With a scrape along the icy floor, the door sunk inward, swinging on indiscernable icy hinges. The first thing they saw was light. Somehow, beyond the door, the room was lit. As their eyes adjusted, they were able to see that they were actually looking into another hallway, but this one looked like a real hall, just one made out of stone and ice. Along the walls, there were chalices holding up flickering blue flames. The air from the hall rushed out, as if it had been contained for a long, long, time. It was cool, but refreshing. It was like they'd stepped outdoors, except... they hadn't.
Lake's eyes went wide as she took it all in.
The hall was wide, long, and grand, and there were even icy chandeleirs on the ceiling, holding the same, magical blue flames.
There was snow-dust in the air, just like after a fresh snowfall. The tiny ice-crystals shimmered in the air, catching the bright blue light. And on the walls, there were pictures. Illustrations, carved into the ice, like ancient cave paintings - except these were far more detailed, and some were even sculpted into the wall with ridges sticking out.
Lake took the first step into the hall, gingerly, but everything inside of her was itching with excitement and awe.
This was real. It was really real.
She couldn't help but feel like she was stepping into her dream, but now it was all tangible. She could feel it. She could touch it. It was really happening. She wasn't delusional. She had real, physical proof that something, someone had drawn her here.
She'd expected the vindication of this moment to feel a certain way. Full of passion and even a self-justified bitterness, to maybe rub it in Fish and Rain's faces for doubting her and calling her crazy. But all she felt at the moment was just... relief.
Tears pricked at her eyes as she silently followed along the wall, seeing runes carved above and below the pictures. Now, she knew at least four of the words, but it wasn't like she could read the story. But she could look at the pictures.
Behind her, she could hear Fish and Rain's trepid footsteps, and the patter of paws following with them. But no one said anything.
It was weird. It felt like they'd intruded on something ancient and sacred, but at the same time, they were welcome. Lake felt like she was supposed to be here.
She reached out, gently running her fingers over the first picture on the wall.
It looked familiar.
It started at the same place every folktale about Chevan ever did. Generations ago, when their people met Cheva in the rough winters of the arctic, and Cheva blessed them. The image showed three human figures, and a icy, humanoid hand reaching out to them, with streams of light radiating from it.
Lake smiled softly. As she slowly walked along the wall, the story seemed to resemble the book they'd lost. It followed the same pattern, and even some of the pictures looked the same.
There was Chevan. It started small, and then it grew, and it grew.
There were her people. Generation after generation, learning the magic, passing it down. The spells. The stories.
But where she expected the story to end, it kept going. Instead of ending in Chevan, it seemed to return to the glaciers, and the pictures seemed to travel through them. Into them. There were the icy tunnels, then the door. A bright light around a large, humanoid figure, and then a panned out image of Chevan from afar. One picture, the lights were on, then the next, they were all out.
Lake felt a chill run down her spine.
She noticed the word "magic" was written below it. The symbol was the simplest of all the runes. Essentially, it was just a swirl.
Without having to read the context around it, she understood what the pictures were saying. Apparently, it was foretold a long time ago that magic would die out. Did that mean their whole journey into the glaciers was for nothing?
No. They wouldn't have gotten this far if it ended there.
The story kept going.
After the image of Chevan buried under snow and plunged in darkness, there was a picture of three silhouettes coming up from a snow-covered hill.
One reached out in front of them, melting away the snow, pushing it back like a wave.
One reached up to the sky, and called forth the sun.
One flying in on the wings of a giant bird, with creatures following behind them.
What had Rain said?
Children of the water, sky, and beasts?
After the grand appearance of the three "heros," there were three silhouetted portraits of them that had smaller runes. At that moment, Lake really wished she could read the ancient language, because it seemed like there were more details about the "children of x,y,z." If she could read it, maybe it'd confirm things more. Or give them answers.
After the portraits, there was a picture of the three silhouettes entering town, and a burst of light as magic returned. Hovering over the town, there was the same icy, humanoid figure, and Lake could recognize what seemed to be a smile.
And that was where the "story" ended. But Lake realized now that it was more of a prophecy than just a story.
Lake swallowed, and turned to look back at Rain and Fish finally. Their eyes were wide as they stared at the wall too. The dogs herding around them, however, were entirely clueless, and were just sniffing around.
