They made the transfer in silence. Picking up the oars, they left the little outboat rocking in the churn of the great mouth. Spray hissed against the obsidian stairs, beading and running off in a never-ending cycle. Up close, the tube wasn’t smooth. It was worked purposefully to make it rougher, which Marco thought was a nice touch. It added just enough friction that they weren't constantly landing on their faces after slipping on slick glass.

Elisa lit her hands to light their way, letting the flame lead out in front of them. Riv walked side by side with her, ready to jump ahead and guard if he needed to. Everyone's eyes were peeled for threats. There probably weren't monsters inside the turtle, but it was hard to know for sure.

The tube climbed at an incline, enough to make calves complain but not so steep there was any real difficulty climbing it. After thirty strides, the salt gave way to a warmer, dryer air that was still humid in its own way, stinking like old kelp and iron blood.

"This has slept a long time." Elisa said.

Riv grunted. “Like our host.”

"You might be more right than you know. Turtles live a long time. There's no telling how long it's been here."

The kept walking for a half minute more before the light found the edge of the easy path. The carved glass ended without ceremony, abruptly transitioning to squishy, living flesh.

The floor wasn’t wet, exactly. It had a waxed feel, resilient and faintly warm, ribbed with little ridges of flesh that made it less difficult to walk across. The chamber itself was large like a cavern, open and dark and stretching seemingly forever.

"We are above the stomach," Aethe said. "The tunnel took us up. It's like this chamber exists just for this."

They moved by Elisa's firelight, following the edge of a natural dome where the turtle’s anatomy determined the exact curve of the roof. The floor heaved once in a long roll that pressed their boots to the flesh and then settled again.

Elisa’s voice had gone small with wonder. “Whoever built the obsidian wanted to keep the sea out and indicate where to go. This? I have no idea how they got this chamber to happen. What kind of power it would have taken to influence a being this way.” She knelt to touch a ridge with the back of her knuckles, respectfully. “There's magic here, in the air even now. This space healed around it.”

The passage grew wider as they approached the center of the turtle. The roof lifted beyond the light’s reach, taking their sense of scale with it. The sound changed again. Their footsteps picked up a hollow resonance in the empty space.

Marco swallowed. “If he wakes up, how will we ever get out?”

“We’ll have time,” Aethe said. "Poison doesn't wear off all at once, generally. Not in natural things. Just keep walking and make good time. It's all we can do right now."

Marco did as he was told. His boot slid once on a patch that looked like clear lacquer and was slicked with something unknown. He caught himself on Riv, thankful he didn't crash into the ground and get whatever that was on his clothes.

They walked on and on, burning precious minutes staring into the unending dark. That ended when Aethe stopped so suddenly that Riv jumped in front of the group defensively before she waved him down. Aethe pointed, and Elisa's light followed and found geometry where there ought to be none.

At first Marco thought it was a trick of shadow. Then the outline resolved to clarity, and he saw a dome. This was not bone or flesh. It was black stone, slick and smooth. The turtle’s insides had accepted it as best they could, and scar tissue connected the border between the stone and its flesh. A ring of the same obsidian as the entry ran around its base, flat and walkable.

“Temple,” Elisa whispered. Even whispering, the word sounded too large. "A full temple in a living thing."

It was a vast, undecorated thing, so black it seemed the surface ate light. A mouth-like arch stood facing them, five-times-a-man high and twice as wide, doorless and open.

“Nothing's showing itself,” Aethe said, all business. “We have to be careful, but I think we can go in.”

They went in.

The temperature dropped almost immediately. Whatever warmth the turtle generated or held on to from the sun was blocked here. The dome’s interior had no corners. It was just as round on the inside, but the complete absence of angles and the jet-black surface made it very hard to judge distances inside it.

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All that combined to make a literally chilling space that disoriented Marco as he moved into it. It wasn't horrifying by any means, but the whole space was off-putting in a way that made him want to turn around and leave. Even the usually bravest of all of them, Riv, slowed.

They walked forward, keeping close to each other and trusting in Aethe's eyes to pick out anything they had to worry about. The roof raised higher and higher as they approached the middle of the temple and the apex of the dome. At the center of that bowl stood a plinth, one they would have missed if it had been placed anywhere else in the space.

It was waist‑high on Marco and cut from the same lightless stone as the dome. This, at least, was familiar. They had seen something like this associated with at least a few temples, and they tended to be the final goal of the whole endeavor.

It was almost over, which was the main thing. Marco walked quickly towards the plinth, eager to put an end to all this.

Riv’s attention had drifted left, toward a darker darkness beyond the plinth. “What’s that?”

