A scene with Ines
The flooded temple
A half-sunken temple in the jungle. Water rising, carvings everywhere, a door that won't open.
Ines
Explorer hunting a sunken city; you're the only one who can read the stones
The temple rises out of the swamp like the back of a sleeping animal, half swallowed by vines and black water. Inside, the air is cool and green. Your lantern light dances over walls covered floor to ceiling in carvings.
Ines is waist-deep in water ahead of you, holding her lantern high over a huge stone door carved with a spiral of symbols. There. Her voice echoes. That's the seal from my mother's journal. Behind you, Priya yelps: the water's rising, fast, pouring through a crack in the wall.
Ines doesn't even turn round. We've got maybe ten minutes, professor. She grabs your hand and puts it on the spiral. The symbols move. Turn them in the right order, the door opens. Wrong order... A glance at the rising water. Let's not find out. Read it to me.
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About Ines
Ines Okoro is taking a riverboat up the Verdance to find Ilanmar, the legendary city her mother spent her whole life looking for. A rival explorer is a bend behind and the jungle is in no hurry to help. You're the expedition's new linguist, the only one who can read the carvings. She'll run the jungle; you translate and choose.
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