The Rising Stones (Ihale Book 1)

would lead up to the Temple so at least Bel and Heln would be safe.
It looked like she might to die in the line of duty after all.
The monster chittered at her, sounding eerily like one of the birds in her mother's garden. It clacked its beak with the harsh sound of bones snapping. The inside of its mouth was a vivid blue, almost the same color as the pond.
"Hey, ugly!"
That was Bel's voice, just before a ball of magic flew over her shoulder. It would have missed the creature entirely, but it swiveled around to catch it in midair, the magic shining through the nostril slits in its beak before it swallowed the script.
Rhyss turned and ran, not waiting to see if Bel had helped or hurt her immediate survival. She caught up to them easily, shoving a hand between Heln's shoulder blades and pushing him forward.
Bel made a loud noise of disgust when they hit the mud and Rhyss thought she might have to haul her through it, but her self-preservation instincts must have finally kicked in and she waded into it with a face that in any other time or place Rhyss would have wanted painted, framed, and put in a hall of portraits of her enemies so she could laugh at it forever.
"This is by far the worst day of my life."
"Shut up, Bel," Heln told her, his voice a lot quieter, though Rhyss didn't think the volumes of their voices made much of a difference with all of the splashing they were doing.
She was quickly up to her waist in freezing cold mud. It made her movements sluggish. When Heln stumbled, she barely managed to grab his hood to keep him from eating mud pie. A moment later, her own boot hit the stair that had nearly tripped him up and she scrambled up onto it.
They were out of the mud and up several steps before she realized that they weren't being followed.
"I think it's eating your barrier, Bel." Heln looked faintly ill.
"That. That is disgusting." Bel was shivering on the step above her. The end of her blue ponytail was black with mud. "These stairs had better lead directly to the Temple or… or I'm going to be really, really upset."
"I think they do, but wherever they lead we should get there. Now." Rhyss deactivated her dagger but kept it in her hand. The familiar weight kept her focused. She thought about bringing out her second, non-magical dagger, but she didn't want to give it to either of them, so it stayed in her boot for emergencies. Bigger emergencies.
The stairs were easy to climb. She kept getting too far ahead of her companions and finally settled with being at the rear, trusting that Bel would at least yell out a warning of anything ahead before her untimely demise. There were two tunnel entrances halfway up, dark like empty sockets. Bel ignored them so Rhyss did, too. If Heln had any comment he let it go to focus on breathing.
The stairs evened out and Bel sat down, gasping like she'd been running for hours. Rhyss was suddenly glad for all the times she climbed a tree with a bag of rocks on her back. Her breathing was still even and the hike had warmed her up. It took Bel minutes before she could even talk. "I… I think we lost it. Right?"
They both looked at Heln, who sat down, curling his knees up to his chest. He looked startled when he realized they expected something from him. "Don't look at me, I didn't know that thing was there, why would I know where it is now?"
"Well, maybe now that it's eaten—"
"Your barrier is gone, that's all I can tell you, but I think we would probably hear it coming if it was after us again. If you're hoping that I can sense an absence of magic in a place full of magic then you're going to be really disappointed." Heln shrugged.
Maybe Rhyss wouldn't make his teeth rattle as much as she had initially planned. Once they were out of this she still planned on a good shaking.
She settled for punching his arm. "Well, tell me if you do sense anything."
He just glared at her and rubbed his arm.

Chapter Five
"You know," Bel was telling Rhyss as they both got as much mud off of their clothes as possible with a cleaning script, "I totally saved your life back there."
Rhyss, of course, didn't even bother to look at her. "How do you figure that?"
"I threw the magic that distracted it." Bel didn't even have to watch the lines of magic that knocked the mud from her clothes and skin. Ihalins, especially high Ihalins, were supposedly graceful from the time they were teenagers and nearly fully grown. Bel was pretty sure this was a lie because she still needed that particular script a lot. "Therefore, I saved your life."
"But you missed."
Bel bit her lip to stop what she was going to say and gave Heln a look that clearly said, "Can you believe this girl?"
Heln either got the message or didn't; his shrugging didn't really convey that much meaning. He was still rubbing his arm where Rhyss had hit him.
After a moment she felt safe enough to take a breath and try again. "Well, I didn't want to hit you, now did I? It was a distraction. Clearly. And it worked! So, you're here and you're alive. You're welcome."
Rhyss gave her a blank stare. "What exactly do you want from me?"
"Well. You know. A 'thank you' would be nice." Bel felt smaller than she had a moment ago. Rhyss had a way of making her feel that way. It was unlike anyone else in the rest of her life.
"Thank you." Rhyss rolled her eyes and turned around, slapping Heln on the shoulder and performing the same cleaning script on him. "Let's get moving once we're cleaned off. We don't know how far this tunnel goes."
She started