Page 33 of Beneath the Veil of Tides
The god closed his eyes to focus.
Veins of shining sapphire power surged through the rune’s grooves, starting from the top and slowly lacing their way to the floor below us. It snaked under our feet, sending us into a panic trying to dodge stepping on the enchantment. The room hummed in response and gradually got louder, a constant drum of sound as it accepted its payment. Then, the door slowly creaked open as if drifting by the wind.
Before us stood a cavernous entrance, the endless stone steps the only way down.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The stone on either side rubbed against my shoulders as we filed down the slippery stairs. Each scrape intensified the sweat dripping across my spine, the heaving and bile settling in my throat. The walls wept with moisture, glistening in the Noctis-powered light at my back.
Five thousand and two… five thousand and three… Was there even an end?
Pressure built behind my chest wall similar to the narrowing stone, and the breaths I managed to sip were short like needles prickling the organ. We descended for miles, the men shuffling sideways to fit through the further we traveled.
There had to have been another way.
“Want to play a game?” The god’s voice filled the corridor, and I shot him a glare over my shoulder. A game would become a distraction to the only thing holding me together—my mind searching for memories. “It will help. I promise.” If he noticed my trepidation, his face didn’t betray it.
I swallowed, the gesture of him trying to calm us fluttering deep in my stomach.
What was I thinking?
“If it’s like our card game, I’m down,” Calvin called out from the front of the line.
“Somewhat,” the god answered. “It’s called Light the Lie.”
“Ironic, coming from the biggest liar I know,” I muttered.
“We take turns holding the light and tell a tale. Inside the tale, you must fabricate one lie. If we guess the lie within the story, the light flares,” Noctis explained behind me, ignoring my remark. He trailed the group but demonstrated the light flare, which illuminated another endless number of stairs before us. We all groaned.
It’ll never end,I whined in my head.
“So, you finally feel like telling us more than vague theater performances that provide nothing but drama?” Calvin jested.
Noctis hummed. “Maybe a little at a time. Good things aren’t meant to be rushed.”
“You go first,” Zahara ordered, the tension in her clipped, sharp words palpable, the ache of protection for her boys as we headed into the unknown.
“When I was eight, the divine council called me to my first meeting, one that was to bring judgement on an elderly man for attempting to mess with his fate. He found a sorcerer to fake his death, and it enraged the gods. They sent me on a search for him through Sindlewood and ordered for me to return with him dead. I found him with his family, but I couldn’t kill him. When I returned, I told them I lost his body in the ocean. It was the first time I betrayed the gods’ orders.”
We descended in silence for a moment, all pondering which part of his story was untrue. Zahara guessed first.
“You can’t mess with fate. The man couldn’t have faked his death. The fates would have just cut his cord,” she declared, but the light remained dimmed.
“Incorrect. You cantryto defy fate, but they’ll always know. Which is why I was sent to find him,” Noctis corrected.
Jun made his guess next. “You weren’t eight. That’s too young for them to send you on a mission that important.”
The light did not flare.
“You actuallydidkill him,” I guessed, but still the light remained unchanged. Maybe Iwaswrong about him.
Calvin waited, thinking for a minute before giving his guess. “It was not the first time you defied the gods’ orders.”
The glow multiplied throughout the chamber.
“I defied them the day I was born.” Joy laced through Noctis’s words, a lilt to the sentence.
We played for hours, each giving stories of ourselves that lowered the tension through the narrow corridor. They thankfully skipped me, a story not forming in my muddied mind to offer.
