Chapter 15
WE ARE STILL NOT DISCUSSING THE WET SPOT
MIKAELA
The tunnel spits us out into something so big my brain forgets how to categorize it.
I step forward, and the ground just… falls away.
A ledge curves out beneath my shoes, sloping gently downward and opening onto a cavern so vast my sense of scale throws up its hands and walks away. The ceiling soars high overhead, ribbed with polished stone that seems to catch and cradle every scrap of light.
Because there is light.
A single shaft spears down through the darkness from some crack far above, a perfect column of Ain’s harsh gold. It strikes the center of a wide, still pool, turning the water there into molten metal.
“Holy shit,” I whisper. The words echo back to me.
Beside me, Sarven makes a low sound in his chest, something between a growl and a purr.
But as I take a breath, the reality hits me.
It’s not cool here.
The air shimmers above the water, full of steam and humidity. It feels like walking into a tropical greenhouse. Moisture beads on my skin instantly, mixing with the sweat I’ve already worked up.
Strange plants cling to cracks in the rock: dark blue, deep purple, their broad leaves glistening in the damp heat.
“It’s like a spa,” I murmur, dazed. “A very, very hot spa.”
Sarven tilts his head. He doesn’t know the word, but he feels the awe behind it. His glow softens slightly, the edges of his light gentling in response to the space.
I take a cautious step forward. The ledge we’re on slopes down in a broad stone ramp toward the pool’s edge.
The sound of water is everywhere: the steady pour where it spills from a split in the far wall, the soft lap and ripple across the pool, the distant rush as it disappears again into holes along the far edge.
It’s beautiful.
Pristine.
Perfect.
Except.
As we move closer, the illusion cracks.
The mist and distance had blurred it, but now, near the inflow, I can see it clearly. Thin red tendrils slide over the surface of the water where it pours in. Not thick mats like in the lower cave, but loose strands, floating like bloody hair.
The smell hits a second later.
That same sharp, metallic-mineral bite mixed with the sweet rot of the bloom. It cuts through the damp steam, making my nose itch and the back of my throat sting.
“This is it,” I say quietly. “The spring’s mouth, where it all starts.”
If it’s poisoned here, it’s poisoned everywhere.
Sarven doesn’t look at the pool first.
He turns in a slow circle, head tipped back, eyes tracking along the high, ribbed ceiling. His nostrils flare. His ears angle forward, then twitch back, straining past the sound of falling water.
“What is it?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. His body goes still and tight, a low vibration starting in his chest that isn’t his usual soothing purr, but not quite a growl either. Something more like a warning note only other hunters can hear.
“Air,” he rumbles finally, the word scraping out. “Wrong… air.”
He keeps looking up, toward the source of the golden shaft.
“It’s just a vent,” I say, scanning the darkness where the light originates. “A crack to the outside. But the heat... it must be coming from deeper down.”
Sarven makes a low, unhappy noise. He doesn’t relax. He only shifts his weight slightly, hand dropping to rest on the hilt of his blade.
“Fast,” he says, gaze still flicking along the upper stone. “We work… fast.”
I swallow and nod. “Right. Fast.”
I gesture for my basket before kneeling at the water’s edge and setting it down on the stone. Sarven crouches beside me. He says something low in Drakavian, and my translator whispers in my ear a moment later: “Sacred water. Old heart.”
“Not so sacred anymore,” I say under my breath.
I dip a strip of clean cloth into the pool, watching how the water beads and clings. When I pull it out, the droplets fall like normal, but a faint reddish stain trails after them, soaking into the fibers.
My stomach tightens.
I rig a crude filter, layering cloth, firestone dust, sand, then cloth again inside my woven basket. Then, I use the gourd shell we emptied earlier to run a sample.
While it drips through, I pull out my bit of bone-charcoal and mark two circles on a flattish rock near the edge: one for unfiltered Sample A, one for Sample B after it’s been through my makeshift purifier.
Sarven watches with that focused stillness of his. He watches the cavern mouth for threats in the same way. It’s the look he gives to anything that might save or kill someone he cares about.
Including, apparently, my strange little experiments.
Including, unfortunately, fingering me senseless against cave walls.
My cheeks heat at the memory. I shove it ruthlessly away.
Not the time, Mikaela.
The water dries fast because of the heat. As the drops in my charcoal circles evaporate, they leave behind a residue.
