Crystal and Torrent waded through the water of the tunnel, Torrent so close to Crystal that their scales pressed together. A large number of the SeaWing's stripes were activated, casting a faint blue glow down the tunnel. Torrent himself could see in the dark, but this way Crystal could also see. On the walls of the cramped tunnel were more of the gemstones from before. Each colorfully lit up as Torrent and Crystal brushed against them, their hues mixing with the blue of Torrent's glowstrips.
The SeaWing tried to keep his body as compact as possible, but the sharp walls still scratched against his scales, although the dampness of the air made it more tolerable. Crystal had asked once if he'd wanted to try and turn back, but he'd refused her offer. If they went back now, they'd have wasted all this time for nothing. Plus, Torrent wasn't even sure he could turn around in this cramped space.
Suddenly, Crystal stopped, causing Torrent to trip on her tail and fall onto back. He quickly lifted himself back up.
"What's wrong?" Torrent asked. The SeaWing tried to crane his head around Crystal to see what had caused her to halt.
"There's a split," Crystal observed. "The tunnel leads two ways."
Torrent frowned. "Should we just choose one? I suggest left."
Crystal shook her head. "Step back a little."
Torrent tried, carefully splashing backwards. Crystal, watching him from in front, also took a couple steps. After she felt like it was far enough, she looked down at the fork in the tunnels, and opened her mouth to let loose a smidgen of frostbreath. Immediately, the surface of the water started to freeze over, and Crystal stopped. The small, quickly melting piece of ice started to float over towards the right path.
"I think we should go to the right," Crystal explained, "that's the way the water is flowing."
Torrent nodded in understanding. He was the SeaWing, he had grown up with ocean currents all his life. Why hadn't he thought of that? "Wait," he quickly said, before Crystal started to walk down the right passage, "we need to mark our path so that we can find our way back."
Crystal understood Torrent's logic. Maybe finding which way the stream was going would lead them further into the caves, but when they came back, that technique wouldn't work anymore. "Let me pass," she asked.
Torrent stepped into the left passage, the intersection giving him just enough room to spread his wings slightly and turn around. Crystal walked past him, then gave a short blast of frostbreath onto the walls of the tunnel they had just come from, the air around Torrent suddenly dropping a few degrees. A glittering white layer remained after she stopped and the mist dispersed. It would take a very long time to melt, and could guide them on the way back.
The two continued on down the right path, and struggled through the passageways. At each split, Crystal performed a similar routine, marking the path they'd come from, then using her frostbreath to detect the downstream direction of the river. It felt like they were in the maze of tunnels for hours, maybe longer, before the two finally reached what looked like an end to them. Crystal breathed a sigh of relief as the tunnel started to open up, and a gasp of wonder as she saw what lied beyond.
"What is it?" Torrent asked, walking past the IceWing as she stepped aside. "Oh. Wow."
The tunnel opened up into a humongous cavern, many times the size of any dragon. More of the colorful gemstones from before poked out from each nook and cranny of the wall, and were no longer just vivid specks. Now, the crystals protruded from the cavern, the largest reaching the size of a dragon's paw. As Crystal stepped near them, bright pulses of colored light lit up, and spread through the cavern like a wave, the light being passed between each adjacent gem.
In the center of the cavern stood a pit, with more of the gems extruding from the walls. The small stream that the two had been wading through continued a short distance before dropping into the pit, arcing over the side and splashing onto the larger gemstones, then falling below. Torrent and Crystal stood on a ledge around the edge of the pit, with a few exits from the cavern thrown around the ledge.
Crystal stepped to the edge of the pit, peering over the side while crouching to maintain her balance. She beckoned Torrent forward and he followed. He dipped the end of his tail over the edge and lit up the stripes on the end so Crystal could see. The pit just seemed to go down, with no semblance of an bottom. The waterfall from the stream fell in, but neither dragon could hear where it hit the ground.
Reaching over, Crystal tapped a claw to a large green gemstone protruding from the pit at a slant. As the tip of her talon touched it, it glowed a bright green, causing the gemstones around it to light up in unison. A wave of light passed down the pit, allowing Crystal to see further down. The light slowly faded as it got farther and farther from her.
"Are they magical?" Crystal asked. Torrent pulled out his dagger, and pressed a claw to the amethyst. It was faintly warm, no matter which direction he pointed.
"I think so," the SeaWing guessed, "I can't imagine anything else lighting up like this."
Crystal tapped a claw to the end of Torrent's tail, prodding one of his bioluminescent stripes. "I thought it might be like one of your stripes."
Torrent thought for a moment. "Maybe," he responded. Were his stripes magical? He didn't think so. "Which way?" he asked. They could go down into the pit, or take one of the other exits from the large cavern.
