Chapter 46: Under the Waterfall

"I have wronged you," Ico says. With their part in the subterfuge done with, the dragon and the water sprite retreat back to her underground spring. "I wanted you to suffer the way I suffered. I shouldn't have let my anger rule me so."

"I shouldn't have let you drive me off," Aymeri answers, "Had I spoken to you..."

"I wouldn't have let you near enough to speak to me," she answers, smiling sadly.

"I think you would have, Ico, if I had tried."

"Even in my anger, I still loved you, Meri," she says, "I told everyone that the tears I shed were for Lusinea, but most of the time, I mourned my own loneliness. In secret,I would visit the waterfall where we first met, and wish that day had never ended. Do you remember?"

"How could I forget?"

"I was with Tania, and we saw you soaring above. I said to her that riding a dragon in flight must be an experience like no other, and she laughed at me, and said I was far to timid to approach a dragon, let alone try to mount one. So I set out to prove her wrong, and  followed to where you landed, to the waterfall where made your lair. But when I arrived, I saw not the great dragon I was expecting. You had transformed."

"'Her heart did tremble, but her fear was gone, and Icovellauna mounted her dragon'," Aymeri sings the refrain of a ribald song written about them.

"We were so innocent then" Ico sighs, "Could we ever be so again?"

Aymeri's head dips sadly, "Innocence, once lost..."

"Is lost forever," she finishes.

"We cannot go back, Ico, but we can go forward."

"Together?"

"Together."

"Have you found anything?" Sage asks. Joffrey has been working on decrypting MorcuCorp's files for days.

"Most of this was encrypted with standard MorcuCorp cipher," he says, "And most of it is useless. But there's this one file..."

"Not so easy to decrypt?" Sage guesses.

"It shouldn't be," Joffrey answers, "But this encryption algorithm is mine. I used it for my personal files, and I never shared the key with MorcuCorp. Or anyone."

"So that means...?"

"Someone worked out my encryption and is using it. For this one file only, apparently."

"What's in the file?" Sage asks.

"The location of a secret lab where MorcuCop was developing a technology to interfere with... fae powers, it says. It would block the ability to glamour, or teleport."

"You think that's where they're holding Summerdream?"

"That would make sense, they'd need some defense against her abilities. But it might be a fake, a trap."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because the way this file was encrypted was guaranteed to get my attention. It's like they wanted me to find this."

Joffrey still worries that they're walking into a trap, but Sage didn't want to overlook the one clue they'd managed to find about Summerdream's location. So they set out for Sunset Valley, to the hidden lab beneath Stoney Falls.

"Maybe it would be better if you stayed here," Joffrey says, "They may be waiting for us inside."

"Who will get you in, if not me?" Sage answers as she finds the mechanism to open the sealed entrance, "You need me."

Behind the metal door, they find the stairs to the underground lab.

"There should be a lab here. This is just an empty cavern," Joff observes nervously, still hoping to back out of this before anything bad happens.

"Empty caverns are never what they seem," Sage answers, and starts feeling the walls for a hidden door.

"Summerdream put a lot of trust in Cecilia. She must want a child pretty badly," Joff observes. He hasn't mentioned his own desire for a child since he broached the subject in Egypt, but he hasn't stopped thinking about it.

Sage grunts as she pushes on the wall. "Secret lab," she says, "Just like you expected."

The lab is small, with no evidence that anyone, fae or otherwise, had every been held here. "It's a dead end," Joff says, firing up the lone computer, hoping to find new information there.

"It's never a dead end. This corner is suspiciously empty," Sage answers, "There's a hidden door here, I just know it."

Sage turns out to be right.

Joffrey gets up to follow her through the door.

But as soon as she's inside, the door swings shut behind her, leaving Joffrey alone in the lab. He calls out to her, and they both try pushing the door back open, but it won't budge. This is exactly what he was afraid was going to happen.

"I'm going to search around for a switch, or another way out," she calls, her voice faint through the walls.

Behind him, Joff hears footsteps coming through the open door to the lab, and a very familiar voice, "You got my message."

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I used Claeric's Stoney Falls Underlake Tomb for the hidden lab entrance scenes. The actual lab is a set I built myself.