Olimpia

Joxin crouched behind a large, erratically shaped stone, his head poking up over its edge as he looked down at a camp placed at the far side of a large cavern. As he looked out over the cave, he could not stop the snarl creeping onto his face as he inspected it. While the rest of the space was a maze of large rocks, holes, pointy cone rocks, and whatever else the natural rock formations were called when the two types of stone spikes became one, the camp was an oddly flat, cleared area with a large green glowstone lighting up it and most of the cave. Kind of stuck out.

From his count, there must be at least three thousand creatures calling this place home, though most, if not all of them, were not around at the moment. While he couldn’t count individuals, he felt confident in his guess as he studied the tents and the far smaller number of stone buildings in the camp's center. He was getting the sense that those still here were just the guards. Maybe even a reserve, but that was impossible to tell as he could not see into the structures, and releasing a pulse was an idiotic idea when the goblins able to feel it.

Joxin couldn't say what exactly was going on in the camp. He hadn't been here long enough to scope it out. And if things were going to go the way they had been the last… well, he didn't know how long, then they wouldn't have the time to give more than a cursory inspection of the camp before they had to make a move.

Depending on how you looked at it, Joxin and the others had either the best or worst luck of their lives during their time in these cursed caves. However, no matter how you looked at the situation, one thing was certain, Joxin was wrong. Horribly, hilariously, wrong.

It was to the extent that he wished he had never learned the truth. As understanding the truth meant putting the sweet and blissfully innocent Joxin of the past through torture.

After the ambush in the tunnel, where Joxin made the false claim of hating tunnels as he thought he understood what hate was. He did not. To hate something, you have to invest in it. An investment that takes time and can not come about quickly by its very nature. Joxin had now spent enough time in these caves to properly hate them.

As they traveled down the tunnel away from the fight, hours passed, and it almost became a pleasant journey as the tunnel started to spiral slowly downward. So long as they ignored the fact they had been walking for most of the day, and their feet were screaming at them to take a breath. But the cool wind constantly flowing past on the unbroken path was nice.

With the light from the suntorch, they were able to move at a brisk pace, but what kept them going were the hoots and pattering of distant feet echoing down the tunnel behind them. After a long time, they arrived at the end of the passage, where they found a guard post blocking the exit. After a quick and brutal fight, they found themselves inside a large natural cave, partially lit by clumps of glowing mushrooms next to small pools of water.

Knowing they were being pursued, they traveled across the cavern, randomly picking one of the new tunnel mouths when they could not see any signs of a steadily traveled path. Moving from one cavern into a tunnel only to find another unoccupied cavern at its end, they trekked through the caves, becoming increasingly weighed down by the far-too-long day. After they moved through a dozen chambers without seeing or hearing any signs of their pursuers, the scouts stopped in the dimly illuminated by the mushrooms. "I'll keep watch. You guys take a break." Sathera said, speaking for the first time in hours as she leaned against one of the cone rocks for support, her jaw clenched tight.

Looking at the others and shrugging, they didn't bother to argue with the obviously determined woman. Joxin moved to the other side for the rock from Sathera and flopped onto the stone floor while the others moved to her sides. Unable to stay awake on the surprisingly soft rock, Joxin drifted off into sleep.

Eyes snapping open that night or day — they had long since lost track of which it was — Joxin's mind was screaming at him of danger. Lying still, Joxin tried to figure out what was bothering him. The sudden spike in his heart rate corresponded with the realization he fell asleep on flat ground. Now, he found himself inside a suspiciously rectangular hole a foot below the rest of the cavern. A distance that seemed to be increasing… Arms snapping out, he grabbed onto the ledge of the hole and pulled himself up to a sitting position, intending to jump to his feet.