Marco followed his line and saw it. It was a heap of sorts, a general lump of blackness that nonetheless contrasted with the slightly different shade of the stone. He couldn't tell exactly what it was until he got closer, but when he did, the nature of the object wasn't a complete shock. A body lay flat on the ground, limbs splayed out. The proportions were all a little wrong, but not so much that this didn't look human. It was like the differences between elves and humans writ large, still in the same family but with some generations spent apart.

"What is this?" Marco kneeled down. "How could someone have died in here?"

He reached to flip the body over. It was cold and stiff, more like wood than a thing that had recently been animate. When he actually started to move it, power surged up his arms and into his body, blasting him back. He landed by the plinth again, his whole body complaining with pain.

"Marco!" Aethe ran to his side. "Are you hurt?"

Elisa's healing magic washed over him, unnecessary for injury but wiping out his residual pain.

"I'm fine. But the body doesn't like being moved."

Riv ran his hand lightly across the corpse's clothing. Nothing happened.

"It looks like it's just that," Riv said. "There's something in its pockets. Should I try for it?"

"Why you?" Elisa walked over and knelt by Riv. "I could try."

"I survive things better than you." Riv hooked the corner of the pocket and pulled it up, gently. "Just be ready to heal me if something unexpected happens."

Nothing did. He was able to reach in, extracting a small leather container secured with a band around a button on the main body. He flicked it open and examined the contents.

"Papers," Riv said. "I can't read them in the dark."

"Don't even try to get them out yet," Elisa said. "We need to preserve them. And this body, if we can. It's protected, but there must be some way to move it. After all, it's been here a long time."

Before she could get down to really trying to move the body, another body moved. This one was hard to miss, since they were currently inside it. The turtle took a huge breath, then wiggled in its sleep, tilting its body one way and then the other. The team struggled to keep their feet as the floor under them tilted to the left, then to the right.

"Uh-oh," Aethe said.

"Uh-oh?"

"Just uh-oh. It's waking up sooner than it should. Plinth, Marco. Now. Elisa, stand up."

"But…"

"Just stand up. We need to go."

Marco slapped the plinth, which shook a bit before retracting into the floor. By the time it was level with the ground, they were already out of the temple, running full tilt across the turtle's flesh towards the obsidian tunnel.

"Are we going to make it?"

"There's no telling until we get out," Aethe said. "We might be underwater already for all I know."

They ran through the darkness, stumbling constantly and taking minor injuries as they bashed into each other, the sides of the obsidian tunnel, or even fell down stairs. Elisa kept them healed up to the extent she could while running, and they made huge gains on their inward-bound travel time despite all of it.

"Light," Marco yelled. "That's light ahead."

"Keep running," Aethe said, through gritted teeth. Marco immediately felt worse. If Aethe was scared, so was he. "Just keep running."

The turtle began to shake more, tossing them this way and that as it started to wake up for real. The party mostly fell down the last set of stairs as a warm bellow from the turtle's lungs propelled them forward, nearly deafening them in the process.

They landed almost in the boat after that last boost, cut the mooring ropes with Marco's sword, and let Riv get to the fastest paddling he could handle. Ahead of them, the enormous mouth started to close.

"We aren't going to make it," Elisa said. "Oh, Gods, we aren't going to make it."

Marco let out a Captain's Cry to help Riv, but he knew it was useless, too. The boat would be going down with the turtle. Eventually, they'd be found, and he suspected they'd look a lot like the temple corpse when it happened.

"I have an idea," Riv said. "But it's pretty bad."

Marco winced but didn't hesitate. "Just do it."

Riv grabbed his club, pushed the oars as far forward as they'd go, then glowed gold.

"Someone hold on to me," Riv said. "I'm using everything. I don't want to flop out and drown."

Burning all his strength for a one-use hit, Riv brought his club onto the water. The oar handles strained, cracked, and eventually broke, but the swing held strong long enough for some small fraction of that power to reach the water.

The boat rocketed forward like a stone from a catapult. Marco grabbed Elisa, who grabbed Riv. Aethe just balanced, apparently possessing enough dexterity to stay in the boat regardless of what help she received. The boat came down into the water again, skipped like a rock, and continued forward as the turtle's top and bottom jaw neared each other ahead of them.

Marco swore he felt the turtle's beak brush his hair as they shot out into the sun.

"Rope, release!" Riv yelled. The rope unknotted itself from the turtle and sank at that end, now only attached to The Foolish Endeavor's mast. The turtle gave one last long reptilian groan before sinking into the ocean once and for all. They had survived.