“I guess we needed that boulder after all,” the purple-haired engineer-girl was saying. “It pressed down the switch at the bottom of the pit, which opened those doors.”

“Hmph,” said the ponytailed skypirate. “I could have done that. I would have found it eventually.”

The purple-haired girl rolled her eyes at him.

Huld was just grateful that they seemed to have made it through the trap-gauntlet, for now at least. He was astonished at the variety and ingenuity of the traps and designs that had been built into this shrine to Eto. Had they been part of the original architect’s intention, he wondered, or had the ‘Earth Emerald’ moulded those, too, around itself?

“Come on everyone,” said the fireboy, who seemed to be the leader of the group, when it wasn’t ponytail or the old man. “Let’s see what’s through these doors.”

Huld walked forwards with the others through the steel doors.

Now the pool of moving light from the collection of glow-worms in the floor, which they had been chasing for so long, moved with them, staying under their feet and following them through the doors so that they were walking atop a bright halo.

Beyond the doors the pool-light lit up another large, high-ceilinged chamber much like the one they had been in two floors ago.

There were only two differences that Huld could see.

One, this chamber was somewhat smaller, in terms of its length and width, if not its height.

Two, this chamber, while it had the same brown-coloured earthen floor as the whole of the rest of the Shrine, had walls made of stone, grey in the light from the worm-pool.

“We’ve reached the stone top floor of the Shrine!” said the old man.

“About time too,” said ponytail.

“What do we do now we’re here?” said fireboy. “Shouldn’t the Emerald be in this room somewhere?”

“Hopefully…” said the old man. “But there might be one final puzzle, or challenge…”

“Well that’s just great…” grumbled ponytail.

“Hey, what’s that over there?” said the Manolian girl.

She was pointing at a small object on the floor in the centre of the room.

Huld walked over to it with the others in the light from the glow-worms and inspected it.

Right in the centre of the chamber was what to all appearances seemed to be a tiny plant.

The plant jutted just a few inches out of the earth floor, its stalk and presumably roots extending down into it. In the glow-worm light, it appeared to be green, but it was hard to tell. It had a few little leaves which grew off the main stalk. It was more of a shoot than a plant, really. The whole thing did not look bigger than Huld’s hand.

As they got close to it, the edge of the light-pool touched the plant, and its leaves twitched.

“Did you see that?!” said the engineer-girl.

All of a sudden the pool of light dissolved as the glow-worms all shot apart in different directions, trailing streaks of brightness across the floor away from the central point where they had been gathered. They moved faster than the party had yet seen them move, and made straight for the stone walls of the chamber.

Which they began to eat through.

Rather than turning dark, the chamber filled with light as the worms reached the stone and started to eat through it, flaring white in the process just as they had done when they had eaten through the stone doors that had given them access to the previous chamber.

None of the foreigners said anything, apparently too surprised and awestruck to do so, like Huld was. Instead they all held up their hands to shield their eyes against the incredibly bright light.

From behind Huld’s own upraised hand, the light moved up higher, till it was coming from above. Huld had to lift his hand higher above his head to block it out and stop it from blinding him. The worms must have eaten a path up to the ceiling of the chamber.

Then the light started to move downwards again. The worms must now be methodically eating through the walls of the chamber from the top, down.

A deep rumble sounded, punctuated by the occasional louder rise in pitch and volume, and the floor started to vibrate. It sounded like the walls were starting to crumble and fall away as the worms ate through them.

And a new light had joined the glow-worm-light now, a warmer, yellower light, all-encompassing, impossible to block out with one’s hands.

The sun.

Warm air caressed Huld’s face.

He dropped his hand.

As the last of the stone walls crumbled away, Huld looked round at the blue Farrian sky, the white clouds drifting aimlessly through it, the canopy-sea of green treetops that they were raised a little higher than on this earthen platform, the pinnacle of Eto’s ziggurat, which was now entirely stripped of its walls.

The foreigners had dropped their hands too, and were looking round and staring open-mouthed at the scene like idiots.

“Well, that was pretty cool,” said the engineer-girl.

“Indeed,” said the old man.

“We’re definitely at the top of the Shrine then…” said fireboy pointlessly.

“Yeah, but where’s the Jewel?” said ponytail.

“Stay patient, Captain Sagar,” said the Manolian. “I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.”

The Imperial Shadowfinger, Vish, barely ever said anything, Huld noted again.

“Er, guys…” said engineer-girl. “You’d better take a look at this…”

Huld turned to see what she was talking about.

Behind them, the plant in the floor, which they had been distracted from by the eating away of the walls, was growing.

It had grown so fast that it was already as tall as the engineer girl, a much larger shoot slithering upwards into the air, more shoots and leaves spouting off it and unfurling before their very eyes, its base stalk widening, thickening, pushing at the earth in which it was encased, roots starting to pop out of it like clenched fingers.

“What in the hells?” said ponytail.

The ground began to rumble again, then it split and cracked under their feet, a hundred jagged cracks zigzagging out from the plant’s base .

They stumbled backwards to where the ground remained firm, gazes still locked on the rapidly growing plant.

Now it was twice Huld’s height, and still growing, climbing, thickening, not showing any signs of slowing.

Then it roared.

Can plants roar? Huld thought.