Story: Leviathan (chapter 4)

Authors: ALLjapan

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Chapter 4

Title: Leviathan- Chapter 4

Chapter Four
"We've been here too long!"
"Then let's go." Annette answers Louise's trembling voice sturdily and she looks back. "We can still beat the tide."
"Right." Tom leans down taking the chest into his arms.
"WHAT?! No way are you taking that thing Tom."
"What you expect me to leave it?"
"Uhh, yeah!"
"I agree with Louise you already hurt yourself once." Tom ignores both Louise and I as he leaps over the gap and begins walking briskly ahead.
"The idiot." Annette scowls and Gracie clings to her neck more, her slender shoulders shaking a little as she looks about.
"C'mon. We better keep up."
At this Louise joins Annette and I before dashing ahead to keep up with Tom. We walk fast, one of the lights on the ground and the others shining the path ahead. The ground is already wet with over an inch of water and I notice it quickly rising on my canvas sneakers.
On top of that my body pulses with adrenaline, and then there is something else, something which tugs at the back of my mind. Like one of those little headaches that buzz around your mind for hours after the initial pain of the 'headache' has left. My hand is tight on the staff as we climb the steep rocky path back up to the ledge. Tom luckily does not fall again, yet instead I find that I lose my own footing as we scramble up the steep slope. My jaw slams into the rock and I try raising my arms in a last ditch effort to catch myself. Annette, Louise and Tom all look back at me and Annette asks me if I am okay.
"Y-Yeah," the water is beginning to cascade down the slope and my heart races in my ribcage. "Keep going, keep going!" I urge them, as we clamber up still, I feel blood warm on my face and wipe my mouth as we climb up the last stoop of the slope and come to level ground.
The cave erupts with a colossal sound of crashing stones the ground and earth trembles everywhere. I drop to the cavern floor covering my head, so do the others as rocks slides and falls from everywhere. We're all screaming and my eyes are opened wide in a state of shock. I close my mouth and I can hear Gracie crying. I stop screaming and screw my eyes shut tightly, the cave-in doesn't last long but ahead we can still hear the unmistakable sound of rocks which continue to fall. I am the first to rise on unstable legs that shook and threatened to betray me and make me fall. My breath was just as shaky as my legs and I looked about our little group. Louise was already standing and Tom was also shaking. Annette sat up a little looking around with a mouth formed in a hard line. She took a breath and seemed to reform herself in that single breath of air. She had Gracie clutched to her chest. The poor creature had begun to cry, her nose and eyes ran, she was in a stupor about what was happening and Annette attempted to soothe the little girl absent mindedly as she looked about. "Stay here." I asserted to the group. "I'm going to check ahead." I go to take a step, but Annette who is closest to me takes hold of me before I can get away.
"You're what? No, if anyone goes anywhere we need to agree to it first."
The water was getting past my ankles, I realised my shoes were filled.
"Time is of the essence, I just want to see if the path ahead is clear! One of us will have to." I felt a fear deep set in my chest and my heart pounded against my ribs.
"We can't be separated!"
Annette didn't loosen her grip on me and I held back a snarl. I jutted my chin out pridefully. "Someone needs to see if the path ahead is clear." I stand by that.
"Let her go Annette, just, be careful." Tom strides over to Annette and I, putting the chest down so that he could put a hand on his sister's shoulder.  "Someone has to, unless you're volunteering?"
"Be careful."
I run off before Louise can start, holding the staff as I jogged ahead. The water was rising still, it all was happening so fast if we stayed there and tried to discuss what to do then nothing would have happened and we'd be drowned like rats. Ahead there was naught but bad news that hurt my eyes and filled me with dread. It sounded like the rocks had stopped falling, but the water was coming in fast and the path previously taken by our small group had now been blocked. To exit we'd have to take another path, but that would risk us losing our way. These tunnels were treacherous. And that was on their good days.
I had been about to turn back to race and tell everyone the news when I heard a shifting of rocks, rumbling that shook the cavern and more screams from Tom, Annette, Grace and Louise.
I bolted back as I heard a deep voice echo through the cavern. "Who enters my cave? And wakes my slumber? Speak your names."
