Chapter 47 The Chamber Is Still Open

Chapter 47 The Chamber Is Still Open
Elias's POV

"The chamber is still open," Lyra said.

Elias stopped walking toward the house. "What?"

"The third entrance," she replied, looking at the dungeon entrance behind them. "When the weapon discharged it should have sealed everything. The passage. The door. The ancient chamber." She paused. "I can feel it through the dungeon foundation. It's still open."

"Rael," Elias said.

"He can feel it too," Lyra replied. "He's been pushing against it from the foundation since the weapon discharged. Something is holding it open from the other side."

Elias looked at the dungeon entrance.

The gold dawn was fully arrived now and the village was alive around them and forty seven people were relearning what it felt like to exist and his father was standing in the road with three children he had buried and everything was exactly as good as it was supposed to be.

Except the ancient chamber was still open.

"What's on the other side?" Elias asked.

"I don't know," Lyra replied. "The woman's presence in your mark. Ask her."

Elias looked at the mark on his wrist and felt the woman's presence in the foundation layer and said quietly "What's on the other side of the chamber?"

The mark pulsed once.

Then her voice came from it the way it had come from the dungeon walls, quiet and specific.

"The passage between," she said.

"Between what," Elias asked.

"Between here and where the first architect went," she replied. "When they finished building the original dungeon three thousand years ago they didn't stop. They went further. The ancient chamber was never the destination." She paused. "It was the door."

"A door to where," Elias pressed.

She was quiet for a moment.

"Somewhere that doesn't have a name in any language you know," she replied. "Somewhere the first architect spent three thousand years building toward. Somewhere the something still coming is coming from." She paused. "And somewhere that is now open. Because the weapon discharged and the discharge was the key and I designed it that way and I should have told you before you used it."

Elias stared at the dungeon entrance.

"You designed the weapon to open the passage," he said flatly.

"Yes," she replied.

"You designed the entire trial system," Elias said carefully, "to produce someone capable of opening a door you couldn't open yourself."

"Yes," she said again.

"And you didn't tell me," Elias said.

"You would have made different choices," she replied. "Careful ones. The wrong direction again."

"You keep saying that," Elias said. "The wrong direction. What is the wrong direction?"

"Stopping," she said simply. "The wrong direction is always stopping."

Elias looked at Lyra.

Lyra looked at him.

"She used us," Lyra said. Not angry. Just precise.

"Yes," Elias confirmed.

"Again," Lyra added.

"Yes," Elias said again.

"Are we going down?" Lyra asked.

Elias looked at the dungeon entrance and thought about breakfast and thought about his father in the road with three children who had just come back from wherever the curse had taken them and thought about a passage between here and somewhere that didn't have a name and something coming through it.

"Someone has to," he said.

"It doesn't have to be now," Lyra replied.

"The chamber is open," Elias said. "Whatever is coming through it isn't waiting for after breakfast."

Lyra looked at the dungeon entrance for a long moment.

"Together," she said.

"Together," Elias confirmed.

His father appeared at his shoulder.

"I heard," Aldric said quietly.

Elias looked at him. "You're not coming down."

"I built the dungeon," Aldric replied. "I know the passage between better than anyone alive." He held Elias's gaze. "You need me."

"You just got your children back," Elias said.

"And I intend to keep them," Aldric replied. "Which means closing whatever is coming through that chamber before it reaches the village." He looked at the dungeon entrance. "I'm coming down."

Elias looked at his father for a long moment.

"Cara knows?" he asked.

"She figured it out approximately four minutes after arriving," Aldric replied. "She takes after her brother."

Elias almost smiled.

Then the dungeon entrance flared.

Gold light spilling up from below, brighter than the trial seven light, brighter than anything the dungeon had produced before, and with it a sound that had no clean description, not loud exactly, more present than loud, the specific quality of something very large moving through a space that was almost but not quite big enough for it.

"It's already coming through," Lyra said sharply.

The three of them looked at each other.

"Down," Elias said.

They went down the forty three steps toward whatever the first architect had left on the other side of a door that had been waiting three thousand years to open.

And the something still coming came to meet them.