The tunnel branched off a few times. Each time it did, Bel noted that Rhyss marked their way with the dagger. Heln didn't say anything more about the pillar, Bel didn't want to talk about it, and none of them wanted to think that they could have made a wrong turn, despite Rhyss's self-proclaimed incredible sense of direction. Everything looked the same to Bel and she honestly couldn't tell if it had been hours or days when she finally just sat down in protest.

"Look, Trainee, the rest of us didn't run up and down stairs with old men strapped to our backs."

"I think your ideas of what my training entails are a little skewed."

"The point is, it's cold, I'm tired, Heln is shaking, and maybe you can keep this up, but us defenseless civilians can't." Bel took off her bag and rolled her shoulder. "Ow. I am too young to lose my legs and my shoulder."

"Your legs are fine." Heln said, but his words didn't stop him from sitting next to Bel. He was pale in Bel's illumination bubble, which was starting to look more white than blue.

"You're wrong. They're about to fall off. And that would be a crime. A shame. A dark day in history." Bel leaned her head against Heln's shoulder. Her feet had hurt while she was standing and now they felt like they were on fire. It was the only warm point in the tunnels, but somehow she couldn't bring herself to appreciate it. "And then you'll have to carry me."

"I wouldn't, though, so you'd just have to crawl around down here by yourself."

And yet, Heln didn't shrug her off, so Bel doubted that, slightly. Still, she couldn't help another moment of bravado. "Rhyss would carry me."

"No, I'd leave you to die." Rhyss sat down, a little too hard for her to be as ready to go as she acted. "I need a short break. I was hoping to find an area where you could carve magic script into the floor, but I suppose this will do."

"Oh Rhyss, you trust me to create all of our barriers?"

"Oh Bel, I just want to conserve my own magic for more important things." The smile Rhyss gave was saccharine venom. "Like fighting off monsters when you won't move your butt."

"At the time it was a hypothetical monster, in my defense, but I won't question your insane instincts ever again."

"If you have enough energy to snipe at each other, then you probably have the energy to walk," Heln said.

"Well, I would feel a lot better about walking if I knew that we were actually getting somewhere." Bel looked up and down the tunnel. It looked the same both ways, only broken by more pillars that she didn't care to count and didn't dare look at. She wondered if the tunnels they hadn't traveled down looked the same and if the one near them had the same symbol. It was coated by a long, snarling tree root so it was impossible to tell. She didn't want to think about it anymore. "I'm starving."

"I think the moss is edible." Rhyss was eyeing the walls with a considerable amount of trepidation.

Bel regarded the moss with a queasy feeling. "I'm not starving, literally, just a little peckish, not really in the mood for moss, more for something that makes a good brunch. Oh! Heln. Maybe you can sense the Temple! Then—"

"No."

"Okay, it's customary in most cultures to let someone finish their sentence and only then refuse to go along with their plan." Bel looked up at him.

Heln's expression was a closed door. "I knew what you were going to say and I knew the answer was no, so I saved some of your precious breath."

"It is pretty precious," Bel conceded. "So, why not?"

"I can't sense the Temple, it's specifically shielded from people like me," Heln explained. "And don't ask if I can sense an absence, because I still can't. It's not really… an exact science, and I'm not clairvoyant. Believe me, if I knew a way out of here I wouldn't be hiding it from you. I want to get out, too. Even if I could… I don't know, something about this place…"

He trailed off, and something in his voice stopped Bel from asking any more questions.

It didn't stop Rhyss. "What about this place?"

"I don't know. It doesn't feel like normal magic, but the whole place is just drenched in it, more than a strengthening script. More than, well, I don't know. I think it has something to do with that carving."

Rhyss's eyebrows rose. "Carving?"

Heln gave Bel a sideways glance, like he was looking for permission. Instead she spoke for him.

"The forest god's symbol." Bel straightened, despite her entire body protesting. "I don't know, maybe someone put it there later, but it was definitely its symbol. So. We need to get out of here really fast."

It had looked just as old as the stone around it, but if Bel was anything she was an optimist.

Rhyss shuddered at the mention of the old god and Bel couldn't blame her. "You're right. Okay. Rest for a bit, then we push on. I want to be out of here as soon as possible no matter who left that symbol."

She didn't say "or what", but they were all thinking it.