Rhyss ran until it felt like someone had stabbed her in the side with a hot poker. She stumbled to a stop, leaning against her knees and trying hard to breathe, but each gasp for air strangled out of her like a sob.

Vin was probably dead.

He had been her mentor ever since she became a Trainee when she turned fifteen the year before. Maybe she wasn't always the best student, and maybe he wasn't always the best teacher, but they'd always gotten along.

Why had he come alone? She'd said it was an emergency in her message to him. Even if it was her first time out on patrol by herself he knew that she took her duties very seriously. Maybe he hadn't taken her as seriously as she thought.

She shook her head, trying to dislodge that thought. Vin could still be alive, maybe he hadn't been alone, there could have been back up behind him. It had been so dark that she couldn't be sure.

That thought was like a steel pillar she could cling to, letting stillness settle into her core as she slowly stood up straight just as light dashed off of the tunnel walls. Heln and Bel had finally caught up. She blinked at them, shielding her face from the illumination bubble Bel had brought up.

"You shouldn't run off like that, what if there had been a hole or something?" Bel's face was white.

"You're too slow." She glared at Heln. He was still holding his useless light stick and breathing like he was dying. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything." Heln looked up at her, genuinely confused. "I'm sorry about Vin. I'm sure he's okay. It didn't look like he got hit hard."

She was sure that he wasn't okay, deep down, but she had to know. She absolutely had to know. In two steps she was in front of him, grabbing his shoulders a little too tightly. "Can you sense him?"

Heln stepped back from her grasp and looked away. "Maybe. I don't know his magical signature, and if there are too many of those… those things back there then I'm really not sure."

"Well, sense for magic that isn't those things back there." She took a deep breath, getting angry and lashing out at the only person who could give her answers was not going to help anything, even if it did make her feel better for a moment. "Just try. Please. He's my mentor."

Heln nodded. "Bel, take out the bubble, I don't want it to confuse me."

Bel nodded and the bubble disappeared, the light turning orange until Heln deactivated his light stick, too, the glow fading slowly from the crystal.

For a moment it was dark. Her eyes adjusted and she realized the moss that clung to the tunnel walls was glowing. Faintly, just enough that she could make out the general shape of the tunnel and see the silhouettes of the DoVan siblings. Heln's eyes were glowing, too. They were half closed, cat slits of bright green, his head tilted to one side like he was listening to something far away.

It was creepy, and she couldn't keep herself from shuddering a little bit.

His head jerked back up and his eyes stopped glowing, at least enough that she couldn't see them anymore. "We need to get going, there are… more things behind us. I thought I sensed Ihalin magic back there but it's different when it's not actively being used, so it's really hard to tell. I'm sorry."

It was good enough for her. Vin was alive and she was going to grip that thought with her teeth if she had to.

"Work on it." She told him instead. "That could be useful. Maybe you could even join the Guard someday."

"The Guard doesn't allow low Ihalins." Heln's voice was too even for her to know if that upset him.

"Besides, why would he want to?" Bel cut in. "We're both joining the Enforcers when we get out of school, y'know, so we can actually be useful."

Rhyss shrugged even though they couldn't see it.

Bel had been in almost all of her classes since she started school. They'd butted heads for as long as she could remember, but Heln was more of a mystery. Rumor had it that his mother had dumped him on his father's doorstep one night, saying she couldn't deal with it anymore. Bel had done nothing to squash those rumors. All Rhyss could do was assume there was a grain of truth, though she'd heard her mothers talking about how he had been awfully old for it after Heln started school.

Low Ihalins couldn't use magic the way high Ihalins could. They could use the amulets and items with an already activated script, but they couldn't use script on their own. Their ears weren't nearly as pointed and long as a full high Ihalin and their hair colors were usually more on the warm spectrum, like Heln's red. Some low Ihalins had the ability to sense magic script. That was the one thing that set Heln apart.

Rhyss pulled up an illumination bubble. It was one of the first magics she had learned and it took almost no effort at all, a trickle of magic to start and the smallest amount of concentration to keep it working. Her mind felt ragged and raw—doing something familiar was soothing, even if it lit up an unfamiliar part of the tunnel a little too harshly. The tunnel she had been in was smooth and cream colored, turning so gently that it was almost unnoticeable. The tunnel seemed to have straightened out, and the walls were coated in moss. It hung down in streamers. One of them brushed her shoulder and she waved it away quickly.

"I haven't been here before." She stepped over to the wall, letting the bubble hover over her shoulder. The moss was thick and damp, glowing a pale green. She ripped at it with her fingers, pulling away thick, string strands to the wall beneath.

It felt like bricks beneath her fingers, stained green from the moss, but they might have been the same cream as the floor in a previous life. She moved her hand along the wall, even with the moss softening the features of the wall she could feel when the bricks were interrupted by a pillar.

"Playing with the moss giving you a clearer picture of where we are?" Bel had gotten right behind her and Rhyss squeaked, whipping around, her braid hitting Bel in the face. She sat down heavily, holding her nose. "Eleti above, your hair hits hard!"

"Don't sneak up on me!" Rhyss glared at her. "No. I don't know where we are. Everything is weird down here. I've never been this far, maybe there was a side tunnel I didn't notice, I don't know."

"I wasn't joking when I said there were things behind us, we might want to have this conversation while we're moving." Heln tried to sound annoyed, but Rhyss heard the note of panic in his voice.

She couldn't blame him. "Let me try to contact… anyone, first. Do either of you two have a communication crystal? I only have my wrist plate."

"Mine's at home." Heln shrugged.

"Got mine." Bel rooted around in her bag. "I think. Shut up; I don't like wearing it."

She finally pulled it out. Communication crystals only had to be vaguely diamond shaped, but usually they were embellished. Bel's was big and chunky, the wrist strap way too wide to be fashionable.

"It was a gift. From my grandma." She glared at Rhyss like she dared her to say anything, but she just shrugged. Bel sighed and strapped it on, the leather fitting too loosely on her wrist. She tapped the middle of it, and it glowed faintly. It blinked a few times, then went steady again. "Hmmm. I don't think I can reach anyone from down here. What about your wrist plate?"

"Keep trying, and I don't know." Rhyss tapped out a message, letting anyone who was close enough know that she was deeper in the tunnels and would continue on. Hopefully someone felt it. If they did, she got no reply, but hers was linked to Vin's. It was possible no one would get the message until he got back to the main Guard station. Which he would, she had to have absolute faith.

"All right, let's go."

They walked for a long time. At least it felt that way. It was hard to tell down in the depths. Rhyss let Bel take the lead without much protest. If there were more clay constructs behind them, then she would be the one to take them out.

Besides, if she'd put Bel in the back, she would have thrown a fit and Rhyss didn't have the energy to deal with it.

That left Heln in the middle, and she really had no idea what to say to him.

"So, what was behind the moss?" he asked.

"It felt like a wall," she told him. "Like someone built this place."

"They probably did, as an escape route to the Temple," Heln reasoned. "Or from. I guess the first cave was supposed to look unassuming just in case. It might have even been above ground at one point."

"I suppose." Rhyss shrugged. She doubted this place had ever been above ground. The ceiling was higher than it had been at the entrance and mostly lost in shadows, roots twisting through the rock and snaking down the walls. The air smelled damp and far too still. "We'll find a good, defensible place to camp for the rest of the night and then go back tomorrow. By then there should be a full rescue team and we can get you home."

"Yes, Captain." Bel looked over her shoulder. Her little quip didn't have quite enough bite for it to be mocking.

"Oh, I will be, someday."

Since neither of them responded it was clear that they didn't doubt her.

Good.