In an instant, the fruit just stopped glowing. I started, heart pounding. Without the glowing fruit, the place was as black as the inside of a can of black paint that had also been painted black. Despite the darkness, though, I heard the tendrils thrashing and coming close.
It looked like turning the lights out was the best Dawnslight could do for me. Desperate, I fumbled my way down the hallway in one last mad dash toward freedom.
The tendrils of water struck.
Right at the place where I’d been standing before.
I couldn’t see it, but I could feel them brush past me, converging on that location. I stumbled away, listening to the crash of water hitting wall, and fell back against one of them in the dark—a large, armlike glob of water, cold to the touch. I accidently put my hand into it, and my skin sank right through.
I pulled it out with a start and backed away, hitting another tendril. None of them stopped moving, but they didn’t come for me. I wasn’t crushed in the darkness.
She … can’t feel with them, I realized. They don’t convey a sense of touch! So if she can’t see, she can’t direct them.
Incredulous, I poked another of the tendrils in the darkness, then slapped it. Perhaps not the smartest thing I’d ever done, but it provoked no reaction. The tendrils continued thrashing about randomly.
I backed away, putting as much room between myself and those tendrils as possible. It wasn’t easy, as I kept stumbling over tree trunks. But …
Light?
A single fruit glowed up above. I chased it. It hung in front of a stairwell, and the floor here was dry. No water for Regalia to peer through.
“Thanks,” I said, stepping forward. My foot crunched something. A fortune cookie. I grabbed it and opened it.
She’s going to destroy the city, it read. You don’t have much time left. Stop her!
“Trying,” I muttered, squeezing between vines to climb into the stairwell and starting upward. Fruit glowed to light my way, then winked out behind me.
On the next level was a floor where all of the fruit glowed, but no water tendrils sought to capture me. Regalia didn’t know where I’d gone. Excellent. I crept out into another office room. This floor was cultivated, to an extent, with carefully kept pathways and trees that had been trimmed into a garden. It was a striking sight, after the wildness of the other levels.
I started down a path, imagining the people who had decided to take this floor and make it their own personal garden, buried in the middle of a building. I was so captivated by the imagery I nearly missed the blinking fruit. It hung right in front of me and pulsed with a soft light.
A warning of some sort? Cautious, I continued forward, then heard a footstep on the path ahead.
My breath caught, and I ducked off the path and into the foliage. The fruit closest to me went out, making the area around me darker. A few moments later Newton strode down the path and passed right under the fruit that had pulsed.
She had her katana out resting on her shoulder, and she carried a cup of water.
A cup of water?
“This is a distraction,” Newton said. “Unimportant.”
“You’ll do as told.” Regalia’s voice rose from the cup. “I heard him moving down there, but he’s gone silent. He’s hiding in the darkness, hoping we’ll go away.”
“I have to make it to the confrontation with the others,” Newton protested. “Steelslayer is meaningless. If I don’t fall into their trap, then how are you going to—”
“Obviously you’re right,” Regalia said.
Newton stopped in place.
“You are a wonderful help,” Regalia continued. “So brilliant. And … Blast. I need to deal with Jonathan. Find that rat.”
Newton cursed under her breath and continued on, leaving me behind. I shivered, waiting until I heard the door to the stairwell shut, then I stepped back out onto the path.
Regalia was worried enough about me to pull Newton away from other plans to hunt me. That seemed a very good sign. It meant she felt that keeping me from warning Prof was extremely important.
So I had to break through and reach him. Unfortunately, the moment I stepped out of this building, I’d be in the bull’s-eye again. I’d have to push through it, dodging as I had been before. I walked up to a window and prepared to leap out, but then found that my pocket was buzzing. I dug