Down through the darkness Jace and Sheiral fell, plunging into a connecting passage through which a subterranean stream flowed. The passage of water over the stone made the bottom and sides of this passageway surprisingly smooth, though not… unfortunately… particularly soft. The pair were bruised and battered as they slid through the winding stone tube with no way of stopping themselves or slowing their descent on the natural waterslide. Their momentum carried them as much as the current of the shallow stream did.
Eventually, they each stopped screaming when they’d been sliding long enough to consciously realize that they weren’t plunging directly to their doom and that there was no end to the downward flight in sight.
Not that there was much of anything else in sight in the perfect darkness of the underground… but then the pair both became aware that they could, in fact, see the walls around them… they could just barely make out the fast-moving water, glittering like diamonds.
“Jace?” Sheiral called, her voice audible below and in front of the boy… and then he realized he could see her, at least as a dark shape on the path in front of him.
“What?”
“I think it’s getting lighter,” she said.
“I noticed,” he said.
“There’s something up ahead,” she said.
“What?” Jace asked, wondering why she couldn’t be more specific. A wall? A waterfall? A pit of spikes? A monster? Details mattered.
“I said, there’s something up ahead!” she said, and he groaned inwardly. Moments were racing by. Whatever was coming up would need to be dealt with. Time was of the essence.
“I heard!” he said. “What is…”
He was cut off by a whooping shriek from the girl, as he himself became aware of a blindingly bright light immediately ahead. He passed into the green glow and then felt the world drop away from him… he’d shot out of the narrow tube-like tunnel into a wide open space with green light all around. His arc carried him over part of a pool of water and landed hard and heavily on some wooden planking, right next to a very dazed and dizzy Sheiral.
He had no breath in his body or strength in his limbs. The floor beneath him seemed to be rocking in more than one direction and the ceiling above him was swimming in and out of focus… indeed, Jace only knew that the one was below him and the other was above him because he’d stopped falling. He had no greater sense of up or down.
Sheiral groaned softly beside him. Jace tried to flop around to face her, to see what sort of shape she was in. His eyes found a tall, white-clad form looming over him, its face wrapped in black cloth. Even as Jace’s vision gradually cleared, the figure still seemed fuzzy.
“Well,” the man said, “I think we’ve solved your food problem.”
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