The bright clear light shone from Lina's hand, illuminating the staircase that appeared before them. While the City itself was obviously very old, both girls understood immediately that the passageway before them was ancient. The archway above their heads and the smoothly worn stairs beneath their feet were relics of a time that was long past by the time the white marble city had been built on top of it.
"I knew that when we came down here that this was going to be the adventure of a lifetime for you," Lina spoke in a low voice that was little more than a whisper, "but I didn't realize that it was going to be more than a walk through the most familiar of streets for me." Pausing she shifted the light to her left hand and reached behind her with her right. "Take my hand. We need to stay close together." Her tone was light but Quara had the distinct impression that holding hands wasn't for her benefit alone. Slipping her hand into her sister's they began to walk side by side down the staircase.
"It's wider than I would have expected a secret staircase to be." Quara whispered the words, and then wondered why she was whispering. The City was empty and had been for a very long time. She was certain that the tunnel had been empty for just as long, if not longer. "I mean it's nearly as wide as the sidewalk outside. It makes me wonder if upon a time this path wasn't inside the castle at all, but was a street, open to the cavern outside."
"Maybe." Lina was reluctant to speak and Quara realized that she seemed to be listening hard for any sounds from further on inside the tunnel.
They walked on in silence. It was true that the path before them was exceptionally wide. The smooth grey granite stretched out in front of them, descending gradually, with rather wide steps that stayed straight for the first five minutes as they walked on. Gradually the stairs began to curve to their left and Quara realized that it must be taking them ever so slightly back in the direction of the City's lake.
"Lina?" A thought suddenly occurred to Quara and she gripped Lina's hand more tightly as she spoke. "What if they're nearby and they blast through this tunnel while we're in it? What if they blast behind us and we're trapped further down in the earth?" Quara's voice rose towards the end of the second sentence as she felt a tight panic spread through her chest, threatening to crush her lungs.
"Let's add that to the list of things we aren't talking about right now, okay? In fact let's not talk at all right now unless it's an emergency. An immediate emergency." She raised her hand before her sister could speak again, knowing that in Quara's mind, in that moment, nearly anything that happened could qualify as an emergency. And if Lina was honest with herself she knew that she wasn't really all that wrong. This was one of the stickiest situations that she'd ever gotten herself into and she wasn't exactly sure how they were going to get out of it.
As they followed the staircase deeper into the ground she wondered what the odds were of a blast damaging the staircase. She supposed that it was unlikely that the miners would come so close to the staircase as to damage it, but she was worried that the hallway would collapse as the staircase above had collapsed, leaving them stranded, or worse, plummeting to the surface below. But staying in that room would have only meant a slower death that was nearly guaranteed. No one was coming to find them. She was almost certain of that fact. Even if by some miracle the miners made it into the city they wouldn't know that the girls were there and were in trouble. Even if the City was discovered and her mother realized that they were missing it would be nearly impossible for anyone to make the connection between the City and their location.
So a risky staircase that could potentially cave in at any moment, that was headed towards an unknown location, was suddenly their very best chance at getting back into the upper part of the City alive. After meandering to the left for nearly twenty minutes, which Lina was certain put them below the lake, if not beyond it, they began to head again to the right. Glancing down she noticed that the stones beneath their feet had changed. Now they were a smooth grey cobblestone, carefully fitted together, both on the walls on either side of them and below their feet. The light, which Lina had begun to refer to as the Egg, cast a crisp clear light all about them, but it began to fade about seven lengths out.
Lina didn't see the drop off as they approached it, and if Quara hadn't grabbed her arm and drawn her back she wasn't entirely sure if she would have noticed it until she'd come to the very edge. Up until that moment the stairs had been wide. Now the staircase abruptly descended, in a corkscrew that disappeared beyond what they could see in the glow of the Egg's light.
"What choice do we have?" Lina spoke softly when she saw her sister's expression and sensed that she wanted to go back to that safe little room "There isn't a way to get out back there. We have to keep going forward. It's our only hope."
Down and down and down they went around and around in tight little circles until Quara pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and wondered if she was going to be sick. She thought of an image in a book that she had once read that showed a ship being sucked under the sea by a swirling vortex of water and she imagined that she was trapped in a whirlpool, traveling around and around deeper and deeper beneath the waves.
"Lina," she whispered her sister's name. The sound, which she had barely breathed aloud, echoed down the staircase into the darkness below.
"Quara!" Lina's voice was loud and exasperated as she stopped midstep and turned to peer into her sister's face. The motion, however, wasn't as smooth as she had planned and for a moment she teetered on the edge of the step. Quara clasped Lina's smooth, cool hand tightly, but Lina had already cast her free hand out to the side to catch the cold coiling rail of the staircase. She realized her mistake even before her fingers wound around the metal, but it was already too late.