Crystal thought out loud for a moment. "The pit seems to go deeper, but we don't know if that's where the Darkstalker will be," she explained. "And, it might be dangerous to fly up and down in the limited space. So, let's try one of the other caves first."
She pointed to a small hole in the wall part-way around the ledge she and Torrent were standing on, a few yards up the side of the walls. The two carefully walked around it. Torrent, being the larger one, went first. He stood on his hind-legs, and reached to the edge of the entrance, using his tail to keep himself balanced. After he had grabbed ahold of it, he pulled himself up, stepping on a few of the gemstones in the wall to hoist himself, causing a flurry of light.
Crystal went next, and climbed up a few of the larger gems towards the hole. As she approached the exit, she and Torrent grabbed each others' claws, and the SeaWing helped pull her to the top. The next cave was less impressive. It was wide, but flat, the ceiling only inches above Torrent's horns. More of the gems protruded from the walls here, along with the floor, forcing Crystal and Torrent to watch their steps so as to avoid stepping on them and poking their paws. As Torrent went forward, lighting his stripes up again to light the way, Crystal used her frostbreath to mark the entrance of the cave.
They continued on, passing through the low-roofed cave into another one, this one at such a steep slant the two dragons had to practically walk on the walls. After a few more caves, Crystal making sure to mark all the entrances, the two ended up in a curving cave, with a floor shaped like a SeaWing's back.
"What does it say?" Crystal suddenly asked.
"What?" Torrent replied, confused at what Crystal was referring to.
"Your stripes," she explained further, "that's what they're used for, right? To talk underwater?"
"Oh!" Torrent realized. A few of his stripes were lit, but he hadn't really been paying attention to what it meant. It had been so long since he'd last spoken Aquatic, but he'd never forgotten it, of course. "Er, 'pungent TreeWings red enjoy had.'"
Crystal laughed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Absolutely nothing," Torrent snorted, "I'm just lighting up random stripes. Were you hoping for a secret message or something?"
"Sort of. Anything more interesting you can say?"
"Sure," he offered. He lit up a couple of stripes in succession, causing the cave to go into darkness for a second, before having light burst from his scales. "There, I said 'Crystal.'"
"Great," Crystal laughed, "now say something nice about me."
Torrent thought for a moment, then repeated his show, letting out a few more stripes afterwards.
"What does that mean?" the IceWing asked.
"Er, Crystal has a large tail," Torrent explained.
Crystal burst out laughing. "A very SeaWing thing to say," she teased. Torrent looked back at her in confusion.
Crystal snorted in amusement. "Calling someone 'big-tailed' is usually an insult to IceWings," she answered. "We usually go for, 'your tail is so sharp and spiny, it could poke more holes in a SandWing than the Great Ice Cliff.'"
Torrent waved his tail back and forth. His tail might be able to crush the skulls of his enemies, but it definitely wasn't 'sharp.' "Well then, you have a very, very, sharp and dangerous tail," he acknowledged, flicking on and off the correct stripes to repeat his message in Aquatic.
The two walked forward a bit more. "You know, you should try and teach me Aquatic," Crystal suggested.
Torrent put on an expression of amusement. "Aquatic?" he asked. "But you're an IceWing; you don't have glow-stripes."
"Just to read it," Crystal clarified. "It would be fun! Then, the next time I meet SeaWings talking about me while thinking I don't know what they're flashing, I could just chime in and embarrass them."
Torrent chuckled. That did sound sort of amusing. "It's hard," he warned Crystal. "They say if you don't learn it as a dragonet, you'll never be able to learn it."
Crystal shrugged her wings. "Bet they never tried teaching it to an IceWing, then. After we take out, er, the Darkstalker, we might have plenty of time while waiting for Griffin. Why not then, to pass the time?"
Torrent thought about it. She was right. He didn't know how long it would be until Griffin returned, and he didn't just want to abandon him. It could be days, or months. The two passed into another cavern, this one wide and flat, with a roof only inche — wait. Torrent suddenly realized that this was the same cave they had been in before.
"Crystal," he alerted her. "I think we're going in circles."
She frowned, and glanced around the cave. It did look suspiciously similar, but she couldn't find the entrance they had come in, nor the mark of frostbreath she'd made on it. She looked around again. "Are you sure?" she asked.
Torrent nodded. "I remember this. See? There's the scratches my horns made on the rock."
Crystal looked up, seeing the faint scrapes in the blue-ish glow. "In that case, shouldn't the entrance be over here?" She walked over to where she'd thought they had exited from. There was nothing resembling an exit, just a curved wall with more of the gemstones poking out.
"The entire caverns are magically created," Crystal recalled. "They closed up when you tried to bring your dagger in without allowing the enchantment.
