After the shortest break they could possibly have, they were moving forward again. Bel didn't feel like she had to look behind her every second, but being in front was almost as bad.

It didn't help that it was much darker close to the wall. Even with two illumination bubbles it was dim. Here, the trees crowded close, most of them skeletally bare. A pale white mist flowed over the ground, obscuring tree roots and dips in the moss. The damp made everything stink like rot and death and her boots squelched unpleasantly with every step. If Bel hadn't felt like they were going the right way, she would have insisted that they turn around.

"I don't like this." Her voice sounded too loud and too small at the same time.

It had been quiet before, but now the only sounds were their movement and the occasional drip from somewhere in the trees. Silence pressed in her ears and it felt like the moisture in the air was crawling on her skin.

"Just keep moving." Rhyss sounded confident, but when she glanced back at her, she was looking uneasily at the trees.

"I'm with Bel. This part of the forest is obviously dead and that can't be a good thing," Heln said after a few minutes. "I… I think I made a mistake. I must have just felt the difference in the trees. I mean, they're alive everywhere else, they have magic, but here they don't, so…"

"Let's just get to the wall." Rhyss didn't sound completely convinced of her own plan. "If it looks bad we'll just follow the wall to the real exit, or back to the entrance, but if we turn around now we won't have a choice, we'll have to go back to the center. It's gross and… and I don't like it, either, but we have to try."

"I guess." Bel was technically in the lead, and she could decide they should turn around any time. Except, that kind of thinking wasn't what they'd agreed to as a group. "I just think…"

She had turned her head to the side just for a second to listen to Rhyss, and when she turned back there was someone standing in front of her. Bel screeched and threw herself back. Heln caught her by the arms and she flailed for a moment before she realized it wasn't a person at all.

"I knew that was a statue." She looked up at Heln.

"Uh huh." Heln clearly believed her.

"I wasn't scared."

"Right. Get up or I'll drop you."

It took some shuffling but Bel got back on her feet and no one was dropped in a pile of long rotted leaves. Rhyss was already inspecting the statue.

Bel rubbed her chest. Her heart had pounded so hard it actually hurt. She had thought she understood what the phrase 'frightened half to death' meant, but she hadn't, not until that very moment. "Who? Who puts a creepy statue in the middle of a bunch of dead trees? Huh? That's just wrong. Ugh. I hate this place."

"I thought you weren't scared." Heln gave her a bit of a grin. "Impressive bit of screaming there, by the way."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure anything that didn't know we were here definitely knows we are now, so we should get a move on," Rhyss muttered, but she didn't move away from the statue.

"So, who in Eleti's name is so important that she has a statue in the worst place in the world?" Bel asked. The statue itself actually wasn't that creepy. It looked like it might have been painted once, but now it was mostly smooth, white stone. There were some dark spots on it, lichen and rot spreading across the stone, but the face was clear. It was a person in full battle armor, their expression determined as they looked out onto the forest. Despite the short hair of the statue, Bel got the distinct feeling it was supposed to be a woman. She had a sword in one hand and her other held a helmet against her hip.

"Well." Rhyss gestured to the writing at the base of the statue. "I don't think it's just Eleti's name. I think this is supposed to be Eleti herself."

"Nah," Bel said, but it was an automatic response, arguing with Rhyss. "She's supposed to have like… a dress."

"We all know that the depictions in any illustration of Eleti are grossly inaccurate." Heln was referencing of course the beautiful figure of Eleti standing in a dark field, shining with white light, from her pale blue hair to her long, flowing white dress. "Eleti was a war general so… this… makes more sense."

"Hmph." Bel knew he was right. After all, they'd taken the same history class. It was one thing that anyone who had even the most basic understanding of history agreed on — Eleti probably didn't look like any artistic interpretation of her, but no one actually knew what she looked like, and she had been dead for a thousand years, so no harm was really done by the image. "Well, one mystery down, Heln. Now we know what the bringer of magic looks like so that's neat. Not that anyone will believe us. It's like having a secret club."

