72

Monster!

Deilune and Beilla stood opposite the opening.

Roughly heart-shaped, like a curved triangle, the entrance was about four feet tall, four feet across at the top and about two feet at the base. They could feel a current of warmer air blowing from the opening, as if exhaled from a sleeping dragon within.

"Now what?" Deilune asked.

"We must go through," Beilla said, recovering his composure. “Abzeig will remain here to guard against escape.”

Reluctantly, a scowling Abzeig drew closer, clutching his pistol, though staying well away from the tunnel’s entrance.

“I’m willing to go," Deilune said and turned to Linda. "Do you want to stay here?"

Linda glanced at Abzeig. "Not with Mr. Smiles there."

She took her husband's hand and walked with him to the entrance. He gave her hand a squeeze and then got on all fours to enter the passage, the pulsing Kareima providing plenty of light. As he moved into the passage, the heat became more intense. Like a sauna, he thought. He called back to Linda, "Take a deep breath before you come in. It’s stifling in here."

He scooted along as best he could in the close confines, checking to see if Linda was keeping up. The cramped passage was hot but it was straight and did not narrow. About fifty feet in, the light of the Kareima revealed a widening of the passage, and Deilune felt a moment of relief followed by a strong rush of anticipation. What were they about to find? Was the Astreima really within their grasp?

He stood up slowly and turned back to Linda who was making her way, cautiously, illuminated from behind by the glow of the Fareima around Beilla's neck. He waited for her, and then, together, they stepped into the new chamber. Beilla quickly joined them.

In the competing light of the Kareima and Fareima, the chamber seemed to be tugged between the cool blues of the sea and the tempestuous red of lava. Forty or fifty feet beyond them were four distinct pools in the cavern floor, seemingly reflecting the light of the two gemstones. Two of the pools were redolent with the calm, inviting clarity of spring water; the other two bubbled and popped, roiling with the superheated fierceness of lava.

"Look at that, Linda. No wonder it's so hot in here."

"What is this place?" she asked.

In almost trance-like wonder, Beilla answered, "The heart of the mountain. Mount Breima. Where the Tireima was formed. Lost. And now is to be remade."

"How can you be so sure, Beilla?"

"Come, Deilune. Tell me that you do not see the very pattern the missing piece revealed? See how the chamber is formed? How can it be otherwise?"

To get a better look at what Beilla claimed, Deilune took a step towards the pools of lava and water. Immediately, he shouted, madly waving his arms like a windmill gone berserk, and jerked backwards.

“What’s wrong?” Linda gasped, catching Deilune as he stumbled backward. She held him as he caught his breath.

"Linda, be careful!” he warned. “There's a chasm. I almost stepped off the edge."

Beilla cautiously inched forward, keeping his eyes fixed at his feet until he came to the very edge of the chasm that blocked their way to the four pools beyond. He removed the Fareima from around his neck and dangled it over the side. Its fiery hues pushed back the deep-earth darkness to reveal the far side of the gulf. It was a good thirty feet across. The light of the Fareima was not enough, however, to penetrate the nether depths of the chasm which stretched from sidewall to sidewall.

There was no way across.

"Well, this is an interesting setback, Beilla," Deilune goaded their captor.

Beilla did not respond. He inched his way along the ledge of the chasm to one sidewall, then turned and crept along to the opposite cave wall.

With a self-satisfied smile on his face, he motioned Deilune to him. "The answer is here. Come, look."

Deilune and Linda's followed and saw what Beilla had discovered. An opening in the sidewall of the cavern. Deilune searched across the dark chasm to the dimly lit walls near the mesmerizing pools of lava and water. It was difficult to discern, but he eventually understood what he was seeing.

Across the wide chasm, near the pools, obscured in shadow where the cavern wall met the floor of the chamber, was a deeper shadow. It was another opening. It formed a passageway to the pools, a much smaller version of the roughly heart-shaped tunnel that had led them here.

"Okay, I get the layout,” Deilune said as he inspected the opening on their side of the chasm. “But, there is still no way across. That tunnel is too small for any of us to get through."

"Yes, on that account you are right. It is too small for us." Beilla had a fixed smile on his face.

"You're not thinking of using dynamite to widen it? That's insane."

"No, Deilune, I am not insane. The picture is now clear to me. There is a much simpler solution. One foretold" He paused as if listening, and then walked to the passage they had crawled through. Again, he listened.

"There will be no need for dynamite. I think our solution is on its way.."

Linda gave her husband a perplexed look. Then she heard what Beilla had heard coming through the heart-shaped passage and leapt at Beilla who had blocked the passage with his menacing form.

"Let me past, you monster!" she screamed, as if echoing the sound she’d heard a millisecond before: the high-pitched, completely unmistakable shriek of her daughter.