The Rifts of Psyche by Kyle West (i love reading .txt) 📕

it might draw too much attention. Lucian tethered the floor and ceiling by the entrance and unleashed a heavy stream of magic. When the tension was too much, a resounding crack echoed through the tunnel. The ceiling started to collapse. Hopefully, that would block the entrance of the tunnel rather than collapsing the entire thing. Whatever the case, Lucian was running.

The others were already far away, with Fergus’s light sphere quite distant. Lucian streamed his own sphere and ran, his head swimming with fatigue. Rocks and dust fell behind him, and pebbles pelted his back.

By the time he reached the stream again, the others were waiting.

“They’ll have to double back the way they came,” Serah said. “Which will put them here in about an hour or two if they go at an all-out run.”

“I’m no longer maintaining my ward,” Fergus said. “There’s no point until we get some distance. Our only choice is to keep ahead of them.”

“Rot it,” Serah said. “Let’s go.”

She led them at a run, weaving through the tunnels of the Darkrift in seemingly random directions. Lucian noticed the general slope, however, led downward. He gasped for breath. The others were far fitter than he was.

“I . . . can’t breathe . . .”

“You’ll really not be breathing if you’re dead,” Serah shot back.

Lucian stumbled on. The trail ended in a cliff, seemingly a dead end. There was nothing below them but dark water with no way out.

“What now?” Cleon asked. “If we backtrack, we’ll run into them for sure.”

“Only one answer to that,” Serah said. She walked toward the cliff. Surely, she wasn’t going to jump down there.

“Are you out of your mind?” Cleon asked.

But it was too late. In the next moment, she was jumping over the edge without so much as a scream. It took a long time before there was a splash, at least ten seconds.

“It seems our options have been taken from us,” Fergus said, stripping himself from his bronze armor. “It’s a sad day to leave this behind.”

“There could be no way out of there!” Cleon said. “We could drown! What about our packs?”

“I know,” Fergus said, pushing the armor over the edge so that it wouldn’t be found. “But we just have to hope there is a way. And hope they aren’t desperate enough to follow us. As for your pack, I hope you’re a strong swimmer.”

Cleon sighed. “Fine. I already knew I was dead, anyway. But does it really have to be drowning? That’s such a bad way to go.”

“Oh, stop the theatrics,” Fergus said.

“Hurry!” Serah’s voice echoed up. “I see a way out.”

“That’s all I need to know.” With that, Fergus hopped off the cliff with a decidedly bigger splash than Serah.

That left Lucian and Cleon. Cleon stared at him with wide eyes.

“This cliff must be thirty meters high,” he said. “It’ll hurt like hell when we land.”

“Can’t swim?”

“Of course I can swim.”

“All I needed to know.”

Without warning, Lucian streamed a kinetic wave at Cleon, instantly knocking him back. He flew into the air a little farther than Lucian had intended, unleashing a stream of curses. The only words Lucian could discern were “rotting son-of-a-whore.”

Before Lucian could second-guess himself, he jumped, not daring to look down.

28

When he hit the cold water, the shock was unreal. He reached for his Focus to calm his nerves as he plunged deeper into the darkness. This was not the night on Volsung he had almost died. Here, the water was still. There were no waves. The surface was above, just a few meters away.

He clawed upward and took a deep intake of breath.

The others were already swimming, so Lucian joined them. They swam for a good fifteen minutes, enough time for the cold to settle into Lucian’s bones. He saw Fergus’s sphere shining ahead, the only light in this darkness. At any moment, he expected the Sorceress-Queen’s soldiers to be right behind them. But every time he looked over his shoulder, there was only darkness.

Lucian was the last to pull himself onto the shoreline. The sand gleamed white, soft beneath his boots with shiny crystals mixed within.

“I’ll stream us a fire,” Cleon said.

“Not yet,” Fergus said. “Let’s find a better spot.”

Serah was jumping up and down to generate body heat. “There must be some tunnel to follow here.”

“I thought you said you saw a way out,” Cleon said.

“This is it.”

They followed her up the shoreline, and Fergus increased the intensity of his sphere, revealing stalactites, stalagmites, and an endless labyrinth of rock formations.

“Rotting hell. We’ll get lost in there for days,” Cleon said.

“We’re deep in it now,” Fergus said. “The only way out is through.”

“It’s the perfect place for them to get lost in, too,” Lucian said. “We have food for weeks. There may even be good fishing in this lake, for all we know.”

“Forgot my rod,” Cleon said.

“Don’t need a rod,” Lucian said. “We’re mages, remember? A good shock and we’ll eat like kings for weeks.”

“Pipe down,” Fergus said. “Sound carries far here, and it’s not just people we have to be wary of.”

There was silence for a moment, but only for a moment.

“I’ll eat my boots if we ever find this mythical Slaves’ Run,” Cleon said.

“It’s not mythical,” Serah said. “I’ve seen it before.” She looked back toward the shore. “This lake must be the same one we saw earlier. Just a different spot.”

“Is this the Moon Sea?” Lucian asked.

She shook her head. “We haven’t gone far enough underground to reach that. If we were there, you’d know it.” She peered into the darkness. “Let’s get farther into these rocks, then we can see about a fire to warm up.”

Shivering, they followed Serah deeper beneath the surface of Psyche.

They crunched over rock formations that had not been disturbed in eons. They passed bony skeletons of what appeared to be ancient, alien fish. Or more like alien monsters. Some were up to ten meters long. They even walked through one of them, tail to mouth. The lake they had