Remembering the Water

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.”

“The dragons don’t concern us, we’re only here for the chalice.”

Echoing softly through the musky air of the long and twisting corridor, the voices had been arguing quietly since the group had started down these passageways a few hours ago.

“Dragons aren’t exactly some small backwoods infestation,” the woman’s voice hissed. Her armor clanked softly as they moved along.

“The deal was for a chalice,” replied the magician. “If they wanted heroes to swoop in and vanquish some dragons, they should have mentioned it in the contract.”

“A poisoned lake, barren farmlands, and now dragons? How is this not adding up for you?”

“I am an excellent mathematician,” he said loftily. “And I’m not sure what you expect me to do about a poisoned lake.”

Before the woman could retort, a burst of fire detonated from the wall, heat bombarding the group and pushing them back to shield their faces, a horn blast of blistering air, and the smell of sulfur and singed hair. When it eased with the swiftness of an indrawn breath, darkness crowded back into the dank corridor. The only sources of light were a pale bulb of incandescence glowing a short distance ahead, and the shining tip of a longsword held aloft by a scale-armored grip. Five people were cast in silhouette, frozen in defense, waiting for the next blast of flame, but it never came.

His tone hushed and tense, the magician asked, “Who triggered the trap?”

Stunned silence answered him, and he swiveled around to search the faces of his four companions. After a long beat, a tall woman standing next to the magician raised a gloved hand slowly, her auburn hair gleaming under the light orb. Her face was unreadable, hidden within the shadows of the deep hood of her cloak.

Shaking his head, the magician flashed her a forgiving smile. “Glad we managed to dodge it.” Turning back further, the magician’s eyes narrowed on the slender man standing at the far fringes of the light. “Sero?”

The other man hesitated for a fraction of a second, startled at realizing that the magician had been referring to him, and then nodded, ducking between the others to move toward the tall woman, looking at the floor near her feet. “Need more light, please.”

Entirely encased in steel armor, another woman—the one who had been arguing with the magician—brandished her sword in Sero’s direction. He could see the raise of her pale brow, an unasked question, but she held the shining sword over him so that he could see the worn pattern of the stone floor.

Near the tall woman’s leather boot was a thin blade of wood, bent and splintered now that it had been snapped by her footfall. Sero looked down at his hands doubtfully, took a deep breath to steady himself, and then pulled a pack of tools from his belt and set to work on dislodging the trigger so that the trap would be defunct. He found his fingers to be nimble and skilled, and made quick work of the trigger before standing back up to nod at the magician.

The magician watched Sero, impressed by the deft handling. “Think you might go ahead and check for more? You did promise there would be traps.”

Sero did not move with much enthusiasm, frowning down the corridor ahead, realizing that his reaction was being gauged carefully. “Come on, Sero, you’re the best.” This encouraging comment came from the last of their group, a younger woman clothed so darkly that she blended with the shadows.

Unsure how to argue the point, Sero moved forward and led the group down the hall at a snail’s pace—listening for unusual bursts of air or suppressed sparks, watching for changes in color in the stone or razor thin strands of tripwire, feeling for strange depressions along the walls or jagged edges that could catch at an unwary sleeve. Once in a while, he would look back at the group—the magician was immediately behind him, the tall woman seemed glued to the magician’s side, and the armored woman and the shadow woman were taking up the rear—all of whom were now silent and watchful, the earlier arguments having been snuffed out by the tense progress.

They followed the corridor as it turned, and turned again, right, right, left. The darkness remained, penetrated only by the sword at Sero’s back and the glowing orb up ahead. There were a couple of minor traps, easily dispensed with, but otherwise the group proceeded undisturbed. Perhaps the first trap was merely a warning. But Sero did not increase his pace; he made sure to be embodiment of thoroughness, investigating every oddity and possible sign of trouble.

“This is going to take eons,” the shadow woman sighed under her breath.

The hallway continued to turn and turn. They came to a juncture and the magician studied both directions for a beat before indicating they should take the passage to the right.

They came upon a large chamber with an intricately carved dais on the north wall. The rest of the room was open and empty, the walls bare and the floor coated in the same grime, clearly having suffered the flooding. If Sero scraped his foot across the silty mud, though, he could see the glisten of a gold and blue mosaic.

“The dais was to honor the goddess Herundra,” the armored woman whispered. “She obviously abandoned this place long ago.” She shot the Magician a meaningful look.

As they moved on, the air grew thicker with rancid humidity, and the chill permeated through cloth and armor alike. Sero’s fingers were running across slimy patches of muck on the walls, and he could hear the disturbing squelch of his companions’ boots on the floor.

