The Passion of Hades - Eliza Raine Page 0,18
If whatever it was had claws bigger than me, I shuddered to think how huge the rest of it was.
I snapped my attention back to the job at hand as we zoomed between two columns, and into the temple.
'Slow down a bit, buddy,' I said, straining to see in the darkness. The hippocampus did slow down, but he also made a funny squeaking sound, before beginning to glow. A soft blue light started emanating from him, casting just enough illumination about us for me to make out more columns and what was left of a cracked marble floor, sinking into the ground. Something large scuttled on my right, and I jumped in surprise.
Trying not to think about what else might be in there with me, I urged the hippocampus on. 'That's a neat trick. I'm going to have to give you a name,' I told him, as we floated cautiously through the room, me scanning the ground beneath us for anything that looked like a gem. 'How about Buddy? I keep calling you that anyway.' He snickered and I nodded. 'Buddy it is.' A loud screech from outside the temple carried through the water to me, and I shivered. We needed to do this faster.
We did a full circuit of the room, finding nothing but more broken rock and marble, and lots and lots of large crabs. I grimaced as I realized we were going to have to go further into the temple. There were two dark doorways at the back of the room and we hovered before them. Choosing the one on the left arbitrarily, I directed Buddy towards it, and we swam through.
It was pitch black, and Buddy's soft glow failed to penetrate the darkness. A primal fear of not knowing what was in the dark crawled over my skin. Heat swept over me as I blinked and I realized that being completely submerged in water was a much, much more suffocating feeling when the water wasn't nice and cool. A budding panic started to blossom in my chest as Buddy turned in a slow circle, and the water around me heated more. Despite every breath I took being dry air, my lungs were straining, and it felt like I couldn't fill them enough. Tightness was spreading across my whole chest now, and I knew the signs of oncoming panic in my body too well. Big black spots would come soon, along with the dizziness.
'We'll come back to this room,' I said, even my blurry underwater voice sounding breathless. Buddy seemed to agree, wasting no time at all speeding back to the doorway. The gloom of the main hall seemed positively bright compared to the dark room, and the water we moved through was mercifully cool, almost like a balm over my skin. I took long breaths as Buddy slowed, petting his neck absent-mindedly as I reassessed the hall, my racing pulse calming. 'Let's hope the gem is in the other room,' I said to him. 'Cos I do not want to go back in there. Ever.'
The ceiling in the second room was cracked, and the gaps were letting in shafts of blue light that shimmered over an array of rotting wooden crates. We were on the raised side of the building, the side that wasn't sinking, and I couldn't have been more grateful for the extra light.
'OK. Let's see what we've got,' I said nervously, and slid my feet from Buddy's stirrups. Swallowing my trepidation, I kicked myself over to the nearest crate and reached for the lid. I'd half expected the wood to crumble under my touch, but it felt sturdy as I eased the lid up. There was no hinge, and the lid slid off, hitting the sandy marble and causing a wave of dust to lift from the floor. I heard a distinct slithering sound and froze, trying to tread water as gently as I could while looking slowly around myself for the source of the sound. Nothing was moving though, and I let out a long breath as I swam over the top of the open box to look inside.
Books. Piles and piles of books, probably submerged in water for centuries. I felt a pang of sorrow that they were ruined, then another distant screech made me focus. I needed to check the next box.
I went through them all and whilst I found some pretty awesome stuff, none of it was a gem. There was an unbelievably sharp looking sword, a large box