"So uh," Lake said. "Does this mean I'm famous?"
She pointed to the silhouetted figure commanding the waters.
Rain looked like she wanted to have a sarcastic comment, but came up short, instead her eyes flicking from Lake back to the intricately carved prophecy. "... bruh."
"This is not what I expected to find in here," Lake went on, finding the words spilling out without filter. "But uh, wow! What a surprise!" She went on to laugh a little more nervously than intended.
Rain glanced at her again. "... what do you think it means?"
"Uh. Um," Lake pursed her lips, looking at the illustrations, then her friends, then the illustrations, and her friends again.
"We're uh... supposed to be like, heros or something I guess," she said.
Why did it feel like even 24 hours ago, she'd be thrilled by this, but now it was entirely overwhelming? She wasn't a hero. She was literally just some gal who chopped wood for a living.
"I don't know how we'll bring magic back or whatever, though," she muttered. "Feels like there's a lot of missing steps here in this graphic novel."
Rain's eyes were glued to the wall, flicking back and forth between the various images as she tried to fill in the holes. She was intent and ran her fingertips across the ridges in the ice closest to her eye-height as she paced back and forth along the wall. "...we need to figure out how to read this."
She didn't come up with any further suggestions or ideas, though, and instead settled for staring intently as if that would force the ice to open up and share its secrets with them.
"What am I supposed to do with a bunch of animals?" Fish finally blurted, sounding bewildered and anxious.
"Have a bear army?" Lake suggested.
"We are so not qualified for this," Fish deadpanned. Lake realized he was being very serious.
"I'd argue that you're overqualified having spent so much time with fish all your life, and being named Fish," Lake said.
"I'm being serious!" Fish retorted, though he sounded more worried than upset.
"So am I," Lake said with a shrug.
"So they were supposed to get their magic...then go back to Chevan," Rain said, still pacing along the wall as she tried to piece together what was written between the lines.
"Okay now before you start telling me you were right and we should've turned around a lot sooner--" Lake started to say.
"What are we even supposed to do?" Fish interrupted.
"Maybe we've done it?" Rain said, glancing at them with a furrowed brow before she looked back at the wall. "Everything happened. Magic died. We got our magic. Now we just have to go home... right? That's what that's saying, right?"
"But now we're stuck with this magic forever?" Fish went on, flailing his arms at the wall. It didn't sound like he was even listening to Rain. "Am I going to be hearing animals talking all my life? Oh, Cheva. Am I going to be hearing fish talk all my life too? I BUTCHER fish for a living! I can't handle that!"
Oh no. Fish was spiraling.
Lake reached over to him and planted a hand firmly on his shoulder.
"I think Rain's right," Lake said. "Now we just have to focus on finding a way out and going home, right? Just like the original plan."
"But what about Cheva?" Fish asked. "Where even is she???"
Lake blinked.
She didn't have an answer for that one.
She looked out down the hall, as it continued on even after the story came to an "end."
"Huh," she said softly to herself. "Good question."
"I can't do this," Fish started to say. "I can't do this. Can't we go back? Maybe we could wish for her to take our powers back? This was a bad idea. We should go home."
The dogs started to whine and yap as Fish visibly grew more distressed and pulled away from Lake, shaking his head.
"Stop it!" he said, clearly snapping at the dogs. They just got louder.
"Fish, it's okay," Lake said. "We're okay. We're going to get through this."
Fish looked down the hall, and after the illustrations came to an end, the walls were smooth and sleek, apart from the intermittent lit flames lining them.
"We have to get out of here," Fish said, clearly worked up into a panic. "Before she finds us!"
As he broke into a run, Lake reached out to try and stop him.
"Fish!" Lake shouted in exasperation.
"Wait, what--?" Rain turned back towards them, pulling from her cerebral pondering of the inscriptions. "Fish! Stop it! You can't run from a Goddess! Get back here before something bad happ--"
Before Lake could even reach Fish, he slipped.
Slamming onto the icy floor, he groaned, and as Lake hurried over to him, she saw a string shimmering just a few inches off the ground. From afar, it was clear, and practically invisible. But Fish seemed to have run into it and snapped it.
Her eyes went wide. There was a loud groan in the ice heard above them.
