Read Online Darkin: The Prophecy of the Key (The Darkin Saga Book 2) by Joseph Turkot - Free Book Online

glowing rosy circles. For a moment, Adacon stopped to peer in close at the trunk wall, at a pair of the glowing spots: he touched the edge of one, and upon his closer inspection, he decided they were some kind of flower. He continued down, and eventually there were so many of the glowing flowers that he decided to shut off the Orb. He put it back into his pocket and continued his descent. A soft scarlet glow guided his footsteps. The red staircase spiraled down interminably, and Adacon wondered just how deep they had already come.
    “You still down there?” Adacon called. No answer came. “Calan?!”
    Adacon felt a rush of anxiety and traveled down faster, as the red flowers continued to grow in number, magic plants that didn’t seem to need sunlight. Finally the stairs broke their circular pattern. He stepped onto a long flat surface of the tree trunk, aglow with the luminescent flora. The stairs descended deeper in one direction, he saw, but a new path was opened before him, a straight tubular hallway, leading away from the center of the trunk. The floor, walls, and ceiling of the hall were covered in the glowing plants. Orange and pink ones fought to grow between the red now, and the long hall appeared as if a lit rainbow. Several of the flowers near his feet were no longer glowing, and he realized that each footprint he left trampled the glowing flowers, and they ceased to emit their hue. Peering down the hall he rejoiced at what he beheld: there, all the way down and nearly out of sight, were a set of footprints—Calan’s—stretching away through the sea of flowers.
    “Hah, found you!” Adacon reveled. He quickly raced down the vibrant hall, dewy with moisture, leaving dark sets of footprints where the plants had been. This must be a root coming off the trunk, Adacon decided of the circular hall. What an enormous tree, he thought, and in he sped up in excitement. The hallway twisted and turned, dipped and rose, until finally the scenery changed: before Adacon was Calan, smiling warmly, wading up to her stomach in rainbow-colored water that rolled steam off its top, wafting up to the ceiling of glowing plant life. Adacon was speechless—the whole hall had widened out into an oval room filled with radiant color. The roothall continued out of sight, past the oval room by way of a hole at the opposite side, but squat in the middle of the widened section was the steaming pool, softly lit by the magnificent pink, magenta, red, orange and yellow flowers that reflected down on the water from the ceiling; even the inside of the pool itself was lined with the wavy glow of submerged flowers that coated its walls and floor.
    “Come in.”
    Adacon wondered for a moment if the water itself was glowing, but decided it was an effect of the plants. He stepped over Calan’s clothes, which lay strewn about on the flowers near the edge of the piping bath.
    “How hot is it?” he asked.
    “Hot enough,” she laughed. Adacon got out of his sleeping clothes and held his breath, momentarily forgetting his old fear of not being able to swim. He closed his eyes and jumped in. A great warmth overtook his entire body, and he rushed up to the surface, exhilarated. Coming up he splashed her face. His feet gently pressed into the soft ground of the pool, allowing him to stand; he felt the tickle of hot springs shooting up between flowers at his feet. She splashed him back, hitting his eyes, and he rubbed them furiously. Finally they squinted open: the room wasn’t overbright, lit with just enough ambience of flower-light to create a dreamlike awe. Adacon felt a sense of peace in the glow and he wrapped himself around Calan.
    “What is this place?” he asked.
    “We call it the Blossoming Spring,” she answered from his embrace.
    “Why didn’t you show this to me before? We could have come here all the time!”
    “The entrance is sealed during the day, the path only revealed at night—and I decided you could use a surprise before