Chapter Thirty-two
Creatures of the Dark
The cavern beyond was much different from the room we had just left. It was natural cave, rather than constructed walls like the rest of the temple.
"Do not fear the dark. Stay your course." I couldn't tell if the sphinx had actually spoken, or if she had somehow spoken to our minds, which it seemed I was getting increasingly familiar with.
Naidaroe put away her glowing blade, but Sindus refused to put out his lamp. An odd gust of wind put it out for him, and Melima let out a smug smile. My eyes quickly adjusted to the diminished light, something was glowing on the top of the cavern, down the tunnel. It looked like moss, but glowed a faint blue.
It was just enough light that everyone could see, and we continued on our way. The path slowly descended, and after a couple of minutes we heard the door behind us close. Ari'yasa mentioned that the cave didn't appear to be made of natural erosion, but seemed to be more like a tunnel carved by a creature.
The tunnel continued its gradual descent, with nowhere else to turn. It was just wide enough for us to march single file, which hampered most conversation. We wanted to be quiet anyway.
Sindus would whistle every once in a while, which prompted a swift smack from me. He dropped behind, and Melima took a turn to smack him when he whistled. He finally dropped behind with Keothi.
After about a half-hour, we began to see other tunnels branching off of the sides, ceiling, and even the floor. They seemed to be just smaller than the main tunnel. Seeing these, Naidaroe and I healed ourselves. I whispered back to the group. "Keep your wit about you, but let's keep going down the main tunnel."
The side tunnels continued for a while, but at one point disappeared for several minutes of walking. The tunnel became narrower, and Keothi could barely fit through as he walked sideways.
The tunnel widened again, and I began to hear something down the tunnel. After a few moments, I recognized it as water falling. I was starting to dislike the sound of water underground.
The tunnel widened even further and the glow disappeared farther down. It seemed the tunnel would open to a larger cavern as we continued. Naidaroe and I crept forward to see what was in the cavern.
On the way down, Naidaroe stopped suddenly, turning to make sure I was there. Her sheath clanked into the wall, but I caught it before it could hit again. I motioned for her to be quiet.
There was indeed a huge cavern at the end of the tunnel. It was dotted with stalagmites and stalactites. The glowing moss continued up the ceiling, eventually dispersing. It almost looked like stars. To our left was a river coming out from the rock. It went over a cliff a few stone's throws away.
The cavern faded into darkness. It seemed as if this was a shelf of a larger cavern. We slowly moved forward to the ledge, which was as high as a tree. It wasn't as tall as I thought it might be.
There were more stalagmites in the lower cavern. There didn't seem to be anything alive on the shelf where we were. We went back to get the others.
I led the party towards the right, away from the river. A different type of rumble started, and the ground beneath us started to shake. Something popped out of the ground directly in front of me.
It was huge and buglike. It had pincers on its hands and huge mandibles on its head. When my gaze reached the eyes of this thing my vision faded, almost like I had been hit in the head.
It felt like a combination of grogginess and having just seen a bright flash. I couldn't see, and wasn't quite sure what was going on. I just felt my legs moving, walking beneath me. I couldn't even tell if I was walking in a straight line.
Then I was falling, and my senses cleared up. I had just walked straight off the cliff! Almost as soon as I realized what had happened, I hit the ground below. Flat on my back, the air was knocked right out of me, my head ached, and my ankle hurt tremendously.
I heard a crack of lightning above me, and Melima was soon looking over the cliff. "Are you okay?"
"Ow." Knowing my friends above must still be fighting this thing, I rolled over just enough to grab my broom and shot back up the cliff.
"We're getting close, guys!" Sindus shouted. I floated just over the ledge, so I wouldn't fall off the cliff again if I fell.
The creature was entangled in vines, and there was a cloud of daggers between two stalagmites. We could make it between the daggers and the rock, but the creature would have to pass through the daggers to follow. "Get to the other side of the daggers!" I cried.
I tried to avoid looking right at the creature and sent off two arrows. The first one sailed over its shoulder, but the second one planted in a crack in its shell. Lightning shot out from Melima next to me, but landed just short of the creature in a fiery crash.