“See?” I point at the ring.
The unfiltered circle has left a distinct reddish-brown crust.
“The contamination is here,” I say. “It’s the bloom. The heat in this cavern is cooking the water, waking up the bacteria, and then sending it down the pipes.”
Sarven leans in and inhales near the drying circles. His nose wrinkles; his lip lifts a little from his fangs.
“Bad,” he says simply. “Rot.”
“Very bad,” I agree.
I rock back on my heels and look around properly.
The shaft of light. The still pool turned gold where it hits. The split in the far wall where the inflow gushes out, and the dark channels at the far side where the outflow vanishes into the rock.
That split is where we need to look.
“Help me up?” I ask, nodding toward the far wall.
His hand is on mine before I finish the question, warm and strong as he lifts me easily to my feet.
We walk the curve of the pool together, my shoes scuffing softly on the damp stone.
The inflow is even more impressive up close. Water bursts from a vertical crack with force, falling in a short sheet into the pool. The stream feeding it must come from somewhere deeper within the mountain, hidden behind stone.
I lean in as far as I dare, peering into the narrow throat.
It pinches down quickly. There’s no path, no usable crawlspace. Just water and rock.
And heat.
Waves of it roll out of that crack like breath from a dragon.
“Dammit,” I mutter.
Sarven makes a questioning sound, head tipping.
“The source,” I explain, pointing to the crack. “The heat is coming from in there. We can’t reach it. Whatever is cooking the mountain is buried too deep.”
I trail my fingers through the falling water and bring them to my nose. The sharp smell is stronger here, almost a metallic sting, like old coins and something chemical.
“It’s biological,” I say, confirming my theory. “The heat wakes it up. The water carries it out.”
Sarven watches me, following maybe one word in five, but following me all the same.
“Sorry,” I sigh. “Thinking out loud. The point is, we can’t fix the heat. Not today. Not without mining equipment.”
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 through miles 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.”
He holds my gaze for a long beat.
He sees the fever. I know he does. But he also sees the stubborn gleam behind it. The same one that made me decide to come in the first place.
Slowly, he lowers me onto the stone.
My legs wobble but hold. I drop to my knees and crawl a little closer to the outflow channel.
“I just need an idea of how big we’re going to have to make this filter,” I mutter, brows furrowing.
I lean over the edge, squinting at the water swirling into the tunnel.
My heart thuds so hard, wooziness threatening to overcome me, that I have to squeeze my eyes shut to focus.
Opening my eyes, I take a deep breath, gaze automatically finding the shaft of light streaming in from above. The crack in the ceiling is high up. Hundreds of feet, maybe.
I squint, trying to see the sky.
And then I freeze.
There’s something in the crack.
A shape. Blocking the light.
For a heartbeat, it looks like a rock. But then it moves.
It’s not a rock. It’s a face.
Golden. Smooth.
A Drakav?
It’s not Haroth. It’s not Zan. The features are...wrong. Too sharp. Too still.
It peers down, features distorted by the distance and the glare. Eyes. A nose. The suggestion of a mouth.
My gaze darts to Sarven, a chill shooting down my spine.
“Sarven,” I whisper.
He stops instantly, hand going to his blade.
“Up there.” I point, my hand shaking so hard I can’t even point straight. “In the crack. Someone’s watching.”
He moves in a blur, eyes scanning the ceiling, nostrils flaring as he scents the air.
But when my gaze shoots back to the ceiling, there’s nothing there.
The light streams down, empty and unbroken.
“It was there,” I sputter. “The light. The crack. There was a face.”
Sarven stares up into the glare, but the steam and the rot mask everything.
Silence stretches. The water gushes on.
Sarven glances at me, head tilted. “Mih-kay-lah?”
“There was something,” I insist, though doubt is already creeping in. The world swims when I try to focus. My head throbs. “It looked like a person. A Drakav like you.”
Sarven steps closer. He places a cool hand on my burning forehead and my shoulders slump.
It’s the sickness. The stress. My brain misfiring.
“Just… a play with the light,” I whisper.
But I don’t step away from the edge. I stay there, bathed in the light, staring up at the empty crack.
Because even if my eyes are lying, the feeling of being watched, of cold, pale intent boring into the top of my head, isn’t going away.
I swallow hard and try to steady my feet on the slick stone.
“Okay,” I murmur. “Okay. Just a play with the light.”
But I don’t look down.