“Hey, Harish, what are you doing?” I called over to him.
He glanced up and saw me coming over. He quickly stood up, looked at me once more, and jumped feet first into the hole.
“Denton!” I yelled over my shoulder. “Come with me!”
Denton quickly got up from Chinook's side and came running after me. I grabbed the dragon’s tooth from the ground. It was the closest thing I had to a weapon.
I hesitated to enter the hole until Denton caught up. “Harish just jumped down there,” I said.
“What, you want to follow him? Just let him go.”
“But what if he’s not running away from us? What if he’s running toward something?”
A frown spread across Denton’s face. “Do you really think she’s down there? If she is, we have to stop...”
I cut Denton off. “There’s only one way to find out." I grabbed Denton’s arm with my free hand and jumped into the opening before he could protest. He was pulled down along with me.
We dropped down into the abyss. With each foot that we fell, the air grew hotter and hotter. The crystal rods came into sight once again. When the dragon had been trying to escape from down here, he must have hit some of them, causing them to shoot out of the ground. This time there was no dragon to catch my fall. We were so deep that we’d never be able to climb out again.
Together we fell onto one of the strange cylinders and slid down the side of it. The heat emanating off of it began to scorch my pants. At the bottom of the crystal rod was a cluster of small, sharp crystals. I quickly pushed Denton off the side of the column and turned so that I’d fall down off the opposite side. Luckily, neither one of us dropped onto any razor-sharp crystals.
“What are these things?” Denton asked, turning in circles. The hole above looked small from such a distance, but the light that shone through brightened the entire underground cave. The light reflected off each crystal rod, making them sparkle. It looked like midday when it should have been pitch black. “It looks like a crystal forest,” he added in awe.
I couldn’t have described it better myself. Hundreds of crystal rods poked out of the ground, intertwining with one another, creating quite a maze. And in the places where there weren’t crystal rods, there were clusters of tiny sharp crystals, just waiting for someone to trip into them.
I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead. I hoped Denton still had some water in his satchel. “I don’t know what these things are, but we won’t last long down here. It’s brutally hot.”
I didn’t need to tell Denton that. He was lifting off his shirt, and now he was bare-chested like me.
“Are we in the bloody Fuorster's lair?” Denton always got angry when he was overheated.
“It’s too beautiful,” I reached out and let my palm hover over one of the crystals. "How are they emanating heat?"
“I don't know,” Denton said, touching his forehead where he had run into one earlier. Denton's eyes suddenly grew. “Look, there’s Harish!”
I snapped my head to where he was pointing. “Come on then!” We ran after him. I was sweating profusely. “Harish, stop!”
I knew he had heard us, but instead of stopping, he picked up his pace. The crystals were sleek and it was hard to keep my footing. I saw Harish sprint across a horizontal crystal rod. Below it, thousands of the small sharp crystals pointed up, making the crystal rod above be a bridge of sorts. I ran up to where the long bridge began, then abruptly stopped. I wasn't usually scared of heights, but the combination of the slippery bridge and the deadly crystal spikes below made my knees tremble.
“Denton, I can’t do it.”
I heard Denton panting behind me. Harish turned and saw that we had stopped. He bent down next to one of the small sharp points and split the rope that was bounding his hands together. He smiled over at us as he pulled a dagger from his belt. It was the one that had been in Achates' bag. He must have gotten it before anyone else had found Achates' unconscious body.
“Kings aren't afraid of heights,” Denton said and nudged me onto the slick bridge.
"I'm not a king!"
"Well, pretend a little longer then."
I took a deep breath and began walking very slowly. Harish started running again.
“Hurry!” Denton called from behind me.
I focused on the end of the bridge and began to run. A few feet from the end I slipped, falling forwards. My naked torso singed against the crystal and left a long burn mark down my chest. I slid into a heap in the dirt on the other side. When Denton reached me, he lifted me to my feet.
“There,” Denton said, pointing.
Harish came to a halt in the distance, blocking whatever he was looking at. I began to run faster than I had ever run before. Soon I was closer to Harish than I was to Denton, who was jogging behind me. Harish was holding the dagger in his hand. His grip was tight, his knuckles white. His hand was shaking. Whatever he was about to do, it didn’t look like he wanted to do it.