Ruins of Scell: Prequel to The Secret Depths Trilogy
Page 3
Each flagstone in the floor had a picture carved into it. One third of them were engraved with a picture of a scell, another third with a mermaid picture, and the rest bore a human image. The statue’s two upper arms cupped an emerald the size of a baby’s fist. It was the largest jewel Flynn had ever seen and he ached to retrieve it, but he restrained himself. Even he would not venture into such an ominous hallway.
As Flynn stepped back from the doorway, he stroked his chin. “For a trap to be effective, it needs to be subtle.” He crouched down and examined the floor. “This area could not be more obvious, so maybe it isn’t trapped at all.”
There was an element of reason to the claim, but Flynn feared he was reaching for any excuse that would allow him to give in to temptation. He had a way of talking himself into being reckless, and the hall before him looked like something he would not be walking away from if he dared to enter. But still, the prize was tempting.
“A little experiment can’t hurt,” Flynn said, removing a dagger from a sheath in his boot.
Flynn hurled the dagger as hard as he could down the hall and when it bounced off a flagstone, thin lines of lava shot from the mouths of two masks above it. The lava entered the mouths of the masks across from them and disappeared. The dagger continued bouncing down the hall, triggering lava traps each time it touched the floor. When it finally came to a stop, the masks flanking it repeatedly launched lava into each other’s mouths, pausing briefly after every second burst.
“That’s all I needed to see,” Flynn said, finally convinced of his initial decision to avoid going after the jewel.
As he was closing the door, he realized the images on the floor correlated to the statue’s three faces. The masks next to the dagger released jets of lava when the scell or human face was revealed, but they were dormant when the mermaid’s face was in position. He strained to see what picture the dagger rested on, but it was too far to tell.
As the statue’s head rotated to its human face, Flynn leaned in and pressed his sword against a flagstone depicting the picture of a human. Nothing happened for the first second, but an instant later the statue’s head rotated to a mermaid face and lava shot out from the two masks above it.
The knowledge of how to solve the puzzle bolstered Flynn’s desire to retrieve the emerald. The jewel appeared to be worth more than he would make after months of hard work. That would mean months of ocean exploration and shameful behavior in Seahaven instead of working the mine. It was worth the risk.
As the statue’s head rotated into the mermaid position, Flynn stepped onto a mermaid-engraved flagstone. He let out a breath of relief when none of the nearby masks responded. The statue’s head turned again, revealing a scell face, and he stepped onto the corresponding image. His new position did not trigger any traps but he was slow leaving the previous flagstone, and a thin line of lava streaked behind his head, close enough to scorch hair.
“I’ll be bald by the end of this,” Flynn said, running fingers through his hair. His hand was covered in burnt, blackened curls, and his shoulders slumped at the thought of how long it would take to regrow.
The statue’s head turned and Flynn stepped onto the corresponding flagstone. When the head turned again, he stepped forward without triggering any traps. “I have the timing figured out now,” he said, smiling.
Before long, Flynn stood before the stony figure. His face brightened as he reached for the green gemstone and tentatively plucked it from the statue’s hands. Holding his breath in anticipation, he gasped it back out when he inspected the jewel. There were numerous obvious defects, including air bubbles and bits of rubble beneath the emerald’s surface, devaluing the gem considerably. Anger and confusion surged through him as he contemplated the risks he took to claim the paltry jewel.
“Why would they go to so much trouble to protect. . . ?”
A sick feeling swept through him when he realized the cheap gem was the bait in another trap, one more devious than the others. An ominous rumbling behind the wall interrupted his thoughts and he stepped back, bringing himself inches away from the first masks at the end of the hall. One of the bricks in the wall inched forward as though a being on the other side was pushing on it. More bricks pressed forward, and thin trails of lava seeped out from the cracks.
It became clear to Flynn that the jewel was placed there to trap non-scell intruders, and prevent them from escaping with news of their city’s new location. The wall behind the statue bulged outward, and he was too paralyzed by fear to move. His heart raced and he dropped the emerald, fleeing down the hall as jets of lava shot out behind him. With a roar, the wall at the end of the tunnel toppled inward, and a waterfall of lava gushed forth.
