The Rising Stones (Ihale Book 1)

It looked like the hot springs that the Guard Trainees were sometimes taken to after a hard day, but no steam wafted up from it and she wasn't sure if what they were seeing was the bottom, or if it just got too cloudy to tell.
Heln shrugged, not looking up at her. "It's pretty, I guess. I wonder what it was for."
"It's a pond, it's for being pretty."
"It's a perfect circle." He pulled the plants away to show her the edge. It did look almost like it had been cut into the ground instead of formed. "So it was probably used for something."
"And tada!" Bel's exclamation made Rhyss nearly end up in the pond. She gestured to the script with the dagger. It all looked correctly done to her, and she'd made the space big enough for all three of them. "Just a little bit of magic and we are golden for getting some rest."
"Are you waiting for a drum roll?" Rhyss stared at her.
"Maybe." She pressed a hand against the circle and it lit up, the light forming a dome. "There! It will let us in, but nothing else. Perfect as always. Well. I'm starving, so I hope you still have some of those meal bars in your bag, Heln."

Chapter Four
Rhyss stared at the barrier. It might have been a trick of the blue color of the pond, but she swore it seemed brighter than it had a few hours before. At least, she assumed it was a few hours. Her wrist guard was supposed to tap out the time to her, but it hadn't for long enough that she was certain it was malfunction rather than her sense of time being skewed.
Bel had sprawled out on the moss and Heln had curled up into a ball, using his satchel as a pillow. At least it wasn't too cold with her cloak draped over her and the barrier dampening the worst of the chill. Bel had been surprised that, as a Guard Trainee, Rhyss didn't know any warming scripts. She pointed out that Bel didn't know them, either. That had started a new round of bickering that had been interrupted by Heln calmly saying that if anything didn't know they were in the tunnels, it probably would if they kept fighting.
Still, despite the soft moss underneath her and the quiet sounds of water that sounded like her listening crystal at home, sleep wouldn't come for her, not even after she ran through her breathing exercises for the fourth time. Vin's face, the monstrous construct and the way Heln's eyes had glowed kept flashing through her mind, yanking her out of dozing every time sleep nearly became a reality.
It felt like hours before she gave up, pulling her armor back on. The snaps pulled together by magic, locking securely into place. Even if it was bare minimum armor, made from scripted willow, it still made her feel more secure. Rhyss stood, stretched carefully, and stepped out of the barrier.
It was always a strange feeling, like a gentle humming at the back of her mind was silenced before she was even fully aware of it. Maybe that was a very watered-down version of how sensing magic felt for Heln. She'd never even given a thought to it.
On the outside the barrier looked like a giant soap bubble. Heln and Bel were just barely visible inside of it, still asleep. She thought about leaving them a message, but she doubted they would wake up. She didn't plan to be gone for long.
She started walking, picking the tunnel the stream continued into. The odds of her being so deep underground again were slim to none. Her odds of continuing her Guard training might be slim to none, too. Her mother would be disappointed.
Her wife not quite as much. Rhyss's step-mother had always hated the Guard for how hard it had worked her mother and for taking her leg in an attack on the edge of the city, at one of the weaker points of the barrier. It had ended her career. She insisted that the magical replacement worked almost well enough for her to continue her duties as Captain, but she had settled in as Dean of the Eleti Academy of the Magical Arts like her grandmother had before her. She hadn't even tried to stop Rhyss from signing up to be a Trainee, saying her children could make their own decisions, but she'd seemed proud.
Her injury hadn't stopped Rhyss, either. She respected her mother and her sacrifices. If Rhyss was injured or died protecting her city, then that was a burden she was willing to bear.
Saying that and seeing Vin, bleeding and hurt trying to protect them felt like two very different things. Her stomach churned. She wasn't a coward, but seeing the violence of the construct up close and how it had taken down her mentor was a world away from stories around a campfire. Or having a bag of rocks strapped to her back and told to climb to the top of a tree.
All of that training, talking, and polishing her armor seemed so useless when the reality was a few brutal moments.
Her boot splashed down into a puddle, jerking her from her thoughts. At some point she had started jogging and stopping nearly sent her face first into mud.
The stream was backed up here. A swirl of silt and water became what looked like solid mud. Rhyss sent her illumination bubble forward. Farther down the tunnel a set of steps rose from the mud, rising sharply into more darkness. The mud leading up to them looked deep, especially with the way the tunnel was sloping towards the base of the stairs, but that had to be the stairs that led back out to the Temple.
She didn't want to find out how much mud was there while she was by herself, even though it was killing her wondering if freedom was just at the top of a flight