The Cold Light Fades - Book 1 of the Crystal Chronicles

Chapter Thirteen - Divided

Linta's eyes flashed open and all she could see was green. The girl was surrounded by soft mossy smelling skin, but as she tried to breathe, no air entered her lungs, and she began to panic. The soft slimy membrane was incredibly strong and Linta realised that she could barely move. The lack of mobility added to her anxiety, and she tried to scream but no sound came out of her parched mouth. Linta's mind raced, and her vision started to darken, but then the green skin shifted suddenly, and a rush of cold air filled the interior of the shell. Linta sucked the air in quickly and breathed deeply. She was almost on the verge of hyperventilating until a strong relaxing scent entered her nostrils and Linta felt her muscles and lungs relax.

Now that she was calmer, Linta noticed that there were darker green shadows floating past at an alarming rate. She concentrated hard and sent a questioning image of herself with her hands covering her eyes to Lars, to ask him where she was. The picture that appeared in her head was shocking. She saw her green bundle of vines, falling into a thin well of interweaving frozen caverns. Linta wondered just how she had suddenly got from being on the back of a cart, travelling through an icy trench to falling into a potentially bottomless pit.

The last thing Linta could remember was inhaling some strange, sweet-smelling pollen, as her friend had delicately wrapped himself around her. The pollen's scent had caused her mind to wander, and she had sunk into a deep sleep. While she had slept, she had seen a few blurred images of ice and fire colliding and sweeping around each other.

The princess then felt a slight thud on the underside of the shell and the direction of the moving shadows changed and began to slow. Eventually they stopped and the sense of motion was gone. Linta again questioned Lars about their location, and he relayed that they had skidded down a tunnel and were now inside one of the large caverns.

"Ok," Linta said to herself, "I guess it's time to get out and walk." She formed another picture of herself getting out of the emerald cocoon and pushed it outwards to her vine snake.

The thick moist skin then began to ooze, and a sticky bright green slime pulsed out all over Linta. The outer walls then started to dry out and turned a dull brown colour. The girl's arms were then suddenly released, and she clawed at the dry brown skin to try to escape her protective cell. Linta poked her hand through the rough skin and a glimmer of light shone through, just as the slime reached Linta's neck. She pushed herself up and out of the shell coughing and spluttering as the ooze seeped out everywhere leaving a green pool on the ground. The rest of the shell went dark brown and began to crumble, but near the bottom, a bud emerged from the casing and split open to reveal the green lily headed vine snake.

Linta shrugged off her thick over coat that was drenched with the sticky slime, and it made a damp sloshing sound when it hit the ground. Now that the young girl was down to just her normal cold weather clothes, she noticed that it was freezing in the cavern. The icy walls were faintly glowing somehow, on the floor thick white stalagmites reached upwards toward their stalactite counterparts that hung from the low ceiling.

The honeycomb maze of tunnels was confusing and Linta did not know which way to go, every passageway looked the same and the cold felt like it was eating away at her bones.

"Which way do you think we should go?" she whispered to Lars as she scooped him up and draped him over her shoulders like a living scarf. The snake poked his pale green forked tongue out to taste the air and then he gestured towards one of the passages beside where the green slimy pool was.

"Are you sure?" Linta asked sceptically.

"Your vine snake is quite correct, Daughter of Scorvain. The creature can detect the scent of your companions and I too sense life along that passage," said the Soul of Light. The sound of the loud calm voice in her head made Linta jump unexpectedly.