The Lost Ruins, Chapter 12

After some time, Elena spotted a light ahead of them. As they drew near, she saw that it was a shaft of sunlight filtering down from somewhere above them, falling on a small alcove in the wall. Inside the alcove was a single small crystal set into some kind of silvery metal holder. That holder had a ring on one end, and almost looked like it was intended to hang from a necklace. As Elena drew near, her head cast a shadow on the alcove, and she saw that the crystal was giving off a soft white light. She gasped at the sight.   “Nic! Look! Look at this!” Only long experience kept her from reaching out immediately to touch the artifact. It could be protected by a trap of some kind.   Nic peered down the next hallway that stood beside the alcove. It was much darker than the passageway that they had just emerged from. “I wonder if it was supposed to provide light for this hall,” he mused.   Elena followed his gaze. “You might be right!” She turned back to the crystal, examining it carefully. It was covered in a layer of dust, just sitting innocently in the alcove. She could see nothing that seemed to indicate a trap or even any way such a thing could be triggered. Experimentally, she used the coil of rope she had to sweep the crystal sideways. It moved without resistance in the alcove. Nothing happened to the rope. In fact, nothing whatsoever happened in any way that would indicate a trap. Feeling somewhat reassured, Elena reached up and picked up the crystal. She held it an inch over the base of the alcove for five seconds before removing it completely. Once again, nothing happened.   “Looks like this one is fine,” she commented. She held the crystal close, examining it for any sign of what might be causing the glow, but it was shining too brightly for her to get an up-close look at it. “This looks like it’s at least as bright as a torch.”   “Well, if we’re going to keep moving, then you’ll have a good chance to test it.” Nic extended his hand into the dark hallway, waving his torch around to see what may be hiding in the darkness. His light illuminated a hallway that quickly widened and branched off in multiple directions.   Elena took a moment to extinguish her torch and stepped past him, raising the crystal over her head. The steady white light spread quickly through the room, seeming to reflect off of the walls slightly. Nic nodded in approval, but kept his torch illuminated as they continued forward. Once again, he waited for her to decide which of the paths to take. Elena surveyed their options in the light of her new crystal. Each of the three halls she could see looked identical save for some Syrneth writing above them. Not having any idea what any of them meant, Elena decided to trust her instincts. She turned towards the middle path, which had the largest collection of writing above it. Nic followed, and they continued for several minutes. Elena kept watching the writing along the walls, which was more infrequent than in the last hallway, but still common enough to keep her excited.   She was perhaps a hundred yards down the middle passage when she suddenly felt herself falling upwards.   She flailed wildly at the suddenness of the feeling, her feet leaving the ground. She heard a cry from Nic behind her, but didn’t know if it was because he was falling too or if he had just seen her start to fly. There was nothing to catch herself on, but by some miracle she came to a halt a few feet off of the ground. She had managed to keep a hold of the crystal, somehow, and now used its light to see that she was indeed floating in midair. Nothing was holding her up, yet she could not touch the ground. She wriggled in the air, but all she succeeded in doing was slowly rotating herself in place.   Her idle spin brought Nic into view. He, too, was floating in midair, trying to stretch out his legs to touch the ground. From what Elena could see, he was about a foot too high off the ground for that to work. He had let go of his torch, which – bizarrely – hung in midair beside him. One of his flailing arms clipped it, and it began to spin wildly, flames trailing behind it. Nic immediately froze, leaning backwards as the torch spun. From what Elena could see, it did not look like it was going to stop anytime soon.   “This could be a problem,” she commented.   Nic turned his eyes towards her. “No, really?”   Elena laughed at the unexpected sarcasm. “Well, I will give it this: I’ve never encountered anything like this before.”   “Neither have I!” Nic drew a knife from his belt and cautiously held the blade out towards the spinning torch. The torch hit the blade and came to a halt upside-down, allowing Nic to reach out and grab it. He re-sheathed his knife. “Any ideas on what to do now?”   “How did they do this?” Elena peered up at the ceiling, looking for anything that could be up there holding her up. She swung a hand up over herself, feeling for any hidden cables or ropes. She found nothing, not even when she repeated the motion underneath her. “How is this even possible?”   “Elena.” Nic’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Not to interrupt you, but we need to find a way down.”   “A way…? Oh, right.” Elena twisted again, looking around the hall. No immediate solution to their plight presented itself. She reached out with an arm, clawing at the air as though she was swimming, but she did not move through the air. “Um, no. That’s not going to work…”   Nic continued to struggle, but he was just as stuck as she was. He swore as his motions flipped him over, pointing his head at the ground. It took him a moment to right himself. Thinking back on how Nic had used his knife to stop the torch spinning, Elena took the bow off of her back and used it to reach down to touch the floor. As it got closer, however, she felt herself float higher, keeping the tip of the bow from touching the ground. A quick glance around her made it obvious that her new higher position was still too far from the walls or ceiling to be helpful. She cursed and returned the bow to her back. She slowly drifted back to her original position, still a foot too far off of the ground to be able to touch it. She then took an arrow out of her quiver and held it up before her. She slowly released her grip on it, and it stayed where it was, hovering in place. She gently grabbed it as she would if it was one of her pencils, then gave it a gentle shove away from her and Nic, towards one of the walls.   To her surprise, not only did the arrow drift towards the wall, but she began to drift backwards, away from it. “What the…?” she shouted, flailing because of the unexpectedness of the motion. Once again, her frantic motions only served to twist her around in the air, and she continued her stately sideways drift.   “Wait a minute…” Nic pulled one of his own arrows out of his quiver and tossed it in the direction that they had come from with more force than Elena had used. Just like she had, he began to float opposite the direction of the thrown arrow. He was moving more quickly than Elena was, though, and he grinned. “I think you may have figured it out! Throw the arrows!” He took out a second arrow and flung it behind him. His speed increased.   Seeing Nic’s success, Elena emulated him, tossing an arrow back in the direction that they had come from. She began to move forward, down the hall. After a few seconds, she decided that she was moving too slowly, and threw three arrows down the hall in quick succession to increase her speed. Before too long, she was drifting past Nic. Unable to resist, she stuck her tongue out at him as she floated by. He chuckled at her, then threw another arrow to catch up.   After a few more minutes of what turned into the slowest race Elena had ever been in, she saw a corner approaching. She had just had time to notice and point it out to Nic when she felt herself falling down this time. She landed on the stone-metal floor with a grunt. Moments later, Nic landed beside her, hitting the ground in a graceful crouch. He shot her a smug grin as he stood.   “Yeah, big deal,” Elena grumbled as she rose, rubbing her backside. “Wonder what that trap was designed for.”   Nic turned back to the hallway they had just floated down. He carefully balanced another arrow in the air. “If we hadn’t figured out how to get past it, we would’ve just hung there until we finally died of thirst,” he observed. “Maybe that’s the point.”   “Maybe.” Elena glanced around, noticing for the first time a recessed hole in the wall just before the corner. She walked over and peered inside, seeing what looked like a horizontal metal rod, or possibly a handle. She carefully reached inside and tugged the handle downwards. Behind her, Nic’s arrow clattered to the floor.   “What did you do?” he asked.   “I just pulled this handle.” Elena glanced back in the direction they had come from. “I guess it controls whatever makes you float?”   “Apparently. Just make sure you leave it off. I don’t have enough arrows to race you back across that hall again.”   Elena grinned. “We could always have a foot race back.”   “Sure, if you want to lose.”   “You’d be surprised how fast I am.”   “Maybe, but you’ve never had to outrun a werewolf.”   Elena looked at Nic in surprise. “You have?”   “More than once. They’re not easy to kill.”   It was strange how easy it was to joke with Nic. It felt very similar to how she joked with Marcus when she was back in Avalon. It had been a long time since she had been given an opportunity to laugh like that. She and Marcus typically tried to avoid such displays of frivolity when they were around other expedition members, and no one else ever got that relaxed around her. Sure, Winston, her family’s butler, had an impressive dry wit that he never hid around her, but even that felt filtered through a layer of subservience. Being able to laugh with someone as an equal…   Well, that was special.   Not far past the floating hallway, they reached a new fork in the path. This fork was not immediately recognizable as such, for one branch had collapsed at some point in the past. It took less than a second to realize that the collapse had rendered the path completely impassable. Luckily, there was another path branching slightly to the right of the collapsed passageway. This path was covered in large Syrneth lettering, and when Elena examined the markings, she saw the same message repeated over and over again. It was undoubtedly important, but she had no way of knowing what it said. She pulled out her notebook and made a quick sketch of the letters.   “What do you think?” Nic asked.   Elena shrugged. “It’s an option that will let us keep moving. I can’t read the words, so whatever they were trying to tell us isn’t working.” She pointed to one particular repetition of the message. “That one is crooked, which I would guess means that it was added after the place was built, rather than at the same time. Maybe some kind of vandalism?”   “Did the Syrne have vandals?” Nic stepped closer to the marks, running his fingers gently along them. “They’re carved the same way that the other ones were.”   “Hm.” Elena closed her book and returned it to her satchel. “Well, there’s only one way to continue.” She moved forward, into the marked path. After a moment’s hesitation, Nic followed.   