Naidaroe tried to shoot the creature with her crossbow, but in averting her gaze to avoid whatever this thing could do to us, she missed, and I had to duck away from her bolt.
Keothi feinted an attack to the left, then artfully brought his hammer down to the right. He brought down three more blows in a flurry of flesh and steel.
The creature swung at him in anger, but its swing was wide. Moving with the missed swing, Keothi spun and brought his hammer down on top of the creature's head and into the ground. It looked like a bug that had been stepped on.
The rest of us watched in awe. There was cheer and applause, despite ourselves. We had made plenty of noise as it was. I brought my broom to the ground and landed. "And that is why you are war chief!"
We took a look at our surroundings. The hole the creature came out of was about the same size as the smaller ones we had seen in the tunnel. What would have happened had we been attacked there?
The area we were standing on now looked like it had at one point been a stream bed, but the stream now went another direction. There was a strange smell in the air, but I couldn't quite tell what it was. It also seemed more humid than it should be underground, though it was probably from the river next to us.
I went up and out over the cliff on my broom. I couldn't see anything on the ground below to determine how secure our location was. Everything seemed blurry to me. I returned to let the group know what I had seen, or rather, hadn't been able to see.
"I couldn't see much of anything, which may be due to my fall. If someone else would like, I can command my broom to go out and you can try to see. Between that creature and my fall, I am not able to see much of anything."
"Well, I can only see like, this far in front of me." Sindus held his hand out in front of his face.
"Well, maybe not Sindus." I laughed at his non-helpful offer. Melima offered to go out. She sat on the broom and steadied herself as I commanded it to start moving. She wasn't a bad rider.
I commanded the broom out as far as I could see. Melima motioned for me to bring her back. "More rock. The glowing stuff goes pretty far, I could almost see the end curve down."
Naidaroe continued away from the river. She shouted back. "I found a cavern! It looks like someone may have been camping here!"
We went over to investigate. If nothing else, it might be a good place for us to rest for a few hours. I searched the ground for tracks. Despite the rocks, I was able to make out several markings.
There was a makeshift fire pit, and next to it looked like a bedroll had been laid out. It was about the same size that Lorcan used. There were also several bootprints, small bootprints. Kima must have camped here.
There were tracks that looked like they were from the creature we had just killed, there must be more in the area. I checked for a set of bootprints going out. To my relief, I found some. Kima had not been taken by one of these bug things, at least not there.
Naidaroe pointed out that it seemed to be a different type of stone here. There were not holes like in the other parts of the cavern and the tunnel we came down through. We also found a carving, which Melima thought looked like a glyph, probably to protect the area.
We decided to rest there, and a few of us went back to look at the corpse of the creature to find out if there was anything we could use off of it. Being buglike, it had an exoskeleton and was soft underneath. The only thing I found that could be useful was one of the long pincers that could be formed into a weapon if desired.
Sindus watched me as I looked it over. "Are there any poisons?"
"I'm not sure, I'm unfamiliar with this creature. And I don't really want to dig through it and find out the hard way."
Sindus knelt on the other side. "Here, let me have a look."
He dug around carefully, looking for sacs that might contain poisons. The stench from the insides started to get to me, and I backed away. Sindus gave up and looked to those of us who were still around. "Who wants a hug?"
"Go wash off in the river!" I laughed. I didn't want to smell that, and I didn't think anyone else did either. Sindus and Keothi dragged the corpse to the river, which helped with the smell throughout the area.
Melima and Sindus took the first watch. The rest of us settled in the back of the protected cavern to rest. It didn't seem long before Melima woke me up to take second watch.
My head still ached, even after a few hours of sleep. I found it hard to focus. My mind kept wandering to the Eternity Tree, my parents, and my father's cryptic letter. I knew I needed to ask Melima about my family name, but how?
I was grateful we had decided to have two people on watch. Keothi was doing much better than I was, despite his battle wounds. He nudged me and pointed to the ceiling. Another one of the bug creatures was crawling along, upside down.
We kept an eye on it, but made no moves against it. It was too far at the moment to pose a real threat. We saw another one along the ceiling towards the end of our watch. We awoke Naidaroe and Ari'yasa for their watch and told them what we had observed.
