Chapter 52: Blockage

Patches of yellow and orange, speckled with hints of brown, decorated the tiled wall at the back. Sylph’s pfod stuck to the floor in dried but still a little sticky puddles she did not dare question. It was not quite the squeaky clean escape drain she had envisioned, but it would do. Brandon faced her with a pinched nose. “You want us to dive? Through that?”

Sylph turned to face the group. Nobody said a word as their gazes were firmly fixated on the rushing water. It was a silence that demanded an explanation for what by the six Sylph visualized their escape to be. “The other one was much cleaner.”

Elina looked up, face puffed with queasiness. “Problem is that this one gets cleaned once a week. Nahana’s daily, twice.”

Biscuit unattached the pointlight from his shoulder and handed it to Sylph, as if to say, show us you would do that. “Fine,” she blurted out, snatched the pointlight and smacked it onto her left. She then stepped over the rim into the cool water without hesitation. It rushed right through her legs, not between, not past, right through. Concentrating a little harder on what happened inside, she noticed that it wiped away minuscule drips of the poison she had missed. Her ability had the habit of doing things it deemed right, things she never knew were possible.

“I admire your eagerness to walk in like that,” Brandon said, but took the first step after her.

“It’s nice and invigorating and goes right through me.”

A shiver raced up all the way to his face as the water crept up his pant legs. “Refreshing? It is this cold.” He held up two fingers, holding an imaginary pebble.

“Stone cold?” She had never heard that expression before.

Brandon sucked in a laugh and took the last step into the deepest part. “I’m not gonna question what slimy ground I am standing on. I am just happy to wear shoes.”

“Give me a second.” Sylph submerged her head and crawled through the drain until her pfod hit the open water. She reached and broke the surface before turning back. But when she gripped the rough and slimy end of the drain, she noted something odd. The current had pushed her out, as water in motion usually did. But crawling in, only her horns created small swirls as most of the mass passed through her instead.

“Thirteen seconds.” She surfaced back inside with the words already on her tongue. “If you can hold your breath that long, you are good to go.”

Elina and Biscuit found their way into the water while she was gone. Sylph had a hard time judging the exact expressions playing over their faces. All she knew was that it firmly sat somewhere between disgust and disbelief. If somebody were to open the door, they would slam it shut and try to stop their imaginations from running wild. It was odd that the stream even fit three dragons and a human. Then again, the arena had grown adults, and that was where Sylph stopped her own mental imagery. “Any last unfinished business to take care of before we leave?”

“Please don’t word it like that,” Brandon said.

“Take a deep breath,” Sylph commanded. “We dive on three. Two. One.” Water enveloped her and her lungs filled. With a single push of her legs, she was inside the drain and fumbled her way through the narrow corridor. She flinched in pained surprise and smacked her head upwards against the rocky ceiling as somebody grabbed onto her tail. Ignoring the flaring spikes of pain, she pushed on. It was impossible to tell who to get mad at. If she had to hold her breath, she would have choked.

Seconds later, she breached the surface. Brandon followed, then Elina. As they rubbed and shook the water off their heads, she gave Biscuit another second to join them. He did not.

Sylph pulled the center of water out of position to adjust her buoyancy and dropped back towards the riverbed like a rock. Her heart hammered as she moved through the dark water. He can not have gotten stuck. The hole was sizeable and wide, and yet he had not reached the end. Then she saw it. Clouds of dirt muddied the water and, barely visible by the light from her shoulder, was the silhouette of an arm. He swiped and grasped at the surrounding rocks, throwing more muck and mud into the current.

Sylph clutched a solid outcropping with her left and lunged for his arm with her right. Two ways for him to get free; Forward or back, and this position did not give her leverage to push. With a flare of her dragonheart, she pulled. Her claws dug into his underarm as did his into hers, clenching tighter the more she pulled. She tugged harder when his grip loosened, but he showed no signs of breaking through whatever had trapped him.

“No, you don’t.” She let go for a second to hook her legs into the rocks, wincing as the sharp edges pierced her scales. Faking an exhale to focus the fire inside her dragonheart, she clawed herself into his arm. The claws on his pfod danced and clenched in surprised pain, but he grabbed onto the slick floor once more with what she assumed to be the dredges of his last breath.

Whatever trapped him, or his arm, preferably the former, something would give up. All she needed was more power. Her dragonheart blazed like a dying star as she continued to stem herself into the rocks. Sylph tightened her muscles for one last tug. A tremble reverberated through his body and all the way into Sylph as he rushed forward with a mighty crack, like a snapped line under tension. Claws still firmly in his arm, she pushed herself upward and dragged him through the last tail length of the drain.

They surged through the surface with a splash, followed by the calming sounds of desperate wheezing and coughing. Biscuit had been quiet and limp like a sack of wet grain. She had feared for the worst. “Ow.” He sucked up a pained wince. “Wai-!”

Elina tackled him in a hug that drove them both beneath the surface for a second. “You okay? Anything broken? Dislodged? What happened? Oh, thank the six you are okay.”

“Nothing but scratches, and,” his pfod crawled up his horns, or rather the one and a half he had left. It had sheared off near the middle and the closer Sylph looked, the more scrapes and tears she spotted all over his face, neck and wings. He turned towards her, holding the stump of his horn. “Thank you,” he huffed in disbelief. “I thought that was it. Got my horn stuck in a crevice.” His scales lost all color as he continued, and she feared he might pass out. “My lungs burned and-” He shook whatever thoughts he had away and rolled his shoulder. “By the gods, you nearly pulled my arm out of its socket. Just how much strength do you have?”

“Grooowhjags,” Sylph tried to speak, but only a squall of water spew from her mouth. Consciously managing her ability, she remedied that fact. “I won’t leave somebody behind.”

Elina turned around with a strange glitter in her eyes that sent Sylph into a fighting stance, which was not much of any posture, considering she floated. Elina pounced forward with arms outstretched. “Thank you!” Her voice burst with stunning happiness and fear and Sylph barely dodged out of the way. Elina landed face first in the water.

“No hugging,” Sylph winced.

“Right,” Elina said and shook away the water. “But mark my words, I will, one day. I am in your debt.”

Sylph failed to react in a meaningful manner. Genuine praise evoked some strange sensations that failed her. Instead, the hot shiver of shame crawled up her neck being put in the spotlight for this. Elina would have dived too, Sylph was sure of that. As would Brandon. It was the right thing to do. You did not leave somebody to drown. She was simply the first to react.

“Don’t downplay what happened to yourself. You have our deepest gratitude,” Elina said with a smile and went to look at Biscuit’s horn.

“She’s right, you know,” Brandon swam up with a wide smile plastered over his face. “We could not have dragged Biscuit out of there.” His expression faded. “But it did not happen like that. Thankfully I, we, got you along.”

Coming from Brandon, the words were easier to digest. He told the truth, and his words sounded more neutral than Elina’s. It drove a cold realization into her pfod. It would have been her fault if he died. She should have calculated better, not just wing it, not if somebody else’s life was on the line. She should feel guilty and not be praised. “No more tight passages under water. I promise.”