Torrent nodded. "Yeah. I thought they were originally made by Fathom, but I think I was wrong. Darkstalker has been sleeping in here for thousands of years, what if the caverns were made by his magic leaking from his body somehow, saturating the walls with animus magic and creating all these gemstones?"
Crystal gulped. "In that case, maybe the caverns are . . . alive? You know it's possible, Griffin came to life from stone originally."
"And if the caverns are alive and magical," Torrent finished, "they could be changing their position around us. Which is why we can't find the passage we came from."
Crystal closed her eyes. Marking the passages with her frostbreath might have all been for nothing. "But your dagger still works, right?" she asked. "If the caverns are moving around us, could you use it to still find Darkstalker."
"Maybe," Torrent replied skeptically. He pulled it out again, and pressed a claw to the purple amethyst. Crystal took a step back as he waved it in a circle around him, detecting the direction in which it was the hottest. "This way," he said, pointing the steel across the cave.
The two walked to the other side of the cave, Torrent's dagger out and continuously telling him the appropriate direction. Finally, they arrived at a small exit, and entered into another cavern. Torrent's dagger suddenly turned away, sensing the their target was now in a different direction.
"Is Darkstalker moving?" Crystal asked, seeing Torrent's dagger rotate away.
The SeaWing shook his head. "I doubt it," he replied. "But maybe."
Crystal thought for a moment. "What if the caverns don't just shift themselves around," she suggested with concern, "but warp the space beneath the mountain? That would explain why the direction your dagger points in is changing, it's not the direction that's changing, it's the space itself." The IceWing stuck a wing out, and waved it up and down, as if trying to detect these changes herself.
"It's possible," Torrent acknowledged. When he'd allowed the enchantment on the caves to work on him, it must have also allowed the caves to move around (or move everything else around in comparison?). What else could they do? It frightened him. After so long not having to worry about animus magic, here he was, in the lair of the most infamous animus of all time, vulnerable to this magic.
Noticing his fear, Crystal wrapped her tail around Torrent's, keeping the sharp spines along her tail folded inwards, laying them against Torrent's scales. "C'mon, let's go," she quietly suggested. From her voice, Torrent could tell that she was also worried.
The two continued on, weaving in and out of the passages, colorful gems lighting up as they brushed against them. Suddenly, a breeze pushed past Torrent from the next opening. He looked out, and downwards. The pit they had seen when they first came out of the tunnels was there.
Crystal peered over the ledge. They were positioned in a small hole in the cave wall. Torrent's dagger pointed downwards, into the pit. "Well," she sighed, "I guess we know which way to go."
Torrent nodded, and leapt from the precipice, spreading out his wings. Crystal quickly followed. The two tilted their bodies to the side, flying in tight circles as they descended into the depths of the cave, so not to crash into the glowing gemstones on the side. Even if it was only a few minutes until they reached the bottom, it felt like they were gliding hours.
The two had to land carefully, so as to avoid cutting their claws on the numerous protruding gemstones from the cave floor. Here, the gemstones were much more concentrated than before, and some grew larger than Torrent's head. It felt like they couldn't step anywhere without a burst of colorful light.
Crystal accidentally brushed one, causing a purple glow to emanate. "There are more of them here," she extrapolated. "If these things grow because of the Darkstalker's magic, it would make sense that the more of them there are, the closer we're getting."
The small stream that had fallen down the pit landed in a gully, and traveled a little further into the cavern before opening up into a large reservoir of water, half-filled. Crystal and Torrent walked along the left edge, and the vivid gems around them lit up, providing them enough light to see. Torrent continued to hold out his dagger, making sure they were going in the right direction.
Eventually, the two reached a large tunnel in the side of the larger cavern, leading away from the underground reservoir. After checking to make sure it was the right direction, Torrent went in. Crystal shot a blast of frostbreath on the side, even knowing it probably wouldn't make a difference.
Suddenly, a bright light appeared in front of them, causing Torrent to turn away for a moment. When he looked back, he saw a series of the colorful crystals in front, colored a vivid black. The ground started to rumble, and Crystal took a few steps backwards, pulling Torrent's tail to cause him to do the same.
"What's going on?" Torrent asked, confused. Was there an earthquake? If the roof of the cavern fell down on them this far down . . . well, that would be the end of them.
The gems in front of the two started to pulse in a strangely hypnotic spiral pattern, causing Crystal to feel slightly dizzy as she watched closely. The floor beneath the two dragons started to shake up, causing them to crouch so not to be knocked over. The spiral pattern started to rise up from the ground, growing larger and pulling more stones from the ground beneath them. A form began to take shape: the crystals had congregated, moving on their own, to create a humongous glowing dragon with stubs where its wings would be, and sharp gems for scales and bones.
Torrent gulped. This wasn't good.
The amalgamation took a step forward, its crystal tail screeching as it dragged against the floor, the thunderous landing of its claws shaking through the cave.