Rogue (Valiant Book Five)

Chapter 1: Lynia

AT ANY MOMENT, I could drown. Darkness covered the entire area immediately around me in a thick layer. Only a tiny distant glow came from the mushrooms by the coral reef farther to my right. Between that and the pressure of the water that pressed down on my body, I should have been terrified.

It wasn't like this was my first time doing this. Swimming came easily to me, like a second nature, sometimes easier than walking. I could hold my breath for a good while, but jobs like this one always came with the possibility of drowning. That didn't bother me as much as it should have.

It bothered me more that I was alone. Separation from my sister did squeeze my lungs a bit more than I preferred. Perhaps I depended on my sister too much for everything, but the thought of being without her down here made me shiver.

So, I had summoned some constructs that looked completely real, and yet they weren't. I held the first companion, a dolphin, under my left arm, and I clung to the mermaid's bright blue scaly tail with my right hand.

I put myself through all this to deliver a silly package for a job—one that wouldn't even pay well. But desperate times without ccs called for desperate jobs. The crazy stunts I did for money—and to try to impress the Conclave—never ceased to amaze me. They ruled our world, and only the best mages joined them. Not that I ranked as one of the best mages—just an average one, really—but a woman could dream, right?

The job requested by an unnamed client asked that "the summoning mage bring the package to the Ocean Floor Mining Unit." Fortunately, I'd done jobs here before. The tech-guild Silla owned the Ocean Floor Mining Unit and used it to mine the valuable ore found at the ocean floor here. Typically, Silla required mages and anyone else working for them or doing a job for them to take the elevator inside the building all the way to the ocean floor, but I decided to swim down outside the building. Why pay money to take the elevator when I could just use my magic to summon two constructs to swim me down?

Well, here's to dying just because I didn't want to spend twelve ccs.

I never learned. The thought would have made me roll my eyes except for the darkness that surrounded me. What little light the glowing mushrooms at the coral reef provided allowed me to make out the shape of the Ocean Floor Mining Unit building close on my left. As massive as the building stood, it looked like a speck next to the rough, mountainous terrain and the passing schools of fishes. Millions of fishes populated three swirling masses that swam in the center of a mountainous valley farther to the right. The glowing mushrooms hung from the side of the cliffs, lighting the fishes and the building, but they were too dim to reveal the ocean floor or anything on my left beyond the building. The temptation to swim to the glowing mushrooms' light coursed through me, and my stomach tightened.

Darkness hovered everywhere except where the fishes swam. Calm down, Lynia. It's just the dark. And the ocean. Nothing new. I didn't need to close my eyes, so I simply said a quick mental prayer to calm the nerves lacing through me. Yet, I couldn't stop looking at the black void looming in front of me. Though my sister hated water and would have been far more miserable than I, at least having her here would have brought me comfort. Without her, my mind imagined all sorts of shapes in the void in front of me—monsters with tentacles and fangs.

You're fine, Lynia. Calm down. The uplifting thoughts and encouraging prayer helped calm my racing heart, so I forced the fearful thoughts away and focused, instead, on finding a way inside the building. It had to have an entrance, right? Panic made my heart race again, but I told myself that surely it had an entrance. I wouldn't get trapped out here.

I took my hand off the dolphin and placed it on the building's smooth, solid wall. Though I could see a bit of it from the mushrooms' dim violet glow, my mind had started to play tricks on me and had turned the building into some sort of large monster with tentacles and a mouth that could swallow me whole. So, as my hand rubbed the wall that didn't feel slimy or rough like a fish or monster, relief flooded through me, easing the tension in my muscles, but I couldn't relax for long. I slid my hand across the wall in search of a door—any door.