The Egg slipped from her grasp and she struggled to free her hand from Quara's tight grip as she threw herself forward, reaching for the small glowing orb as it plummeted downward into the darkness. Quara clung to her hand all the more tightly and pulled her back away from the bannister's edge, which she had been far closer to going over in that moment in an attempt to recover the egg, than she had been a few moments earlier when she had believed that she was falling.
They stood, side by side, hands still clasped, in the complete and utter darkness that descended the moment the little Egg disappeared from sight.
"What were you going to say?" Lina spoke first this time, in a small, tight whisper.
Quara let out a slow breath and tried to remember the thought that had weighed so heavily on her mind only a few moments earlier. For a moment it was hard to think of anything other than the Egg and the blackness of the cave that had closed in around them with a suffocating perfection. Quara raised her free hand before her eyes and wiggled her fingers. She could see nothing at all.
"Did you hear it hit the bottom?"
"No. But that doesn't meant that it hasn't. And that can't be what you were going to say because I hadn't dropped it yet when you said my name." Quara was surprised that her sister's voice sounded entirely matter of fact, without even a trace of bitterness or blame.
"I was going to ask you if you thought that we were headed in the right direction, since our path was taking us down and down and down and it didn't seem to me to be the best way of getting out of here."
"And yet we're without any sign of any other path, or even a hint of a way out, and so I think it's best if we keep on." If Quara had been able to see her sister in the darkness she would have seen her shrug. "Hold the bannister with one hand and my hand with the other and we better keep on. Hopefully we'll find the egg at the bottom of the staircase. I don't see much of another option right now, although it would be best not to stray from the staircase until we can see it. I wouldn't want to be lost in these caves without any sort of light."
"And if we can't find it?"
"Then we'll have to go back to the top and figure out a way to make fire and light one of the lamps and come back down here to find our way out. But I'm not looking forward to climbing back up these steps, so let's hope that the way out lies ahead of us instead of behind us.
"Let's hope." Quara echoed the words and slowly they began to walk hand in hand down the stairs. Both girls felt the steps before them carefully with their toes, testing each surface before committing their weight to its keeping, listening and feeling for signs of decay or the sound of stone steps cracking and crumbling, but it seemed that like the stairs they had already passed, the steps that lay before them were still in good repair.
Their progress was far slower in the dark and for a time they walked on in silence. Gradually, as they became more accustomed to moving in the darkness their pace increased to a very stilted walk, as they would reach out and test the step ever so slightly before moving on.
Hours passed. Or at least Quara thought it must have been hours. She felt as though they were traveling through time in slow motion, or perhaps it had stopped completely and they were unable to escape that very second when the world had come plummeting down on top of them.
"Do you think they've noticed that we're missing yet?" Quara said the words as they came into her head and Lina squeezed her hand softly as she replied.
"Maybe. Maybe not though. If they think you were going to the Meadow they might think that I was going to come with you. They might not notice for a while longer. They're used to me disappearing, even if it is already quite late and they might think that you're with me. We've been together more often lately. Quara look!" The last two words were filled with surprise and gratitude as Quara cast her eyes around wildly in every direction until she saw the small flash of gold far below them.
They found themselves heartened by the sight of the Egg and they both pushed on, knowing now that they were drawing closer and closer to their light source and weren't doomed to remain in complete darkness for whatever was left of their potentially short lives.
If they had been going more slowly the sound that came from just beyond the outer edge of the staircase would have been immediately clear. Instead it was almost entirely hidden beneath the sound of their footsteps. Lina wondered if she had imagined it the first two times she heard it, but the third time the sound whispered past her, she knew that it was something beyond her imagination working overtime. It was a whisper of wings in the dark and Lina knew by the tightening grip of Quara's hand in hers that she had heard it too.
"Bats? Would bats be down this far?" Quara whispered frantically, and Lina suddenly found herself struggling to keep up as the older girl plunged down the stairs, headed straight for the Egg. Lina didn't answer the question, but as they began to run her hand slipped from her sister's and she began to skip steps, moving faster and faster, praying that the stairs beneath her feet were strong enough to hold their weight.
Silence, apart from the clatter of noise they made as they hurried towards the light, returned to the space around them, although Lina wasn't entirely certain which was worse, hearing the sound of something in the darkness, or knowing that something was likely there, biding its time, waiting to attack. They reached the bottom of the staircase and together they bolted the five or so lengths towards the egg.
It cast its light in a wide circle, so that roughly seven lengths in any direction glowed merrily, revealing a smooth pale floor that ran right up to the bottom of the staircase. Stooping Lina scooped the little light up into her hand and held it out, away from her body as she turned slowly, surveying the space around them as both girls struggled to catch their breath.
Quara slipped her hand back into her sister's and gripped it tightly as they gazed about, hearts pounding wildly in their chests both from the exertion of their flight down the stairs and the overwhelming and terrifying feeling that they were not alone. Neither wanted to think overly much about what could possibly be living down this deep in the dark, and yet they found that they could think of nothing else.