“We must be under the lake now,” the magician mused softly.

Sero nodded and ducked slightly to get a better look at a thick pocket of moss that glowed eerily in the muted light. His hand held back in a moment of indecision, and then he stood and gently nudged the patch with his boot instead. The boot came away with a vivid green ooze dripping from the toe. He brushed it again, and the glow of the moss pulsed.

“What are you doing?” the magician snapped, pulling Sero back by the hood of his cloak. “Stop!”

But the moss was already hissing out a faint green vapor, tendrils curling up into the still air of the ancient passage.

“Hold your breath!” the armored woman gasped out as she clapped a hand over her mouth.

Everyone else did the same; by some instinct, the shadow woman sucked in a bracing lungful of air before realizing her mistake. Paling instantly, she seized up and fought back the wracking coughs of her body trying to expel the poison—if she coughed, Sero realized, she would only inhale more, and the cycle would kill her.

Slapping a hand against the slick stone, the magician called everyone’s attention and pointed urgently ahead. And then he ran, holding out a hand for the tall woman to follow and catch it. She did follow, grasping his hand, and then pulled him ahead faster. The armored woman snagged the wrist of her choking companion and pulled her along. Sero sprinted around them, trying to keep the magician in his view.

They ran, breaths still caught within their chests and burning up their throats, as far as they would have to run to ensure clear air. The shadow woman stumbled, but the armored one was relentlessly pulling her up and along. Whatever possible traps lay ahead were nothing compared to the sure death at their backs—until the floor opened beneath their feet, a massive trap door that fell out from under them into a gaping void of pitch black.

Even if they had better kept their wits about them, the stone was so slick with slime and putrid moss that no saving grip could be found. Still clutching their mouths, their muffled screams chased them down into the darkness—

—The drop was so short, the screams were cut off by the crashing of the armored woman hitting a new floor, the cacophony covering the sounds of the other soft bodies colliding. Gasping coughs followed, the shadow woman unable to hold her breath any longer. Groaning, the magician muttered the simple spell to reignite the orb that had been doused in his panic before. He was crawling over to the prone form of the tall woman, touching her shoulder as he looked back at the others to ascertain the damage.

The shadow woman was still coughing, close to retching. Staring at her, Sero reached out a tentative hand and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Are you worried?” the armored woman asked him, strangely surprised, even as she moved a hand to the middle of the shadow woman’s back and closed her eyes with intense concentration. From as close as he was, Sero could feel a strange warmth radiate from where her hand was connected.

“Take a deep breath, Hemili, just a normal breath,” the armored woman whispered. Sero’s stomach twisted as the shadow woman’s name hit him almost like a physical blow.

Shakily, she pulled air in through her teeth. Exhaling triggered another harsh seizing across her chest, but she could pull breath in more easily the next time without coughing, and when she was finally able to breathe with some degree of normalcy, Hemili collapsed back onto the ground in exhaustion.

“What in the hells just happened?” the magician demanded, staring up at the gaping hole in the ceiling.

The orb flared, and the group could suddenly see that they had been dropped into a large, barren chamber of mortared, flat stone walls and floor. The moisture that had pervaded the air before seemed to have been shut off from this place; the air here was musty and very still, and the trap door must have been sealed tight enough to protect the room from the flooding. There were no doors or passageways out other than the hole in the ceiling, which would have taken five grown men standing on each other’s shoulders to reach the lip of.

“Is Ayta okay?” the armored woman asked, already getting up onto her knees to shuffle over to the tall woman—Ayta—and check for herself.

“I think just stunned,” he replied, brow creased in worry. And then something seemed to occur to him, and his eyes narrowed on Sero. “What happened?”

Sero shook his head as if to clear it. “I don’t know.”

“That was clearly venomoss. Any child knows what venomoss is, and you agitated it. You did it on purpose.”

The magician’s dark eyes gleamed. The armored woman twisted awkwardly around to look at Sero with that same raised, inquiring brow.

Hemili’s strangled voice called from the floor, “Sero wouldn’t do that.”

“I watched him,” the magician growled.

Sero stared back, caught by the rage and confusion in the other man’s face. And then the man’s face twisted in agony.

Ayta was sitting up behind the magician, driving a dagger into his back. She was blank, not just emotionally, but in the depths of the very features of her face.

The magician made the faintest gurgling sound of shock, drawing the attention of the armored woman, who leapt up as if she had not just crashed from a substantial height in heavy steel armor onto a stone floor. She grabbed Ayta back and pinned her to the floor. “Caleo!” she screamed, pushing the other woman’s face into the stone and fighting to maintain control. “Are you okay?”

