Better the known danger than the unknown. I walked toward the flickering light.
It wasn’t a long journey, but as I approached the maw of the cave, the miasma was indeed quite close to the entrance. Only a few yards separated the corrosive waves from the sand at my feet. Luckily, no dark shapes moved within the nearby waves.
In the distance, I could barely make out the shape of grand sails, skimming across the surface of the miasma like a petal atop water. An Arc, returning to Mesmoria.
This area of the island had several coves tunneling through it, and I could make out Talissa farther away, feet beating against the sand as she ran along the edge of the outer perimeter. I couldn’t find the sun’s glare beyond the crowded clouds, it must already be sinking. The rocky cliff was too smooth. If it started to rain, that wall would become a death sentence.
Well, shit.
The caves jutted out of the cliffside, which was a sheer rocky rise between the shoreline and the outer perimeter. It erected a natural barrier against the miasma.
The immediate threat was the miasma, but I didn’t see any nearby shadows moving beneath its nacre sheen. One eye stayed on it as I searched for the best way through the outer barrier. There was no telling how far the cliffs extended before the shore would be traversable to reach a gate in the outer perimeter. The cliffside had several craggy outcrops, but looked mostly smooth. No doubt from miasma waves breaking against it and melting it down over years. Someone I didn’t recognize was halfway up, climbing the wall a quarter league away.
Another choice, whether to try to climb the cliff face or follow the coast until it merged with the outer perimeter wall. That had to be part of this test, to see how many sound choices we could make with limited information.
I eyed the cliff, glancing at the sky. It looked darker than it had this morning, rain might erupt any minute. Distantly, I heard someone scream, high and shrill. My mind flashed to Rosa, pulse racing.
Don’t panic.
First thing first, what side of the island was this? It might give me some idea how close Lake Mirae was, and which direction to go.
The waves were slightly angled from my current position. If the wind this morning had been blowing northwest, and the prevailing winds on Mesmoria were westerly, it would be a reasonable assumption based on the angle of the water that I was on the south or southeast end of the island. Furthest away from Lake Mirae.
Of course they’d put us as far away as possible.
Before I could make a decision, someone nearby shouted. Turning toward the noise, Izaiah backed away from the miasma toward the mouth of a cave he’d just exited, a lone Sanguir lurching toward him from the waterline. If he kept going, he’d be trapped in the cave with it, blind and defenseless.
Rosa’s mangled eye socket danced behind my vision.
I was moving before I could even think through what I was doing, racing toward him, shouting to get his attention. “This way!” I waved my arms above my head, frantically trying to pull his terrified gaze away from the Sanguir.
His head jerked toward me, and for a paralyzing moment I didn’t know if he would listen. Then he was sprinting toward me, Sanguir still following after him. At least there was only one. When he reached me, I turned on my heel, grabbing his arm as we hurried in the opposite direction.
“Where did you get cut?” I panted, risking a glance at his reddened wrists and ankles as we ran.
He held up his left wrist, which had a jagged line down the side.
It looked awful. And deep.
“Broke the rope on a sharp rock,” he explained, looking over his shoulder at the Sanguir which was still trailing us but at an increasing distance. “Nicked my arm too.”
Nicked?It looked deep enough to scar.
“Wrap it in something.” I slowed to a jog when we had a few yards of safety between us and the leech. He nodded, tearing the bottom of his shirt near a moth-eaten hole and using it as a bandage around the injury.
It was only once the wound was covered and the Sanguir a blurry dot behind us that I slowed enough to catch my breath. With a curse, I realized we’d been running in the opposite direction of Lake Mirae, and there was still a steep cliff wall separating us from the outer perimeter. “We’ll have to climb.” The cliff edge rose at least fifty feet above us. We had at least a few minutes before the Sanguir caught up.
“Shouldn’t we just follow the shore until we reach a break in the cliff?”
“No.” I pointed back toward the way the Sanguir was still crawling toward us. “That’s the direction of Lake Mirae, and we just put another twenty minutes between us and it.”
Izaiah puffed out a frustrated breath. “You should go up first then.” He examined the cliff face. “I could at least slow you down if you start to fall.”
“You’re the stronger of the two of us,” I noted. It was a fact, he had easily fifty pounds on me, and more than half a foot in height. “You should go first, you’ll reach the top faster.”
He shook his head. “If you hadn’t called me when you did, I would be running unseeing in that cave with that…thing after me. You go first so I can make sure you make it to the top.”
Izaiah was more than an acquaintance, he was someone I wanted to stand beside me while we both got our graduation marks permanently inked. He’d hauled my ass to the Medical center after I’d injured my ankle. I’d be lucky to have him as a crew member with me on an Arc. Somewhere along the way, he’d become a friend I didn’t want to see hurt, or left behind.
