𝔸 ℂ𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕎𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕙 (Book 2)

Seventy-Seven

Rhys flew us in close to low tide, dropping us off before taking to the skies, where he'd circle and monitor the guards of the island and mainland while we hunted.

    The muck on the small piece of land reeked. Squelching and us with every step in the narrow walkway toward the temple ruin. Barnacles, seaweed, and limpets clung to the old cobbles of the trail, and every step into the chamber made something inside my chest sing with a symphony. Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Everything inside me called.

    Rhys and Amren had checked the site for wards beforehand, finding none. Which was either very convenient or very, very bad.

    Thanks to the open doorway, we didn't dare risk a light, but with the cracks that littered the walls and the moonlight overhead, it provided just enough illumination for us to get our job done.

    Knee-deep in muck, the tidal water gliding over the stones below us, Amren and I surveyed the chamber, barely more than forty feet wide.

"I can feel it." I spoke as I felt that tug in my chest, yanking me toward the object we were looking for. "It's...sleeping." even as it pulled me toward it, it felt dormant. Wanting to wake but unable to do say as it started locked away in the temple.

    "No wonder they hid it beneath the stone mud and sea," Amren muttered distastefully, the muck squelching as she turned in place.

    I surveyed the architecture, "I don't feel anything in the walls. But it's here." The ground.

    Indeed, we both looked down at the mud we stood on simultaneously, cringing at the mere thought of digging through the mess.

    "We should have brought a shovel." She said.

    "Would've made things a whole lot easier." I agreed. There was no time to get one. The tide was fully out now, and every minute counted. We both knew that.

    I took slow steps, every movement a battle, as I moved through the firm grip of the muck. I honed in on that feeling inside me. That call.

    I stopped in the center of the room—dead center. Here, here, here, here. Book seemed to scream.

    I leaned down, very much contemplating abandoning the entire mission solely because I had to dig through the disgusting mess.

    But I began hauling it away. "Hurry." I told Amren sunrise wasn't far off.

    Amren hissed in disgust but swooped down and began helping me pull away the mud.

    We dug.

    And dug. And dug. And dug. And dug. Until we were covered in salty mud and debris, finally coming to a stop once we uncovered a large lead door.

    Amren swore. "Lead to keep its full force in, to preserve it. They used to line the sarcophagi of the great rulers with it—because they thought they'd one day awaken."

    "Maybe they will. That is, if the King of Hybern has his grubby little hands on the Cauldron any longer."

    She snorted just before she shuddered and pointed. "The door is sealed."

I wiped my hand on the only decently clean part of me—my neck—before scraping away the last dregs of mud from the door. Every touch I layed on the lead door sent bursts of shivers through me, of cold. But there—a carved whorl on the center of the door. "This has been here for a...very long time." I murmured as something icy shot through me.

    Amren nodded, "I would not be surprised if, despite the imprint of the High Lord's power, Tarquin and his predecessors had never set foot in here—if the blood spell to ward this place instantly transferred to them once they assumed power."