Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
The thing practically jumps in her grasp. It immediately turns her, veering toward the wall, where the tunnel has been collapsed over time. There’s no path there, no way forward, nothing but piles of rubble in front of us.
Kipp glances back at me and sheathes his blade, pulling out a tiny pickaxe instead.
I nod. “Looks like we’re digging for a while.”
* * *
We pick at the rocks, loosening them, and roll the larger ones aside. As we do, a pattern starts to emerge, and I realize we’ve encountered a stone wall of some kind. It pains me to destroy it, but if getting to the other side will somehow get us out of here, we have no choice. Still, it looks as if Gwenna has pointed us in the right direction once more, a fact that elates me and unnerves Gwenna.
One of the stone bricks crumbles under Kipp’s pickaxe, and open air appears with a puff of dust. It’s dark inside, and as we push the crumbling rocks away, the entrance grows larger and larger. We’ve tapped into an antechamber of some kind.
Gwenna surges forward, the rod practically demanding that she go through the broken wall. “Should we go forward?” she asks, turning to me, and practically fights the stick in her hands. “Aspeth?”
I nod, grabbing my pack. I’d set it down nearby so I could dig. “Let’s see where it takes us.”
“If it takes us to a graveyard, I’m holding you personally responsible,” she tells me.
“There were no Prellian graveyards. They buried their dead in an antechamber attached to the family’s home so the spirits of the ancestors could be close and watch over them.” I lean the staff over the hole, looking inside.
“That’s horrifying,” Mereden says, settling her pack on her shoulders.
I thought it was kind of sweet, but I guess it could be unpleasant, too. I swing the light from my staff forward, the red bleeding into darkness. “It doesn’t look like a graveyard anyhow. It could be a shop of some kind.” I turn to the slitherskin. “Lead the way, Kipp.”
He nods, pickaxe moving to his belt and changing it out for his small sword once more. We move forward as a group, stepping into the hole and through to the other side. There’s more rubble here, with part of the ceiling of the old building collapsed, and dust drifts down from above. Mereden waves a hand in the air, trying to clear it, and my heart thumps with excitement.
It’s a ruin of Old Prell. Judging by the dust that’s filtering in, we’re probably the first ones to see this. I swing my staff toward the wall, where a mural of a family is made out of chips of tile. The family offers bowls of fruit to the gods, their depictions crude and stylized in the Prellian fashion.
It’s incredible.
“Where are we?” Lark asks. “What is this building? What are these racks?”
“Racks?” I ask, turning my light source toward her. Sure enough, on the other side, there are fallen racks on the ground, and what look like niches carved out from the stone. They repeat in a regular fashion and the floor is covered in some sort of dark stain, along with coils of hammered metal on the floor. “Gwenna, try pointing the rod toward the floor and see if you pick up anything.”
She lowers herself, her eyes still closed tight, and turns the rod in a half circle before shaking her head. “It’s pulling me past. There’s nothing here it wants.”
“But it looks like a tomb,” Lark points out.
“What?!” Gwenna’s voice takes on a sharp edge. “Aspeth?”
“It’s not a tomb,” I say, trying to soothe her. I put a hand on her shoulder, because I can’t imagine how terrifying this is with her eyes closed. “Like I said, the Prellians didn’t make tombs like we do.”
“It’s a wine cellar,” Mereden blurts suddenly. “This is where they kept their wine.”
“How do you know?”
“My father has a similar cellar.”
“So where’s all the wine?” Lark demands. “If this is a wine cellar.”
“The wood rotted away,” Mereden says, nudging some of the metal hoops on the floor. “All it left behind are the cooping.” She glances over at me. “My father is really into wine.”
It makes sense. I nod. “I think you’re right. And wherever Gwenna is leading us, it isn’t here, so we keep going.”
“So we’re in a wine cellar,” Lark says as Kipp pushes farther into the darkness. “Does that mean there’s a wine store above us?”
“Or someone’s estate. My father keeps his barrels in the cellar of our hold and he checks them daily.” Mereden picks her way forward, the rope tugging at my waist as she moves. “There’s bound to be a door somewhere.”
The room is full of rubble that has to be climbed over, along with piles of dirt, leaves, and twigs (of all things). We guide poor Gwenna, grasping her arm. I thought it would be more impressive to find intact ruins, but this place is so full of rotted garbage that it’s impossible to tell what we’re climbing over mixed in with the rocks and debris. The darkness doesn’t help, either.