Suddenly a hand shot out of the wall ahead of her, giving her no time to react or slow her pace as it grabbed her shoulder. Kari pulled at the fingers, tugging at their grasp, trying to hurry. She had to escape the damn water!
Lightning sparked along her claws. She raised her hand to attack again, intending to cut the fingers right off of her.
A familiar voice growled, “Do it and we’re dead.”
Kari froze long enough for the hand to pull her straight into the wall. She stumbled through and fell face-first on something hard and cool.
Groaning, she rolled onto her back and looked up into the sweat-dotted, strained, and frowning face of Guine. Above him hung a ceiling of some kind of jagged, translucent, blue rock.
“Why did you stop?” he demanded rather angrily. “I said we had to keep moving, didn’t I?”
For a moment Kari thought she was still waiting for the water to overtake her. That filthy, disgusting-smelling, murky water. Slowly she realized they had changed locations again; now they were in some sort of cavern. Completely dry and relatively safe, at least for the moment.
Kari jumped up and bared her teeth at Guine. “You didn’t say if I stopped that would happen!”
“Why would I say, ‘don’t stop’ if that wasn’t a vitally important thing to do?!”
“You’re often unclear and exaggerate!” she snapped back.
They glared at each other for a long time. He was mad, but she was madder. He had not been very upfront with her about this wretched maze, and that enraged her. She did not need the Catalyst to fuel her anger; her heart thrummed against her ribs, taking all of her breath with it, and it had not stopped since that first room.
The danger here was real, and yet intangible. She had faced so many people who wanted her dead, or worse. But this place would kill her at the slightest mistake.
Finally, Guine sighed, his face relaxing into exhaustion. He turned away from her.
“It doesn’t matter now. It’s done. But now…now we face a problem.”
The walls were just like the ceiling, seemingly made of something crystalline. Ahead of her, she could see an opening in the circular room.
“What problem? Besides being in this yutemi you’ve created, that is.”
Guine chose to ignore her snappy tone. “We got off-track. Things will change now. I can find the way since I did make this as an option, but now it will take us longer.”
Kari’s gaze slowly trailed back to him. He’d said…what? Two or three days? Without food.
Now it would take longer?
“Just how much longer are you talking about, Guine?” Kari hissed.
He shrugged, not quite nonchalant, but rather resigned. “Maybe tack on a week. At the very least.”
Kari’s mouth dried. Already her stomach rumbled; now that the adrenaline had passed through her system, she was hungry. She wasn’t stupid. She knew her body would be capable of going quite a long time without sustenance, but that long? And what of their water supply?
She felt for the bag, but her fingers were too numb to reach inside for the waterskin. The cavern suddenly seemed very small.
“Guine…”
“Thirst will not be a real issue,” Guine said as if he had read her mind. “When I designed this way, I made a room for myself so that I could survive if I slipped up. There will be a room ahead that provides fresh, drinkable water. Hopefully, we can store enough to last us the rest of the time if we ration it.”
“And what about food?”
He hesitated. “The room…also has a solution for that. For humans. There’s no way we could know it would work for you, or at the very least not kill you.”
Kari stared past him. The only exit out of the cavern they were in was a single tunnel that turned sharply into darkness.
“I will not die in here, Guine.”
“I don’t intend for you to,” he said wearily. “But if things were serious at all to you before, it’s worse now.” He walked to one of the walls and sat down. “We should rest before we go on. Exhaustion and stress make the mind do stupid things.”
Kari didn’t move. She thought of a time long ago when she had left behind Snow Shade. Then she had perhaps gone a day or so without a real meal. It was like torture to her, weakening her body and senses until she had come across something to eat.
She could have adjusted to the idea of three days with no food. But more than a week?