Hemili had sat up and was struggling to get to her feet. Sero found it quite easy to walk up to her and plunge a dagger of his own through the gap in the plates of her armor, between the lower ribs. Shocked, she gaped at him and put a hand up to wrap around his on the hilt. Slick blood poured out to coat his fist, and he yanked away in revulsion.

Hemili’s brows came down, moving from shock to razor-sharp focus. Pulling the dagger out, she pitched it to the floor with enough strength to shatter the blade, pieces ricocheting off the stone. Her body turned toward his, her bloody fingers laced through the air in an intricate pattern, and then she vanished.

Caleo was falling backward. He did not seem to know what to do with his hands. His eyes were rolling back in his head. The armored woman was trying to reach out to him, stretching forward without releasing her captive, but he was too far away. In frustration, she reached instead for her longsword. Though it, too, was out of reach, the sword responded to her open hand and scraped across the stone with increasing momentum, until her hand clamped around the hilt and swept down in a single movement, the blade coming to a halt at the tall woman’s neck, just under her chin.

“It’s not her, Caleo!” the armored woman screamed. “It’s not Ayta!”

Something about this revelation revived the magician enough for him to heave in a deep breath, and out a muttered spell—Sero could feel the burning, binding embrace of the magic overtaking his muscles. Caleo turned onto his side and coughed up clotting blood before sighing, “You can let go. They’re held.”

The armored woman released her captive instantly, sword clattering to the ground, and dove back over to her dying friend, placing one hand over his weeping wound and the other across the top of his head. That strange warmth emanated from them, and Sero thought he smelled the faint odor of a decaying body.

He must have been distracted by the sight, because Sero did not see or hear Hemili come up behind him to slide a blade along his throat and up behind his ear. Her breath fanned across the shell of his ear and cheek as she said, “Who in the hells are you?”

**************

Caleo’s whole being felt scorched; his lungs from the tainted venomous air above, his joints and muscles from the crash landing, his back from the puncture wound that still pulsed with destroyed nerve-endings, his head from complete and utter confusion, and his heart from that one instant of what he thought had been betrayal.

But it was not betrayal. The creature that had stabbed him had not been his Ayta, she was some nightmare that almost, almost looked like her.

Pax was sitting next to him, her hands still pressed to his back and head, breathing heavily, almost sobbing. Healing took a toll, and deadly wounds like his were costly indeed.

Hemili was holding a blade against the throat of what looked like Sero. Caleo knew that not-Sero could not fight back either way, the holding spell was still fresh and strong, but it was comforting to know that her blade was ready. And her question hung heavy around them.

“Answer me!” She jerked the blade closer, skimming the soft flesh under his jaw.

He gritted his teeth and looked over at the other monster on the ground. Hoping she would jump to his defense somehow? Finally, he said through clenched teeth, “I’m Sero.”

“Horseshit,” Hemili growled quietly.

Not-Sero seemed to shudder, but could not move more than his tongue and eyeballs. “I’m not lying.”

Caleo could feel Pax’s hands start to move away. She had healed him as much as she could, but the wound was still raw and shot pain through his chest. Under normal circumstances, he would be able to read the thing to figure out what was real, but nothing in him was strong enough for such concentrated magic.

“Hemili, he’s held, you don’t have to—” What? Guard him? Threaten him? Maybe holding a blade to his throat gave her some sense of control. Caleo would give anything right now to feel some kind of control.

But Hemili heard him and decided to back away—or maybe not, as she stumbled and fell. Pax jerked forward with the intention of running to Hemili, but then collapsed. Sighing, and then laughing darkly, Pax said, “You better not be dying, too.”

Hemili shook her head. “Just resting.”

They lay there, heaving breaths and sagging to the floor. Caleo was careful to keep a thread of thought on his holding spell, but that was about as much as he could muster.

Not-Ayta did not struggle, did not make a sound. She did not seem conscious, but when Caleo turned to examine her, her eyes were wide open, flickering to him and then away. Where Ayta’s were a brilliant sapphire blue framed by golden lashes, this creature’s eyes were black. Caleo realized that these monsters could not have been among them for very long. He knew that Ayta was with him that morning, without a doubt. While not-Sero seemed to be an exact duplicate of real-Sero, this other thing could never have passed except in the extreme shadows.

“Where is Ayta?” Caleo asked, unable to tear his eyes from that nightmare face. Pale where Ayta had been radiant, flat where Ayta had been expressive and open.

Neither of the monsters chose to respond.

“We have to get some rest,” Pax said to the ceiling from where her head was hanging back over a plate in her armor. “Where is the rope?” Groaning and swearing, she forced her body up to look at the chaos. Pools of blood everywhere. Caleo and Hemili splayed out in sheer exhaustion. Their captives locked into awkward positions at the periphery of the light. Bags and weapons scattered across the stone floor.

