high tides ☆ TOH au

Chapter 6

The drive to the beach was faster than it would've been during the day, with almost no other cars on the road. We were silent the whole way there, but we were all happy. I bounce my leg up and down impatiently, not able to wait much longer. The sound of water droplets hitting the ground starts to fill my ears as it starts raining. I'm still not used to the non-boiling rain, the way it doesn't burn your skin or burn off pieces of fabric.

Camila pulls the car into a spot in a parking lot of a building that stood by the beach. The cave was still about a mile away, and not a part of the public beach. We get out of the car, and take the bag with us. Willow and I grab the nearly scarlet bats from the trunk of the car, too, and we start down the beach.

The sand was quiet to walk on, with only the occasional crush of a stray twig or rock under our feet. The only other things that fill our ears were the sounds of the ocean and the wind. Maybe the occasional bird singing out. Despite the silence, we all try to tread lightly. There's a security guard on duty, Camila had told us, so we try our best not to make much noise. There isn't anywhere to hide on a flat beach like this.

Eventually, we get to the border of the public area of the beach. There's a wooden fence separating the two areas. It isn't high enough for us to duck under, so Camila boosts us up, then climbs over herself. We walked for around another nine minutes before arriving at the cliff where the cave opening was supposed to be.

We found it fairly quickly. It was a small opening, but a grown adult could fit inside if they crawled through. Gus pulled out a glyph from the bag, and tested it. The light glyph worked, but only a bit. A small circle of light about the size of a large pin. He grinned at the rest of us, not daring to speak. A light flashed behind us, probably from the security guard. It wasn't facing us, though, and it was too far away to reach us.

I crawled through the opening first. Gus came after me, then Hunter, Willow, and Camila. She had offered to stand guard, but it would be worse if she was caught, and she was easier to notice than the cave was.

The inside of the cave was damp, with water dripping down from the ceiling. It wasn't very big, and it was made of solid stone. The bottom of the cave was covered in water. There wasn't anything in the water; no fish, or items, or anything. A droplet of water landed on my head.

Gus drops the bag onto one of the rocks protruding from the water. I grab a glyph from it, trying to find the spot with the titan's blood. I tap on the symbol, and watch as it starts to fold in on itself and start glowing. It floats up above my hand, lighting up the interior of the cove.

It's much bigger than it was earlier, and I can tell we're close to the pool of Titan's blood. The blood itself can't spread through water without help, so it's probably all concentrated in one spot. Titan blood tends to be thicker than normal water, so I start touching around in the water with my foot, trying to find an area that has a thicker texture.

The others seem to be doing the same, occasionally testing out glyphs. From what we had gathered, it seems to be somewhere in the southeast section of the cove. Wiping the water off of my shoe after about ten minutes of poking around with it, I grab the bat and start to test the waters with the end of it.

Most of the lights we had cast in the cave have died down by now, and only one remains, floating in the northwest corner of the cave. It's stronger than the one outside, but it's still smaller than the other ones cast in the other direction. Another droplet of water falls on my head, and I can hear the rain splashing on the ocean outside the cave.

The searching takes a while. It's not easy, since it's dark, and there were more fire glyphs made than light glyphs. The blue color of Titan blood is hard to distinguish from the clear water, due to the stone underneath it. Eventually, though, I touch the bat down on a thick substance.