But the second he started moving, gangly hands and wiry arms exploded out from the cavity's walls to claw and grasp his armor and cloak, keeping him inside it. "Ahh! Get the fuck off me!" Joxin screamed, unable to stop the surprisingly loud and panicky scream from tearing itself out of his throat and echoing in the chamber as he kicked and scrabbled against the squirming hands. As he felt himself being pulled back into the tomb, Joxin shot his right arm out, planting his forearms onto the top edge of the cavity, keeping his torso upright, but he couldn't force himself to his feet.

Even with his minor success of forcing a stalemate, the grasping clawed hands didn't give up but worked their way up his body, trying to reach his shoulders and get better leverage as they labored to pull him back into the stone coffin. After what felt like hours of using his one free hand to rip off the hands clasping at his body over and over again, he finally remembered his knife. Snatching the weapon from his belt, he started cutting into the flesh of the wrists and hands with short, vicious stabs.

Even with the weeping wounds on the arms, the hands still refused to let him go and continued to remain latched onto him, although half of them did shift to restrain his knife-wielding arm. Joxin's hysteria-filled mind snapped into focus as he suddenly realized he was losing when the top inch of the stone tomb rippled. A moment later, the stone started to flow far too quickly for his liking inward, covering the top of the hole like a lid.

If the stone closed around him and then solidified, it wouldn't matter if his upper body was free. He would be trapped all the same. It would force his team to choose between letting him die or trying to break him free and potentially being killed themselves in the attempt. Because Joxin didn't think for a second that his high-strung comrades could or would sleep through his fight. He was in no way being quiet with his constant curses and screams, with a few calls for help thrown in. As he spent a moment to think back on the last few seconds, Joxin was pretty sure he remembered hearing the echoes of shouts that were not his own. Which meant there was another fight going on.

Continuing to strain against the hands, Joxin used part of his attention to gather half of what was left of his already drained psy reserves. Pushing the energy down to his waist, he held it around the outside of his body in a ring and waited. His heart beat frantically in his chest, and his muscles burned with the strain of holding himself in place, but his eyes remained locked on the line of earth he could just make out.

The moment the stone stopped the barest fraction from his skin, Joxin forced his ring of flat psy to rapidly expand, his heart soaring at the sound of the stone cracking when the two impacted. The horror he felt when he looked down to see the cracks in the stone start to disappear as the surrounding material bled into them almost cost Joxin the casting. His shaken willpower weakened the psy construct, letting his psy leak out, and every moment, it was only getting worse as his focus crumbled.

Gritting his teeth, Joxin sucked in a breath before screaming to focus his mind, filling his psy with his will to live and desire to help his comrades. The spike of willpower into his casting was heard instantly as his ring tendril pushed ever so slightly outward, cracking another section of the constricting stone plate. Then he reshaped his flat tendril of psy to fold around the layer of stone like the covers of two sides of a book.

Once he stretched his psy forward a few inches along the stone, he grunted in effort as he flexed his will again. With a crack that sounded like the breaking of a sheet of ice, he folded the solid layer of stone he covered back on itself. But any plans he had to drive his body upward and out of the hole with the foot he managed to get planted under himself vanished as the stone his psy was wrapped around liquefied.

When the stone changed, Joxin felt himself enter into a contest of wills as his psy and the other casters — as he now could feel six distinct entities controlling the stone together — made contact and began battling each other. Like water being poured into a fire, the opposing psy castings started dissipating in mutual destruction. It could not have been more than a second, and yet a third of the psy within his casting was gone, while his mind felt like it was being sucked dry of all thoughts and emotions as they were fed into the conflict.

Gathering the last of his psy to send in to reinforce his casting in one final attempt at freedom, the stone abruptly became solid before shattering a moment later as his casting continued to push against it. No longer trapped by the grasping hands, Joxin's body rocked before he fell back a few inches, landing at the bottom of the cavity.

Even as he was catching his breath and trying to figure out what was going on, Joxin could feel the ground beneath his backside shiver, signaling he was about to be attacked again. Frantically scrambling out of the death trap, he would swear that he felt hands slipping along his legs, causing him to release a full-body shudder as he flopped onto the ground.

