Holly's POV

"Wren!", Holly yelled. She poked her head out of the gap.
"There were humans here, and they took Dusky!"

In the resulting confusion, she heard Sky yell "No, Wren! Please!" And Umber say "We have to!" And Luna venting to Bryony about how worried she was for her little's friend.
And then Wren was there in the passageway way with Holly, and they ran in the direction the humans had gone.

"Why did they take him?", Wren asked as they hurried down the tunnel.
"What did they say? Could you understand anything of it?"

"No! This makes absolutely no sense!"

The only thing Holly focused on was the faint light of Dusky's flamesilk bracelet.
She tried to run faster, but soon, she had to slow down, so that she wouldn't run into a rock.

"I think one of them said 'Abyss'!", Cricket said, panting behind them.

"It's weird", Wren said breathlessly, " that they would take a baby dragon, when there's a bigger dragon right there. I mean, if they assume you're his mom, they'd obviously expect you to chase them, and probably eat them. So, if they were smart, they'd drop him, an dthen, they'd have a better chance of escaping!"

The tunnel zigged and zagged, and the humans kept turning into other branches, and a few times, Holly nearly lost sight of them

"If the humans knew these caves well, they should have been able to loose us by now", Wren said, stopping to rest one hand on a wall. She was panting so hard, it sounded like she was about to die of exhaustion.
"Sorry- just so tired- you go - ahead."

Holly lifted her onto her back.

"I need you to translate what they're saying. And besides, Sky would murder me in my sleep if I left you."
Wren didn't agrue, and they set off runing again.

The ground kept slanting down, each turn bringing them deeper, and deeper into the earth.

As Holly's eyes adjusted to the deepening darkness, she suddenly realized that there was a sickly green light up ahead of them.
And . . . whispers.

It was hard to tell, but the sound got louder, until they entered a large cavern, a plateau of bolders.
The plateau overlooked a jagged slash in the heart of the planet, a stab - wound in the stone, that plunged down, down, down, so far, it made Holly want to go to sleep.

The Abyss.
They'd found it.

Holly hugged Bait's puch around her neck as she slowed down.

The darkness.
It felt as though it wanted to swallow them whole.

And then Holly saw the humans on the other side, close to the edge, as the girl human, the one with the feathers, cut the net with her knife.

"Don't let him fall!", the dragon yelled.
"He can't fly! Please!"

The girl looked up at her, and said something to the other one, who shook his head.

"She told him to run", Wren whispered,
"But he won't leave her. Holly, I think this is some kind of trap. I think Dusky was bait."

"Bait for what?", Holly asked.
"I don't see anything that could hurt us."

Wren slid off Holly's back and stepped towards the humans, holding out her hands, palms outward.
She called out, and both humans stared at her.

"Here we go", Wren said with a sigh.
"I'm going to try to talk them down, but it would help if you could look a bit more threatening."

Oh.
Uhhh . . .
Not knowing what else to do, Holly spread her wings, in an attempt to appear larger, and glowered.

Wren took another step towards the humans, said something, and the girl responded.
She looked around at the plateau, and shouted to her friend.
He shook his head again, and said something in a sad voice.

"What are they saying?" Holly asked.

"They're waiting for someone", Wren said.
"They called him the Guardian of the Abyss, but his name must be Vole, because that's what she just called him.
Her name is Raven, I think. She says the Guardian told them that the Abyss wants a dragon . . . or that the Abyss told them through the Guardian? Something like that. They say he's always there, so it's really strange he's gone."

Holly's head started spinning.

"Wait, it WHAT? What the crap is down there?"

Wren turned back to the humans, and the boy answered her.

"They say they don'y know. Only the Gaurdian can go into the Abyss. They get instructions from him."

Wren shook her head.
"I'd say it's all some made-up cult thing, but if it's in the prophecy, I guess that means there's really something down there."

"Well, tell them whatever kind of mutant they have down there, can't have Dusky."

Wren put her hands on her hips, and glared at the other humans.

Raven and her friend were quiet for a moment.
Finally, with a sigh, Raven pulled the dragonet away from  the ledge, and cut his bonds.

