Chapter 29 - Diving
The chamber was alive with the flashing beams of electric torchlight and reflections on the wet rock. Lydia slopped across the trampled mud toward Christie. Oddy scrambled to follow her. An anguished shout announced the spiders had bitten Dean again. Shona was complaining about something, her voice rising to a shriek. There were cries of "Look out!" and "Shadows!" from up and down the chamber.
Oddy caught up with Lydia. "Lydia, they're panicking. I don't think the torchlight is enough."
"I think the Watcher knows we're here," she said. "If he knows where the tokens are, he could…"
"They're everywhere!" Corben cried.
"Lumos maxima!" came a girl's voice.
Searing white light flooded the gallery. A dark cloud squatted at the far end of the chamber. It moved, intensifying its blackness and advancing on them.
Then the light faded.
"More light!" someone called.
"Lumos maxima!" It was the same voice as before. It was Sophie's.
The light flared brighter once more. The shadows continued their advance.
"There's summat in the mud now!" Jimmy shouted.
"Spiders?" Oddy asked.
"Looks like snakes, mate," Jimmy said.
"Oh, god," Shona whimpered.
"Dean! Mind your leg!" Dev cried out.
A flash of fire sprang from Dean's wand. The snake-like creature wrapped around his knee flopped back into the mud.
"Lydia!" Oddy shouted.
Lydia was reaching into a crack in the wall with the full length of her arm. "I can see the token!"
"You need to help your team," Oddy told her. "Shadow spiders and mud snakes!"
Lydia glared at him, but pulled her arm from the crack and joined him. Her arm was bleeding from several scratches.
Lights glared; fire flashed down at the snakes; Companions sloshed and slipped in the mud. Lydia looked on.
"What attacks spiders and snakes?" Oddy asked.
"What?" Lydia asked in return.
She frowned for a moment, then smiled.
She held out her hands together, cupped as though proffering water. A flame sprang to life in her palms. It flickered. She pursed her lips. The flame grew strong again. It grew wings and leaped into the air, shaped like a bird. The fire hawk flew at the gathered shadows. Another followed, then a stream of hawks flowed from her hands. They wheeled around, then one called out and they split into two groups. One group flew at the shadows; the other dived into the slurry of mud after the snakes.
Lydia's companions fell back against the walls of the gallery, startled by the flashing flames plummeting into the mud. The fire hawks feasted. The mud snakes writhed in their beaks before being consumed. At the far end of the gallery, the hawks screeched as they swooped into the mound of spiders and out again.
It took a minute, but the hawks picked off every one of the team's assailants. Once the last snake and the last spider had gone, the hawks faded and the light in the chamber dimmed.
"Let's get this token and get out of here," Lydia said.
Her companions applauded.
"Thanks for bossing me about," a pink-faced Lydia said to Oddy.
"My pleasure," he said with a grin.
Lydia shook her head. This Oddy was more than the Oddy she had always respected. This was an Oddy she had to admire. He is more than that, she thought, but she did not know what more there was. What was here and now was the token.
"We need to get the token," she told Oddy. "I'm the smallest. I'll squeeze in and get it. All I need is to go down, then up to it. You wait here and I'll pass it out to you so that I've got my hands free to get out again."
With that, she squeezed into the fissure.
"Getting on well, you two."
Oddy was about to tell Dean to mind his own business but, as he turned to face his friend, what he saw horrified him.
"Dean, you look terrible!" he said.
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Not feeling my best."
Dean's face was pale and drained, more grey than white.
"Oddy? Can you grab this?" came Lydia's voice from inside the wall of rock.
Oddy turned to Dean. "You have longer arms. Can you take the token from Lydia?"
Dean looked into the fissure, then stretched his arm in as far as he could reach. Lydia's hand, grasping what looked like a knobbly potato, was still too far for Dean to reach.
"Throw it, Lydz," he said. "I'll catch it."
Lydia shuffled into a less cramped position, swung her arm and tossed the token into Dean's waiting hand.
Dean disappeared.
"That is what Ambrose must have meant," Dev said, "when he spoke about 'emissaries' taking the tokens back to our world."
"He said they would return the tokens to a 'higher power' to make a weapon against the Alterworlders," Oddy explained to Lydia. "By 'higher power', I believe he meant himself."
"That sounds like him," she said. "So, how come I didn't get sent back when I touched the token?"
"You are the hero, Lydia," Dev told her. "And you are our leader. You have to stay here with us."
"There are seven essences," she mused. "That's why Ambrose said I needed at least five more companions, after Sophie and Freddie."
A glance passed between Oddy and Dev.
"I know," she said. "That would have left me all alone at the end. I'm glad I found a couple extra."
"I'll stay with you all the way, Lydia," Oddy promised. "As the stand-in mentor, of course."
Dev suppressed a smile.
"As it worked out," Lydia said, "Dean is the one I would have returned, anyway. He looked ill. I'm sure Ambrose will look after him."
"Would it be all right if we moved on now?" Dev asked. "This is not my favourite place in the world — this world or any other."
"Yeah, you're right," Lydia agreed. "We should carry on. I guess we leave from the other end of this gallery, where the shadow spiders were."