After he scooted across the stone floor, putting more than five feet between him and his almost crypt, Joxin was finally able to look around and take in what was happening around him. The other three members of his party were in the middle of a fight as they beat back what Joxin came to call shadow goblins.

Heaving himself up while keeping a wary watch on the floor for more stone goblins, the vicious little bastards, Joxin moved to help the others defend their camp, suddenly feeling weighed down by the pain from his cuts and bruises but still stepping forward while muttering to himself. “Yeah… don't mind me. Not like I was almost buried alive over here. No big deal."

With his appearance and a few quick slashes of his knife hitting nothing but air, the attacking goblins scattered into the cave's gloom, leaving Joxin with nobody to take his frustration out on. Sucking in and breathing out a long breath at the anticlimactic ending, Joxin started glancing around.

Studying the handful of bodies at their feet, Joxin groaned as he leaned down. With a few quick motions, he took a belt and the accompanying sheath off a goblin before grabbing a sword with a slight curve at the tip from the creature's hand. The sword didn't look like the best quality, as there was pitting and some rust on the blade, and the leather had a rancid smell, but it was better than the nothing he currently had. And it was almost the same length as gladius, so he should be able to wield it fine.

"I see the sleeping beauty finally decided to get up and help the rest of us," Jim commented from the side, his voice laced with pain.

Looking up at Jim, Joxin spoke while attempting, but failing, to keep the spite out of his voice, "Those little assholes were trying to swallow me with the earth. Nearly had me sealed in a stone coffin before I woke up. The only thing that saved me was I sensed the use of psy in my sleep. They were swimming through the stone and manipulating it like weak knights terra.”

Jim blinked at Joxin a few times, then looked to Sathera and Bellous before saying, "Damn, that's fucked up… And just added a mountain to my concerns. Wonder why they didn't just kill you? Would have been quicker and easier. Succeeded, too."

"Because it would have been quicker," Bellous softly said, the assurance in his tone causing an uneasy silence to settle among them. A silence that was soon broken by the goblins' shrieks and hoots ringing out of a tunnel across the cavern.

Looking to the side of the cave where the noise was coming from, Sathera's shoulders slumped slightly before perking up, and she said with forced confidence, "Grab your gear, and let's move." Turning, she followed her own words, and they were soon forced to blindly flee down another tunnel, constantly hounded by the chittering sounds of numerous goblins in the darkness behind them. But the goblins stalking them wasn't what was pressing them down. That was the knowledge that every step they took, they were heading deeper into the earth.

After that attack, the shadow goblins consistently appeared, as hardly more than a few minutes passed without one popping up. However, they usually only bared their weapons and flashed their teeth before retreating.

On average, the shadow goblins had a larger stature than the stone goblins by a head, putting them about four feet tall, but most of that was a wiry build with no bulky muscles. The bastards also seemed to wear shadows like flowing cloaks, becoming all but invisible in the shadows.

They also usually had some kind of armor and weapons, but that could vary between what was almost at a legion standard to ones in little more than a half-decomposed rag for a loincloth and a rusty chipped dagger. One thing that was obvious was that the ones with better gear were the leaders of every group… kind of. It was just that calling the best-equipped the "leaders" was more than a bit of a stretch.

More than a few times, Joxin saw the leader point their weapon at him and the others and garble something, only for his "troops" to turn on him. Sometimes, it was all of them. Other times, one would pick up a rock and bash in the back of the leader's skull before scrambling to snatch the weapons and armor for themselves.

Regardless of what kind of betrayal it was, it nearly always turned into a fight amongst the goblins as they clawed at each other in an attempt to claim the gear. And it was an opportunity that Sathera never let go to waste as she ordered everyone to retreat down a new tunnel.