"Holly!", he said, as soon as his snout was free.
He wriggled away from the net, as the humans stepped back, and watched as he sprinted across the plateau towards Holly.
He was just a few steps away, when something dropped from the ceiling.
Somthing white and hairy.

The Guardian of the Abyss.

He tackled Dusky, grabbed him, and before anyone could do anything, he dove into the Abyss.

"No, no, no!"
Without farther thought, Holly threw herself after them.

They Abyss seemed to go on forever.
Holly had tried flapping her wings to fall faster, but nothing happened.

Dusky and the Gaurdian must have reached the bottom before she did, because when she finally stopped, they were nowhere in sight.

The deceased green light was the first sign of danger.
The second sign, was the tangle of Breath of evil vines that covered the ground, twisting over rock and stone, climbing up the wall of the chasm.

"Dusky!", Holly called.

Nothing.

Okay, if I were a scary abyss-creature, where would I hide?

Luckily, she'd kept from getting trapped in the vines by flapping her wings, allowing her to hover as she searched for her little friend.

"Holly!", Dusky's voice cried.

She looked around.
There was a trail through the vines, the path of a small creature runing full-tilt, leaping from tangle to tangle like a fearless squirrel, and it led in the direction of Dusky's cry for help.

She shot over the vines, swooping over the curves of the Abyss.

The vines and the path convereged on a cave in the wall of the Abyss . . . . or rather, the coils seemed to be exploding from it, swarming out in both directions.
The cave enterance was filled with vines, but there was a space where a human -or a human and a small dragonet- could fit through.

Holly flattened her body and carefully hovered through the gap, just barely missing the vines.

On the other side, there was a room.
That is, it still felt like a cave: stone walls, chilly, dark.
But if looked as though it had been a room once, before the cool underground had reclaimed it.
The walls were too perfectly rectangular for it to be natural.
There was a throne at one end of the room, and matching pillers that held up the roof.
It looked like the floor had once been a carpet. There were faded traces of torn crimson fabric peaking out from underneath the entwined coils.

The tangles were coming from the thing on the throne.
A vine as thick as the pillers ran from the ground below the throne, winding around the pedastoles and threading the whole room together.
But on the throne, was a man, and on his lap, was a red-and green dragonet.
They were completly motionless, and yet looked . . . alive.
But they couldn't be- the vine went straight through their skulls, emerging and spreading out like a bleeding wound.

"What. The. Frick", Holly breathed.

She suddenly got the sense that something, somone was in there with her.

"Who-who are you?", she called out.

For a moment, nothing answered.
Holly's shoulders relaxed, then tensed again.
A sound was creeping up the chasm.
It sounded like a subway approuching from far down its tunnel. First a distant blar, then a whosh and a bang and a whisper of depravity.

"Your . . . . fate."

It sounded as though seven dragons were speaking in unison.

She gulped.
"More specifically?"

"The end of the worlds as we know them . . . . and the beginning of new ones . . . . Join usssssssssssss."

The voice rang in her mind so hard, it started to pulse. The words swirled and spiraled in her head, like water getting sucked down into a sewer.

"I'm not afraid of you", Holly said. She was trying to sound brave, but it came out more like a squeak than she'd hoped.

The voice chuckled.
"You should be. I am afraid to say, it is . . . . inevitable."

"What?", she said. Bloody sweat was starting to pour down her forehead and down her horns.
"The entrance is just over-"

But when she turned around, the entrance, her only way out, was now competely sealed off by a new twist of the Breath of evil .
"Oh frick."

Her head started throbbing again.

"Wait, I thought you needed a leafspeak to do that."

The voice laughed humorlessly.
"I am afraid my little Lizard can only control the vines close to us, the ones here in the Abyss."

The voice became louder.
"Which is why I ordered you to bring me Sundew!"

There was a growl underneath a tangle of vines, as though the Guardian felt unappreciated.

Making a vain attempt at courage, Holly asked, "Where is Dusky?"

Then, without warning, the dragonet jumped out, and pulled her underneath the vines.

A/N: YAS, WE'RE FINALLY HERE!!!
I've gone through this scene so many times in my head, I still can't believe I just wrote it.
Anyway, after this, there probably won't be too many chapters left, so this is the begining of the end.

Wordcount: 1532

Renx out!