Chapter Seventy-six

Stalactites

The half-elf woman met us at the cave entrance the next morning, wishing us good luck. "If there is anything that we can help with, please let us know. Obviously, we cannot send anything your way, but please let us know how we can help. And hopefully, it will be a successful journey."

She cast a spell on us that made us immune to fear and would protect against other effects of the mind. I thanked her.

"You are most welcome. Be safe." She started her way through the village. We entered the cave, then were plunged into darkness as we rounded a corner. We discussed how to allow Ari'yasa and Jörgen to see as we traveled. Ari'yasa had a spell that would allow one person to see in the dark, or could turn into an animal that could, and Jörgen could see through his familiar if it could see in the dark. Jörgen decided to conjure an owl familiar, and Ari'yasa cast her spell on herself.

The tunnel was about two storeys high for about an hour. Eventually, it grew smaller, more like a single storey with chiseled edges. Ari'yasa wanted to get us all off the ground as we traveled so we wouldn't attract creatures, but we didn't have enough magical abilities to do that. I didn't want to ride the handle of my broom for eight hours straight. Why hadn't I crafted a type of seat for it?

"I feel like we should just stomp forward and let the worms know we're coming!" Jörgen said.

"I don't know that we need to do that..." I said. Sometimes I wondered if the wizard actually wanted to die.

Ari'yasa remembered that she'd purchased a staff that could cast our cloaking spell over and over again. That would help immensely. We arranged our marching order, Jörgen, of course, insisting to be in the front. I refused, taking the lead myself.

Melima gave me one of the earrings that would allow us to talk to each other at a distance, then took the rear. We tried to keep Jörgen in the middle.

If there hadn't been a path, it could have been easy to get lost. Occasionally there would be another tunnel crossing our path, but we knew we didn't want to turn yet. About three hours into our travel there was another intersection that had markings on the wall. Sephra pointed them out to the group. "Oh! This is Druidic!" Ari'yasa said. "It says 'earth.'"

I guessed that was the way to the portal, where we didn't want to go. We kept on our forward path. There were several more tunnels that intersected, one of which almost immediately went down.

Melima started walking on the ceiling with her new slippers. I smiled and used the earring she gave me. "Just remember that there might be things above us as well."

After about four hours, we came to an intersection that was more of a fork than a crossing path. We turned right, and I made a check on my notes, marking that we'd used that direction.

Another thirty minutes later we came to another split with two paths. Both directions were carved, not burrowed. We went right again. Ari'yasa stopped us to make sure that the notes we'd all taken matched. They all did, and we felt confident we'd be able to navigate successfully.

A little while later, another tunnel merged with our tunnel from the right, changing the structure of the tunnel. Something had burrowed through, using the constructed tunnel. Hopefully, we'd still be able to tell which tunnels we should go down.

It didn't change for about forty-five minutes. Finally, we reached a juncture where we had five different directions we could go. It looked like it was used often. One down and left, one slightly left, one straight, one slightly right, and one up and right.

Melima examined the tunnels, looking for signs of constructed tunnels rather than creature burrows. The straight and slightly right tunnels looked like they had been constructed, the rest had been burrowed by creatures. Sephra wanted to make sure we were choosing the correct path, going over what we'd already done multiple times.

Melima worried that one of the constructed tunnels had been burrowed by a creature, that was the left we were supposed to take. Everyone agreed to take the straight tunnel. Jörgen carved an X in the wall. Melima got mad, saying the creatures we were trying to avoid were very sensitive to sound.

I glanced down the slightly left tunnel, making sure it didn't change structure back to a carved shape. It curved sharply shortly after, I could throw a stone and hit the wall. I agreed to take the straight tunnel, and suggested we call it the left that we needed to take, as it was the left of the two carved options.

I started stumbling a little in my step. I was getting fatigued. Thankfully, Ari'yasa continued using her staff to cast our cloaking spell. She was starting to struggle as well.

Every now and then I could swear that I heard echoing down one of the off-shooting tunnels, but nothing bothered us. Eventually, we came to a natural cavern. There was a definitive path through the stalagmites, though there were some other tunnels that came out of the cavern. The faintest sound of water echoed through the cave.

Sephra pointed out a tunnel that the path went to across the cavern. Ari'yasa stopped us. "I just saw a tendril or something in the stalactites on the ceiling. Can you check it out?"

Jörgen sent his owl up to see what was up there. A brief flash went off. The wizard let out a yell and set off a fireball. The fire showed a stalactite with a red eye and tendrils recoiling. The bang of the explosion echoed throughout the cavern and down the tunnels.

"Let's just get out!" Melima said, running up from the back and throwing a bolt of fire at the stalactite creature. Ari'yasa ran just in front of her. A sphere of darkness enveloped the creature. Hopefully, it wouldn't be able to tell where we were.