Pushing herself up onto her knees, Pax crawled over to a leather satchel and pulled out three slender vials. Dragging herself back, she offered one to Caleo. He accepted it and hoped that his sincere gratitude shown on his face, because he could not bring himself to speak. While he watched her crawl across the floor to Hemili, he unstopped the vial and tipped the vitalizing dose down his throat. Over the course of a night’s rest, the concoction would boost his body’s normal restorative process. He could not imagine being whole in the morning, his body had taken far too much damage to recover in a night, but he would at least be able to cast his magic.

Having gotten these vials into her friends’ hands, Pax braced herself again and actually managed to stand up. Moving to not-Sero, she pushed down on his shoulders until his body gave and bent into an awkward sitting position. Spotting the large canvas sack that housed their climbing gear, she pulled out a generous length of rope, cut it in two, and made admirably quick work of tying up both not-people.

Hunkering back down onto the floor, she said, “I’ll take first watch.”

Hemili shook her head. “Not happening, you’re exhausted.”

“And you’re bleeding out of your lung,” Pax returned flatly.

“I’m fine. You know I heal up a bit when I shift.”

“And that is the only reason I’m leaving you alone instead of panicking about how to make sure you don’t die. I’m too tired to argue.” Pax hung her head back again, braced against her armor, to stare at the ceiling. “Just sleep, okay?”

Caleo listened to this from a haze of pain. He wanted to say something, agree with Pax or maybe offer to take watch in a show of solidarity, but his body was giving up, the threads of the holding spell and light orb were fraying quickly, and he just hoped that he did not dream of not-Ayta’s distorted face.

**************

Sero could feel the holding spell relent on his body, which only slackened his limbs further into the burning rub of the rope across his wrists and body. The armored woman had not been gentle, even in her obviously weakened state, and he knew he would be in for a long night. Since sleep was not an option, he watched his watcher, who did not seem particularly capable of watching anything at all.

As if knowing his thoughts, her head tilted up and her gaze fell on him. The orb of light brightened with a dazzling flash before extinguishing altogether, searing her image into his vision for several blinks. White-blonde hair tied in what had once been a tidy bun at the nape of her neck, but which was now frizzing loose around her oval face. Smokey eyes and pursed lips were all the more stark against unusually pale skin. All set in a frame of heavy steel. Even as the light went out, her sword glowed enough in the dark to outline the ridges and plains of the armor.

He had heard everyone else’s name, but not hers yet. Flashes of memory flared of her and the others, but nothing clearly enough to give him any information. An undercurrent of curiosity kept him looking at her, and he could sense that she was more alert than he had been prepared to give her credit for.

The labored breathing of Hemili and Caleo battered the air, keeping time as moment after moment passed.

“Aren’t you tired?” Sero whispered.

“Why?” she whispered back, “Want me to doze off so you can escape?”

“Hardly seems like an option,” he reminded her.

She did not respond.

As the hours passed, Sero realized that Hemili and Caleo had eased into more peaceful rest. Whatever they had drunk before falling asleep must be doing its job.

Sero could not resist commenting, “The others will be angry that you didn’t wake them up.”

With a squeak of metal against metal, he knew she had shifted slightly. “I’d be more concerned with how angry they are with you.”

Sero nodded. “But you’re not angry with me?”

She hissed and leaned forward with a clank. “Angry? There is no word in your language for how angry I am.”

She was from somewhere else; that thought chinked into place like a die being cast across a board. Like everything else he learned about these people, as soon as it was said, the memories began to sharpen. The armored woman was Pax, from Solyvet, the northern reaches. He should have known from her pale coloring.

“What is the word in your language?”

“Stop talking to me. You’ll be doing plenty of talking later.”

Slouched down on the ground, hands and feet bound together, there was no way to shift to lay down or lean back. His neck hurt and his limbs burned. He thought through everything that had led up to this moment, but his mind was a jumble of confused memories and impressions. He remembered the real Sero dying as a surreal, chaotic combination of watching it happen from afar and experiencing it firsthand. He knew clearly what his mission was, but his motivations were now clouded by a history that had not belonged to him the day before, as more of Sero's memories came to him.

He was startled when Pax stood suddenly and moved toward Hemili. The younger woman had curled into a ball on her good side, pillowing her head on an arm—though, he could only see this because of the glowing sword the armored woman held over them. Hemili wore dark clothes, with a black leather breast plate that had done nothing to protect her from Sero’s blade, and she faded into the dark with an ease that he could admire. The armored woman placed a hand over the wound on Hemili’s side, seemed to steady herself, and then she pushed down with some inner focus. The warmth was more tentative from this distance, but he was sure now about that sickly sweet odor of decay.

