body lying on the floor. “That one is named Yereq. I took him when he was just a seedling and weaned him from the soil by feeding him ground worm guts until he was ready for mobility, but he fell out of his chamber today and died.”
“He’s enormous!” Walter said. “Must be a lot of vitamins and minerals in the worms around here.”
“Walter!” Ashley hissed. “This is no time for joking!” She lowered her voice to a whisper again. “We’re in Hell, for crying out loud. And I think she’s upset about the dead giant.”
Walter scuffed his shoe on the floor. “Sorry,” he said to Sapphira. “I guess if you raised him from a seedling you must have been close to him.”
Sapphira smiled weakly. “I was, before they transferred him to mobility. I hoped I could talk to him after he woke up and before he could get to the living world, but …” Her brow suddenly wrinkled. “How did you get into my dimension from there, I mean, from the living world?”
Walter pointed up. “A dragon opened a hole in the ground, making a friend of ours fall in, so we followed a million-step staircase to find her, and that led us here.”
“A dragon made her fall down here? What dragon would do a terrible thing like that?”
“Arramos,” Ashley said abruptly. “But that’s a long story.” She swiveled her head, but darkness in the gloomy chamber kept her from seeing beyond ten feet or so. “Have you seen a girl wandering around here?”
“Does she have red hair and freckles?” Sapphira asked.
Ashley jumped, nearly losing her balance. “Where is she?”
“Right over here.” Sapphira picked up the lantern and lifted it close to the next cleft in the wall. A red-headed girl hovered inside, the beams painting her arms and legs with every color of the rainbow.
“It’s Karen!” Ashley leaped up to the platform and latched on to her hand. “Is she okay? Can I pull her out?”
“Don’t!” Sapphira withdrew a small, rectangular object from her pocket and showed it to Ashley. “It’s a digital counter. As soon as it drops one more tick, I think everyone will wake up. And it won’t be long. I’ve been watching it for years, so I know it’s almost ready to hit zero.” She put the counter back in her pocket. “We have to wait. Yereq died because I tried to wake him up too soon.”
Ashley grabbed Sapphira’s wrist. “Did you put her in there?”
Sapphira winced. “No. I can build growth chambers, but I’ve never put someone inside one.”
Slowly loosening her fingers, Ashley sighed. “Sorry. It’s just that she’s my adoptive sister.”
“It’s okay.” Sapphira set the lantern down and rubbed her wrist. “I just came here today for the first time in quite a while, and after Yereq died, I went out to get a cloth to wash his face, and when I got back, Karen was in Yereq’s chamber. I have no idea how she got there.”
Ashley followed one of the colored lights back to its source and touched the edge of a brick that emitted a yellow laser beam. “Do these bricks have some kind of magnetic field generator that keep her and the giants suspended?”
Sapphira touched a brick on the opposite side that shone a blue beam on Karen’s hand. “I think so. They create a field inside the chamber that counters gravity, and the colors feed the photoreceptors inside the giants. We don’t have sunlight down here, so Mardon had to invent something to simulate it.”
“Who’s Mardon?” Walter asked.
Sapphira picked up the lantern and hopped down to the main floor. “He’s the son of King Nimrod I told you about, the scientist who came up with these inventions. He’s been gone for years and years, but I know he’s up to something. I just don’t know what it is.”
Ashley pushed on a brick in Karen’s wall cavity. “Have you thought about taking one of these out to see what happens?”
Sapphira looked up at Ashley. “A thousand times, but I decided I didn’t want to deal with a giant if it woke up in a foul mood. Since Mardon trained them, I don’t think they’re going to be friendly.”
Walter edged closer to Sapphira. “So why are you here? Can’t you find a way out?”
“I’m pretty sure I can leave,” Sapphira replied, “but I need to figure out how to take Ashley’s brother Gabriel and her sister Roxil with me.”
Ashley spun away from Karen. “My brother and sister are here?”