The first thing that Elena noticed about this new path was that the floor was uneven. As she shifted her weight and walked down the hall, the floor shifted and creaked beneath her. She adjusted her pace to avoid losing her balance or twisting an ankle. Beyond the uneven tilt to the floor, nothing seemed to be amiss in this passage. She continued walking, but froze mere seconds later when she heard something creaking above her.   Very slowly, Elena looked upwards just in time to see a piece of the ceiling tearing itself free. She leapt aside, caution forgotten for the time being. The piece of ceiling slammed into the floor with a thunderous bang. Both Elena and Nic froze, staring at the fallen piece. As one, their eyes returned to where it had fallen from. Another layer of the same stone-metal was above the fallen piece, leaving no indication of a worse collapse to come. Elena allowed her heart to descend out of her throat before she spoke.   “Well, that was unexpected. Normally, I step on something before one of those falls on me.”   “How would you be able to tell if you did?” Nic’s eyes flicked back to the creaky floor, and Elena had to admit that he had a point.   Moving more cautiously, the two of them continued down the hall. Before too long, a strange smell reached their noses. They only paused for a moment, however, instead continuing, and the source of the smell revealed itself after the path bent back to the left. In the next portion of the passage, some kind of pale brown sludge dripped down from somewhere above them, hitting the ground with a wet sound. Multiple drips of the stuff fell around the room, meaning that it would be nearly impossible to make it across without being hit by some of the sludge. Just beyond the dripping sludge stood a mostly-blocked doorway. Dim light filtered through a slit at the bottom of the doorway, indicating an opening that appeared to be just large enough to crawl through. There was no other exit.   Elena and Nic shared a look. “Guess we have to go across,” Elena muttered.   Moving with more speed than was probably wise, Elena set off across the dripping hallway. She was only a foot out when some of the sludge fell onto her shoulder. She glanced down at it, then casually brushed it aside. Her hand only contacted it for a second, but her hand immediately started to burn and itch. She quickly wiped the residue of the sludge off onto her pant leg, where it left a stain. When she examined her hand in the light of the crystal, she saw no marks or any other indication that the sludge had harmed her. While she was still looking, another glob of the sludge fell onto her head, making her scalp itch. With a groan, she brushed it free, hoping that it wouldn’t be too harmful to her hair.   Nic followed, his torch held up to give him light. He ignored the stuff dripping onto him, and Elena started walking when he was alongside her. They made it most of the rest of the way across the room without incident, and then a piece of sludge fell onto Nic’s torch. It immediately flared up, creating a fireball that consumed the top of Nic’s torch in an instant. He yelped and dropped the torch to the ground. It burned out before it hit the ground.   “What the?” Nic glanced at what was left of his torch, then up at the ceiling for an instant. “It’s flammable.”   “Glad we have this crystal, then.” Elena sidestepped a rather large drop of the stuff, then gestured towards the narrow hole in the doorway. “We should go now.”   Nic agreed, and the two of them went to the door and knelt beside the hole. Beyond the narrow opening was a well-lit chamber that seemed to have columns inside it. Just as Elena had predicted, the opening was just large enough for them to crawl through. Even Nic’s large Eisen frame would fit, though he would have a harder time of it than she would. Elena slithered through the opening first, just in case her assessment was incorrect, and she had to help pull Nic through. It turned out that he fit through without a problem, though, so she just helped him to his feet. Once she had, she noticed that the door they had just emerged from had the same Syrneth message scrawled on this side. She wondered if maybe it was the name of the passage they had just used.   Now on the other side of the door, Elena and Nic glanced around. What Elena had originally thought to be columns were actually small pedestals sitting in neat rows. The room was faintly illuminated by larger versions of the crystal that she now held, though they were far less bright than hers. Syrneth writing covered the walls and some of the pedestals, though it seemed that water had gotten into this chamber at some point. Most of the writings were tarnished beyond the point of readability. Some of the walls had what appeared to be murals, but they were just as badly tarnished as the writing. Despite this, Elena felt her excitement deepen.   “Nic, look! Actual pictographic records!” She moved quickly to the nearest one, trying to see what the image had been of. Unfortunately, it was too corroded.   “Kind of…” Nic walked around the room in a direction opposite of Elena. She barely noticed, as she had pulled out her notebook and was frantically copying down what she could of the room. She made it partway across when she halted in front of a pedestal that was actually occupied.   