Xadia the axolotl's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The cold seam ran east like a crack in the seafloor. Xadia followed it with the blue axolotl and his dog at her side. Then the seam narrowed and stopped. A wall of sunken debris choked the passage. Broken beams, cracked pots, and a rusted gate lay heaped from floor to roof. No water moved through. Beyond it, she could not see. Her pet bunny, tucked in the crook of her arm, pressed close and trembled. "The bell is past this," the blue axolotl said. "But nothing swims through that." Xadia set the bunny on a flat stone. She grabbed a beam and pulled. It held. She braced her feet and pulled again. The whole heap groaned but did not shift. She tried a cracked pot next. It came loose, then three more slid down to fill the gap. The wall was worse now than before. "Stop," a new voice said. "You'll bury yourself." A green axolotl swam down from a green house perched on the rise above. Xadia had not seen him watching. He wore a green tunic stitched with gold marks and a belt of worn pouches. He moved easy, sure of the dead water. He studied the debris the way the blue axolotl had studied the chart. "You're pulling the wrong stones," he said. He pointed at the rusted gate near the bottom. "That one holds the rest. Pull it, and the pile falls away from you, not on you." Xadia looked at the blue axolotl. He gave a small nod. She trusted the green one, or she gave up here. "Then help me pull it," she said. The green axolotl gripped one side of the gate. Xadia gripped the other. His dog barked once from above. "On three," he said. He counted. They both hauled back. The gate tore free. The debris shifted, groaned, then slid sideways in a slow crash. Silt boiled up and blinded her. She held the stone with the bunny on it and waited. When the silt cleared, a gap opened in the wall, dark and wide enough to swim through. But the crash had cracked the roof above the seam. A fresh trickle of loose sand poured down. The passage was open now, and already filling again from the top. "It won't stay open," the green axolotl said. He looked past the gap into the black water beyond. "And I know what's on the other side. You don't." Xadia scooped up her bunny. The way east was clear, for now. She had spent her whole plan to open it. To reach the bell before the seam closed, she needed the green axolotl to lead. And he had not yet said he would.