THE BOOK OF TAD
PAGE 4
THE KEY IN THE BROKEN CURRENT 🔑
The Builder flow key trembled in TurboTAD’s flipper. Blue-violet light spilled from its open ring across three engraved points.
The gate had sealed again. He could still hear its warning: Do not open the gate.
“The third pool is dropping faster,” Sora said, holding Mira close. “The Little TADs won’t have long.”
Ahead, water pulled backwards through the reeds.
“Then we follow it.” TurboTAD closed his flipper around the key.
It gave a sharp pulse. One point turned towards a moss-hidden crack beneath the gate. He swept the moss aside, uncovering a narrow stone passage carved with branching First Builder marks.
Mira peered inside. “That was here the whole time?”
“A maintenance passage,” Sora said. “For the old current keepers.”
TurboTAD entered first. Beneath the nursery, the key flashed over sealed valves and silent channels while uneven vibrations passed through the stone.
He stopped at the far end.
A wide conduit crossed the chamber. Water meant for the third pool was escaping through a jagged hole in its underside, drawn into darkness beneath the floor.
Sora pressed a flipper to the fracture. “The pool is draining through here.”
“Did it collapse?” Mira asked.
TurboTAD raised the key. Its light traced splintered edges bent inward.
“This was forced inward.” He kept his voice low.
Gold markings showed beneath the stone dust: circles, channel lines, tiny directional marks. None crossed the hole.
“It wasn’t part of the design,” Sora said.
A vibration lifted grains from the floor and drew them below.
Mira edged closer to Sora. “It’s still pulling.”
TurboTAD pressed the key against the conduit wall. Blue-violet energy branched across it, unfolding a hidden map. Three nursery pools connected to the gate and curved through the lower conduit.
Beneath the fracture, another line appeared, absent from the visible Builder markings. It descended past the nursery roots and the gate, through layers of stone, to an open-eye symbol at the map’s lowest edge.
The eye pulsed twice.
“Is it looking at us?” Mira whispered.
The light within the key began beating with it. TurboTAD watched grains disappear through the opening.
Sora looked at the fading third pool on the map. “Can we close the break?”
“We will. First we need to know what’s pulling from below.”
A stronger surge tore backwards past them and down through the hidden channel. The nursery’s current was being taken.