Tales of the Arcane - 0316 Read online

  Chapter V

  Secret Places

  Interviewer: Hello, Ms. Havenwood.

  Sylvia: Hello, darling. Whispers wandered off?

  Interviewer: I believe she became annoyed after discussing the detonation of the explosive.

  Sylvia: Ah, quite. That was... unpleasant, to say the least. She does not like to acknowledge her failures.

  Interviewer: That is a bit harsh, no?

  Sylvia: Not at all. It was a failure on both our parts. A mistake was made in not dealing with the trap at the time — leaving a sleeping tiger lie as it were; hoping it remained silent.

  Interviewer: Would that be some bitterness I hear?

  Sylvia: Just irritation, my dear; that is all. Lessons had been learned.

  Tuesday, 4 March – 17:16

  Tetepare Island, Solomon Islands

  Sylvia chokes and sputters; her mouth filling with chilling water. Her throat burns as she sucks back the liquid in a desperate effort to breathe.

  Somewhere in her panicked mind, lost in this frigid world of darkness, she knows there must be a surface somewhere above her. Her hands claw outwards, trying to seek out the blessed air — but find only more and more water.

  Objects bump off her, heavy and sharp — bits of rock thrown outwards by the explosion of light and sound that sent her reeling. The impacts sting at her already battered flesh.

  Her lungs burn enraged, desperate for air. It takes all her resolve to fight back the instinctual gasp: a suction of air that would surely drown her.

  In her desperation, her panicked need for air, finds no reward. her world remains naught but darkness, cold, and stinging pain.

  But the more she scrambles, the more she loses herself into more and more water, as if the chilly liquid world goes on forever.

  Something grabs her ankle, gripping her leg with a vise-tight hold — as though an icy hand reached up from the depths to drag her down into the cold, dark shadows of the underworld cavern.

  The urge to fight, to lash out, is as strong as the need to breath. She uses all her will to quells the urge, shoving it down into the pit of her stomach.

  As she is pulled away from what she thought was the direction of the surface, a terrible realization comes to a fragment of her mind. Knocked into a daze by the force of the explosion, she had lost her swimmer’s rationality to the shock of dark and cold water.

  The grip pulls on her. The rational idea of who the hand belongs to calms her frantic terror. Her mind clears from the panic as the iron grip pulls her upwards.

  She gasps out a choking sob when she breaks the surface. Welsh’s strong hands hold her weakened body above the surface of the frigid water.

  “Fuck’s sake, stop hittin’ me... fuckin’ blonde!” Welsh curses in her ear. The redhead sounds like she is miles away; her cursing words muted as if she was talking into a pillow.

  Sylvia sobs back two more gasps of air before forcing her flailing limbs to calm. She pushes her rational mind to the fore over the panic of instinctual fear.

  As Sylvia relaxes, Welsh drags her over to the ledge. She props Sylvia against the edge before climbing out of the water. Welsh then pulls her shaking friend up onto the ledge.

  “Guess tha’ fuckin’ grenade wannae so much of a dud — jus’ took its sweet fuckin’ time in tryin’ to kill us—... wut the fuck you smilin’ at, Drowned Rat?”

  Sylvia looks up at the redhead in the harsh light of the remaining flashlight. She cannot help but smile despite her ordeal. Even the foolishness of forgetting to right herself in the water — diving downwards instead of up — fails to quell her warm amusement. Welsh only curses so vehemently when she’s had a real scare. She tries to use such foulness to cover up her fright in an effort to maintain her appearance of casual disinterest.

  Sylvia shakes her head and waves off the shaking of her panic.

  She is sore and shivering from the cold, but seemingly intact. Shards of falling rock blown into the air by the explosion have bashed and cut her smooth flesh, but the wounds appear mostly superficial. Welsh still takes a moment to look her over— inspecting the injuries under the glare of her flashlight.

  “You had one job to do,” Welsh says. “But you cannae even climb down a damn wall wit’out a bunch of fuss.”

  “It is not a sin to emote a little embellishment,” Sylvia replies, letting the moment’s fright pass with brief levity.

  “Some o’ these injuries ain’t lookin’ to pretty, kitten.” Welsh says. Sylvia winces when the redhead pokes at a particularly egregious slash over the back of her ribs.

  “Do you mind?” Sylvia says with a hiss through clenched teeth.

  “Gonna need some bandagin’. Gimme the pack,” Welsh says. When Sylvia doesn’t respond immediately, Welsh pauses, looking over her shoulder. “You lost the pack...”

  Sylvia sniffs with some indignation. “Well, excuse me. I am sorry I was trying to avoid getting blown apart by a seventy year old hand grenade.”

  “Excuses, excuses,” Welsh mutters. “Well, I’m keepin’ an eye on that. It could fester up somethin’ nasty out here in the jungle Hellhole you threw us into. Buddy on the boat should have a first aid kit.”

  Sylvia nods. She struggles to her feet, holding back the winces of pain from her various injuries in the face of her companion. Showing weakness to pain in the face of the stout redhead will only entitle her to further mocking and teasing.

  Welsh doesn’t seem to notice her friend’s winces of pain — or decides to forego teasing as a kindness.

  “There’s a gap here, looks like it goes somewhere nifty; or our Japanese deathtrap maker jus’ liked to go for a lit’l dip in the water now an’ then while hidin’ in his lit’l hole. You okay for some explorin’?”

  Welsh looks over at her companion as Sylvia leans against the wall. Her body feels like it’s on fire.

  “Yes. Yes, I am fine. Let us go,” Sylvia says with a nod.

  Welsh shrugs and directs her light to the gap she noticed earlier. Sylvia carefully follows in the redhead’s wake.