Page 104 of Lore of the Tides

Lore walked into blackness. Silence rang in her ears. She whispered a spell, but the light in her hand barely glowed. She tried again, urging it to brighten, but herSourcewas weak, as though suppressed by something.

Lore pressed deeper into the cavern, her breaths coming fast and shallow. The air was stale, as if there wasn’t quite enough of it. It was heavy with the musty scent of stale earth. And something else... There was something rotting in here.

Something and notsomeone, she hoped. She couldn’t handle another reverie.

The sound of dripping water echoed every now and then, each plop amplifying the silence that otherwise pressed against her ears. The silent flow of an unseen river rippled over her boots, a caress that sent shivers down her spine. The cave floor, slick with algae, threatened to betray her footing at any moment. Each step was a calculated risk, a gamble with the threat of a twisted ankle and a lonely demise.

She held her hand high above her, casting what little light she could. She glanced down and froze in place.

She was not walking in a river.

Insects covered the floor.

They crawled over her boots in a steady stream. She yelped and kicked them off. Her fear helped her light grow a little brighter, but these bugs did not have eyes to see, so the light didn’t scare them away.

There were beetles whose exoskeletons shimmered in the light. Centipedes the size of her arm with hundreds of legs. Slippery, colorless salamanders that slurped up the bugs with ease. Lore wanted to scream. She wanted to run. To slip back into the corridor and tell Finn and Hazen that she couldn’t find it. She’d failed, and gods, could they get the fuck out of here?

But no, she could feelAuroradelcalling to her from beneath the earth. How it longed to be rescued from this hellscape. Lore blessed Finndryl in her mind and donned the gloves he’d made for her—though they were made of thin material and not, unfortunately, armor—and then she began to dig. The ground was soft clay; it dislodged easily. What wasn’t easy were the bugs that clung to her fingers, pinching them or trying to crawl up her wrists.

The bugs had sensed her, and they were hungry.

They crawled up her legs, and onto her back. She brushed them off, but when she did that, the clay would fall back into place, filling the area she’d just cleared.

The clay was bitter cold, and it wasn’t long before her fingers were numb.

Lore began to sob.

There must be a spell; there must be something she could do to keep the insects at bay; but her brain was barely functioning, such was her desperate, primal need torun.

A spider dropped down from the ceiling and landed on her cheek. Lore brushed it away along with hot tears.

As long as they stayed away from her ears and her mouth, she would be fine. She would find the book and get out of here. This would all just be a bad dream.

But the hole in the ground was getting quite wide and deep, and she still hadn’t found the grimoire.

The bugs were more determined. One tried to crawl into her shirt collar, but, gagging, she squished it between her jaw and shoulder. She heaved, the contents of her dinner almost coming up.

The thought that thiswasa bad dream—another one of her nightmares—wound its way into her mind. This was futile. She wasn’t ever going to find the book. The bugs would burrow their way into her clothes, tunnel into her skin, slither into her mouth.

Lore began to claw at the clay, not caring when a sharp stone jammed into her already broken and bruised nail beds. She ignored the pain and kept digging.

Finally, her knuckles rammed into something solid.

Not stone, nor dirt or clay.

She dug around it. Wood. A box. She brushed a bug with pincers away from her ear. She shook off a centipede that tried to wrap itself around her wrist.

With a groan she heaved the box up and out of the dirt.

It was bound with a silver chain, locked. She muttered a spell, hoping the mechanism would spring open. It didn’t even tremble.

She flicked a bug off her ear and squinted in the low light of her glowing hand. The keyhole was obnoxiously small.

Syrelle’s grandfather was damned thorough.

Survive hungry griffins, not die in a labyrinth of caves, solve a magical puzzle, answer a fucking riddle, not die from the terrifying bugs... and now she needed a key. Lore held in a wail.

She could do this, she could do this. She glanced around the cave. Was the key hidden somewhere in here? Maybe one of the bugs was key-shaped? She forced herself to look down at the swarming mass. With her luck, it was probably the one she’d squished. Its juices still clung to her jaw.