Stirred by the touch, Hemili sat up and put a hand to her ribs. She nodded to the other woman in thanks, and said, “My watch now?”

“If you’re up for it.”

“Get some rest.” Hemili straightened and rolled her shoulders, working the sleep out of her muscles and bones. Pax dragged herself off a ways and crashed back onto the floor, clearly spent. With her went the light, and Sero had no sense of Hemili’s presence or the passage of time. They said nothing to each other; Sero kept thinking about the harsh, wracking coughs that had almost killed her—right before he had almost killed her. He knew the guilt that was eating at his insides, burning up his throat, was more a memory from the original Sero, but that did not change how very real it felt now.

Eventually, however much time later, he heard Hemili’s rustling movements as she crawled to the sleeping form of Caleo. More rustling sounds, and then a muttered curse.

“Sorry,” Caleo groaned, “I forgot where we were.”

Hemili sighed. “I wish it had been a dream, too.”

“Did they… Was there any trouble?”

“No. I haven’t even checked on them. I don’t think I can look at them without killing them.”

“Would that be so bad?” Caleo’s voice was a dying ember.

“Only if we want answers.”

A beat of silence followed, and then, “Try to get some more sleep.”

Sero could hear the whispered spell drop from the other man’s lips as an orb of light sparked to life, but Caleo kept it dim. Hemili was already laying down again, shifting on the hard stone uncomfortably. Caleo stood and looked around with piercingly dark eyes, looked up at the maw of darkness in the ceiling, seemed to reassess the lack of egress from the chamber. He was a tall man, broad in the shoulders. His dark brown hair was clipped short, and his square face was adorned with a trim beard. He wore no armor, just what used to be a fine suede vest over a white collared shirt, and blue trousers tucked into tall leather boots—now all utterly wrecked and crusted with dried blood.

Caleo’s sharp gaze skittered over the still body of who he remembered to be Ayta and landed instead on Sero. Narrowing his eyes, he stepped forward slowly. Sero was trapped, completely helpless at this point, but Caleo was wary. He circled the tied man, looking over the knots in the rope, and then crouched down to look closely at Sero’s face.

Sero did not look away, did not flinch. He had nothing to lose, there was nothing left for him after this.

But Sero was surprised when Caleo stood back up without saying a word. Seeming to brace himself, he walked over to the other body and looked down. For a brief moment, confusion flashed across his face, and then he stooped quickly to feel the woman’s wrist, and then up to her throat, and then over her eyes. Panicking, he shook her body roughly and put his head down to her chest, listening.

“She’s dead,” Caleo managed to whisper.

“Yes,” Sero whispered back.

Caleo turned to stare at the other man in shock. “You knew? Did you kill her?”

Sero shook his head. Caleo’s eyes snapped over to the slumped body of Pax, and Sero knew exactly what he was thinking. “Don’t. She can’t help.”

“How do you know that?” Caleo stood and stalked back to Sero, shoulders hunched and fists clenched tightly. He looked ready to dig those fists into Sero’s face, but Sero did not flinch.

“She was dying when we came down. She was dying the whole time.”

“Aren’t we all,” whispered Hemili, not turning or moving in the shadows.

Caleo was frozen for a moment, but Sero could see the flames of emotion being fanned into fury, and then the man screamed, shaking and pacing and raising his hands to pull at his hair.

Pax sat up quickly, concern etched into her exhausted face, and Hemili was up on one knee in readiness to spring into action, whatever that action may be.

Spinning on his heel, Caleo rushed back to shove Sero down hard into the stone floor, losing his balance and going down with the other man. “Where is she? What did you do to Ayta?” Sero shook his head. Caleo punched him solidly across the jaw, and Sero could hear the man’s knuckles crack even as pain exploded and threw his head back to slam into the stone. “You don’t get to say no! You don’t get to act like you don’t know! Tell me!” Caleo punched him again, and Sero almost wished the man would use his magic instead.

Cranking his arm back to deliver another blow, he was held back by Hemili. Either the two men had been too absorbed in the violence to notice, or she had moved without making a sound, but she surprised Caleo enough that he almost lashed out at her instead.

She frowned, but did not back away. “This isn’t how we figure out what’s going on.”

Caleo shut his eyes and rolled off Sero, only to get up and stalk to the furthest corner of the room, shaking and muttering to himself.

Sero groaned and spat blood. “I didn’t kill her. The real Ayta isn’t dead."