The Howling Delve - Jaleigh Johnson [38]
Not enough, Meisha thought. She ached for the sunlight and the heat, almost as much as she craved the fire inside herself, the power of it. Living in a deep hole in the ground had never stopped feeling unnatural to her.
Was the presence in her dream merely a manifestation of that wrongness?
No, it was more than that, Meisha knew. There was something wrong with the Delve, something Varan chose to deny or ignore. She didn't know which state of mind was the more foolish.
Pushing herself back up to her elbows, Meisha began dragging herself forward again.
Ahead of her, a rock outcrop burst into soft glow. Before she could react, a cold hand closed around her ankle.
A scream ripped from Meisha's throat. The sound echoed down the tunnel. Power flared involuntarily in her mind.
She flipped to her back and splayed her fingertips. Fire rolled down her body, an inch-thick gout of flame that lit up the passage.
When the flames died, the glow had gone, and the only sound was Meisha's ragged breathing. The passage sat empty behind her.
"Show yourself!" Meisha shouted.
The answering silence mocked her. Meisha threw her hands up against the curved stone ceiling, emptying her fear and the fire into the tock. Orange clouds of flame licked along the tunnel in eithet direction until her anger spent itself.
When the flames grew cold, she regarded the blackened stone above her. Meisha felt some small satisfaction knowing she could leave a mark on the Delve's impenetrable armor.
Reigniting her light source, Meisha squinted into the distance ahead of het, and saw that the tunnel dropped off sharply ten feet ahead of her. She hadn't seen the precipice earlier.
She crawled to the edge and saw a steep, angled drop of roughly fifteen feet. Crawling blindly, she might have fallen over the edge and broken her neck.
Cold sweat pricked her scalp. Meisha closed her eyes and pictured a dwarPs face, for she had no other explanation for her mysterious rescue.
"My thanks," she whispeted.
She still had to navigate the steep drop. Feet first, the fall might have been manageable, but Meisha had no way to reverse her position in the tiny space. Shaera, an air savant, would have bypassed the drop easily. Meisha knew few such spells, but would have to learn more, she thought. She'd never trusted magic that did not involve fire. Flame felt natural to het-rendering her body light enough to float down a fifteen-foot drop, did not.
Calling the little-used words to het mind, Meisha cast the spell. Outwardly, she felt no change, but she could sense the release of magic from her spirit, and knew the spell had worked. Still, as she shimmied to the edge of the drop, she felt a hint of trepidation.
She gtasped the stone ledge and somersaulted, releasing the ledge before she hit her back against the rock. Slowly, lightei than the stale air in the cavern, she drifted to the floor below.
What seemed like a tenday later, when her feet touched the ground, Meisha sank into a crouch, grateful for the chance to bend her knees. Her spine cracked as she swiveled around to loosen her sore muscles.
By her light spell, Meisha could see the passage angled off to the right, the formerly smooth tunnel walls pockmarked with crags and fissures.
She drew her hand along the ground and found what she had hoped to find. Shaera's footprints hugged the wall. They moved steadily, and Meisha saw no traces of blood or torn clothing to indicate injury. She breathed a little easiet as she continued on down the tunnel.
In the quiet, with half her mind alert on the ttail and watching for danger, Meisha's thoughts drifted at random. Varan's words came unexpectedly into focus.
You've never shown any indication of friendship…
She'd grown up on the streets of Keczulla, tunning in packs with othet children of the same age and situation: a perpetual state of half-starved viciousness. She would never have risked her life for any of the