Solara Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

The flooded stair swallowed the last dry step. Solara waded down into black water, the metal map clutched to her chest. Behind her, her betrothed followed with the red phoenix low over his shoulder. Then the water shivered. Something long and pale moved beneath the surface, coiling toward the deep. The creature had come back. Whatever slept below had woken it and sent it to hunt her before she reached the waking heart. A month ago the sight would have frozen her. Now her hands stayed still. She felt her new strength settle into her arms like weight she had learned to lift. She was not afraid. "It's between us and the bottom," her betrothed said. He raised a hand, and the red phoenix flared bright above the water. "We can't fight it in the dark." "Then I'll give us light." Solara pressed her free palm flat against the wet stone wall. Far above, in the wasteland flats, her sunflowers waited. She had grown them her whole life, and they answered her still. She reached for them through the ground, past every level of buried stone, and pulled. A single black sunflower broke up through the water at her feet. Its heart glowed hard blue, a light unlike her golden field above. It was born from this deep place, changed by it. The blue glow spread across the flooded stair and lit the water clear to the bottom. The creature reared. Its skin was gray and slick, its many eyes small and blind. It hated the light. It struck at the black flower, but Solara was faster now. She caught its jaw with both hands and drove it against the wall. Stone cracked. The old her could not have held it for a breath. This her held it and pushed. "Now," she said. The red phoenix dove. Fire hit the creature's blind eyes. It screamed and thrashed backward, away from the light and the heat, up the stair and into the tunnels above. Water rolled in its wake and slapped the walls. Then it was gone. Solara let go. Her arms did not shake. She stood in the glow of the black sunflower and breathed. She had beaten the creature a second time, and this time she had not needed the phoenixes to save her. "You're different," her betrothed said. He was watching her, not the tunnel. "Every level down, you're more sure. That thing runs from you now." Solara looked at the blue heart of the flower she had raised from below. It burned like the mark on the map. Like the waking heart, three levels down and close now. "We drove it off," she said. "But it ran deeper, not away. It went where we're going." She lifted the map and stepped down into the cleared water. "It's warning the thing that sleeps. We have to reach the heart before it does."