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For a moment he stands stunned by what he has just witnessed. The others begin to move, however, and he gathers what breathable air is to found in this place around them. Spree and the young man called Deiter exit first followed by the wolf. He follows more slowly that there might be a pocket of air for the woman whose power has provided this exit. It is a slow climb upward through this narrow tube of twisted roots and vines, but a climb whose every forward motion is a movement into the sunlight that reaches them even here so far below the surface of the dark and stagnant waters of the moat.
They reach the surface and he throws back his head to receive the full light of the sun upon his face. His lungs expand hungrily and he draws breath after deepening breath of the free and living air around them. With a strange silence the tunnel of plants collapses behind them and the moat waters lie still once more for a few brief moments before rushing with a roar downward through the opening to flood the dungeons of the ruined tower.
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