Avengard: The Fall of Senvia

Chapter 26 - Lights

We followed the flickering white candle lights through the sewers. At first, they were spread apart so much, I sometimes had to scout passages ahead to find the next one. My initial suspicion was that we were going the wrong way. An old trick a friend of mine had taught me was to hold your hand to the wall, right or left, and as long as you did so as soon as you entered and kept the same hand on the wall, you would eventually reach the end of a maze. Unless the maze decided to change.

But that wouldn't help here. The lights were not connected by walls, they held their own places in a tunnel system that spanned the entire subterranean network of one of the largest cities in Avengard. The time we had spent in the sewers barely scratched the surface of its true extent.

Eventually, the flames appeared more often and closer together. At first it was hardly noticeable, rare enough that I could fool myself into thinking it was just my imagination. But then we saw two in the same hallway. And then three. And four.

After several hours of hunting, which Eskir jokingly assured me would likely not have taken anywhere near as long if he weren't barred from his curse from guiding us, the lights grew to the point where Eskir could put out his portable imitation light. They surrounded us in brilliance, dancing their unpredictable glow around the tunnel. This spot was hardly a tunnel. We must have descended further down at some point, as the ceiling in this room was far taller than the rest, and it stretched out above us like a cathedral.

It felt like I was at a festival. Senvia had earned the monicker of the City of Lights, and these reminded me exactly of the ones that danced around Senvia. They were different enough that I didn't attempt to rationalise a connection, but the feeling I had, standing in the middle of Senvia, surrounded by a thousand, thousand floating candle-like flames raining a flickering yellow paradise down on my eyes, was perfectly replicated in the sewers. For a moment, I forgot about the ick on my hands, I forgot about the fact that we were in a sewer, I forgot about my hunt for the truth.

For a moment, just a fading few minutes, I was a kid again. Lyana was just around the corner, beckoning me with a paper lantern I could release into the sky to join the lights. Senvia was whole and filled with life, and the night streets bustled with carts of festival food. Every corner I turned, there were more of them, and I had a stupid-silly grin plastered across my face as I chased out the thickest batch of them I could find. Most people were comfortable to prop up a chair, and many homes in the city had been built with patio-like rooftops that met the edges of other buildings' shingles, specifically for the festival of lights. Another corner passed, and I looked up to see a wooden platform constructed higher up, nestled in-between two brick buildings with an ivy ceiling and the lights finding their way into the alcove, illuminating it like a yellow dawn. I envied whoever had the chance to sit up there, whoever owned that bridging balcony, whoever had the talent and motivation to build a piece of architecture like that. It was the sort of hidden-away spot that I pictured Lyana longed for in her hunt for that perfect bookstore with stacks of ancient, dusty books rising from the floor and forming ever-narrowing dimly lit aisles. The crisp air of an almost-winter hit my breath like mint, and I wrapped my scarf around my neck to compensate. Lyana was there, just looking up at the sky and smiling with a joy I so rarely got to see in her eyes.

For a moment, just a fading few minutes, I was home.

The white lights in the sewer invited us onwards from that underground cathedral, moving from passageway to room, room to tunnel, tunnel to hall, until we finally arrived at a large stone door emblazed with a blue gem in the shape of a diamond. The lights danced over it like they were announcing its impending existence and celebrating all that it held inside.

Eskir and I both fell against it. The door groaned out in response, but it did open, creaking with the sound of a door that only ever opened when it absolutely needed to.