Alkimiya - A Fantasy Mystery Series

THIRTY~ONE - To The Rescue

Zenetra woke woozy and discombobulated. Though it was blisteringly hot in the cave, her body racked with shivers and her skin broke out in raised bumps from legs to scalp.

Blearily, she watched the necklace bob in front of her face. The tanzanite's natural blue pigmentation had changed forevermore to emulate the purple light held within.

"It was you," Zenetra said, her mouth parched. "You made the first mage."

The light made no more hint of its existence. It did not glow or twinkle, or transport her to another vision, and yet the connection established between them told Zenetra the star understood.

Renavolena had been a mage, not an alchemist, and had somehow found a way to pass her magic of alchemy on to those who had no magical qualities. Like Heironymux the Elder, the false father of the ancient orders had been untouched and had used Renavolena's own magic against her.

Zenetra held the stone at eye level. It was cold. So cold, in fact, that the star numbed her fingers through the glove shortly after contact. The pressing heat of the cave eased and she felt marginally better. Her skin cooled, her lungs no longer burned when she breathed, and her eyes were not nearly so dry.

The star certainly had not caused Renavolena's morph, a terrible thing that happened to some mages, but Renavolena had been the first of many things. No one had seen anything like her before. The morphed version of her was as equally unforeseen.

"No wonder they turned against you when Renavolena went mad. Our world wasn't prepared for you." Zenetra remembered the cosmic memory and squeezed the stone. "Or the others like you."

And there were other stars. She had seen them shoot through the universe and crash just as Maj had, and just like Maj, those other stars had been found. There were mages all across the world, after all. Everywhere save for Naiaca.

Feeling a little silly for talking to a stone, Zenetra made a few things clear. "I know you can understand me, so listen close. Magic is dying. The mages today are the last there will ever be. If people find out you create mages, they will want you just as much as Heironymux did. There will be pandemonium. War upon endless war. We have to keep you a myth. No one can know you actually exist."

In that stifling cave, Zenetra made a solemn vow never to tell anyone what lived in her necklace. She couldn't outright explain to the others what the ring of rising seawater was, not without revealing Maj in the process, so the others of their party were destined to discover the truth independently. If Inspector Hatwig could translate the scroll in Carver's backpack, that would tell them all they need to know.

The stone burned cold as if in answer. Zenetra stuffed the necklace under her sweater and shivered. Time was now her enemy.

The chest latched closed with ease, but prying it free of the tight enclosure proved difficult. After several minutes of struggle, she kicked at the kukoos holding it in place. Crumbles of stone dislodged. The chest squeezed out of the alcove, grinding stone to dust, and hovered between her and the wall in a cloud of particles.

She pushed the chest down with her feet. It wanted to bob and float away, and though Zenetra had never gone punting, she felt that balancing on the chest was of a similar sport. The leather straps—the only portion that remained from her backpack—slid off her arms. She knotted them into one long strap and attached an end to the handle of the chest.

Zenetra stepped off the chest and into the air, where she hovered, and before she could lose her nerve, pulled herself and the chest down to the bottom of the cave where the air was less dense but far hotter.

The gas from the mixture of kukoos and firestones was like a layer of oil over water. When Zenetra passed below it, her weightlessness ceased. She landed ungainly on her feet while the chest, now at its true weight, crashed atop a large porous boulder. Pieces of stone broke off and scattered over her boots. She opened the lid and hurried to fill it. Though her face seared at being so close to the firestones, she collected as many kukoos as she could, including eight masses larger than her head, and tossed them quickly inside the chest.