Everglow: The Trials Of Agaron

21 - The Veranah

Fischer felt his heart stop completely. All feeling drained from his body and he stood with vacant stare plastered on his face. Ko hugged him tighter than she'd ever hugged him before, sobbing onto his chest. 

Kori was on his knees, looking over the edge of the cliff where Quin had fallen. He was screaming in agony and punching the stone floor over and over again. His rage quickly turned to tears.

Fischer's whole body trembled, Ko's fearful sobs only crushing his heart even more. 

He had just watched one of his best friends fall to her death. They didn't even get a chance to say goodbye. Just gone. Taken from them in an instant.

They were powerless to stop it. And now they were stuck on the other side of the ravine with no way of getting back across. 

'Thunk!'

Suddenly a piece of metal struck the ground to their right. It caught Fischer's attention, and he shuffled over to look at it.

It looked kind of like the tip of a spear, a sharp blade that was lodged firmly in the ground. However there were three small legs that protruded from the body of the object which had dug themselves firmly into the stone. There was also a strange chrome blue cable that ran from the tip of the object. It trailed off behind them into the darkness.

Suddenly the sound of footsteps alerted the three. They were coming from behind them, and they were approaching rapidly. 

Before any of them could get a chance to even guess what it was that was making the sounds, a bipedal creature sprung from the darkness. It payed them no mind as it bolted towards the ravine. Then, almost like it was intentional, the creature threw itself down into the gaping abyss, disappearing into the fog below. It moved so fast that Fischer barely even had a chance to take in what it looked like.

"Wha-what the hell?" Kori asked, fighting back the tears that were pouring from his eyes. 

--\/--

Quin closed her eyes tightly and braced herself for the inevitable impact that would soon come. The air roared past her, doing nothing to slow her descent. She saw a sudden blinding white light, and memories of back when she first met Kori began to scream past her. They were too quick to try and take in, but she knew exactly when and what they were. Experiences from plates ago whipped past in her mind, all the way up until she met Ko and Fischer.

She gave up screaming and let her mind fade as she clenched her teeth and waited for the crunch of her spine snapping on the rocks and her entire body being smashed into pieces as it slammed down against the stone cold floor.

Suddenly, she felt something on her hand. Before her nerves even had time to register what it was she was feeling, she felt a harsh pulling sensation on her arm, followed by a huge amount of pain zipping through her shoulder. 

But the falling had stopped.

She slowly opened one of of her eyes and almost fainted as she saw what was going on. She was dangling above an enormous cavern that was at least around three hundred meters deep. There was a faint blue glow in parts of the walls and the floor was nothing but a faint black blur of rock and stone. One that she would've been splattered on if it weren't for whatever it was that stopped her fall. Looking up, she saw the three digits of a creature's hand, followed by an arm and finally the half smiling, half grimacing face of an alien creature. 

Almost instantly she let our a terrified screech and pulled herself up to the alien, hugging it for dear life. She wrapped her arms around it and tightened her already iron grip even harder.