Keeper of the Lost Cities: Rebuild [COMPLETED]

Chapter Twenty-Eight - MARELLA

"I... I don't know if I can...," Tam grunted, seeming to fight the shadows around him. They darkened his outline and gathered around the trio.

"Whoa there," Marella said, lurching back. She ended up nearly plunging beneath the surface.

"The Neverseen is gone," Sophie told Tam softly. "You're not controlled anymore."

"I'm not so sure about that," Tam muttered. He glanced at the shadows around him and winced.

"Do you want me to go with you?" offered Sophie.

Marella felt a jolt of jealousy. She hadn't even registered the last time the group had been at Loamnore. The ordeal hadn't been fun for her, but it must have been so much worse for Tam, who'd been a prisoner, and Sophie, who'd had to watch Keefe almost die. It was stupid, but she almost wished she could share in that oh-so-delightful trauma. Maybe then she could be... understood. At least in a small way.

Sophie held her hand out to Tam, looking as pale as he was. "Together?"

"We'll be fine," he murmured, more to himself than to her.

They both sucked in a breath, took a step forward, and were sucked under.

Marella stood there for a moment. She felt like she had just watched one of the Council's creepy-realistic projection thingies they did for (99.9% pointless) ceremonies. Tam and Sophie hadn't even glanced at her—which shouldn't have really mattered all that much, except it still stung.

"Whatever," she said to herself, now doggy-paddling to the center. "I'm cooler than they are anyway." As soon as she said the words, her body free-fell into the deep dark depths of the poop pool. She was caught mid-scream, which made it all the more terrifying when the breath was sucked out of her lungs and she kept falling and falling with no end. She felt nothing, but maybe that was due to the fact she was dead from lack of air. And her thoughts were slipping away...

"AAAAAH!" she shouted as soon as the strange sensation was finished and she could breathe again. Her feet collided with the ground so hard her knees crumpled, but Sophie's arms were there to catch her. Mud particles detached from her body, clothes, and hair as gravity reversed, reinforcing the ceiling with a new layer of dirt.

"I hate dwarves," she gasped, choking out the stale-air taste leftover from the fall.

"That's understandable," a dry, crackly voice said. But before Marella could look up to find its source, there was a loud thud, and a crack in the packed earth crisscrossed between her legs. She froze. "If you don't tell me who you are in five seconds, you might even hate us more."

"Whoa!" Sophie cried, moving in Marella's periphery—probably giving the dwarf a peace sign (she'd heard those were a human thing, and assumed it was a gesture to prevent crazy creatures from attacking you). "I'm Sophie Foster! These are members of the Black Swan's Collective—Queen Nubiti is expecting us!"

"Where is your magsidian?" the dwarf growled, clearly not buying it.

"I have it," Tam rasped softly.

There was more movement in Marella's periphery, but she didn't trust the dwarf to not drop her into the ground if she looked. She considered lighting her arms on fire and potentially blinding the dwarf, but that probably wouldn't help either.

Shoot.

"Hurry it up," she singsonged to Tam. "My neck's starting to cramp like this."

An awkward moment of nervous foot-tapping and shuffling and rustling cloak sounds filled the round cavern before the dwarf hissed in a breath. "So it is true. You are the Moonlark and her friends."