While the shadow goblins were a near-constant companion of their group, as it always seemed like one was around, skulking in the shadows, they were cowards. The light from the suntorch — which was never out of one of our hands — was usually enough to keep them at bay. And the times it wasn't, a show of force would scatter them like the feral beasts they were.

The only real problem we had was when the third type of goblin showed up leading the others. The bulky warrior goblins were a head and a half taller than their tallest comrades and had eyes gleaming with vicious intellect. When warrior goblins were around, the only way to make the lesser goblins retreat was to kill the larger ones.

Until then, it was apparent that the malicious creatures were more afraid of their supposed brethren than they were of dying to Joxin's new curved goblin blade sword. Which almost made Joxin pity them.

Then, he tried to catch a quick nap while leaning against a nice narrow rock, only to wake up as he was shoved to the side by Sathera, narrowly avoiding the stone goblin's claws reaching out of his bed to slice into his neck. Or maybe he found himself shying away from walls as a mixture of fear and hatred rushed through him, all but certain that a stone goblin would come bursting out of the wall at any moment. And then there was the memorable time he tried to take a shit only to have one of the little fuckers explode out of the stone between his legs and almost rip his balls off. Regardless of which one of the many traumas he suffered through, it always seemed those events happened right after Joxin felt the slightest pang of anything but hatred for the creatures inhabiting this cursed cave system. Maybe it was fate or just happenstance, but every other feeling other than hatred was burned away as the creatures always did something to set him back onto the right path.

A path of loathing that had taken deep root within his heart.

With the unmarked passage of hours tumbling by, they unwillingly plunged into the depths of the cavern. They were unable to make more than the most basic plans, as their pursuers were constantly harrying and harassing them from what felt like every direction. On multiple occasions, they tried to take a path that ascended, but what felt like every time, a group containing multiple warrior goblins would appear, forcing them to retreat.

Force them to take a passage which carried them downward. Always downward, descending to another cavern and new sets of tunnels. No matter how a path twisted left or right, they stumbled along the dark and sloped tunnels, the screeches and chittered laughs of their enemies thrumming against their backs. Time after time, they moved from tunnel to chamber back to tunnel.

Only for the shortest moments could they find a respite, but someone always had to stay up, protecting the others in their naps for the handful of moments they had before their march began again. Yet in all their travels, they never saw the same cavern twice as they continued on their seemingly endless descent into hell.

Joxin wasn't sure how long they had been forced to plod forward or how far they traveled in the hours of pursuit, but finally, they came to a large cavern with its edges filled with glowing mushrooms and hundreds of the upward-facing stone spikes. The center of the chamber was filled with so many stone pillars that it would be impossible to climb through them, not that it would be easy to get to them as they were surrounded by a deep ring of water. Even with only stepping into the cavern for a few moments, they could see multiple exits for the cave, many of which were wide and filled with the green glow of mushrooms, suggesting large caverns at their ends.

Darting into one of the openings, they quickly moved across it, entering one tunnel and chamber after another without thought until they could no longer hear the sound of their goblin pursuers. Taking advantage of their apparent momentary escape, Joxin and the others settled down to catch a few minutes of rest. A few minutes that turned into hours where they were blissfully undisturbed, setting off alarm bells in all of their minds.

It didn't take long for Sathera to lead them back through the caves until they came to the water ring chamber, and they found their answer.

Apparently, the goblins had done a great job of herding the scouts into the deeper sections of this cave network. A fact that none of them had the capacity to realize from their exhaustion-clouded minds until it was far too late to change anything about it. Not that they had many other options when looking back, but they should have seen what was happening instead of mindlessly running.

A fact Sathera seemed to be taking poorly as she lay on the ground, silently brooding as they looked across the cavern. A large group of goblins were setting up camp at the mouth of the tunnel they had arrived through. As Joxin and the others watched them, it became clear the goblins had no intention of moving away from the tunnel mouth.

"Should we try and sneak past them? Or fight past them?" Joxin hesitantly asked as he counted at least a dozen warrior goblins and twice that many of the other two kinds.

