The Emperor's Edge 2: Dark Currents

The Emperor's Edge 2: Ch. 22 Pt. 1

Books woke with a gasp, escaping some nightmare where he was falling—and suffocating. He lay on his back with cold darkness enveloping him. He blinked, trying to make out shapes, but his eyes failed to penetrate the blackness.

Memories hiccupped into his thoughts: the lake, the shaman, the artifact. He was alive, but was he truly in the dark or had he gone blind? Fear chilled him further. Maybe he had worked in the artifact’s blaze for too long.

“Easy,” he told himself. No panicking. Especially considering the numbness that had taken over his body in the lake was gone. “Definitely a positive development,” he muttered.

Either the shaman had healed him or the effects had worn off. The details did not matter. Figuring out where he was and getting back to the others—that mattered.

Cold seeped into his back from a rough, uneven floor. Stone. He rolled to his knees and landed in a puddle. A quick pat-down informed him the helmet and his tools were gone, though he still wore the diving suit.

He explored further. On three sides, dirt and rock walls rose to meet a low dirt and rock ceiling. Faint reverberations coursed through the stone, as if machinery labored somewhere in his underground prison. A different texture comprised the fourth wall of what he realized was his cell. Smooth and hard, it sent a buzz up his arm when he touched it. When he pressed harder, a stronger buzz coursed through him, making his hair stand on end. It reminded him of the power he had felt when he broke the artifact, and he decided not to risk hurling himself at it.

Books swept his foot along the floor, hoping to find something that could suffice as a latrine. No luck. A rusty bolt clattered across the ground. He found a few more scraps, but nothing larger than a hand-length scrap of twisted iron. It had a sharp edge, and he might have used it to file his way free if his captor had been considerate enough to put him in a cell with an iron gate instead of a magical barrier. He kept it on the chance the shaman might be foolish enough to come inside.

He pulled the top half of the diving suit down and was surprised when his movements did not bring pain. He pushed a sleeve up to check his wound. No fish tooth marks violated the flesh of his arm. The shaman had healed him. To what ends?

Books pushed the suit lower so he could relieve himself. At that moment, footsteps sounded to his left. A familiar white globe of light floated into view, illuminating a rough-hewn tunnel running past his cell. A rusty ore cart rail bisected the center of the passage.

He started to clamp things off, but a defiant thought curled his lip. Let the bastard find Books peeing on the floor of his hideout.

“What do you want me to do?” a female voice asked. Books’s eyes bulged. A familiar female voice.

“Just identify him.”

Two figures strode into sight behind the light globe. Books fumbled, hurrying to button himself in, though he feared she had already seen him in action. Heat flamed his cheeks. Why did these things happen to him? No villain would presume to walk in on Sicarius while he was peeing.

Vonsha and the shaman stopped before Books’s cell. She wore a dagger at her belt and carried a lantern. Her stance said “not a prisoner,” though it stung him to admit it. She did seem surprised to see him, so maybe she was not in on the larger scheme.

Something skittered along the floor behind them, a silver spider-shaped creature the size of a fist. A coin-sized circle on its front glowed red. As the spider passed below the shaman’s light, Books realized it was not a creature at all. The tiny “legs” moved mechanically, and metal, not skin, comprised the carapace. It disappeared into the darkness, heading deeper into the tunnel. Neither person facing Books reacted to it.