“What?” Malachite whipped around. Jade pointed a claw toward a small heap of bones and rotted fabric that lay at the mouth of the farthest hall.
Jade said, “If these groundlings fled from whatever it is the Fell are looking for—”
Malachite sprang off the bridge and snapped out her wings, two strong flaps carrying her across the space. Jade grimaced at Moon and leapt after her.
Chime paused to pick up Lithe, and he and Moon sprang into flight.
They landed at the top of the hall, near the groundling’s corpse. The body was stretched out, its spaded skull lying on its side, skeletal arms outstretched. Moon didn’t see any reason why it should be dead. He looked up, but there was no platform or doorway above that it could have fallen out of. It was like something had struck it from behind and flattened it. Beyond the body, the hall stretched out ahead for about a hundred paces, then curved out of sight.
Malachite glanced over the body, then started down the hall. But Chime said, “Wait.”
Moon looked at him and saw his spines trembled. Chime said, “I just heard the voice again. It’s much clearer this time. It’s saying ‘I’ll give you the… something. Teach you power.’” Chime’s whole body shuddered, as if trying to shake off the words. “This is very creepy.”
“At least we know we’re on the right trail,” Lithe said, looking uneasily ahead.
Malachite just started down the hall, but this time she was at least moving more slowly.
They made their way through a series of turns that could have been confusing except for the three other dead groundlings they found to point the way. One hall had a long window to the outside, revealing a few rocky underwater peaks and some drifting semi-transparent creatures like flowers with fins. Close up Moon could see the crystalline substance wasn’t as clear as it looked. It was shot through with hundreds of nearly translucent fibers, like a root system. He paused long enough to lay his hand on the crystal, then jerked back. The material felt weirdly warm and alive and rippled faintly under his touch. Chime watched, wide-eyed, and murmured, “This place is even stranger than it looks.”
As they reached another curving hall, Moon heard a voice and felt his spines flick involuntarily as he recognized the progenitor. He didn’t need to tell Malachite that there were Fell somewhere ahead. She slowed and dropped into a crouch.
At the end of the hall was a round doorway looking down into another large chamber. It had more of the narrow crystalline windows streaking the outer wall. All the curves in their path had taken them some distance down and around. Moon thought they were on the side of the island facing away from shore.
As they edged closer, Moon got a view of the floor of the chamber, some fifty or so paces below. He saw the progenitor and Thedes and four other rulers, and he saw Shade, but the thing they faced captured his gaze so thoroughly all he could do was stare.
In the center of the chamber was something like the bulb of the giant version of a sea-flower, that stood nearly forty paces high. It sat on a nest of vines, some dark and pulsing, others withered and dead. The big white petals at the front had been pulled down, allowing a view of the interior. It was filled with the multitude of writhing stems that in a small sea-flower caught tiny water creatures as prey. This one had prey, too.
The creature caught inside it was big, as large as Stone’s shifted form. But it looked like Shade, like the image in the crystal piece the Fell had shown them. The same dark scales, the armored crest and huge mane of spines.
Malachite drew back from the doorway and so forgot herself as to exchange a look with Jade.
Lithe and Chime stared wide-eyed. Jade whispered what they were all thinking, “Can that really be an ancestor of us and the Fell?”
Malachite shook her head, but it was a gesture of grim realization, not denial. “But why is it here?”
Moon had to ask, “Why would our ancestors live underwater?”
“They wouldn’t.” Jade risked another peek. “Maybe this… ancestor was captured by the species who lived here, and left behind when they died.”
Moon didn’t buy that. “This place is designed for things that fly. We haven’t seen any stairs, anywhere.”
Chime nodded. “And there are these jewel lights, and all these flowers bringing air down here. They make me think of the flower lights in Emerald Twilight.”
Moon thought Chime was onto something. This place was strange, but maybe not entirely unfamiliar. “They do whole trees at Opal Night.”
Lithe said, “That’s just an ordinary mentor’s skill. At least, it is here in the Reaches. It’s been passed down forever.”
And everyone believed that mentors got their abilities from interbreeding with consorts. Moon thought, And Stone said it was the Arbora who made the seeds to transform mountain-trees into colony trees. Maybe this place had been transformed out of the rock of the island itself, with their ancestors’ equivalent of mentors’ magic.
Chime said, “But if our ancestors did build this place, who’s been renewing the spells?”
Lithe looked up at the nearest air plant, spread across the ceiling of the chamber. “Maybe they don’t need to be renewed. Maybe they’re just that powerful.”
The scales of Jade’s brow furrowed as she reconsidered. “They might have had a good reason for building it underwater. To hide something, maybe. Or hide from something.”
Lithe said, “The flower has to be magically sustaining that… person. So he was trapped inside it, all this time?”
Chime seemed uneasily fascinated by the scene below. “He must have called those groundlings to him somehow. Maybe their boat came too close.”
Lithe bounced, excited at unraveling the mystery. “But then the groundlings couldn’t let him out, because only one of his own species, or someone who was close to that species, like a Fell-Raksura crossbreed, can open the trap. Then something happened, and the groundlings fled.”
Chime bounced too. “If his body’s been sleeping, but he can still think, and he’s been here all these turns—”
“If he wasn’t raving mad when he was put in there, he is now!”
“Yes,” Malachite cut through their speculation. “But why was he put here in the first place, in an underwater prison, that only a member of his own species could unlock?”
Everyone went still, thinking over that. Moon supplied the obvious answer. “Because somebody powerful wanted to punish him, and it wasn’t safe to put him anywhere else.” The forerunner hadn’t made groundlings flee and die and Fell attack Raksura to create crossbreeds because its intentions were good.
Malachite gave him a head tilt of approval.
Jade said, “How do we know for certain?”
“Perhaps I’ll ask it, after I kill the Fell.” Malachite stood, spread her wings, and sprang out to drop to the floor of the chamber.
Chime and Lithe recoiled in shock. Jade made a choking noise that seemed to combine rage and astonishment. Moon just stared. “Didn’t expect that,” he admitted. In hindsight, he probably should have.
Jade snarled and leapt after Malachite, and Moon followed.
He landed on the floor, every nerve alert. The progenitor and the rulers had swung to face them at Malachite’s sudden appearance. The Fell were all in their winged forms but Shade was still a groundling. Thedes had caught him by the neck and held a clawed hand to his throat, probably the only reason Malachite hadn’t started ripping Fell apart yet.
Shade hadn’t shifted because he looked like he was about to drop from exhaustion. His pale skin was gray-tinged and there were dark bruises under his eyes, his clothes were torn and filthy; he stared at Malachite as if he thought he was hallucinating her. Of course, Moon thought, they haven’t been feeding him. Faced with the choice of groundling meat or nothing, Shade must have chosen nothing. The Fell could have forced him to eat by threatening Moon and the others, but they had wanted him weak.