While they navigated through damp cave corridors, Maya talked to reduce the levels of her anxiety. "Sorry, I ratted you out earlier."
"It's okay. I sort of expected it. But I have to admit, how fast you did it… it did sting a bit."
"In my defence, we were in a hurry. I didn't want to be down here after night falls."
Their journey below wasn't seamless. The path morphed unpredictably, ranging from tight crevices they had to squeeze through, to sudden slippery slopes filled with water of inscrutable depths that could very well reach hell itself, to expansive cave halls they weren't aware could be hidden right beneath the academy floors.
Despite the challenges, taking the plunge into a dark well emboldened them to face what lay ahead. Maya, however, wished they had brought wetsuits; the frigid waters were excruciatingly cold to be soaked in.
Some areas seemed oddly man-made, resembling the walls of ancient temples or tombs swallowed by the earth and forgotten. Yet exploration wasn't on their agenda. They were trailing Anastasia through a labyrinth of corridors branching off in all directions. With her as their only guide, Maya was constantly on edge, fearing Anastasia might vanish as she often did.
They weren't alone, at least from Maya's perspective. Many souls were trapped down there, disoriented and erratic due to the scarcity of visitors.
These souls would rush to them, begging for help in desperation. They had no recollection of how they ended up there, lost and unable to find an exit. Unaware of their demise, they couldn't comprehend Maya's horrified expression upon seeing bite marks and blood on their bodies, nor could they understand Elena's apparent disregard for their desperate pleas.
Elena noticed Maya's agitation. "Are there many of them?"
"They don't even know they are dead," Maya was saddened. "Elena, they have bite marks."
"It only means we have to be careful."
Is this where missing students go missing? She imagined them being dragged away by some vicious animal, into the depths of the underground, by monsters she imagined vampires looked like, having never seen one.
They continued on and Maya did her best to ignore those desperate souls. Anastasia led them to a dead end. The path they were to proceed on was flooded.
"Crap… It's flooded," Maya was disappointed.
"Is there no other way?"
"No."
"Can we drain it?"
Maya looked at Anastasia to respond. She shook her head. It meant there was too much water for them to drain or it could take forever. "No."
"Then we improvise. Join our powers."
They devised a plan to create an air bubble for them to inhabit while walking through water. This plan combined Elena's water-manipulating abilities with Maya's air-manipulation skills. It was a risky solution. Elena battled the water pressure to prevent it from crushing them, while Maya maintained the structure of their air bubble, keeping it contained and preventing it from escaping upward. Elena pushed while Maya pulled.
The task was challenging. Their bubble continuously shrank the further they ventured, and the oxygen was depleting. It was a constant struggle to keep their heads in the shrinking bubble and to move through the increasingly deep water, which made every step more difficult. The tension was high. Uncertainty filled them as they didn't know how much further they had to go or if they would make it.
When they saw what appeared to be the end, they let go of their efforts to maintain the bubble and swam through the cold waters. They surfaced, panting, and took a moment to catch their breaths. Then, they continued further through the rough terrain.
Suddenly, the ground began to tremble. It was much weaker than any of the times before, but still enough to get them straight into a panic. Fearing they will get buried in the rubble under the academy and no one will ever find them.
"It's just above," Anastasia said.
Maya looked up seeing only solid rock. "Are you kidding me?"
"What?" Elena asked.
"She says it's above us."
Elena looks up and touches the ceiling above to examine it. "How thick? Can you break it?"
"It's a solid rock. I can't manipulate solid rock, Elena."
"Have you tried?"
Maya scoffed.
"Have you brought some dynamite then? Are we giving up?" Elena kept asking questions Maya had no answer for.
Maya took a deep breath. Elena was right. She should at least try. Try not to get them buried down here. "Okay. Move away."
Elena listened and Maya took a moment to focus. She visualized what she wanted to happen and began.
She made her movement but felt resistance. Earth manipulation was all about friction and resistance. It requires willpower and determination to move the unmovable. Maya flexed her muscles, her entire body, to the brink of pain, and then further, fighting the urge to scream.
Then a crack echoed and it was Elena's surprisingly fast reaction that moved Maya out of the way before the ceiling caved in. They were coughing as dust was slowly settling to reveal a hole in the ceiling of the narrow tunnel.
Elena took the initiative to peek in, waving the dust away. The rubble that had fallen down was now conveniently creating steps for them to climb up. Elena did it first, beckoning Maya to come.
"Watch your head—" Elena warned just as Maya bumped her head into a wooden beam.
"Ouch," Maya rubbed the sore spot on her forehead.
They were in a dusty crawl space beneath old hardwood floorboards. Elena was checking if any of them were loose enough to break off. Maya was unsure if Elena found a loose one or decided to use her shoulder to forcefully break one. Nonetheless, she managed to break off enough to create space for them to crawl up.
"No matter what they do, never react," Anastasia warned Maya before entering.
They found themselves in a study room of some sort. It was old, windowless, with stone arches supporting the low vault overhead. Bookcases filled with old, rare-looking books were tucked into the niches beneath the arches. The room gave off the feeling of a dungeon repurposed.
"Something about this place gives me the creeps," Elena said.
"I can see what," Maya responded, learning why Anastasia had given her a sudden warning before she had entered.
There were a number of ghosts, uncomfortably close, unblinking, invasively staring at the intruders—them. They had a distinct violent energy about them, Maya had only felt from a certain hotspot, and that fact made it infinitely more difficult to stay level-headed as her skin wanted to crawl away.
Maya took a moment to compose herself, then looked at her surroundings.
The proper entrance was blocked by collapsed rubble. The only access to the room was the way they had entered. An old, well-maintained desk sat in the centre of the room, displaying a book.
Maya immediately sensed that this was the book they had been searching for—the book that held all the answers. As Elena glanced around the room, observing other books partially buried in the debris, Maya moved towards the book on the desk.
Briskly packing it safely away, Maya's gaze landed on a broken talisman displayed in a glass cabinet. Struck by curiosity, she looked at it closer. There were several of them packed in a box below, all quite high class.
The one she admired has a brilliant cracked ruby of excellent quality. The gemstone, although broken, still seemed to shine brightly. Then a glint of a colourful opal caught her eye, resting beside rectangularly cut amber and a black pearl.
All of the gemstones were broken. The ruby one seemed to hold significance to the owner of this room, and Maya wondered if they were trying to fix them in order to be used again.
"I hear voices," Elena whispered.
Maya stopped to listen. There were voices. Not only that, but it also sounded like someone was digging to get through.
"We should run," Maya said and grabbed the book tightly.
Elena snatched one off the shelves before retreating the way they had come. They could hear footsteps approaching the room, breaking through wooden doors blocked by rubble. They slid underneath the floor and Elena was trying to quietly put the floorboards back in their place.
Just as she set down the last plank, the unknown visitors had entered the room. The girls hastily covered their mouths to stifle any sounds. They will have to wait in this perilous position for a little longer to avoid making any sound to facilitate their discovery.
The voices above them belonged to men. From the sound of them and the creaking of the floorboards under their heavy steps, there must've been two or three of them—having a casual discussion while clearing up the pathway into the room.
"Lady Lefebvre, you should relocate the study to a more convenient place, before something like this happens again."