s worth the risk.”
This time, when the guard walked by, she threw the knife at him, impaling him in the shoulder.
He grunted but kept walking, now with blood trickling down his arm to plop on the floor. He disappeared around a corner on our left and reappeared on our right a short time later, with the blade still protruding out of his arm.
“Doesn’t he feel it?” Wonder filled her voice as hestrode past us again. She raised her voice. “Hey, don’t you feel that? You! Guard! Answer me.”
He kept walking, completing the loop and returning with her blade still sticking out of his shoulder.
“I don’t know what this means,” she said after he’d disappeared on our left. “But it must mean something.”
Prager's influence was everywhere, twisting even the guards into unnatural patterns.
“He appears to be locked in a spell. Short of killing him, I imagine he’ll keep strolling by.”
Sounds echoed from the right. Instead of the guard, a click of metal was followed by Moira rushing toward us, glancing around feverishly.