"No," Sathera rejected instantly. "They'll see or sense our approach. And there are too many for us to fight through. We have to find a way around."

"And if there is none?" Joxin asked.

Sathera shrugged, a tinge of resignation and despair in her movements and voice, "We will cross that bridge when we come to it. Bellous, stay here and watch them. We'll go search the caverns."

With nothing else to say, Joxin, Sathera, and Jim slipped back into the tunnel and away from the goblin cavern.

It soon became clear why the goblins were content to leave them be. This section of the cave network was largely interconnected. Joxin took a single tunnel that split and looped back on itself so many times that it led to dozens of large and small chambers. And it wasn't the only passage like that. Chasing anything within this section of the tunnels would be a nightmare and be begging to be ambushed. Not to mention, it didn't seem to matter if the goblins chased them anymore, as no matter how they searched, they couldn't find a single passage leading up. There were a few dark and narrow openings dropping to underground rivers or cramped chasms, but those were of little help. They weren't at the point where they would plunge deeper into the unknown darkness in the fleeting hope of finding an escape.

Days must have passed while they gradually mapped this lower network of tunnels, and they had long since run out of their stored food and water, but that ended up not mattering much. They had plenty of water, and Bellous had taken it upon himself to test something he witnessed the goblins doing.

Much to Joxin's dismay, Bellous lived, and they made the oh-so-critical — and yet horrible — discovery that the glowing mushrooms were edible. While it was keeping them alive and fed, the stupid mushrooms tasted like a wet piece of bark you picked up out of a marinade of swamp water, let it dry out, and then decided to dip it back into the water for flavoring. Joxin didn't have anything against weird food, but eating something that you could faintly see through a neck when someone swallowed it was a line too far for him.

The only good part of being in these cursed caverns was that the entire time they were down here, they never once saw the thralls, as they didn't come down here for whatever reason. Not that they were needed.

Joxin and the others had explored all of the nearby connected caverns they were confined in, and with every cavern and every day that passed with them still only having one possible blocked escape path, the mood in their camp was becoming grim. But if Joxin was being honest, most of the dark mood came from the shift in Sathera's attitude. Her near-constant smile had disappeared, and she hardly spoke outside of giving orders.

"The guards have relaxed their vigilance," Bellous said, "We may be able to rush or sneak through their camp."

"And go where?" Joxin asked, "We might be able to navigate these caverns, but we have no idea how extensive they are above us. I doubt we could find the path we took to get here."

"We could start picking them off." Bellous tried again.

"That will only draw more of them… it could even make them start hunting us," Joxin said as he held a mushroom, contemplating whether he was starving enough to put it into his mouth. "Besides, killing them will only alert them that we are still around. You already said they were relaxing their guard; it would be better to wait and see if they leave at this point. They might think we died down here of starvation, as we were too smart to think of eating the poisonous-looking glowing mushrooms. Or that we went into the deeper caves and fell into the underwater rivers."

"If we try to wait them out," Sathera cut in, sounding defeated as she looked at the ground, "anything we have to report will be meaningless, assuming we find a way out… But that could already be the case with how lon—

Rushing into the light of the suntorch, Jim called out with a massive smile on his face, "I found an air shaft! I think we might be able to climb through it."

Head snapping up and fevered eyes locking onto Jim, Sathera snapped, "Take us there."

Quickly packing up their things, they moved to follow Jim. They traveled through at least twenty caverns, entering an area that Joxin had never been to. "I spent the last couple hours trying to track a small current of air I felt," Jim explained, "but I was finally able to find this." Holding out his arm, Jim showed off a crack in the wall, which was no wider than his forearm. Then he turned to look at the rest of them with a wide, proud smile.

Joxin couldn't believe that this was what Jim was getting excited about. "Jim, you fucking idiot," Bellous grumbled, sounding disappointed.