"It's not like that at all." Rhyss straightened. "There's a door behind the statue, by the way."

Bel hadn't even realized they'd reached the wall, but there it was, rising sharply into darkness. Rhyss pointed to a stone door that was blooming with mold and nearly completely encompassed by dead, blackened vines. "Bel, I'm probably going to need your help to get it open."

"In case you missed it, my specialty happens to be barriers."

"Yes, but you can still help me."

Bel took one last look at the statue's stern face. She looked so distant and cold, nothing at all like any other statue of Eleti that Bel had ever seen. The actual Eleti was probably buried somewhere above them, enshrined at the Temple. Maybe even directly above them.

She shuddered and hurried over to help Rhyss.

The vines were easy to remove, but slimy, falling apart like overcooked noodles. Bel grimaced and wiped her hands on her already filthy pants, looking at their handiwork.

The door was either made of darker stone than the rest of the cavern or it had been completely ravaged by decay. It was simple and crude. It had been carved with magical script, though some of them obscured by mold and moss. The clear ones were all sealing script.

"How active is this script?" Rhyss asked.

Heln put a hand to the door, disregarding anything actually on the door. Bel tried to not make a face. Clearly, she didn't succeed, judging by the expression Rhyss gave her in return.

"It's sort of like the tunnels, script layered on script. Whoever put this up really didn't want this door coming down. It wasn't the same people as the other tunnels, that's… that's strange." Heln frowned, moving his hand away. "It's weaker than the tunnels, I think whatever is killing the trees could be causing it, but I honestly don't really know."

"Not clairvoyant, we know." Bel nodded.

"All I want to know is if I can break it down."

Heln stared at Rhyss. "I think so? But I don't know if you want to. Whatever is causing all of this could be on the other side of this door and it's probably dampened by the seals, but it could be a really, really bad idea. It could be another magic eater. Actually, it could be something worse."

"What could be worse?"

Heln actually cracked a smile. "You in the morning."

"Rude, but true, I'm probably much deadlier."

Rhyss looked steadily less patient by the second. "Right. Bel, pay attention, if I unseal the door, can you redo the seals?"

"Give me a minute and I can tell you." Bel focused on the magical script, what they were doing, rather than the mold and rot, or the way it looked like the door was really more of a roughhewn slab that had been shoved into a hole as quickly as possible. That had been probably hundreds of years ago, anyway, and if anything was on the other side of the door, it was a skeleton at best.

The scripts were all ones that she'd covered in class and in her readings, though she'd never actually worked with them herself. Sealing magic ranged from the very simple, things like preservation script on food jars, to the very complicated, typically used on family tombs of the rich and not particularly fiscally aware. This was somewhere between the two, like someone had slapped it on and hoped it held.

No wonder it was falling apart.

Supposedly sealing scripts were once used against things that went bump in the night, but she'd only read about that. The only threat to Ihale City were the things in the forest, old war machines and magically altered creatures. No one had used a sealing script on anything in living memory.

"I'm pretty sure I've got this." She must have sounded more confident than she felt because Rhyss nodded and slammed the pommel of her dagger into the door. It let out a soft, echoing boom.

The door fell into the tunnel with a much louder sound. Dust rushed over them and Bel threw up her arms to guard her face against it.

The air settled and the dust did, too. The door had broken in two when it fell, the upper righthand corner lying a good foot away from the rest of it.

"Well, now I'm not so sure." She looked at Rhyss. "Think that could have been any louder? And you were yelling at me? Honestly."

"Shut up." Rhyss was absolutely coated in gray dust and looked like her own vengeful ghost.

Beyond the door it was pitch black. Bel sent her bubble of magic light forward, slowly. It lit up a tunnel like the ones they had left, but this one had been better sealed. There were no tree roots or moss, just bare stretches of walls between crude pillars. The mist trickled in across the floor, spreading out like a blanket.

She felt strangely excited.

"Ladies first." Heln offered.

"Guard Trainees first." Bel grinned at Rhyss, who glared at her but took the lead.