"Grace! Louise!" I ran round the small bend and saw that they all hid behind a rock as the rumbles and the enchanting voice came from out beyond where the rock dipped and fell. "Tom, Annette!" I duck behind the rock clasping Louise on the shoulder as we all looked from one another.
"The path?"
I shook my head to Tom, "it is blocked. We have to take ano-"
"Speak!" The word was laced with a growl and everyone flinched.
"What's that sound?" Louise trembled. "Is it the rocks?"
"Another cave in?"
"Are you kidding?" Tom said. "That's a freaking roar! Not rock and stone."
I was terrified as the rest, but once they said roar, and no one mentioned the voice I bought it up. They all looked at me as if I were mad.
"Tan, there is no v-voice? What are you-"
She was cut off by the voice again and I turned my attention from the rest as I rose to my shaky legs.
"I sense your fear youngling. I feel it as my own, you who holds my sapphire staff, name yourself child."
I felt a foreign strength help my heart beat stronger and stop my head from throbbing, my legs from trembling. I straightened my back grasping the staff in my hand as I looked out into the darkness where the voice came from. "Tanith, Tanith Perry Brown."
"Open your mind Tanith, let me in to see your ailment." The warmth spread through me even more and my eyes drift shut. I was vaguely aware of Tom, Annette and Louise calling my name, with my free hand, I signalled for them to give me a moment. I allowed my mind to open and felt a presence sift through them. He -it was a he- looked and a flash of the memory of arriving in the cave the blocked path from the avalanche of the cave in all flickered through my mind and I opened my eyes once I felt his mind leave mine just lingering at the edges still giving me strength. "I see your reason for fear. I have chosen to help you."
"Tanith!" Louise grabbed my arm. She stood beside me, and the others stood too, the water had risen to my knees almost and I looked down then at Louise.
"What happened?"
"We kept trying to call you but you wouldn't answer, when we try-tried-" She had tears in her eyes and she was trying to pull me away. In a stupor I began to follow, concerned for her tears.
"When you tried what? What happened Louise?!"
"You wouldn't budge." Tom said. "We tried but we couldn't move you. It was the weirdest shit I'd ever seen."
Annette and Louise were trying to guide me away when I stopped all of them. "Wait."
Before any of them could ask why we all heard a sound of movement from behind us. As I turned, the head of what I somehow already knew to be a dragon came into view and everyone was in silent awe at the sight as he climbed and the mass of his body filled the Cavern we were in. He had a blue-grey face and two types of scales from what I could see, His under belly had thick scales that shielded his chest like an armour whereas the scales along his back and the rest of the mass of his body were of a smaller scale, set in ridges and looking simular to fish scales in a way. They shone with water, the Dragon having just left water which had filled the drop off point where the chests had come from. He had no wings and his back was heavily laden with spikes that stuck up high and deadly.
"Tanith Perry Brown, you carry my staff and so I humbly offer you my service."
"Will you show us a way out?"
"Tanith! Are you crazy that's a Dragon!"
"Tell you accomplices to hold the staff so they hear my voice."
I relayed the instruction; and Tom was the first to comply taking hold.
"Tell your friends to do the same."
Tom was so shocked that he yelled and took his hand from the staff.
"Tom!"
He put his hand back onto the staff and he only needed to give the others a look for them to put their hand onto the staff as well.
"Good. Now, younglings of humans as you are, I know of how you have come to be in this predicament. I offer you a way out, if you can trust to ride my back, I will take you to safety." He paused turning his head this way and that looking at us all with cerulean eyes that put the sapphire stone of my staff so shame. "What say you?"
We looked form one to the other and I myself looked down at the water that had started rising to my waist. "Please!" I looked up holding the staff with both hands. "Help Us!"
The others pleaded too, all except Grace who clung to Annette, her face blank. She had probably gone into shock of some sought.
The dragon dipped his head and climbed the rest of the way to meet us. He laid down stretching out his foreleg as a step ladder to his back between his shoulders.
"Then climb aboard. There is not another moment to be spared!"

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