"How," Sathera said before Jim could speak, her voice taking on the edge of an internal struggle as she held the bridge of her nose with her forefinger and thumb, "are we going to be able to climb through that, Jim?"

"Huh?" Jim grunted, looking at all of them in confusion before his face lit up with understanding. "Ahh, yeah. We can't right now… But the narrow crevice is only a few inches thick before it widens a lot. Just stick your arm in there and see for yourself."

Moving forward with suspicion radiating off her like heat, Sathera walked up to the crack and then sucked in a long breath before pushing her arm forward. As her arm vanished up to her shoulder, her face brightened, a smile touching her lips for the first time in days.

"Good Job— No, great job, Jim," She said, clapping him on the shoulder, "Now, let's get to work." Putting words into action, she pulled back her arm and punched the wall. Sathera's fist stopped inches from the stone fissure, but her psy casting lashed out, hitting the stone wall with a crack that resounded through the chamber. As a fist-sized chunk of stone fell to the ground, along with a pattering of stone shards and dust into the air, Joxin and the others stepped forward to help.

None of them wanted to stay in this horrible place a moment longer than required.

An hour later, with over half of their psy reserves gone, they had widened the opening enough for Joxin to slip inside. After the new entrance, the crack widened considerably, and it was like he was inside the hollow trunk of a large tree. Except the hole continued farther than he could see into the earth, and he had to brace himself against the opposing walls to stay in place.

Holding the suntorch and feeding it a slight tendril of psy and willpower, Joxin looked up, not seeing the end of the cavity. But he also didn't see the walls suddenly shrink to a third its width. Tilting his head down, Joxin looked back at Sathera, who was crouched by the entrance, watching him with a mixture of anticipation and fear on her face. Giving her a broad smile, he said, "We might have a way out of here."

"Might?"

"The chasm goes too far up for me to see its end. I'm going to have to climb up and see what's up there."

“…Okay," Sathera said with a resigned nod after a moment of thought. "Just be careful with the climb."

"Here," Joxin said, stretching out his arm and offering her the suntorch. "It will just hinder me in the climb, and if I get stuck, it would be better for you to have it. These will do just fine." With his other hand, Joxin lifted the bundle of tied-together mushrooms he had at his waist, which gave off enough of a glow that he should be able to see a few feet in the dark passage.

Reluctantly, Sathera reached out to grab the torch from Joxin, unable to deny his reasoning. Giving them all a nod goodbye, he said, "I'll drop one mushroom if I find an exit, two if I get stuck." Then, he stood to his full height, briefly shaking out his arms and back.

Looking up, Joxin planted his feet and arms on opposite sides of the wall and started shimmying up the channel, one small alternating step after another. Even with the help of a tendril pulling up, the climb started to wear on his body after the first thirty feet, and he felt himself breaking out into a light sweat.

Time crawled by for Joxin, and he focused on raising one side of his body, then the other. It was all that mattered to him. He hardly even noticed gaining a few scrapes as he pushed himself through a particularly narrow section of the ascent. After a couple dozen near-silent curses for volunteering for this shit, Joxin found his eyes locked on a sickly green glow above him, and he found himself speeding up.

It wasn't long afterward that he found himself squeezing through a narrow gap in the wall and flopping onto a small ledge surrounded by rocks, with the best-looking mushrooms he had ever seen glowing at their base. Rolling onto his back, Joxin kicked at the mushrooms that had some kind of mesmerizing ability — which could be the only explanation for him being happy to see them — scattering them with his boot. Then he picked one out of the mess and dropped it down the hole, a smile touching his lips.

He rested a moment before getting to a crouch and moving to the ledge overlooking the camp he was now watching. A camp that looked an awful lot like it had a spiral staircase winding around a massive pillar with a weird section taking up one side of its base. Joxin couldn't stop a few tears from coming to his eyes at the beautiful sight. At that moment, he wasn't sure if he would trade the vista of the staircase for anything.