Panic welled up in me, threatening to break loose. But I pushed down the hot, worrisome emotion, smothering it with cold logic. I was still alive, still breathing. Which meant I still had a chance, however small it might be.
I didn't know how long I'd huddled there under the lip of rock, with the earth shaking below my body and the cavern collapsing in on top of me. Minutes had passed, maybe hours, for all I knew. But it was quiet now. The earth had quit trembling, and the stones had quit falling, which meant it was time to come back to myself.
I opened my eyes to blackness. Again, panic filled me, and once again, I forced it down. I hadn't been afraid of the dark since I was a child. Besides, Tobias Dawson and his giants were dead. They couldn't hurt me anymore.
There was nothing down here but me and the rocks and the water. Nothing I couldn't handle.
So I began to blink, focus, and strain my eyes. Slowly, the blackness lessened to a midnight gray, and the world came back into focus. What I could see of it, anyway.
Which was nothing more than a big pile of rocks. They partially blocked the entrance to the small recess where I'd taken shelter from the cave-in. I stopped a minute to assess my body. Wiggled my fingers and toes, and went through the whole routine I'd done when I'd first woken up in the cavern. Sore, scraped, raw, aching, bone-weary.
Same as before, but everything was more or less in working order.
I reached down, searching for my purse and the healing supplies Jo-Jo Deveraux had given me. But the purse was long gone. So was my blond wig, and I didn't feel the blue contacts in my eyes anymore. They'd popped out somewhere along the way. The only thing I had left were my black dress and stilettos, which were no help at all. So I blew out a breath, crawled forward, put my hands out, and shoved.
To my surprise, the rocks moved. Bits and pieces broke off like eggshells where I touched them, and I got to work. I don't know how long I crouched there, half under the recess, scooping rocks out of the way so I could wiggle forward and get to my feet. Slow going given my various aches and pains, but eventually I cleared a space large enough for me to worm my way through. I got up on my knees first, then lurched forward, and used my legs to push myself up and out of the hole. The rocks tore into the thin fabric of my dress and scraped my stomach, but I didn't care.
Slowly, I got to my feet. There was almost no light, but maybe I could fix that. I uncurled my dirty palms. Even though I couldn't see them, I knew the spider rune scars were still on my hands. I'd always been able to create a little light with my magic, especially with my Ice power.
The familiar silver light flickered over my palm anytime I made a simple cube or Ice pick.
But before, when I'd made that final, desperate reach for my Ice magic to stop Tobias Dawson, the spider rune scars on my palms had ignited and burned with cold, silvery flames of Ice magic. Something they'd never done before.
I wondered what the silverstone scars would do now that the danger wasn't so imminent. Time to find out.
I reached for my Ice magic. Cautiously, this time, drawing on a small trickle of power. But again, it came to me far easier than it ever had before. It only took a moment of concentration to make the scars on my palms burn with cold silver fire. Better than a f**king flashlight.
"Well, that's something new and different," I murmured.
I held out my glowing palms. The silver light flickered over what remained of the cavern, and I surveyed the damage I'd wrought with my Stone and Ice magic.
Beyond my hole, the stone and earth rose and fell in jagged waves, and dust choked the air like storm clouds of particles. The cavern, which had once been so beautiful and elegant, was now nothing more than a pile of mismatched rubble, like a house that had fallen in on itself.
Tons and tons of earth, stone, water, and mud filled the entire stretch of the cavern, blocking the entrance back to the mine shaft. I looked up. There must have been more rock above the ceiling than Tobias Dawson had let on, because the stone had formed a sharp, sloping roof, instead of the natural arch of the original cavern.
I wasn't getting out that way. Because even if I'd been at full strength, instead of beaten, bloody, and exhausted, I doubt even I could have managed to blast my way through so much stone and earth. Elementals had a lot of raw power, but ultimately, we all had our limits. Even me.
So I skirted around the edge of the rubble, slipping, falling, and climbing from one rocky dune of muddy earth to the other. In the distance, I heard the rush of water, like a bowl filling up. I didn't know where the water from the creek had gone when I'd collapsed the ceiling, but it was close by. Another reason for me to get out of here. I hadn't defeated Tobias Dawson to succumb to something as simple as drowning.
I'd just surfed down one particularly large dune when a small sound caught my attention. A tiny, sharp wail in the stone around me. I held out my glowing palms. A flash of light caught my eye, and I peered at the ground. And I realized I was standing on the diamonds.
They littered the ground under my muddy shoes like dull, frozen tears. Most of them had been pulverized to small bits, slivers, and glints that caught the silvery light emanating from my palms. Still beautiful, even in their ruined state. Too bad they were of absolutely no use to me. Definitely not a girl's best friend, in this case.
I walked on until I came to the far side of the cavern, but the earth and stone had fully blocked the exit. Which meant I had to find another way to get out of here - now.
So I surfed back in the direction I'd come from, stopping long enough to take off my stilettos and toss them into the darkness. The broken heels were doing more damage to my feet than going barefoot would. I'd just reached the recess where I'd originally hidden when a spot of white caught my eye against the gray stone. What was that? Another diamond?
I crept closer and realized it was a hand - Tobias Dawson's right hand, sticking out of a mound of earth, fingers stretched wide. I crawled over the earth and stone to get a closer look. But it was just a hand sticking out. Nothing else.
I checked for a pulse, but the dwarf didn't have one.
The cold chill of death had already settled into his flesh.
Still, I picked up a jagged piece of rock and slashed his wrist just to be sure. I sat there, resting and watching his blood soak into the turned earth and shattered stone.
When his wrist quit oozing, I moved on.
I walked deeper into the back of the cavern to the part I hadn't seen while Tobias Dawson had been challenging me to a duel. The cavern narrowed to a small corridor barely big enough for a person to squeeze through.
I stood before it and peered into the darkness, wondering what lay at the end of the midnight rainbow. Only one way to find out. I couldn't go back, and I had to get out.