I look at the red slime coating everything. This isn’t natural. This is an explosion of growth.
“Ain,” Sarven says, scanning the ceiling. “Too much…here.”
He’s right. The air in this pocket is stifling, humid, and hot like a swamp. But I don’t think this heat is coming from Ain. There’s no way this heat is coming from the sun.
“Something is heating the water deeper inside the mountain,” I murmur. “Cooking the rock. And this red stuff islovingit.”
I look at the red slime oozing from the solid rock wall. The pressure behind that wall must be immense to force this sludge through solid stone.
“Dormant bacteria that woke up because the temperature rose,” I murmur. “This is what’s poisoning us.”
I hover my hand over the weeping rock. Heat radiates off it.
“The main channel of water must be behind this wall,” I say, mind racing. “And it’s hot. By the time it gets down to the clan, the rock cools it off, so we don’t notice the temperature change. But up here? It’s cooking.”
I look at Sarven.
“We can’t fix it here.” I shake my head. “The water is trapped behind the stone. If we want to clean this, we’re going to have to go further. To the spring mouth. We have to catch this gunk at the source before it gets into the tunnel system.”
Sarven growls, looking at the ceiling as if he can see the spring mouth miles above us.
I point to a thick glob of red slime dripping from a crack.
“I need to get to that flow,” I say, eyeing the slick wall.
“Slippery,” Sarven growls, gaze shifting to me. “Dangerous.”
“Yeah, but we can’t go back. If this is what’s poisoning us, I have to find a way to fix it.”
I lean toward the slime only to hear a growl near my ear.
“Noh.”
Of all the English words, why’d he have to learnthatone?
I don’t wait for permission. I snatch an empty gourd from the basket on his hip. There’s a handhold that looks relatively dry. A jagged spur of rock jutting out near the hanging algae. I lean to reach it, gourd outstretched, scraping the rim through the thick red slime.
But that jagged spur of rock? It isn’t dry.
My shoes hit a patch of red slime that was hiding in the shadow, and friction exits the chat immediately.
My feet go out from under me.
I don’t even have time to scream. I just have time to think, “This is it; I’m dying in alien snot?—"
But I don’t hit the floor. I hit a wall of muscle.
Sarven catches me mid-fall, one arm snapping around my waist, the other grabbing my thigh to haul me up. The momentum slams us both backward against the slimy stone wall.
He grunts as he takes the impact, his claws digging into the rock to anchor us.
For a second, the world is just spinning red shadows and heavy breathing.
I’m dangling against his chest, my feet inches off the floor. His arm is a steel band under my butt.
He looks down at me, and if looks could incinerate, I would be a pile of ash.
“You,” he growls, his face inches from mine, red eyes blazing, “are... bad.”