"Shit! A booby trap!" Lake shouted. "Get up!"
Without waiting for Fish to meet her hand, she grabbed him, pulling him to his feet.
"Rain! Get over here!" she shouted. "Storm! Come!"
Storm came bounding over, and the other dogs followed behind her. The was a loud thump in the icy ceiling above them, and suddenly, it began to crack.
The dogs rushed past Lake, further down the hall, away from the noise. Lake shoved Fish ahead of her, hoping he wouldn't trip again this time.
Rain was on their heels, also giving Fish a shove as she rushed forward. "Go-go-go--"
They were booking it. Lake's backpack bounced on her shoulders, and for a moment, she considered ditching it completely, but she feared even attempting so would slow her down. She and Rain held up the back as Fish scrambled into the herd of dogs ahead of them, and with one glance over her shoulder, she could see the ceiling caving in.
It crashed down behind them, crumbling and shattering against the walls, the floor. It kept crumbling down behind them as they ran, only a narrow few feet behind them.
Eventually, the shattering and the crashing came to a final end, but they kept running. Running, running, until they were positive they were free of it. Hoping that in the process, they didn't somehow set off any other booby traps.
Finally, Lake started to slow.
"Woah!" she called out to the dogs, and they all started to slow, skidding on the icy floor.
Fish got bumped by Big Guy in the mess of it, and fell over again, but this time at least caught himself on his hands and knees.
"OW!" he said in offense to Big Guy. Big Guy actually responded in an apologetic whimper, and came back to Fish, licking his face and nudging his shoulder to try to help him up.
Lake came to a stop, huffing and puffing, and leaned forward with her hands on her knees. Rain seemed to have slowed down a few steps behind her, and with heavy footfalls, caught up to her.
They were all breathing hard. Lake could see the puffs of smoke around their mouths.
"Well," Lake said through breaths. "Looks like Cheva has some built-in... security."
"You're telling... me that..." Rain was panting, but it sounded like she was huffing a little extra out of annoyance. "A goddess has a booby trap for her heroes? Wack."
"Maybe it's... for intruders?" Lake guessed. "Or... maybe it was... a recent installment?"
"Of course there's booby traps," Fish bemoaned, flopping to the floor beside Big Guy instead of getting up.
"Cheva, on her death bed, 'let me make a trap to cave in the heads of people trying to come help me'-- seems legit."
"She's on her death bed?!" Fish nearly shouted.
"SHHHHH!" Lake hissed. "Don't go triggering something else!"
"It wasn't like I was trying to!" Fish defended.
"Well you did anyway!" Rain shot back.
Fish groaned, defeated, and stared up at the ceiling as Big Guy started to lick his face again.
Lake stood up straighter and let out a long sigh, looking back behind them.
"Well... there's no going back the way we came now," she said. "I guess it's Cheva or bust."
Rain looked at the caved-in tunnel behind them helplessly, then looked down the other direction, seeming equally hopeless at those prospects as well. She glanced back towards the rubble regretfully. "... so much for figuring out what the runes mean."
"It's not like I know what any of the other ones mean anyway," Fish mumbled.
"Still, you could've given it a minute before freaking out," Lake said, about to lean against the wall before deciding against it. Now she was a little paranoid.
Fish sighed.
"You two are never going to let me forget this, are you?" he lamented.
Lake looked to Rain with a raised eyebrow.
"At this rate, none of us are going to be alive to remember it," Rain muttered, brow furrowed.
"We'll be more careful this time," Lake said, trying to be more hopeful. "I'll take the lead, okay? Any everyone keep your eye out for anything sus."
She walked over to Fish and extended a hand to him, this time, waiting for him. He looked up at her for a moment, seemingly defeated, and then let out a sigh. He reached up and took it, and Lake pulled him to his feet once more.
Fish scrubbed his face where Big Guy had been getting his slobber all over him.
"On the bright side," Lake said. "We were going to keep going this way anyway. So... we'll just keep with it. We're going to make it out of this."
Fish looked down to the floor with despondence and only nodded. Lake gave him a quick shoulder pat and then stepped past him, weaving past all of the dogs.
"Alright, come on, guys," Lake said. "Modern heroes or not, we've got ourselves to save first before we can help anybody else."
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