Flynn raced through the map room and down the stairs as a river of molten rock flooded the hallway. Out of breath and on the verge of collapse, relief swept through him when he reached the entry chamber. But he gasped when he saw what was waiting for him.
The rolling boulder had smashed one of the urns, and the other two were tipped over. Three lava golems stood between Flynn and the pool leading into the ocean depths. The outpouring of lava blazed at his back, and he dared not waste the time for a backward glance. The scell statue bearing the four element-containing bowls sat next to him, and his memory of what happened when he pulled down the hand bearing the flame-filled bowl gave him an idea.
Flynn pulled down the arm that held the water-filled bowl. The ceiling cracked and water poured into the room. He was barely able to take a breath before the room filled with ocean water. Lava flooded into the room, turning the water scalding hot. His breathing helm was nowhere to be seen, and Flynn swam for the tunnel leading into the complex, both to escape the heat and to reach his ship before he ran out of air. Behind him, lava formed pillow-shaped boulders that sealed off the cave, and his insides felt as though they were boiling.
The steel and crystal ship remained parked in rubble, and Flynn struggled to stay conscious as he swam for it. The instant the hatch opened he plunged his head into the air-filled vessel. It took many moments to catch his breath, and when he strapped himself in to the sponge-padded pilot’s chair, his shoulders slumped at the sight of the sealed cave. The scells were clearly a highly intelligent race, and the map room would have proven quite useful to cartographers in Seahaven.
Flynn closed the hatch and pushed the acceleration levers forward, giving rise to a dust cloud and speeding ahead until a pair of giant comb jellies blocked his path. Their helmet-shaped bodies glowed fiery red, and rainbow-colored lights danced down their sides. Branched, sticky tentacles trailed below them and he ascended, narrowly avoiding a collision that would have coated his ship in gelatinous flesh.
A cloud of plankton too large to be avoided loomed before him and he flew into it. The ship burst out the other side, and the tiny organisms bounced off the hull like grains of sand. The luminescence from the thousands of glowing creatures was blinding.
After blinking away the glare, Flynn banked his ship between coral pillars and rock formations. When Seahaven came into view, he circled around the city and dropped down into a dark crevice below the dome. His crystal ring flashed, and the grinding sound of stone against stone preceded a rock wall sliding out of his way to allow entry into the hidden tunnel below his home. The wall slid shut behind him as he entered and he surfaced in the Pool Room, where his brother was waiting for him.
“That took a while,” Tasker said, his arms crossed and his brow furled. “Did you run into any trouble?”
“Not at all,” Flynn replied, trying his best to sound sincere. The last thing he wanted was a lecture about drilling too deep and starting a rockslide.
“Your hair looks terrible.”
Flynn ran his fingers through his disheveled brown hair, releasing burnt, curled strands. “For once you and I have something in common,” he replied, glancing toward the unruly mop of black hair on Tasker’s head.
Tasker appeared unmoved by the retort. “I see you collected a sample, albe
it a small one.”
Flynn didn’t know what his brother was talking about until he looked down at the sample-collecting pouch that still hung from his belt. After all that happened that day, he had forgotten that he was still wearing it. He untied it from his belt and handed it to Tasker. “I don’t think there’s much in there to interest you.”
Tasker entered the adjacent laboratory and poured the pouch’s contents onto a stone table. “I beg to differ,” he said, removing a large, flawed emerald from the soil and staring hard at Flynn with one raised eyebrow. “Quite the vein of raw ore you found; it’s even cut perfectly.”
Flynn was genuinely surprised. He hadn’t realized the gem landed in the pouch when he dropped it. “Must be top quality ore,” he agreed, chuckling as he left the laboratory.
The End
From The Author
Thank you for reading this novelette.
Don’t forget to join Flynn on his adventures in the Secret Depths Trilogy, a series of three full-length novels that take place entirely on the ocean floor.
Secret Depths Trilogy
Seahaven — released early 2017.
Deepstone – released mid-2017.
Graveport — will be available late 2017.
Contact Information
Website: www.raymondcain.com
Twitter: @Captraymondcain
Facebook: Raymond Cain
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
From The Author