Young Flame

“So… should we destroy them? I’m not sure I like the idea of more of whatever that was running around,” Jav says.

“No,” Tetsu says. “Did you not feel that presence? We don’t have a chance if it comes back.”

I look down at the glowing base of the cavern below. Large swathes of the glow go dark in areas silhouetting… something down there. The light isn’t bright enough to actually see what the shadows are, but if there is more than one of those things down there, I really don’t want to stand around here. Actually, even the one is too much.

“Bunny’s right.” Remus stares up at the eggs on the ceiling. “This is our limit. Thanks to whatever that glow is, we know there is an entire unexplored ecosystem down here. We won’t have to search that last hole we found. Now is the time to report back.”

As he takes a step back, the familiar skittering sound of a centipede comes from the other side of the hole. I pump my flames a bit to get a better look, feeling exhausted even from this slight effort. The creature is already digging into an egg, eating whatever undeveloped creature it can find inside.

“Well, that’s not good,” Remus says as I hear more critters all around us. “On the off chance that thing actually cares about its babies, we should probably run.”

And like that, we are off. Grímr lunges after him, and the rough motion immediately flares the aches in my body, reigniting my migraine. I shut my eyes to try and push away the pain, but it isn’t helpful.

There is no sound of grinding rock nor the tapping from earlier. All I hear as we run is the scuttle of many centipedes rushing for a free lunch. Whatever left those eggs, thankfully, doesn’t return.

We slow after Remus decides we are far enough from the hole.

“Alright,” he starts. “Where’s the way out?”

“You weren’t paying attention? Again?” Jav says, exasperated. “Just go east.”

At the blank looks he receives, he sighs and points in a direction. “Just walk that way.”

Again, we are back to walking through the endless flat cavern. I feel capable of looking around without losing my mind in panic. So… progress.

I don’t know how Jav can tell where we are. It looks the same no matter how far we travel.

Regardless of how he does it, he exudes a confidence that doesn’t make me doubt his ability to find the exit for a second. That is until he has us stop where there is no hole in the ceiling and looks around in confusion after days of walking with confidence.

“It should be here.”

“Oh my, what’s this? Jav lost his touch?” Remus gasps. “And to think he was so confident all this time.”

“Not the time,” Jav snaps, looking along the ceiling as if it will pop into existence. “I’m not wrong. It should be here.”

Remus sighs. “Alright. Everyone fan out and see if you can find it.”

Grímr and I rush off. With my body as reluctant to work with me as it is, it’s a challenge to brighten my flames. I push them so we have a decent amount of light to work with, but despite that, we find no signs of our entrance.

We search for a long while, covering several hundred metres from the point Jav claimed the exit should be. Not a hint of the entrance to be found.

But that’s not to say we find nothing.

“Everyone,” Tetsu calls through the dark. “Get here now.”

Grímr and I arrive to see her standing over what looks like a golden-brown, flat-bottomed bowl.

“What did you find?” Remus says as he approaches.

“Not sure. It looks like a pastry, but I’ve never seen one so hard.” She pokes the toe of her boot at the offending bowl and it clatters along the stone as if it were rock itself.

Jav is off Remus’s head and scoops the pastry off the ground. “Old man, I didn’t realise you ate these? I thought you hated acting your age?”

“What?” Remus’ eyes widen as he gets a closer look at the bowl. “That’s not mine.”

“Then this is concerning,” Jav says, putting strength into his arms until the thing cracks apart.

“What is it?” Grímr asks.

“A pie. A pastry hard enough to survive some abuse. It’s used to contain meat for safe consumption while travelling. They’re an outdated practice as the inedible crust wastes a lot of space.” Jav pauses as he looks around the cavern. “Someone else has been down here.”

“But… why? Did the Order send someone before us?” Tetsu asks.

“No. They shouldn’t have. Even if you ignore the fact that this was more of a punishment than a mission, they sent us alone because nobody else was available.” Remus rests his head on a curled up tentacle. “I think for now we should just focus on getting out. We’ll trust that Jav’s sense isn’t off and that the Titan’s path is above us. Bunny, can you please?”

Without a word, she pulls out her war hammer and swings it so the spike smashes into the stone above our heads. The loud clang sends a jolt of pain through my head. Her hammer did nothing more than bounce off the stone. A thin scratch is all that marks the spot she hit.

After watching her smash though thousands of tonnes of stone against the dahu, it is shocking to see her hit cause nearly no damage.

“Wha…?” she obviously feels the same way

She lines up her strike again, but is no more effective than before. In fact, the ceiling seems to have damaged her hammer more than it did the ceiling. The sharp tip on the back of her hammer is ever so slightly duller.

Remus shoos her out of the way and dons a gauntlet. His tentacle moves too quick to see, but I hear the thunderous crack reverberating from his swing. Even his attack leaves nothing more than a dent the shape of his gauntlet in the ceiling.

“Well,” He starts. “This is worrisome.”

Each of the team casts their gaze around the cavern in obvious concern. It seems I’m the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on.

“Is that…” Grímr pauses. “Is all of this… ranked stone?”

