I looked around nervously, my anchored shoulder beams revolving back and forth like a lighthouse. "I don't see anything."

"Whit aboot a cave?"

"Nothing."

"By the direction o' yer umbilical I can see ye're headin' south. Did ye want to head south then?"

I checked the digital compass. One-seven-two… he was right, I was drifting south. "Standby." I pressed down with my left foot, activating my propeller for the first time.

The powerful motor blasted me through the alien underworld, my arms reaching out awkwardly for balance as I soared through the abyss doing eight knots.

Easing back on the propeller, I slowed, then used my thrusters to execute a turn. After a few tries, I was able to steady my heading at zero-nine-zero, moving due east, aiming for the eastern bank and Aldourie Castle.

Through the brown-black darkness I flew, the intensity of my beating heart causing the arteries in my neck to throb. I looked left then right, feeling like a lone antelope on a lion-infested plain.

And then my eyes caught movement, a brief shimmer along the bottom.

I slowed, circling back as I searched the gray-brown void. And then I saw it.

It was an Anguilla eel, a big one, maybe ten feet long, only it wasn't slithering like a sea snake, it was hanging vertically off the bottom, the tip of its tail buried in the sediment, its head aimed at the surface.

As I drifted slowly over the eel, my light reflecting off the opaque eyes of another and another, then dozens more, all frozen in the same vertical holding pattern, like a ballet of cobras, caught in a trance.

"Zack, whit dae ye see?"

"Eels. Must be hundreds of them. They're just hanging off the bottom, as if standing on end. It's eerie."

"An' dangerous. Steer clear."

"Wait… I see something else."

I eased forward using my propeller, aiming my light along the bottom. The beacon caught the jagged edge of a dark shadow. Moving closer, I saw that it was not a shadow, but a chasm, cutting across the Loch's bottom like a miniature version of the Grand Canyon.

"It's a narrow trench, and it looks pretty deep. The eels are positioned around it, almost as if they're sentries standing guard."

"Stay downcurrent if ye can. Anguilla have poor eyesight, but if they smell ye—"

"The chasm's about sixty feet wide. If I hover over it, I think I can drop down nice and easy without disturbing the eels."

I pressed gently on my thrusters, ascending higher over the rift before engaging the propeller again. Slowly I circled, the handheld beacon shining down upon a hole so deep it seemed to absorb my light.

I never noticed the elongated tract of sediment, piled eighteen feet high, that wound more than fifty feet along one edge of the crevice. Nor did I see the two luminescent-yellow eyes that gleamed up from it as I circled by.

"Stand by, True, here I go."