Sitting on the pedestal were a pair of metal rings. These rings were nearly identical, simple silvery loops with an oblong widening at one point in the design. They were just large enough to fit over someone’s wrists. When Elena glanced at the markings on the pedestal below them, she saw about half of a Syrneth word and what looked like a drawing of the two rings held apart, then touching. She quickly sketched the symbols into her notebook, then peered at the rings. Just like the crystal from before, there was nothing indicating a trap on these. She gently prodded the pedestal with her toe, feeling for any telltale movement that would indicate that the pedestal was a pressure plate. The pedestal seemed solid.   “Nic, I’m about to do something that might be really stupid.” She glanced up, mildly surprised when she found him halfway across the room from her. “Stay back for now, okay?”   When she got a nod in response, she reached out and plucked one of the rings off of the pedestal. It was incredibly light, almost as though it was made of string instead of metal, but it held its shape. Nothing happened in the chamber, so she picked up the second ring. Once more, nothing happened. She took a few more seconds to glance around, then shrugged. If the rings had been trapped, the trap had long since worn away.   Nic moved back towards her. “What are those?”   “I’m not sure. They look like bracelets or something.” She held them up in front of her eyes. Now that she was looking at them closely, she could see some kind of symbol on the wider portion of the rings. Each one had the same symbol, just mirrored. If she pressed the two together, the spiral-like symbols would match up. She glanced back down at the marking on the pedestal. “It looks like they are supposed to be touched together. Like this…” She brought the two rings together, lining up the symbols.   Elena felt a sensation like a cool breeze across her entire body, and a shimmering silver haze appeared around her. For a brief instant, she panicked, but the haze stayed where it was. She could still see through it, though it was slightly hard in the dim light of the chamber. She could also apparently still breathe just fine, so she allowed herself to relax.   Just on the far side of the haze, Nic stepped forward and extended a knife towards the haze. Elena watched him tap the edge of the knife against the haze, and she heard a slight metallic ping as he did so. “It feels like I’m tapping against a breastplate,” he reported. She could still hear him just as clearly as she could before the haze appeared.   “I wonder if this is some kind of Syrneth armor.” Elena took a step sideways, away from Nic, and the haze traveled with her. She noticed that the pedestals passed through it without hinderance as she moved. When she turned, the haze stayed in place. Only when she took a physical step did it move. It was wide enough around her to fit another person, and possibly two if they were small enough. “How big were they, if this was their armor?”   A second cool breeze sensation crossed over Elena’s body, and the haze vanished. Confused, Elena tapped the bracelets together again, but nothing happened this time. She glanced back over at Nic, who shrugged. The next three attempts Elena made to make the haze reappear failed as well. Eventually, she gave up and carefully placed the bracelets into her satchel.   She continued around the room, sketching down the Syrneth words that she found, and before too long Nic called out to her. When she turned to look at him, he was holding up another artifact made of the same silvery metal as the bracelets. This one was some kind of spiraling loop that folded back on itself. She crossed the room to where he stood and saw that there was a second copy of the artifact on the pedestal beside him. She picked this one up and examined it.   “Hold still,” Nic said, and Elena immediately froze. She glanced sideways at him and saw that he was peering at the side of her head through the spiral. Noticing her unnatural stillness, he commented, “You’re not in danger, you’re just standing in a way that got me thinking. You can move again.” Elena relaxed a bit, and Nic held up the loop. “It almost looks like this will fit around your ear.”   “Really?” Elena took her copy of the artifact and slid it over her ear, back to front. Just like Nic had predicted, it sat comfortably over her ear, the light metal almost unnoticeable to her. She reached up and fingered the piece. Her thumb and middle finger rested comfortably on the piece, thumb just below her earlobe, and middle finger close to her temple. Nothing whatsoever happened when she touched the piece. She turned her attention to the pedestal, but whatever messages that had been there were completely unreadable.   “Well, it looks good on you,” Nic commented. He handed her the other copy. “Does it do anything?”   “Not that I can tell. Maybe I can start a fashion trend back home, though.” She slipped the artifact off of her ear and deposited it and its twin alongside the bracelets. “Four artifacts in this one room alone. Plus, the crystal!” She felt a fierce grin explode across her face. “These are amazing finds!”   The grin on her face froze into place as she saw something dark drop from the ceiling behind Nic. Whatever it was landed with enough of a sound to make him turn. The shadow rose, straightening to a threatening height. Two wicked looking long steel knives glinted in the light of the crystals. The shadow shook its head, a dark hood dropping away, revealing the nightmarish features of Sonya. Her eyes almost seemed luminescent in the steady white light of the chamber, filled as they were with unbridled hatred. Her hair was disheveled, and she looked worse for wear.   “There you are, you bastards,” she snarled. “You owe me a fight.”