What’s happening? was all Evanshade could think as he thrust across the cracking ocean floor of Meridia, approaching the rising tower before him. I have to reach Cardonea Tower in time! I have to rescue Illala before it collapses! Hard sand and stone beneath him burst upward, spewing air bubbles up and about his body.
The sensation of air erupting on his flesh could have been described as tickling, had Evanshade not been in such a state of mental alarm. But the stones bursting from below and lodging in his scaly black flesh were excruciating.
His senses switched off, preventing him from registering sensation, as he narrowed in on that single goal.
THOOM!
As Evanshade neared Cardonea Tower a gigantic stone plunged into the earth beside him. It had cracked off from the tower itself. Have to find a cage, he thought, spying one of the large bone contraptions tied with a kelp rope to a hook in the tower wall’s base.
His tailfin pumped from side to side, spinning him in different directions as he dodged smaller stones plummeting down from the tower wall.
Within seconds he reached the cage of bone he had been eying, untying its kelp rope with haste and then looping two whale-leather straps that were at its front, around his shoulder like a pack. This cage had been used to transport enslaved Meridians in from the molten mines to their holding cells, but now it would aid him.
CRACK! The upper most part of the tower separated from its lower two-thirds, sending a scratching sound through Evanshade’s ears as it separated and caved downward. It had split off just above Illala’s room.
Evanshade’s tail had never beaten as quickly as it began to do. His heart raced in his chest, almost leaping from it, as he swept parallel to Cardonea Tower’s wall. He breathed a fresh breath of water through his gills upon reaching Illala’s windowsill.
“Evanshade,” Illala sighed as she saw his eyes rise above the sill before her. Panic flushed through her face. “What is happening?” She clung to the stone sill as her rotund belly glistened in the sunlight trickling through the ocean outside.
“We must leave quickly,” Evanshade spoke to her with both urgency and love.
“How?” she spoke faintly, for her belly had grown so large that its weight prevented her from swimming. The baby would force its birth any day now.
Evanshade extended his arms to the windowsill. “I will carry you. Step into my arms.”
Illala’s slim body, with its large belly, climbed through the sill and into Evanshade’s embrace.
He lovingly cradled her in one muscular arm and opened the bone cage door with another. “Rest in here and I will carry you on my back.”
Nervously, Illala crept on all fours into the rocking bone cage.
“Wait here,” Evanshade spoke as a gnawing thought entered his mind. He tied the cage to the tower wall and swept with his tailfin into Illala’s room.
It was dark, possessing a haunting silence. With a push he forced open her door and pivoted down a stairwell to the room below, where he jabbed his double-edged trident into the door’s lock and ruptured it open. With a swift rush against the door Evanshade burst into the room.
A deformed old man floated in the room’s center, his fingers bent in unnatural directions. The man’s expression was both transfixed and that of blank nothing. His leg hung bent at his side.
Evanshade hovered in the doorway and looked upon the man. “This is all I can do for you, Amaranth. Free yourself,” he spoke. “Meridia is collapsing.”
CRACK! The second part of the tower broke free, as the walls appeared to slant in about them. Evanshade left Amaranth to his own devices, hurrying off to Illala’s side.
Within seconds he burst into open waters from her windowsill to find her huddling in a slanting corner of the cage. He managed to untie it from the wall just as Cardonea Tower slid to the ocean floor below, and strapped the leather harness to his back.
Then, with a sweep, he turned toward the realm of Sangfoul, whipping brown sands chasing him for leagues as he swam with all his sore muscles could muster. Not a soul was in sight.
The cage bobbed behind him, with Illala shivering from where she huddled against its chilled bone.