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Nadia screwed the cap back on her bottle. “This is a strange place to turn on the charm, Chronicler. Next time, you can choose the venue.”
“On it,” he said with laughter in his voice. “Not that I’m complaining about this one.”
No, he wasn’t, was he? Nadia had noticed Harmiston seldom complained. It was one of the things about him that meshed with her and her upbringing. Oh yes, he was always positive, inquisitive, eager to learn and share that knowledge. And highly talkative. He was in some ways as different from the Wraiths as one could be, but there were a few things in him she recognized in herself and those she had spent most of her life with. His willingness to do what was right, his lack of despair when things got bad, and simply doing what was needed instead.
She wasn’t lying when she’d told him she enjoyed having him along. Harmiston was a breath of fresh air in her life, especially after all her years of secret-keeping and following every rule. And taking him with her like this had become easier after she’d learned he could take care of himself. There were always risks of course, but when had life ever been without those?
“Shall we continue?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She heard him screw the cap back on his own bottle and stuff it into the small bag.
They went on, agreeing to hold off on the gas masks for a while if they could. They were crawling and shimmying through the dark and narrow space, dirt falling around them due to their movements. It was warm too, and the masks wouldn’t help with the heat.
“Look at that,” Harmiston said after about fifteen minutes more of this.
His words had Nadia stop, considering the fact that he couldn’t see anything. “Are you all right?”
“Of course. It’s just … don’t you see that? I think we might be close to the surface.”
Nadia looked forward and squinted her eyes. And yes, there was something up there, a small light. Maybe she wasn’t all right if she hadn’t noticed. She gulped down air and went on. At this point, reaching the surface was what she needed regardless of how it was up there. Crawling backward down to the city would take longer than the alternative.
The light gave them newfound energy though, and they were spurred on, feeling a breeze of warm and thick air meet them as it went the opposite way, compelled down the air well by the city mages’ magic.
“Sorry, Harm,” Nadia said when she reached the light. “It’s not the surface.”
She’d reached a small alcove, which gave some long-awaited respite from the cramped shaft. A smaller shaft diverted from it at the back of the alcove, but there, in that widened opening, stood the source of the light.
“Luminescent asphodel,” Harmiston wheezed when he crawled up to Nadia’s knees and could see over her. He breathed heavily and shook his head, narrowing his eyes. The light wasn’t strong, more of a weak golden shimmer, but it was the first he’d experienced in over an hour. “You don’t often see bland asphodel in its blossoming state.”
Nadia nodded and looked at the flowers, golden and with large, pointed leaves. Stripes of icy blue lined the golden petals that lay over the leaves. “No, we don’t. They’re lovely.”
“And incredibly valuable these days. I don’t think anyone goes this far up to harvest them though.”
The flowers grew and thrived in the caverns of Agartha and a few harvesters made a living seeking them out. Nadia and Harmiston both could attest to the dirty and exhausting job of looking for them after their climb now. Usually, though, the harvesters didn’t use the air wells to look for the luminescent asphodels. The strain wasn’t worth it, especially when the flower thrived further down. The only place it couldn’t be found was in the Shade, but then, nothing living thrived in there.
Nadia glanced up and then back at Harmiston. “Let’s keep going.”
It took another twenty minutes of grueling maneuvering before they finally saw a blur of light ahead.
“Beautiful as that precious flower is, I hope that’s not more of it,” Harmiston said behind her.
Nadia nodded and then remembered he couldn’t see that. Usually, that wasn’t a mistake she would make. It was getting even harder to breathe, and she felt like she’d been bedridden for weeks and now trying to run for hours. Her body ached from the hits she’d taken earlier from the hybrid, and she knew the worst thing she could do was pause and let her body stiffen. This wasn’t the place to rest, and neither was the surface, but at least the latter place would have room to move properly.
The closer she got to it, the more obvious the light became although it had a grayish sheen to it that strongly indicated this was not a golden luminescent asphodel.
“I believe … this … is … it,” she managed and crawled on, all the while listening for Harmiston, making sure he was right behind her. She could hear his heavy breaths and the movements of his body. He wasn’t giving up, and neither was she. They just needed to crawl a little more, and a little more.
The susurration of a strong wind sounded and Nadia sighed in relief. That was the surface all right. Something up there cracked and then fell. Rocks most likely. It all pushed her further, and the light became clearer, forming a jagged circle that would finally lead them up and out. Nadia sped up, urged by the need to simply get out of there, and finally, within minutes, reached the opening. She slapped her hand down on it and felt cool stone under her skin instead of the warm dirt and rocks within the air well.
“Is that it?” Harmiston asked, hope in his voice.
“It is,” she croaked and hauled herself forward, pushing through the opening without regard for anything else.
The air outside was hard on the lungs, yet better than inside the choking top of the air well and she pulled herself out and tumbled to the ground, feeling a decline under her. It wasn’t steep enough for her to tumble down and she rolled to her back and closed her eyes a moment, breathing hard and hearing Harmiston surface too. He landed next to her and drew ragged breaths before they eased and became more rhythmic.
“Oh,” he said, the sound of moving pebbles reaching her ears. He leaned up on his elbows. “This looks awful.”
