Page 4 of Winds of Ruin
“Hm.” My mind churned through the possible threats.
Fenris took a step forward, but I grabbed his arm.
“Wait…” This was usually where things got interesting. I tugged a loose stone from the cave wall and rolled it down. As soon as the stone hit the fifth step, sharp iron spikes shot from the narrow walls. They retreated as abruptly as they’d sliced through the cramped space.
“Well, that’d have hurt…” Fenris mused with a shiver.
I pulled out another stone and aimed it at the sixth step. Nothing. Another at the seventh, and the spikes returned. Another at the eighth—nothing. The spikes triggered on the ninth and tenth steps. I repeated my method until we’d mapped our descent.
“After you,” I teased Fen.
He chuckled a dark laugh. “Oh,nowyou’re okay with me leading?”
I smirked and nodded. “Avoid the fifth, seventh, ninth, and tenth steps. And maybe don’t touch the walls. Just… in case.”
I matched his steps into the cave’s depths, and the hairs on my neck stood as we entered the tomb. I’d never been above stealing from the dead, but something about this room’s energy prickled at my skin.
The glistening ceiling was at least fifty feet high. Phynnic passages of remembrance covered the stone walls. I recognized the looping script from the ancient tomes in Krait’s library.
At the center of the cavern, there was a bronze coffin, grand in both size and design, fit for the Phynnic Princess of twelve centuries ago.
I grimaced, spotting skeletal remains wrapped in cobwebs. The person had fallen with their torso across the coffin, arms outstretched—a peculiar position that made me think of worship or mourning. Or both.
A chill ran up my arms.
“Maybe don’t touch the tomb itself,” I mused. “Wouldn’t want to end up like him.”
“Never did I think we’d be grave robbing together,” Fen said too merrily as he stepped around the underground room, flame still lit, affording us limited visibility.
A single beam of sunlight landed on the bronze coffin, where a flat golden stone with an intricate sun symbol, had been soldered into its surface. Under the light, a quote in script adorned the tomb.
“What does it say?” I asked.
Growing up in Brennax, I’d never learned the old texts of Phynx.
Fen had traveled the realms in his hundred years spent working among the old-world courts. By the time I was born, the languages had already converged into something new.
He moved his flame above the writing. “‘May this reflect for those who need the rays of Astros’ eternal projection.’”
We both looked up to find the light source.
High above our heads, something in the far-right corner reflected down from an opening in the cave’s ceiling. Like a magpie drawn to shiny trinkets, I needed to know what it was.
“There’s a ripped page dropped here,” Fen said.
“Uh-huh,” I said, still fixated on the object.
“It seems to be about a sleeping Princess,” he mused.
I inched closer to the cave’s corner, head tilted back. “Mm-hmm.”
The buzzing sensation of having found something extraordinary overcame me.
“You’re not listening, are you?” he grumbled.
I felt in my bones that we needed to retrieve the object.
Wind lifted the hair off my shoulders.