“It appears so.”

“Well, shit. It looks like Solvei was right to be worried about being trapped,” Jav says.

His words feel like a spike being nailed into my chest. When there was a way out, I hadn’t been able to stop the panic attack coming on. But now they say we are actually trapped?

I can’t stop the delirium that envelopes me. I go to lash out but find no energy responds. Darkness takes me.

❖❖❖

My eyes open to a wall of blue light. I blink and groan from the pain that assaults me. I guess it’s too much to ask to sleep until I feel better.

As I look around, I realise it isn’t a blue wall, but a thousand blue glowing dots around me. Tiny little flying insects that weave in amongst themselves a metre or two above the ground.

Wait… we didn’t go down into the home of that monster, did we?

I can’t see the ceiling. Not a good sign. The ground under Grímr’s feet is uneven soil with protruding jagged rocks, not smooth stone. The glow-flies must be the source of the blue glow I saw looking down that hole.

Despite possibly being in the home of some Titan and being trapped underground, the panic that has consumed me ever since they dragged me down here, has calmed. I still feel horribly sick and lacking energy, but the overwhelming desperation is gone.

The fear is still there, but I feel like it is manageable. It’s both more natural and yet somewhat subdued. Maybe it’s because the cavern is much larger, or I’ve just burnt through all the effort I’m willing to go through in my efforts to escape.

Something about these options doesn’t seem right to me, but I’m grateful to think with a clear mind again. Now, I can figure out how I’m going to get out of here. If this team tries to stop me from getting out, then it might be time to separate from them.

“You’re awake!” Grímr says as I readjust my position.

“Yeah.” I manage, still feeling tired.

“You’ve been out for weeks. We were worried.”

The team comes to a stop and surrounds me. It is uncomfortable to have everyone’s attention solely on me. Especially as vulnerable as I feel right now.

Remus steps before me and dips his head until it’s below mine. “I am deeply regretful of the actions I have made. I apologise for not treating your concerns with the sincerity they deserve. My actions were intended to help, but that is no excuse for the suffering I have inflicted on you.”

He tilts his eyes up in his head until he’s locking them with my own. “I talked about the arrogance about the younger teams, but it was my own arrogance that landed us here. If I had listened to your fears, I would not have put you in such a dangerous place. For that, I am sorry.”

I don’t know how to react. I turn to the others to see their reaction. Both Jav and Tetsu bow their heads to me as well. Even Grímr lowers his head underneath me. I don’t know why; it’s not him I feel betrayed by.

“I am sorry,” Tetsu says stiffly.

Jav nods at her words. “You should have seen Grímr’s outburst. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry. He made sure each of us regret what we did.”

I don’t know if I should believe their apologies are sincere. What if they’re trying to bait me in with a false sense of security only to betray me once more? Just as Gloria did.

Well, regardless of their intentions, if I can use their intent to make up — genuine or not — I’ll use them as much as I can to find a way out.

I give them a small nod to appease them.

“What happened?” I ask.

Grímr takes the chance to jump in. “After you fainted, we spent a week walking through the flat cavern, looking for any sign of a way out. We had no luck; the cavern was identical almost the entire way through except for the holes created by that large egg-laying monster and a few other insignificant oddities. We found nothing in our search, so we decided it was best to look down here.”

“So, how do we plan to get out?”

“We hope to find a path down here. There was nothing for us to find up there. The entrance we came through has seemingly been replaced by ranked stone,” Remus says.

“You want to find your way out… by going down? Won’t we just reenter that cavern if we climb up again? And what’s ranked stone?”

“Ranked stone, or any ranked element, is the enhanced version of that element. Think how we are strengthened people of our own race; it is like that, but for stone. That cavern above us is entirely made of ranked stone. Which, I should be clear, is insane. Many of the stronger Middle Elevation beasts can only create or influence a small amount of the stuff. Imagine all the rock the dahu manipulated, all of that compressed to the size of your hand.”

I look down at my hand and struggle to comprehend the exact magnitude of what he is talking about. All I know is that this ranked stone is strong.

“There are few things that can break through ranked stone. None of us can. So we come down here on the assumption that the area acts like the Middle Elevation; there may be paths that shouldn’t exist if you mapped it out. It is not impossible for a path to lead to the surface that somehow avoids the flat cavern above.”

It sounds hard to believe, but I’ve already seen the inside of the Void Fog, so it isn’t unimaginable. Still, it feels like a bit of a stretch as our only option.

“There’s really no other way?”

Remus avoids eye contact and acts like he hasn’t heard me.

“The monsters,” Tetsu says in his place. “We could lure one of them into reopening the entrance.”

“No. If we do that, the likelihood something will go wrong is enormous. We can’t risk it.”

That sounds terrifying. But if it is a way out, it’s definitely worth considering.

In the corner of my eye, I spot the hovering glow-bugs start to thin.

Remus notices too. “We should get moving. For now, we’ll continue to look for a way up and only consider baiting one of those things if we have no other option.”

I cling to Grímr and we dash away from the area of dwindling lights.