Glowly's Arc

Chapter 14 of 16

The fireball burned deep below, and the crocodile chased it. Glowly swam down the drowned stairs in its dim shadow. Nova kicked beside her. The light showed the steps for only a moment before the crocodile carried it farther away. Glowly stared into the black water below. She still could not tell how deep the relic lay. Somewhere down there, her father and sister had gone and never risen. The fire was leaving. Seconds remained before the crocodile circled back. "It's too far," Nova gasped. She surfaced against a stone ledge and clung to it. Her coat dragged heavy in the water. "Your fire went with the croc. I can't see the bottom." Glowly gripped the ledge beside her. Her lungs ached. "I need one throw that stays put. Not moving. Just down." Nova wiped chalk-white fingers on her soaked sleeve. "If I aim it straight down and it lands, the light stays. But the croc comes back to it." "Then we look fast," Glowly said. "One breath. We count the steps to the bottom and get out of the water before it turns." Nova nodded once. She struck her scorched stone against the ledge. A ball of flame bloomed in her palm. She drew back and hurled it straight down into the flooded shaft. The fire sank, spinning, and struck stone far below. Light bloomed and held. Glowly saw it all in that instant. The stairs did not stop. They dropped past the fire's glow into a dark doorway. The bottom was deeper than any account had guessed. No swimmer could reach it and return on one breath. That was why they all drowned. The long shape turned in the far dark and slid back toward the new light. "Up," Nova said. "Now." They hauled themselves out of the shaft onto the ledge. The crocodile's tail broke the surface where they had floated. Glowly pressed her back to cold stone and breathed hard. "We know how deep," Nova said. "That's something." "It's too deep," Glowly said. "On our own lungs, we die like the rest." She thought of the high dry stone above, where the pup waited wrapped in her coat and the small blue dragon curled beside it. The dragon breathed fire and drove back things in the dark. But it could not carry them air. Glowly looked at the doorway far below, still lit by Nova's fire. Her father had reached it. Her sister had reached it. Neither had come back. The way down was open now. She just could not survive it yet. "We go back up," Glowly said. "To the pup and the dragon. There has to be a way to breathe down there." She had measured the drop at last. The relic lay one held breath too far. Now she had to find the breath.