Those Who Would Not Be Gods

19. Below: Raff

Into darkness.

The tunnels had been dark. What they faced now was pitch.

As soon as the stones had ground shut behind Cecile, the light from her flame dimmed by half. She frowned and reached out to it, but it stubbornly refused to put out any more light. What they had was all there was.

Three narrow passageways opened up before them, each one wide enough to admit one man. Even then, Raff could already see that he'd have to turn sideways up ahead if he wanted to keep going, at least on the second path. The walls pressed in from all sides, suffocating, claustrophobic. It was easy to imagine getting stuck down here, caught between thousands of tons of earth on either side. No one would hear them scream. No one would come to help.

Raff whipped around to face the door. What if? But no. But... it was meant to seal the god in. No. He had to look. With a snap of his fingers, he summoned his own small flame and held it up to the wall, examining it closely.

"What?" Cecile asked.

He swallowed. Made another pass, just to be sure, eyes scouring every inch of the stone surface. Then he turned towards her.

"There's no way back."

All three of them froze. Edith was the first to come back to life, turning toward the leftmost passage like the needle on a compass divining north. "Then we go forward," she said. "It's so close now. I don't even have to try to feel it." She slid into the passage. Almost immediately, the shadows swallowed her up.

Raff and Cecile exchanged a look. Raff shrugged, then gestured for Cecile to go first.

"How courteous," she said, fluttering her eyelashes at him with a tiny, sarcastic smile.

"If you get stuck, I want to be able to escape backwards," Raff explained.

He could've framed the deadpan expression on Cecile's face.

They proceeded. On and on. The floor was covered in gravel. Once, Raff slipped and only caught himself because falling meant being wedged in the stone. As he extricated himself, unwinding his belt from the stone prong that had grabbed it and redistributing his weight from his hands back to his feet, his mind presented him a horrible possibility: falling flat, sliding between some impossibly thin jut of stone and getting stuck, unable to press his head back upwards past the jut and stand again. Another: his head caught between two stones, completely stuck, unable to move up or down. Frozen in place, until he starved to death and died.

Raff breathed out. His eyes found Cecile's flame and settled there, letting the fire burn away the fear. It would be fine. He wasn't that clumsy. They would get to the end of the passage, they'd find the Godstone, and they'd escape. That was all there was to it.

Multiple paths branched out. Left and right turns twisted up, down, away from them. Every time, Edith unhesitatingly chose her path, not even giving it a moment's thought before she turned and pressed on, through the cave, on and on. It was all he and Cecile could do to keep up.

What if there is no Godstone? he thought, as he bumped his head on the low ceiling for the hundredth time. He wiped moisture from his forehead and told himself it was from the dampness of the cave, not fear. If they got to the end and there was nothing... what then? Then we starve to death, came the grim answer. His guts twisted for the hundredth time, heart pounding away in the tight space of his chest, enclosed like him, trapped between stony ribs like he was trapped in the bones of the earth. No. It had to be here. What else could it be? Why else would everyone be here, trying to find it?

By that logic, they should have found the Godstone ages ago, a little voice replied. So many people had searched for it. Why would he be the one to find it? And on Schola grounds. Surely someone else had thought to look beneath the music room's floor. Surely someone else had noticed the circle and the odd construction of the room.