“It hurts, but I’ll make it,” she said. “Let’s keep moving.”
No matter how much agony she was in, Sera knew she couldn’t allow herself to be caught, not with so much at stake. Hoping that the other Black Fins and the manta rays had made it to safety, she pushed the pain down and started swimming again.
She and Sophia moved warily through the stables. Empty stalls loomed eerily in the weak glow of Sera’s illuminata. She was glad when they reached the other side and emerged in the indoor ring.
Its floor was pitted and cracked, its walls colonized by anemones and tube worms. The ring was immense. It was not only wide, but its ceiling was very high, as mer swooped up and down on their mounts when they rode.
“Ugh. Do you smell something?” Sophia suddenly asked, wrinkling her nose. “Something really bad?”
“Something really dead,” Sera said, her fins prickling.
She held the illuminata at arm’s length and turned in a slow, wary circle. Its light glinted off a metallic object in the middle of the ring. It appeared to be a large and deep trough, stabilized with four short metal legs. The two mermaids swam toward it and peered over its edge.
“Whoa!” Sophia said, recoiling. “That is so nasty!”
The smell, up close, was sickening. The sight was even worse.
The trough was full of bones. Sera saw the skulls of large fish, the spines and ribs of smaller ones, and a few terragogg legs—some with shoes still on them. Chunks of flesh and guts, all in various stages of decay, had been mixed with the bones.
“It looks like some kind of feeding trough,” Sera said when she could speak again. “Though I’d hate to see what it fed.”
“Sera…oh, my gods, Sera…” Sophia said. She wasn’t looking at the trough anymore.
“What is it?” Sera asked, turning to her.
“Do. Not. Move,” Sophia said, her voice cracking with fear.
“Okay. I’m not moving,” Sera said.
“Look up. Very, very slowly.”
Sera did. And gasped.
Clinging to the ceiling, like demons in a nightmare, were three massive Blackclaw dragons.
SERA’S HEART WAS beating so hard, she thought it would crack her ribs.
Enormous and powerful, with lethal teeth and talons, Blackclaws were one of the fiercest breeds of dragon known to mer.
“The death riders must be stabling them here,” Sera said, anger replacing her fear. She’d had no idea the fragile ruins were being used to house such destructive creatures.
As she and Sophia watched, one of the dragons—the biggest one, a female—scented the water. Her head swayed slowly from side to side. Her yellow eyes narrowed to slits. The spiked frill on her neck stood up.
“It’s my wound. She can smell the blood. We’re chowder,” Sera said.
“We might be able to make it back to the doorway,” Sophia whispered.
As if sensing her intent, the huge dragon scrabbled across the ceiling toward the entrance.
Sera glanced around wildly, searching for a way out. “Soph, look!” she said excitedly. “To the right of the trough!”
“Please don’t tell me it’s another dragon.”
“There’s a crack in the floor! I think we can fit through it!”
Sera slowly swung the illuminata around to her right. Sophia’s eyes followed the light. A section of floor had heaved up—probably, Sera reasoned, from the dragons stomping around on it. The broken pieces had been driven into one another like plates of ice on a polar sea. Two of them didn’t meet entirely, leaving a space that was small, but maybe just big enough for a mermaid to fit through.
“We don’t know what’s down there,” Sophia said.
“We know what’s up here, though. And it’s not good,” Sera said. “Start moving. Nice and slow.”
Sophia did, and Sera followed. They were only a few feet away from the crack when the big dragon hissed. She crouched, ready to spring, and then the sound of voices coming from the stables stopped her. Her head swiveled toward the noise. That was all the two mermaids needed.
“Forget slow!” Sera said. “Hurry, Soph!”
Sophia shot into the crack. Sera was right behind her, still holding her illuminata. She had just enough time to see that they were in some sort of underground room when the big dragon started roaring.
Sera and Sophia peered out of the crack. The death riders, torches blazing, had stopped in the safety of the doorway. The dragon, furious she couldn’t get at them, was shrieking now and flapping her enormous wings.
“I think we’re safe. For the moment,” Sera said. “The death riders won’t come after us unless they want to get eaten.”
She started to swim away from the crack, intending to explore the space they’d swum into, but Sophia stopped her. “First, we need to do something about that hole in your tail. Sit.”