Lucas nodded and made his way to her, pulling a small kit from the inside of his coat. Even with his magic, he still kept mundane supplies: bandages, nectar, a few chunks of ambrosia wrapped in wax paper.
Elizabeth didn't flinch as he pulled the shard from her forehead. He pressed the cloth to the wound, gave her a piece of ambrosia to chew. The faint golden glow eased the worst of the bleeding, and he tied the last loop of the bandage around her head.
Before he could even ask if she was alright, they heard it.
A scrabbling. Soft at first, then sharper, a hiss like claws dragged over stone, multiplying until it was a chorus. Dozens. Hundreds. Red pinpricks flickered in the dark beyond the cracked mirrors. A tide of fur and teeth, mouths foaming with white froth, eyes gleaming.
Elizabeth stared over his shoulder, her fingers flexing around her dagger. "Wonderful."
Lucas raised a palm. Flame kindled on his fingertips, then guttered out, smothered by the stifling weight of the Labyrinth's ambient magic. The canvas that was the Mist drowned beneath layers of someone else's messy paint, every line blurred and drowned before it could take shape, making it too difficult for his own to come to fruition.
The rats poured forward, climbing both walls and ceiling, a living flood.
Elizabeth didn't wait for him to hesitate. She grabbed his wrist and ran, hauling him away from the mirror room into the next corridor.
The chamber spat them out into a cavern so vast Lucas thought, just for a breath, that they might have found the end. Until he tasted the air: brackish, cold, stale. The floor shimmered dark and uneven. They skidded to a halt almost immediately.
Water. A half-submerged ruin of pillars and broken ledges drowned beneath a black underground lake.
Lucas reached the edge first. He crouched, dipped a finger in, "It's warm - no salt, too."
Elizabeth joined him, peering down. Ripples spread, touching the cavern walls and vanishing. There was no other passage, no corridor, no archway, just the water swallowing stone.
Behind them, a distant rustle. Then a hiss. Hundreds of tiny claws clicked on the stone.
Elizabeth turned, eyes narrowing. A tide of rats poured from the tunnel. Mottled fur, red eyes, froth dripping from open jaws. They filled the corridor, spilled onto the walls and ceiling, a living wave of fur and teeth.
Elizabeth's eyes cut to him, a sharp question he didn't need her to say aloud. He grabbed her hand this time. "Come on."
He jumped, dragging Elizabeth in after him.
The water swallowed them in an instant, warmth wrapping them like steam. Lucas kicked, pulling Elizabeth down beside him as the ripples swallowed the shadows above.
Below the surface, sound blurred. The rats' squeals cut off. There was only the muted rush of bubbles and the steady drum of their heartbeat pounding in their ears.
Lucas twisted, blinking through murky water. He spotted shapes, half-collapsed pillars, fragments of ruin, all submerged. They needed to find a way out.
Elizabeth's hand was still gripping his wrist. He could feel the strain; she was struggling. Her bronze leg dragged her slightly off balance, her donkey leg giving little propulsion. She kicked hard, but it wasn't enough.
Lucas wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her forward, one-armed strokes propelling them toward the edges before they broke to the surface.
Elizabeth released Lucas and grabbed a nearby column, holding on to it as she coughed up water from her lungs. Lucas turned to look back at where they had come, watching as the rats fell into the water before they soon drowned. For some reason, these ones couldn't swim; this at least removed one worry he had.
But while looking at the rats, he noticed the state of the rocks that made up the cliff they all jumped from - a distinct dark line, an algae stain. It took a few seconds to realize how this came to be, as he noticed a small deposit of sand and silt in the crevices, which were soon lost beneath the water.
The water line was rising.
"Elizabeth, we need to escape now!" Lucas quickly turned around and explained his reasoning to Elizabeth.
When the water level rose to its full height, there would no longer be a pocket for oxygen, and as such, they would drown.
"I can't. You've seen my legs. I can't swim."Elizabeth struggled to formulate her words, both from fear and the struggle to keep her head above water. Although she knew she would eventually resurrect, Elizabeth had no desire to die. Not only was Tartarus a horrifying place, even for monsters, dying was not pleasant, especially from a slow death like drowning.
Knowing this, Lucas told her to stay while he dived back down, searching for anything that might seem like an exit. He kicked off a broken pillar, pushing himself deeper under. Darkness and water pressed in from all sides, wanting to stop his attempts and hoping he would simply embrace the depths in death.
However, while he couldn't find an exit, he did discover something else. The water was gradually growing colder, the warmth slipping away inch by inch, replaced by a creeping chill that started at his fingers and worked inward. Even if they could figure out a way to keep breathing, the water would kill them another way, especially since Lucas wasn't willing to bet the water would stop at being a little colder.
The water turned colder still. A bite against his neck. A knife's edge sinking under skin, his limbs feeling heavier, and it took more effort for him to swim. Eventually, he searched most of the depths, breaking the surface for air occasionally, and noticing how he was getting closer and closer to the ceiling. One more dive and there would be no pocket of air left to return to.
He swam back to where he had left Elizabeth and saw her hugging the ceiling, her face pressed against it, while her legs stood atop an underwater pillar, allowing her to stand instead of needing to tread water.
"Anything?" Elizabeth muttered. She had closed her eyes to avoid panicking at the rising water level. Still, like Lucas, she also noticed the water temperature changing, knowing their chances of survival dropped with each passing second, yet unable to do anything about it.
"No, but there are two sides I haven't checked, so there must be an exit there..."
Elizabeth understood the silence; to reach that side would mean leaving her current location, which meant Elizabeth needed to go into the water, even though she couldn't swim. Worse still, by the time they needed to come back up for air, there would be no air pocket left. They had to gamble everything on there being an exit at the location Lucas picked and not the other side, and that's if there was an exit in the first place.
She hesitated for a heartbeat, then nodded once, her lips blue but her eyes sharp. She clung to him, trusting him. Lucas took a deep breath and again kicked off the column. The weight of Elizabeth and his half-numb limbs meant he didn't gain much push, but it was better than nothing.
He decided on the direction to search and dove deeper into the water, looking for anything that seemed out of place or different, not expecting the Labyrinth to play fair here and truly make the exit a simple door. He maintained a slow heartbeat and remained as calm as possible, hoping to slow the need to breathe.
The weight of water above pressed Lucas' chest like iron. His body was slowly numbed by the cold, which dulled his fingers, cheeks, and the ache sank deeper into his bones. He noticed that in some places, the water was gradually forming flecks of ice. Elizabeth struggled to keep a grip on his back as the hope of their escape vanished every second.
Lucas then saw something. He blinked, squinting into the black. Just a gap of lighter darkness, but that brought a spark of light to Lucas' eyes. Hope. He willed his body to move, ignoring the numbness, the frost gradually growing on his clothes. He moved towards the gap, finding a hole in the wall, just large enough for them to crawl through.
Lucas grabbed the rocks and pulled them through, just as his vision turned to black and the water turned to ice.