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 fucking 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.