Page 11 of At the Mercy of Midnight
A deep rumble echoed around the temple, resonating in her ears. Amelia held her breath as she glanced worriedly up at the high ceiling of the temple hallway, seeing trickles of dust being dislodged as the ground began to tremble beneath her feet.
They were far from the entrance, and she suddenly felt the urge to retreat, the fear of being buried under collapsed temple walls filling her mind.
“We should go,” he said quickly, mirroring her inner thoughts.
Amelia swallowed and nodded, but before they could move a single step back in the direction they had come, the ground shifted with a lurch, sending her careening to the side. Her shoulder hit the wall forcefully, before she fell to her hands and knees, unable to regain stability with the rocking of the stone floor.
The floor began to crumble at the edges of the wide chasm, large slabs of rock breaking away with a resounding cracking noise and falling heavily into the deep darkness of the hole. A piece broke off right next to her splayed fingers and Amelia whimpered in fear. She started to shuffle away from the opening hastily.
Hands took her under her arms, hauling Amelia to her feet. Silas was yelling in her ear, but fear morphed the noise into something nonsensical. She stumbled against him at the force of the quake, and then with a piercing scream, the stones gave way beneath her feet, and she tumbled down, down, down…
Until darkness was all around, consuming her.
THREE
“Winslow!”
Pain.
It coursed through her body. Inside her bones.
Am I dead?
The question made her eyes fly open, only to clench them shut at the bright light that burned in front of her face.
“Ugh,” she moaned.
A soft sigh from next to her before the brightness seemed to dissipate slightly. Blinking her eyes open again, she found Silas kneeling beside her.
There was a dark smudge across one side of his face, and it took her a few bleary moments before she realised it wasblood, smeared across his skin, from his temple to his chin. That was when she remembered the hole, the earthquake, falling…
Amelia pushed herself to sit quickly, causing a rush of dizziness to overcome her. She moaned and brought her hands up to her head.
“Careful, Winslow,” Silas said from next to her, “I think you hit your head pretty bad on the way down.”
Amelia quietly assessed herself. She moved her legs, and then her arms before stretching her neck from side to side. Her head pounded, and she seemed to have acquired a few bumps and bruises, but she otherwise felt no major damage to her body. She looked at the deep gash on his temple.
“You’re hurt,” Amelia said, rather stupidly.
He touched briefly where she looked, flinching slightly as his fingers came away red and nodded. “Just a little. Nothing to be concerned with.”
She looked around to find them in the centre of a cavernous hall. It was poorly lit and lined with pillars, small beams of sun finding their way into the hall through large cracks in the roof. The floor was made of stone slabs, cracked, and weathered, some looking like they might swallow you. It was a barren space, without furnishings. It was just floors and walls and pillars. It might have been a grand ball room, if that was something the Gemino tribe had participated in.
Glancing up, Amelia could see the hole they had fallen through, far above their heads. Their fall had been broken by a landslide of debris, cascading out onto the floor.
Amelia was surprised they had survived the fall with so few injuries.
“We landed there,” Silas said, as though reading her mind. Amelia found him gesturing to a flattening of fallen stones perhaps three metres down from the chasm and far from where they safely sat.
She looked back at him, surprise flooding her. “Did you carry me all the way down here?”
Silas stood suddenly, brushing dust from his shirt. “Well, I couldn’t risk more of the upper floor falling on top of us.” He picked up his lamp and dangled it from his fingers.
“Thanks,” Amelia said, gingerly getting to her feet and adjusting the pack against her spine with a wince.
He looked at her over his shoulder as though surprised, but then his eyes returned to something at the end of the hall.
“There’s a source of light over there.” Silas pointed as they passed through two thick columns.
