Muse 9 (ONC 2020)

Chapter 12

Laurelyn and Evelyian watched as I descended the stairs. They hadn't said anything about me taking the texts or tried to stop me. Indeed, I wondered if there was anything they actually could do, if it came down to it.

I thought of my mother, walking down these stairs all those years ago, after leaving me that note. How did she know I would do this?

Walking down at a controlled pace, my mind couldn't help but think back to my brother. My fingers found his scalpel in my belt and I played with it as I walked. How had he lost it? How had those strangers captured him? Luktor wasn't just anyone. He didn't just get...surprised.

Reaching into the other side of my belt, I removed my stylus. The fine metal pen beside my brother's thin blade. The pen and the sword.

Our key differences.

And the reason we didn't get along.

We'd always argued. All siblings do, I supposed. But Luktor and I weren't just any pair of siblings. We were hunters' orphans, raised to rely on ourselves. But Eurykhan had so wanted us to be able to count on each other, too.

"You're blood," he'd tell us, over and over again. "Blood means something down here where nothing else does."

Luktor and I had both agreed to disagree with him.

Eurykhan would hate to see how we'd acted toward each other. How we'd seemed to forget about our childhood, about that day in the Drain when we'd heard our parents were dead.

I'd never been told why my parents had taken Luktor and I with them into the Drain that day. All I knew was that we were there.

Swinging down into the Drain, tied to my mother's back, the gutterfalls had been smaller then. Perhaps there was less water to drain in the past, perhaps it was one of the slower days, but the gutterfalls wasn't as loud or powerful that day. It wasn't hard to make it across into the Drain tunnel without getting completely soaked.

I felt no fear. I should have, with where I was, but I had absolute faith in my mother. There was nothing she couldn't do.

I shook my head. Except live past that day.

Eurykhan had given my parents a disgruntled look when he saw Luktor and I running by their sides. He hadn't entered the Drain with us, but had already been there. Then I had wondered why. Now I realized he lived in the Drain.

"It's about stark time," he told them. "I told you they could make it."

My father had given Eurykhan a steady look. "I wasn't raising them down here."

I hadn't thought much of that conversation. Now, I thought about my parents' safe house.

They were taking us there.

But we never got there.

Neither Luktor nor I saw the Library tower. We didn't see them die. We never even saw the bodies. Just heard about it, when Eurykhan stood by us and told us they were gone.

What was it he'd said? "They lost to darkness."

Everything's dark down here. It's always dark. Now I get it. The darkness always strives to take you. If you lose, you lose for good.

I hit the main floor of the tower. I stopped and looked at the door. Then I continued down onto the lower flight of steps.

I looked at my stylus and Luktor's scalpel, side by side. So different, yet with the same bent. The same slenderness. The same narrowing at the tip. Used for different jobs, but in the end, too similar to be placed in completely separate categories.