Winter's Edge

Chapter 38 - Speed

Abby

A little ways into the city, we passed through a long, rounded tunnel. "This is the largest tunnel we've found so far that's rounded like this."

"What's it for?" he said.

I shrugged. "I like to think they were just being creative. But I get the idea they used it to move large objects through to the...well, I can't tell you that."

He smirked. "Why's that?"

"Because I have to show you."

"Okay..." He looked around, a little confused. "...if they were moving large objects through it, wouldn't the tunnels around it be a bottleneck?"

"Yeah, but we don't know what they had up above this tunnel before the flood. Maybe a hole they lowered things down through. The flood changed the landscape above. Covered it all in sediment layers. The current holes in the ceilings have to be post-flood." I looked at him with excited eyes. "It's two miles long." I smiled slyly. "I'll race you."

He returned the smile. "You're on."

I took off, hoping to get a head start on him.

"Hey!" He was quick to engage his powers. Quicker than me.

A moment later, he passed me going a good 50 mph faster than me. Then again, his legs were longer than mine. I shouldn't have expected to win.

Ian shot out the end, then skidded to a stop, kicking up dust in a massive, open cavern with large columns supporting a domed ceiling at least two-, maybe three-, football-fields high. The Three Chasms lay beneath the dome, just to our left, dropping hundreds of feet into an underground river. Just up ahead lay the center piece of the Old City.

The Dragon Castle.

A gaping hole in the ceiling bathed its walls in brilliant hues of blue-white moonlight. But nothing stood out quite like the giant dragon skull in place of its portcullis. Well-placed fiber-optic cables, along with spotlights gave illumination in all the right places making it a grand display.

Ian's face was priceless as he took in the skull, the river-moat that surrounded the castle walls, and the towering multi-spire keep within. "Oh, wow. Is that a..." Ian cocked his head. "...dragon skull?"

I smiled and nodded. "It's more interesting inside." We swung wide around the Three Chasms to our left, covering the distance to the enormous castle's entrance after several minutes. As we approached the dragon skull, my lip twisted at the edge. "Watch this."

I pushed a large bone lever sticking out of the ground. The clinking of gears sounded off inside the castle walls and the mouth of the dragon skull opened, its menacing teeth welcoming us into its belly.

"It looks...real."

I nodded, rubbing my hand across a tooth as we passed by it.

"How is this even possible? Dragons are a myth." Ian looked all around the inside of the skull, the pallet of its mouth arching above us.

I shrugged. "There are different theories out there. Some believe there were a few dinosaurs—not the huge ones—still around until a few hundred years ago that people called dragons. But humans killed off the last of them around the 1500s and they became a myth since they weren't seen anymore. Two-hundred years later, giant fossils were found and the word dinosaur was created. Not long ago, paleontologists found a tyrannosaurus fossil still containing some intact cells and blood vessels. Some have a hard time believing cells could last for sixty-five million years. That caused a big stink among researchers for a while." My eyes got big. "Oh, fun fact—did you know every known dinosaur is engraved on the walls of Babylon?"