The air leaves my lungs in a rush.
I jerk back, a full-body flinch away from the thing peering down from the crack. The light washes it in glare and shadow, but it’s a face all the same. Not one I know. Not any of our clan.
Something else.
I twist away from the face in the ceiling, trying to grab Sarven, to point, to get the word ‘look’ out of my mouth?—
But I turn too fast. The sudden movement tears me out of Sarven’s reach just as my feet betray me.
The planet-sickness seizes its chance. Vertigo slams into me, a hot wave that flips the cavern sideways. For a heartbeat, I lose all sense of up and down.
“Sarven!”
The scream rips out of my throat before I even know I’m making it.
I flail, fingers clawing at empty air. In the spinning blur, I see Sarven’s face, eyes going huge with horror. His hand flashes out, claws extending, reaching?—
My fingertips brush his forearm.
Just a brush.
And slide away.
Gravity takes hold.
There’s one thin, horrible instant of weightlessness where I hang above the steaming water, staring up at his terrified face?—
Then I hit.
The water is not soft. It hits like stone.
Impact slams into my back hard enough to knock the breath out of me. I punch through the surface layer instantly.
It’s hot. Suffocatingly, cloyingly hot. And it wraps around me like a heavy, wet blanket, thick with slime and rot.
I go under.
The light disappears. Everything goes dark and red. The soft sound of the spring turns into a muffled, all-encompassing thunder that vibrates in my teeth.
I open my mouth to scream, and the spring rushes in.
It tastes foul. Metallic, rotten, warm. Like swallowing blood.
I choke. Panic claws at my chest as the heavy fluid floods my nose, my throat.
I thrash, trying to orient myself, but the calm surface was lying; under here, the current is a raging beast. It grabs me and spins me, hauling me toward the black mouth of the outflow, turning me end over end.
Swim, my brain yells.Swim!
My body doesn’t listen.
The shock of the impact has turned my limbs to stone, and the heat presses in on all sides, disorienting me.
I kick, but I don’t know which way is up anymore.
The world narrows to choking and burning and red.
And the last, ridiculous thought that flickers through my drowning brain is that Sarven—poor, unyielding, endlessly patient Sarven—is going to have to watch me die.
