I step back from the waterfall, mind racing through everything I remember from half-forgotten textbooks and a few too many late-night science documentaries.
“But we can catch the bloom,” I say slowly. “It’s particulate. It’s physical sludge. If we set up a filtration system right here... catch the algae before it spreads out... before it runs throughmiles of tunnels and collects in the big cistern… we can stop the poison…or at least diminish it considerably.”
I head back to where I did my filtration experiment. Sample B’s ring is faint. Almost gone.
“This works,” I murmur. “The sand catches the algae cells. It works.”
I push to my feet and turn to Sarven.
“I think we’ve found what we?—”
The world tilts.
One moment I’m upright. Next, the cavern lurches sideways, and my vision blurs. The planet-sickness surges up like a wave breaking over my head: fever roaring through my veins, pressure spiking behind my eyes until my skull feels too small. The heat of the cave isn’t helping.
Strong arms close around me, hauling me in against a chest that might as well be a furnace. Sarven lifts me off my feet as if I weigh nothing, holding me snug to his body.
“Mih-kay-lah,” he growls, the sound vibrating through his chest into mine. “Bad? Hurt?”
“Just… dizzy,” I manage, words slurring around the pounding in my head. “Planet-sickness again. Plus the sauna.”
His glow jumps, and I let my head slump against his shoulder. Fighting this would be stupid, and I do not currently have any extra brain cells to spare.
“We need to get back,” I say reluctantly, though the idea of standing on my own right now feels ambitious. “Tell the others. We need sand. Lots of sand.”
Sarven dips his chin in a sharp nod, but he does not put me down.
If anything, his arms tighten, one under my knees, one around my back, cradling me like cargo he has zero intention of dropping.
“You… not walk,” he says firmly. “I… carry.”
“I can walk,” I protest automatically.
My eyes choose that moment to roll a little in my head; the world wobbles.
Sarven treats this as the answer it is.
“Not walk,” he repeats, with the absolute confidence of a male who has already made up his mind. He adds something else that makes my translator whir anxiously before deciding on, “Already lost too much water today.”
Heat slams into my cheeks.
“Oh my God,” I mutter, hiding my face against his chest. “We are not discussing the wet spot.”
He turns with me in his arms, heading back toward the slope we came in on, clearly intending to leave the golden cavern behind us.
“Wait,” I say quickly, tightening my hand on his shoulder.
He halts at once, body going alert. “Wrong?”
“No. Yes. Maybe.” I try to push myself more upright in his arms, fighting the wave of dizziness threatening to knock me out. “I just—hang on.”
I look back at the pool. At the place where the water spills over and then drains away through dark channels, disappearing into the guts of the mountain.
“Put me down,” I say, wriggling. “Before we leave, I need to see where the outflow starts. Exactly how wide it is. How deep.”
“You sick,” he rumbles, brows drawing together. “Body fire.”
“I’ll sit,” I promise. “I’ll crawl if I have to. But Sarven, I need as much information as I can get before we leave.”
