Luke Swan and the Laistrynians: The Flood

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

~I Get a First Impression of~

 ~the Other World~

I woke up on the bottom of the ocean.

I couldn't breath. Well, ok, that was obvious, but, you know… lungs like breathing. The pressure was crushing me flat like a tin can. My eyes stung, but I managed to keep them open enough to see Zyra floating towards me in a giant bubble. I thought, "Okay..."

She reached out with her hand. Miraculously, the bubble didn't pop or fill with water. I grabbed her hand and she pulled me in.

I gasped for air. Zyra's breathing seemed rapid, too. She looked at me with concern, before saying, "You were actually stupid enough to follow me."

"Well, it was kind of a surprise when you decided to stop breathing and then just completely vanish!"

"Well, it was an even bigger surprise to me when I got sucked into my arch-nemesis's back garden." She looked up. She looked really worried. I realised it was strangely quiet here: there was no life anywhere. Nothing. The only thing was the strange, black sand below us.

Was this the evil other world that Zyra was talking about? If so, I wouldn't like to meet whatever was above us.

To my dismay, the bubble started to float upwards. We floated for fifteen minutes, and I still saw no sign of any form of life. Nothing. Nada. Zero. It was so creepy, so eerie, that it sent a shiver up my spine. Zyra noticed me.

"Nothing can live in this sea," she explained, "because it is directly above Selenos's dark fortress. The evil behind its walls is so great, that it drives away even the foulest demons. And believe me; I've seen some pretty bad baddies."

I tried to imagine that. Now I really didn't want our bubble to surface.

Unfortunately, it did.

What did I think of the evil world? Well, it was dark.

Really, no light at all except for a few stars that glimmered above us.

The bubble popped, and I fell into ice-cold water. Zyra seemed fine. Unfortunately, I wasn't. My teeth were chattering like crazy. Zyra looked over at me and raised her eyebrows.

"Cold?" she asked innocently.

"Y-y-yeah," I managed to say without biting my tongue.

"Well, we definitely can't stay here," she said. Even though it was dark, I could see the fear in her eyes.

"Are you ok?" I asked.

"Of course I'm not ok!" she snapped. "Knock some common sense into you!"

Well, that shut me up. Zyra just sighed. We were both silent for a while, kicking our legs to keep ourselves afloat.

"So, what do we do now?" I asked. "Can't we use that portal to go back the way we came?"

"Confound it! I should have realised it the last time." Zyra seemed to be talking more to herself than to me. "The door has two entrances. You do not want to know where the second one is."

A feeling of dread started to rise up in me. I knew exactly what she was going to say next. So I said it instead.

"We have to go into that fortress," I said.