A huge bonfire ignited under the sphere of darkness. The cavern lit up, other than the darkness that domed on the ceiling. I let everyone run past me. I wanted to defend my friends if necessary, but I didn't want to attack something that hadn't directly attacked us. I followed behind Jörgen, who had started to lag behind the others. I couldn't let the old, fragile wizard get stuck by himself.

A black tendril reached out from the darkness towards Ari'yasa, which she dodged away from. Another one wrapped around Melima, pulling her into the darkness. More tendrils reached for Sephra and Jörgen. Sephra backed away, and an arcane shimmer repelled the one heading for Jörgen.

The darkness disappeared, revealing Melima dangling halfway between us and the creature, and getting closer to the ceiling. Sephra paused for half a second. "Guys, there's rumbling on the ground!"

Melima vanished into a puff of mist, reappearing next to Ari'yasa. The creature fell from the ceiling, but instead of falling to the ground, it flew through the stalactites on the ceiling. If this thing could fly, we might be in trouble. I glanced at my friends, Melima was concentrating and moving her hands back and forth. She was moving the creature, it wasn't moving itself.

Sephra grabbed Jörgen. "Let's get out of here!"

She stepped through a frame of light, reappearing with the wizard at the end of the tunnel. I chased after my friends. I wanted to be at the back, but not too far from my friends.

Jörgen ran to the mouth of the tunnel. "I need help with light in the tunnel!"

It would be so much easier to do things if everyone could see in the dark. Ari'yasa joined him at the mouth of the tunnel and shouted, "everyone get behind me! I'm going to make a wall!"

Rumbling emanated from the wall we were heading towards. The wall burst open, and something large, smooth, and shiny erupted from the wall next to the tunnel entrance. A bulette. My eyes grew wide and I started running. "That thing is not nice and can burrow. Let's get out of here!"

I remembered from my dream that it could move faster than us. If we couldn't get it distracted we wouldn't be able to outrun it either, even with Ari'yasa's wall. I cast my mark on the bulette, "taithfarna."

I shot a couple of arrows at it. One landed right in between the plates on its back, but my other one was just a little bit off and bounced off the outer plate. I grabbed Jörgen and pulled him into the tunnel.

Multiple tendrils reached for Melima. To my relief, Melima ducked out of the way. The stalactite creature crashed into the ground. Melima dashed into the tunnel with us, everyone was behind Ari'yasa. The druid pulled up a wall of stone. There was about a hand width of space at the top of the wall that hadn't sealed shut and firelight flickered through it.

Sephra cast some orbs of light that went down the tunnel. Jörgen puffed into mist, reappeared further down the tunnel, and kept walking. Suddenly, I heard nothing. Ari'yasa finished moving her hands in a spellcasting motion. I hadn't realized she could cast that silence spell as well.

The question was, what was the bulette doing? If it were coming towards us, we were going to need to fight. The ground thumped lightly underneath me, it was walking somewhere. The shadow on the ceiling moved from left to right, it was probably moving towards the other creature.

I stooped down to feel the earth. Using my arcane senses from casting my mark on the beast, I could tell for sure that it was moving away from us. I smiled, put my finger to my lips, then pointed down the tunnel as I nodded. We could get away.

Jörgen turned as we approached, like he was checking on if we were coming or not. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. Soon the silence spell enveloped him, and he briefly paused before going on.

I still kept concentration on my mark. My sense of direction of where it was remained after several minutes. The bulette survived whatever fight may have happened. It remained in the room for several minutes, then I sensed it move down, then away from us. We weren't going to have to worry about it for a while.

The tunnel started to go down, then curve just a little bit. After about an hour, we came to another set of tunnels, four of them. I was relieved, we must be going in the correct direction if we found another juncture.

All of the tunnels were constructed, none came from a creature. Melima and I wanted to go right, but Sephra thought we should go left, based off of the directions. We consulted, deciding that the last tunnel we made a choice at we'd consider left, because it was a decision of two carved tunnels that we had to choose either left or right, even if it looked like the straight option because of the creature tunnels.

Which tunnel should we use? We'd been traveling for eight hours at that point, so we decided to rest for the night there, where there was enough space to cast the dome. Sephra was worried about finding our way back if we needed to, but I was confident that I could find our way back. I was more worried about the wall we'd created, preventing others from getting through, and maybe sending them down the bulette tunnel.

We decided to use charcoal to mark walls from now on. Jörgen went off to set an alarm down the tunnel, and Sephra gathered the rest of us women together. She wanted to have a codeword between us to have one of us cast silence if Jörgen started getting too out of control. Someone wanted "code blue," but I knew I wouldn't remember that. We decided on "code raven" or just the word "raven," because he usually used that as his familiar.