"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.
Chapter Thirteen
Heln did not like the new tunnel.
Not that he had cared for the other ones, but they had at least had some sign of life. The new one was all dust and stale, flat air. If the other parts of the cave had some sort of sentience then this was where it was dying. The sealing scripts felt old and slightly faded, underneath those it felt more like the rest of the ruins. He even thought he recognized some of the magical signatures, like faded pictures of people that died long before he was born. "I think this tunnel was resealed."
"What gave you