Lydia rounded up her team. They had been quiet since Dean had disappeared. She felt she should give them tasks to occupy them. She needed to stop them from worrying or worse — going into shock. Without trying to read their feelings, she could tell the fight and Dean's disappearance had disturbed them. They had dealt well with the horrors on the way to the gateway. But that time had ended with them standing in a pristine new world on a beautiful day. It had given them a chance to recuperate. This latest conflict had seen them on the edge of panic and had left them in a dark and strange underground world. The threat of further attacks unnerved them. The thought that the Watcher would guard every token lay heavy on their souls. She must keep them moving.
"Are we using wands still?" Corben asked as they filed towards the exit at the far end of the chamber.
"If it's the Watcher sending us these problems," Lydia said as lightly as she could, "then he'll know where we are when we get to the tokens. The rest of the time, I don't think he's sure. If we use magic, it might give us away. Best if we stick with using the torches, for now."
There was a murmur amongst the team. The consensus was that her decision made sense.
"Keep your wands handy, though," she added. "Any more problems and I'll be asking you to use them. Be prepared!"
This cheered them. Without their wands, they had felt powerless. Their wand skills were a major part of why Lydia had chosen them, she realised. Though, now that she came to consider them, their friendship was paramount.
"Lydia?" Oddy whispered once they were on their way through the new tunnel. "Those birds of fire…"
"What about them?" she asked.
"It just… I thought it looked as though you found the magic harder than you'd expected."
They paced onwards in silence for a while.
"It was," she admitted, stepping around a boulder which was in their path.
She waited for him to re-join her on the other side of the boulder.
"It shocked me," she said.
Oddy frowned in thought for a moment. "We are underground, surrounded by the Anteworld. Back on the surface, you might have a better connection with our world and the Old Magic."
"Possibly. I will lose my Old Magic at some point though."
"But you — we — will have access to more of the High Magic."
She did not want to shine her torch on her face to show him how grateful she was. She held his hand for a second or two.
"Thanks, Oddy. But…" she said in a low voice.
They walked on a while longer without speaking.
"But what?" Oddy had to ask.
"I won't be special anymore."
"You?!" Oddy sounded shocked, then lowered his voice again. "Lydia, you will always be special. You can't help but be special. I mean, you are our leader and the hero of this whole quest. And from what Draco and Ambrose have said, your High Magic skills will easily equal anyone here."
Grateful for his words, she reached out and took his hand again.
"Sorry to interrupt, babes, but it has to be lunchtime!" Freddie's voice sounded like he was grinning.
Lydia did not dare look at him. She hoped the torchlight would not show her blushes.
"As soon as we find somewhere, we'll sit down and have lunch," she said.
Not too much later, they emerged from a narrow part of the tunnel into a wider space. It had limited headroom, but a fast-flowing stream at one side of the space had cut into the rock. It had left a ledge in the floor. They had room to sit and dangle their feet over the edge. The water would still be below the soles of their boots.
"We'll stop here for a rest and a bite to eat," Lydia called out to her friends.
They sat in a line on the ledge overlooking the stream. The edge was uneven and dug into the backs of their legs. The current charged through the space, raising a fine mist of spray which hung cold in the air. They settled down for a joyless and less restful break than she had hoped.
Jimmy was in excellent form, joking with the others. He was careful to include Shona in the fun. She had found the shadow spiders unsettling.
Lydia sat between Oddy and Sophie. Sophie leaned in close to Lydia.
"I wanted to apologise, Lydz," she said.
"For what?"
"I used my wand, back at the spider cave. That lumos maxima. I should have asked if it was OK first."
"It's fine," Lydia assured her. "I was about to tell everyone to use their wands. Don't worry about it. You used your initiative."
"I didn't want you to think I was undermining your authority or anything."
"Nah, anyone who undermines my authority gets turned into a toilet roll," Lydia joked.
"Eww!" said Sophie.
"Lydia?" Dev asked, tapping her on her shoulder.
He had got up and had come round to crouch behind Oddy.
"Yes, Dev?" Lydia said.
"We may have an insignificant problem… or we may have a tremendous problem."
"What is it?" she asked, her spirits sinking.
"Our exit."
He pointed towards the downstream end of the torrent at their feet. Lydia, Sophie, and Oddy stared at the point where the raging black waters disappeared under the rock wall.
"I'll put a rope around me and swim down it," Lydia informed them. "I'll see how far it goes and then you can pull me back."
"How far it goes?" Sophie asked.
"Until there's some way out," Lydia said. "And, you know, somewhere to breathe. I'll take a few torches and leave one wherever there's some air."
"What if there is no air?" Oddy asked in a small voice.
"Then I'll come back and we'll have to find another exit," she said. "But there will be a way out, eventually."
"Eventually?!" Oddy sounded horrified.
"I don't need air," Lydia reassured him. "It's one of those bits of inherent magic. I'm not performing magic when I do it. Or, if I am, what other choice do we have?"
"Some of us, the rest of us, have to breathe, though," Oddy reminded her.
"And some of us will not be happy about swimming in the dark and in… that!" Dev pointed to the churning water of the stream.
"I know," Lydia sighed. "I'm open to other suggestions. There hasn't been another tunnel since we left the token chamber. That's a long way to backtrack."
Oddy explained the plan to the others, while Lydia stripped to her underwear and a T-shirt. She tied the end of a hundred metre length of rope around her waist.
"Aren't you gonna freeze in that, love?" Jimmy asked.
"Won't feel it," she explained. "And I need to keep my arms and legs free."
"Bloody 'ell. She's amazing, isn't she?" Jimmy said, turning to Oddy.
Oddy let out an unintelligible squeak.