Satisfied that she was, he pulled out Suriel’s marble, adding a faint blue candle-glow to their procession. To his surprise, Orthos was a capable swimmer; the turtle’s feet acted more like flippers in the water, and he outpaced Lindon in seconds. Lindon had to strain to keep up, and only because he suspected Orthos was waiting for him.
They had only swum a few yards before they reached the edge of a cliff and looked down. Warm, inviting light spilled up from below: a new habitat. The bubble was shaped a little differently than the previous, like a wide circle rather than a dome, but the top was only a dozen feet straight down. The relief was like a breath of air; he could swim that distance. No problem. He was honestly surprised that they hadn’t seen the light from this place before, when it was so close.
He glanced back to judge the distance between himself and the habitat, and saw two points of blue light coming at him out of the darkness.
He looked for the other lights instinctively before he realized they weren’t spots.
They were eyes.
Blackflame madra raged through him, and the Burning Cloak ignited. When he couldn’t breathe freely, controlling madra was like pushing mud through a straw, and it strained his channels to bursting. Primitive, crippling survival terror made it easy: he’d tear his soul in half to defend himself from those approaching eyes.
The Diamondscale opened its maw, revealing even more saber-sharp teeth than the Silverfang Carp, as well as a light welling up from its throat like a blue furnace.
Lindon kicked off the sand, twisting desperately, hoping that the Enforcer technique would give him enough speed so that the great serpent wouldn’t just turn and snap him out of the water.
It twisted, but he scratched at its face with both hands, seizing ridges on its head and plastering himself to it like a monkey clinging to a tree branch.
The Sea Drake bucked like an earthquake, rumbling with a fury that Lindon interpreted as a roar. Every quake threatened to shake Lindon loose, until he was holding on only by the pointed tips of his Remnant hand.
Red light shot through the darkness, and Orthos sank his jaws into silver scales.
Now the serpent’s ferocious twist threw Lindon free, and for a moment he was lost in an aimless blur of bubbles and darkness. Lost, disoriented, he clawed in the direction he hoped was the ocean floor.
He found himself staring down at a purple light from ten feet above: Dross lay on the sand, helpless in his gem.
Lindon pulled through the water, scooping up the jewel in his left hand. He faced a wall of dust kicked up by two massive, thrashing bodies. Red and blue lights flashed from within the cloud.
His lungs were starting to burn as badly as his madra channels, and now he was faced with a choice: forward or back?
The choice was made for him when Orthos came hurtling out of the dust cloud, righting himself in the water and charging back in.
The Diamondscale Sea Drake flipped back to stare at him once more.
Then it rushed at Orthos, seizing him in its jaws. Orthos wrestled with it, sinking his own teeth into its snout, and they struggled in the water for a long instant before plunging over the cliff.
Lindon followed them. If he could reach the bubble, he could use his madra properly, and then maybe he could help Orthos.
Through the bubble, the dream tablet library looked like a series of stone shelves, resembling bookshelves, only instead of books they contained points of soft multicolored light.
Orthos and the Drake fell into the center of the ring, kicking up another cloud of sand, and Lindon pulled himself to the edge of the habitat. He clawed through the bubble, pushing his head through, getting a deep gasp of breath that brought life back to his madra.
His head was sticking through the ceiling of the bubble, and he looked down onto the stone libraries. After a disorienting moment of shifting gravity, he started to fall through into the air.
He allowed it, Blackflame still flowing through him, and twisted in midair to land on the floor. Unlike the ground in the last habitat, this one was laid with polished tiles.
And it wasn’t empty.
From down the curving row of shelves, a man stared at him. Bright green horns grew from his forehead, pointed up, and he wore a road-stained cloak of gray. His expression was so worn and weary that he initially looked older, but a second glance made it clear that he wasn’t much older than Lindon.
Lindon recognized him as one of the young Truegolds. The one who had saved him back in the portal room.
He heaved a sigh as he saw Lindon, reaching out to a hammer leaning up against a nearby shelf. Its haft was as long as he was tall, its head the width of his body, and Lindon braced himself for sudden battle.
Instead, the stranger pulled the hammer behind him as though it weighed as much as a mountain. The head dragged against the tile with a horrible scraping noise. Each step cost him visible effort. There had once been an emblem dyed into the back of his cloak, which Lindon thought resembled a lotus flower or perhaps a web, but it was too faded with age to be clear.
Lindon pressed his fists together and bowed, saluting the man’s back. No need to be unnecessarily rude, even if the man couldn’t see him. After all, Lindon was the one who had burst in out of nowhere, dripping water all over the tile.
Then he shot off. Orthos was still in trouble.
When he cleared a few rows of bookshelves, he saw what the center of the ring looked like from the inside. It appeared to be a column of dark blue water in the center of the facility, extending from the floor to the ceiling as though it supported the weight of the ocean overhead.
Now, that column was filled with flashing scales, billowing dust, and leathery skin.
Lindon watched for a moment. Dross was babbling something, but Lindon was too focused on the battle to hear it. The Burning Cloak burst into being around him again, its power flowing through him much more easily. He started gathering dragon’s breath in his hand. If he got a clear shot, he was sure he could turn the fight in Orthos’ favor.
Then the water exploded in his direction, drenching Lindon as Orthos and the serpent spilled out of the bubble and into the library.
Orthos smashed into one of the shelves shell-first, cracking stone and releasing hisses of colored light from two of the broken tablets. The Sea Drake flopped around in midair at first, but after only a second it righted itself.
And started swimming through the air.
Sure, the Carp had done it, and they were huge. But this creature was ten times bigger; it didn’t seem fair that its mastery of water aura was great enough to allow it to swim through air so easily.
It struck at Orthos as the turtle forced himself upright, and Lindon extended his dragon’s breath.
The stranger was standing there, between Lindon and Orthos, holding the haft of his hammer in both hands while the head still rested on the floor. Lindon hadn’t seen him arrive, but now he had to abort his Striker technique to avoid hitting the newcomer. He stood before the serpent with eyes closed, like a man embracing the approach of death.
For an instant.
A blink later, the Drake slammed to a halt like a fist hitting a steel plate. There was a sickening crunch that echoed through the library and a brief flash of green light, and the huge serpent’s head exploded under a titanic hammer-blow.
Blood and gore sprayed over the floor, gushing over Orthos and splattering the tablet shelves behind him. The stranger was only speckled in dark red; a floating script-circle hovered in the air in front of him like a shield Forged out of green light. It pushed the tide of carnage to either side, preventing the man from becoming drenched in blood.