"Well, that's something new and different," I murmured.
I held out my glowing palms. The silver light flickered over what remained of the cavern, and I surveyed the damage I'd wrought with my Stone and Ice magic.
Beyond my hole, the stone and earth rose and fell in jagged waves, and dust choked the air like storm clouds of particles. The cavern, which had once been so beautiful and elegant, was now nothing more than a pile of mismatched rubble, like a house that had fallen in on itself.
Tons and tons of earth, stone, water, and mud filled the entire stretch of the cavern, blocking the entrance back to the mine shaft. I looked up. There must have been more rock above the ceiling than Tobias Dawson had let on, because the stone had formed a sharp, sloping roof, instead of the natural arch of the original cavern.
I wasn't getting out that way. Because even if I'd been at full strength, instead of beaten, bloody, and exhausted, I doubt even I could have managed to blast my way through so much stone and earth. Elementals had a lot of raw power, but ultimately, we all had our limits. Even me.
So I skirted around the edge of the rubble, slipping, falling, and climbing from one rocky dune of muddy earth to the other. In the distance, I heard the rush of water, like a bowl filling up. I didn't know where the water from the creek had gone when I'd collapsed the ceiling, but it was close by. Another reason for me to get out of here. I hadn't defeated Tobias Dawson to succumb to something as simple as drowning.
I'd just surfed down one particularly large dune when a small sound caught my attention. A tiny, sharp wail in the stone around me. I held out my glowing palms. A flash of light caught my eye, and I peered at the ground. And I realized I was standing on the diamonds.
They littered the ground under my muddy shoes like dull, frozen tears. Most of them had been pulverized to small bits, slivers, and glints that caught the silvery light emanating from my palms. Still beautiful, even in their ruined state. Too bad they were of absolutely no use to me. Definitely not a girl's best friend, in this case.
I walked on until I came to the far side of the cavern, but the earth and stone had fully blocked the exit. Which meant I had to find another way to get out of here - now.
So I surfed back in the direction I'd come from, stopping long enough to take off my stilettos and toss them into the darkness. The broken heels were doing more damage to my feet than going barefoot would. I'd just reached the recess where I'd originally hidden when a spot of white caught my eye against the gray stone. What was that? Another diamond?
I crept closer and realized it was a hand - Tobias Dawson's right hand, sticking out of a mound of earth, fingers stretched wide. I crawled over the earth and stone to get a closer look. But it was just a hand sticking out. Nothing else.
I checked for a pulse, but the dwarf didn't have one.
The cold chill of death had already settled into his flesh.
Still, I picked up a jagged piece of rock and slashed his wrist just to be sure. I sat there, resting and watching his blood soak into the turned earth and shattered stone.
When his wrist quit oozing, I moved on.
I walked deeper into the back of the cavern to the part I hadn't seen while Tobias Dawson had been challenging me to a duel. The cavern narrowed to a small corridor barely big enough for a person to squeeze through.
I stood before it and peered into the darkness, wondering what lay at the end of the midnight rainbow. Only one way to find out. I couldn't go back, and I had to get out.
So I stepped forward into the waiting darkness.
I'd only gone a few feet into the corridor when the world turned from dark gray to as black as the coal Tobias Dawson had ripped out of the mountain. There was no light up ahead, nothing to help me see the dangers that waited. And I hadn't escaped the dwarf only to break my leg and end up starving to death down here. So I reached for my Ice magic again. It came to me as easily as before, and I upped the intensity of the flames burning on my spider rune scars until I could see well enough to walk on. Around me, the stone muttered, sharp, angry, and hurt from all the upheaval it had seen today.
"Sorry," I murmured to the rock. "I didn't have a choice. "
My voice bounced against the stone and echoed back to me. The sound made me shiver, and I moved on, using my hands to light my way. The passageway grew narrower and narrower, until I had to turn sideways to shimmy through it. But I kept going. It wasn't like I had a lot of other options. There was no going back. Only moving forward.
The passageway opened up again slightly, allowing me to walk through the area square on, instead of twisting from one side to the other. But twenty feet later, it narrowed again. I gritted my teeth and slipped sideways.
And so it went. Sometimes, I could walk through the corridors with ease. Sometimes, I had to turn sideways.
Other times, I had to suck in my stomach and force myself through passageways that were little more than a foot wide. But I kept moving. Despite my many injuries, despite my broken jaw and throbbing skull, despite the strange influx of magic coldly burning in my veins, I kept going. To stop would be to rest, to sleep. Who knew if I would ever wake up?
There could be some noxious gas down here already killing me slowly. Some form of carbon monoxide or something equally lethal. No, I didn't dare stop. Not to rest, not to cry, not for anything. If Fletcher Lane had suddenly stepped out of the shadows and offered to tell me all the secrets he'd kept from me, where Bria was and what she was like, I would have walked right on by the old man.
So I trudged along in the blackness, with only the magical silver glow of my palms to light the way. Time ceased to have any sort of meaning. There were only rocks to navigate around, through, over. Sharp rocks pricking my feet. The smell of my own blood. And the murmur of the stones around me.
As I left the destruction of the cavern behind, the stones' murmurs became soft and sweet once more. They talked of water and air and the slow passage of time that had little effect on them. After the screams of the stones and the wail of the shattered diamonds in the cavern, the murmur of the rocks was as soothing as a lullaby. But I pushed the sound to the back of my mind, tuning it out.
Because if I listened to it, I would want to stop, just for a few minutes. And then I'd be gone.
I don't know how long I trudged along, just plodding through the dark earth. Minutes, hours, days, the end of the time. But I stumbled free of the narrow passageway I was in and entered a larger room, almost as big as the cavern where the diamonds had been. I was halfway across before I realized I was walking directly into a sheer stone wall.
I stopped, blinked, and held out my glowing palms.