Chapter 2: The Trident Cipher
Chapter 2: The Mosaic of Tides
It took Delilah a long minute to realize she had agreed, by way of a nod and a nudge through the kelp, to accompany these outsiders into the ancient deep. Above and behind her, the trench’s twilight pressed like velvet—peaceful, but full of lurking memory. Still, the locket pulsing faint warmth against her collarbone, Delilah led Mikael and Lys onward, further than most nymphs dared wander from the crystal groves.
The three strangers—pirate, solver, nymph—descended in slow spirals, sand swirling around their feet, past petrified forests and fallen spirals of whale bone fossilized in black glass. Broken pillars rose from the seafloor, each etched in runes so old they looked like cracks in the world’s surface, glowing faintly as if remembering some once-great light. Mikael trailed behind, flicking nervous glances at every passing eel. He fingered his belt’s charms; he seemed to mutter apologies with every bubble. Lys glided ahead, unable to contain their fascination, copper lenses whirring as they fixed one ancient inscription after another in the strange mechanical memory of their glass mask.
“So this is it?” Mikael finally asked, gesturing at the ruin ahead—a squat dome of fused obsidian and bone, tangled in spiderwebs of coral, with deep claw marks scraping its side. The only doorway was sealed shut, guarded by a mosaic as large as a ship’s hull, composed of hundreds of shifting tiles—each carved with jagged tridents, swirling shells, and phases of a silver moon.
Lys pressed their palms to the mosaic, eyes sparkling. “Oh, yes. This is exquisite! Ancient tide codes—see how the tiles slide, each out of true! The pattern’s all wrong. And the tridents—look, aligned anew each month. The vault’s first test: the riddle of patience and pattern.”
Delilah hovered, anxiety chiseling at her composure as she caught the gleam of the locket in Lys’s gaze. She clutched the chain unconsciously, voice barely a whisper. “It’s said no one solves the tides by strength. You must feel the rhythm in your bones. It changes, but always cycles back.”
Mikael, boots braced and hat firmly planted, eyed the mosaic. “I don’t suppose we can just bash through? No? Ah, fine. What’s the worst that could happen—apart from getting pulled limb from limb by a vengeful sea god?”
Lys grinned, their mask shifting into a fishlike smile. “No bashing. Observe, dear pirate: the moon tiles must match the tide tiles—they both ebb and flow. If we—oh, let’s try the sequence of a neap tide: half, full, half, new!”
The puzzle was maddening. Each tile that slid into place sent ripples along the mosaic, shifting the other tiles in subtle, frustrating ways. Lys darted back and forth, muttering calculations. Mikael tried brute force, nudging tiles with the hilt of his knife, only to trigger a grinding lock that forced them to start again. Delilah closed her eyes, letting the memory of wavelike lullabies guide her hands.
But the chamber was not quiet. The magic in the stone began to stir—darkness unraveling as if the obsidian remembered its volcanic birth. Coral sprouted from the cracks and twisted into fanged shapes, writhing and whispering in a tongue that made the bones of the ruin shudder. From narrow fissures, spectral eels flickered, jaws snapping at stray fingers.
“We’re running out of time!” hissed Mikael, as a coral tendril slid close to his boot, snapping inches away.
Delilah, with sudden clarity, spoke: “It’s not brute force. It’s harmony. Moon follows tide, tide follows moon. Sometimes forward, sometimes back.” She reached out, her hands glowing faintly, and traced a path—full moon, waning, new, waxing—guiding Mikael’s and Lys’s hands over the tiles. The mosaic began to hum; its glow brightened from dull blue to brilliant silver.
Lys, caught up in the melody, nearly missed the final step. “One last tile! It must—wait—this isn’t in any of the riddles—” They hesitated, fingers trembling. Delilah caught Lys’s hand and met their gaze. “Sometimes you must make room for secrets, Solver.” Together, they left one tile turned face down—a moonless night.
With a grinding sigh, the mosaic convulsed, then stilled. The entrance wrenched open, sucking the icy current into a corridor lined with blue fire. At their heels, the living coral froze mid-lunge. The spectral eels darted away as if chased by the sun.
Delilah let out the breath she’d been holding, but tension still crackled in the water. Mikael worked hard to play the part of a cheery rogue, though his hands shook around the map. “Gold and riddles, just as advertised,” he said with a forced grin. “You’re the cleverest shapes under the sea, truly.”
Lys only stared at the opened corridor, lost in the edge between excitement and obsession. “Answers always lead to better questions. If only—if only the locket would—”
Delilah jerked away, voice cold as the new current. “This locket is not for you to solve. It is older than any riddle, older even than this ruin. Some secrets are guarded for a reason.”
The tension punched the water. All three drifted in silence, uncertainty swirling in their wake, until Mikael broke the spell. “Well, since neither of you are set on stabbing me or each other—yet—perhaps we see what this Vault keeps from the rest of the world?”
Delilah moved to the edge of the corridor, where the blue fire danced along runes old as the sea. As she passed through the threshold, her locket pulsed—once, twice—and the temperature plunged. The water burned cold, so shocking it almost hurt. Somewhere above them, something vast stirred. A shadow, darker than the trench itself, glided over the dome.
Lys shuddered. “We’re not alone.”
The current thickened, throbbing with warning. Runes along the wall began to flicker and shift, casting huge silhouettes that crawled along the floor. The three pressed close together, smaller now beneath the impossible weight of fate and the gaze of something inhuman.
From high in the gloom, a single luminous eye blinked open. The shadow knotted into the shape of a titanic figure—armor layered in seabed stones, eyes like lanterns in a storm, and a voice that rumbled down the bones of the ruin: “Intruders. Trespassers upon the sacred trust.”
Delilah’s heart raced—she was not ready. This was the Ancient Guardian: Keeper of the Vault and reaper of the unworthy—an obstacle no wit or fortune could bribe, a legend fashioned from what the sea wished never to forget. Yet, here they were. And so the adventure’s true peril began.