The room that they were standing in appeared to be shaped from an enormous cavern. The floor beneath their feet was polished and still shone as though someone had waxed it only yesterday. When she'd first glanced down Lina had thought that it was white marble, like up above in the City, but as she looked down a second time she realized that it was transparent and she guessed that it was a crystal of some sort. Staring out into the darkness she could see no sign of a wall in any direction. Moving closer to the stairs she realized that at some point between the moment when she'd dropped the Egg and the moment when they'd reached the bottom of the stairs, the staircase itself had turned into a clear, smooth crystal, shaded ever so slightly blue, but entirely transparent.
Hand in hand they walked, growing bolder as each minute passed uneventfully. They both began to wonder if they had imagined the sound on the stairs, or if there was some benign explanation. Perhaps a draft from a vent of some sort? Abruptly a form came into view, rising up from the translucent floor and disappearing into the darkness. Coming closer the form of the pillar came into focus.
The girls could have held hands and stretched their arms as far as they could reach and they would only have come halfway around the enormous column. Like the staircase and the floor it was made of crystal, but even from a distance in the dim light she could see that it had been carefully carved with thousands of intricate lines. As they walked slowly towards it Lina's eyes strained to make sense of the shapes. "Half circles? Are those rows of half circles?" She breathed the words, still whispering, although she felt increasingly certain that they were alone.
"Scales. They're scales. It's a giant pillar covered in carved dragon scales."
"How do you know that they're dragon scales?" Lina tried to sound playful, but her words had an edge, as though the fear that she'd thought she'd shed a few moments earlier was creeping back in.
"I don't know. But I do. Look at it. Really look. Could it ever have been anything else?" They drew closer. As the amber light fell across the great support structure, in all its brilliance, it glowed the exact shade of the brightest emeralds they'd ever seen brought up out of the Cavern Mines and looking at the hundreds of rows of scales Lina now saw what her sister had seen clearly from their first approach.
"She's right you know." A soft yet powerful voice cut through the darkness behind them and both girls stood, frozen in place, as though their legs had become crystal pillars connecting their bodies with the glass like floor beneath their feet. "It was carved four thousand and fifty seven years ago by my grandfather. At least, I think that's how many years have passed, by your calendar. It's been hard keeping track all this time, down below ground, unable to see the sun as we spin frantically around and around it, rushing through space."
Lina winced as Quara's hand crushed her fingers, but she held on tightly, afraid that at any moment her sister might regain the use of her limbs and ruled by her fear, dash away into the darkness and to what might very well be certain doom.
The younger girl, on the other hand, felt the fear drain from her body as the voice continued to speak. A part of her was convinced that she had heard the voice before, many times.
"And while I can see better than the two of you can in the dark, better than any human really, it's not exactly the same as seeing the light of day. Or even seeing with the light from a Fire Orb like the one you hold in your hand. Although I really shouldn't complain after watching the two of you grope down those steps in the dark. That was quite a sight. I came close at first, to make sure you wouldn't fall, but then I realized that you seemed more likely to fall when you realized that I was there, and so I came back down here to wait until you were a bit more settled and not suspended over a great height, where a misstep might spell disaster. Can you imagine if I'd waited all these years for you down here only to scare you both into falling to your deaths? They'd never forgive me. I would never forgive me." The voice fell silent as though it were overwhelmed by the idea.
"Who are you?" Lina was surprised when her sister was the one who found the courage to reply to the strange voice, although she would later claim that she didn't speak up sooner because she was so lost in her own thoughts, trying to pinpoint her own memories of the voice, that she hadn't thought to ask the question.
"That is the question of the millennia, isn't it? Actually it really is the first question anyone has asked me in several millennia. I am Ausfela. I was created when this cave was part of a great kingdom that had long since passed from being, before the City above rose to prominence, back in the days when the Walemont Caverns were nothing more than storage space. My people later fled to Za'Reek although some still remain, deep underground, sleeping away the years until the tide turns and the world becomes more friendly to our kind again."
"Your kind?" Quara was the one to speak again. Neither girl had turned to face the direction of the voice.
"Yes, my kind. You can turn around if you wish. I'll step forward into the light. And don't worry, I won't bite. We're not as scary as people here in the southern countries seem to think. At least not to our friends. And I can tell you, we are going to be friends."
For a moment Quara and Lina's eyes met and Lina nodded slightly. They dropped their hands for a moment and turned, immediately clasping palms again as they faced the darkness.
"Are you ready? Promise not to scream?" Ausfela's voice held a hint of amusement as she spoke.
"I promise." Lina said confidently.
"I'll try." Quara barely murmured.
"Well I can't ask for much more than that, can I? After all, it not everyday that a girl from the Walemont Caverns meets a dragon, is it?" With her long claws clicking on the crystal floor Ausfela stepped forward into the circle of light.
Quara screamed and then dropped to the ground as she fainted dead away.