Page 3 of Exquisite Monster

But it wasn’t.

We kept falling.

Was this what eternity felt like?

Maybe.

The air thickened and warmed. The cold mist from the water falling with me shifted to muggy steam, and suddenly the piercing claws of the wind felt like hands dragging at me, slowing me down, cradling my fall.

Which was impossible.

Wasn’t it?

Pain rolled through me as I hit something hard, and then again. I felt pelted as I fell, like I was hitting… rocks? The walls around this eternal hole glowed faintly with lavender light, and in that light, I saw the shapes of pebbles and rocks hovering in the air like the laws of the world meant nothing.

And still we fell, though it felt more like floating now. I could control my body and turn this way and that. I managed to flip myself over and stare down into the dim, lavender-coated darkness.

More than just stones hovered in the air. There were weapons and shields. Shoes and other human clothes. What might have been a tangle of flowers brushed past my cheek.

Anxiety clung to the inside of my ribs. If I weren’t to die dashedon the bottom of the world, then what would happen to me? What was this place, and was it worse than whatever afterlife death could have afforded me?

“Varí,” I whispered. “What is this place?”

He moved, slowly climbing my dress until he was on the outside and could move up my body once more, eventually reaching my shoulder. He perched on my back, staring down into the abyss with me. A small chirp was my only answer, and I sensed that he didn’t know any more than I did.

Something shimmered down below, roiling and moving like?—

The rushing sound reached me a moment later. All the water that fell from Evrítha was below. A tumultuous sea I couldn’t sense the end of. Maybe this would be the end after all.

My body jerked to a stop in the middle of the air, bouncing as if attached to a string. We floated together above the seething water, close enough to touch the mist off the surface and feel that it waswarm.

Your kind does not usually survive to the bottom.

A resonant female voice filled my head. It had sharp edges and felt like the entire world rested inside it.

Varíchirped like he had heard it too.

I opened my mouth, but no voice came out. Was this a dragon? Something worse? My chest ached with the fear and tension of falling for so long.

I will offer you a choice. Be eaten, or drown.

“Wait,” I gasped. “Please.”

Varígrowled, that strange language ripping out of him with a fierceness that shocked me.

I haven’t waited for anything in more than a century. And certainly not for a human.

Heat rolled over my skin asVaríunleashed fire into the air with a tiny roar that had me smiling in spite of myself.

“Please,” I said. “Even if you must kill me, spareVarí. The dragon. He’s done nothing.”

It took me long seconds to realize I could no longer move. My head was frozen, staring straight down at the bubbling water, so though I sensed movement and the shape of a creature looming through the misty dark, I could not look to see it.

Deep growling vibrated the air. I wished I could understand the tongue of the dragons to know, because that’s what the creature was. A dragon. The violet scales I could see out of the corner of my eye confirmed that.

Varíspoke back.

Warm steam like breath hissed towards us, and the vast feeling of… annoyance.