“Very well. May the Wild Goddess save your souls.”
Dramatic old gargoyle. No one’s saving my soul except my regina. Aurelia casts a dark look over her shoulder as the door swings open and I nod encouragingly. We all surround our regina, Lyle putting his arm around her waist like he’s scared it’s going to slurp her in.
That strange magic circles in the air as the door opens, and it feels like being tickled by a windmill, but it’s pulling at us all. “Ready?” I say in my chompy’s ear.
She takes a shaky breath. “Let’s do it.”
We all edge towards the darkness, right up until I’m pressed against the hinge, sniffing to see if I can sense what’s on the other side.
“Oh, there’s a passageway,” Aurelia says, her eagle eyes enlarging her irises.
“Do you want me to go first?” I say excitedly.
“No, I’ve got the eyes?—”
Xander prods everyone aside. “No,I’vegot the eyes, regina.”
He has no eyes at all, actually, so I don’t know what’s going on, but I let the dragon go first with narrow eyes, and Aurelia holds onto his belt loop. We all go in a long chain, but when I hold my hand out to Lyle behind me, he looks at me disapprovingly, taking out a torch from his backpack instead. I just shrug and follow my leader.
Xander’s eyes light the way through the passage, and it’s wide enough that Aurelia ends up walking side by side with him. There are black stone walls and the same cobbly-stone floor as Lia’s rabid cave in the animas dorm. It feels old and dusty, like there should be cobwebs and ghosts floating through here. The floor slopes downwards, and we’re clearly heading underground, the air feeling heavy on my chest and shoulders.
Suddenly, both Aurelia and Xander jump backwards like they’ve been tripped up. “Stop!” Aurelia exclaims as they both stumble back into me. Henry tumbles off Lia’s shoulder but rights himself in mid-air.
“What is it!” I shout excitedly.
“It’s the floor,” Aurelia says, showing me with the toe of her trainer. She presses on the floor, and it tips inwards like a trick panel.
“It’s a massive trapdoor,” Xander mutters. “What the fuck is underneath here?”
“How we get to the other side is the better question,” Lyle says. “We need to keep moving. Allow me.”
We make way for the lion, and he shoves at the trapdoor with his telekinesis and shines his torch on it. The floor slides away from us, moving on a hinge three or four metres down the path. Beneath the trapdoor is a darkness even deeper than the corridor. When Lyle shines his light into it, there’s nothing at all to see. Only shadow. Lyle levitates himself across the trapdoor to the other side, pointing his torch left and right to show us that it’s a dead end.
Aurelia snorts. “It wants us to go down.”
Lyle sighs dramatically. “We don’t know what’s down there. I’m getting flashbacks of Naga House.”
Aurelia shifts, and when a tiny head pokes out of her fallen clothes, I gasp in wonder. She’s a blue rosella. So cute with her tiny red chest and face, bright green wings, and round black eyes. She gives a little chirp, and Henry chirps back, flying around her in circles. Scythe picks up her clothes as she hops to the edge of the trapdoor and peers down before she and Henry flit into it together.
“Quick, Lyle!” I cry, falling onto my ass and dangling my feet through the trapdoor. With no choice at all, Lyle wraps me in his telekinesis and sends me down into the all-black. The others follow with some grumbling, Lyle’s torch beaming yellow over me. He lowers us boys slowly into the shadows until there’s nothing all around us and it feels like I’m in outer space or something.
The smell of salt hits my nose just after my brother says it. “It’s brine,” Scythe says. “There’s a lot of saltwater down there.”
Aurelia and Henry let out chirps again, and I feel my regina shift. There’s a flash of white skin before a plonking splash. Henry chirps in dismay by my ear.
“Let me down, Lyle,” Scythe says. “But take my clothes first.”
We’re all lowered down to the surface of some choppy water. Sea spray brushes my toes, and I grin down at the black waters beneath me, lowering my fingers to dip them in. Scythe splashes into the water a moment later, and Lyle levitates next to me, gathering up his clothes into the backpack.
“Can you guys see anything?”Xander asks irritably into the group chat.“Where else would we be expected to go?”
“It’s almost as if this journey was made for a Boneweaver,”Lyle says.“Telekinesis, flight, now swimming.”
We hear nothing from our marine mates for a moment, and just when I think Scythe and Aurelia have eloped, Scythe says.“There’s a light far down here. I think we need to go through it.”
“Gods help me,”Xander moans.
“Don’t worry, my dragon,”Aurelia says.“I’m going to bubble shield you non-aquatics and then Lyle can shoot you through.”
