So many views! So many visitors! I'm dying. Thank you so much.

.

.

.

Chapter 12: Above Ground

.

Ricky glanced over at his red-headed friend. He hadn't meant to make Mikey feel bad. The situation was bad enough as it was.

"So," said Ricky, trying to find something less depressing. "Doesn't this kind of remind you of the Warrens of Warlock's Way?"

"Maybe," said Mikey sullenly. "Except you're not a level four fighter, I'm not a level three wizard, and hopefully there aren't any kobolds in here."

"Yeah, that'd kinda suck, huh?"

"Heh, yeah."

There was a scuffing sound from up ahead, and the clatter of falling stones, and both boys froze.

"Then again," Mikey said, "we didn't have to worry about cave ins in the game."

"Yeah, but doesn't that sound more like-"

There was another clattering sound, and then a cough.

"-footsteps," Ricky finished quietly.

"Hello?" a voice echoed faintly from down the tunnel. "Is someone there?"

"Isn't that-?"

There was another clatter, and a light began to shine from around the corner. "Hello?" repeated the voice. "Mikey? Ricky? Is that you?" After the last question, a small figure came around the corner.

"Danny?" asked Mikey incredulously. "What are you doing down here?"

The light in Danny's hand bobbed as he came closer. "I- I'm not sure. The last thing I remember is all those little ghosts showing up, and then I'm in here? Wherever here is. What are you doing here?"

"We fell down a hole," answered Ricky. "What do you mean you don't remember?"

"Um. I think that I might have been overshadowed."

"Overshadowed?" asked Mikey.

"Um. Possessed," Danny said, his voice wavering a little. "Where's everyone else?"

"We don't know. We fell when the attack happened."

"Oh," said Danny, sounding very disappointed. "I was hoping that you knew more than me."

"Hey," said Mikey, "is that a Nokia?"

"Huh? Yeah, I guess. You don't mind if I turn this off, do you? I want to save my batteries."

"Oh, yeah, sure," said Ricky, checking his own battery. "I'm good for hours yet."

"Cool," said Danny. He switched off his phone and put it back into his pocket.

Ricky tried to examine Danny's eyes surreptitiously. If someone was possessed, their eyes were supposed to change color, flash, or glow. They looked normal, though, the same sky blue as always. Once Ricky had satisfied himself on that count, although he wasn't sure what he would have done if Danny was possessed, Ricky let his eyes wander over the rest of Danny's face.

Danny looked awful. The circles under his eyes were even darker than usual, and where his skin wasn't smeared with dirt, it was unhealthily pale. Also...

"Danny, what's that on your face?"

"Um, dirt probably," said Danny, rubbing the wrong side of his face.

"No," said Ricky, "here." He reached out to touch Danny's face, his fingers brushing against the angry, red-pink mark on Danny's face.

Danny flinched away, hard, a haunted look on his face. His hand came up to touch the mark, and Ricky saw that there was a similar wound on Danny's hand.

"It looks like a Lichtenberg scar," said Mikey.

"A what?"

"A Lichtenberg scar," repeated Mikey. "You get them from electrical injuries. Like being struck by lightning."

Danny was still just standing there, hand on his face.

"How-?" started Ricky.

"I don't know," said Danny. He tugged up his hood, and looked down, effectively obscuring Ricky and Mikey's view of the scar. "It must have happened when I was ove- possessed. When I was possessed." He turned away. "Come on, we've got to find a way out, and I bet that there isn't any way out from where you've come, right? So we should go."

"Did that seem weird to you?" asked Ricky.

"Yeah. But, dang, I wonder what that ghost did to him."

"Yeah."

.

.

.

Danny kept his hand pressed to his face as he walked away. How had he forgotten the scars? At least they hadn't noticed his ears. He wasn't sure he could explain away the ears. Then again, how often do you really look at another person's ears?

"So," said Ricky, "how long have you been up?"

"I don't know. Not very long. Ten or fifteen minutes? How long has it been since you were... attacked?"

"Two or three hours, I think," said Mikey. "We haven't really been keeping track."

"Okay," said Danny. "Neither of you are hurt, right?"

"No, the hole we fell down was kinda sloped, so we're fine. You?"

"I'm fine," lied Danny. His attempt to transform earlier showed that he clearly wasn't, but there wasn't anything Ricky and Mikey could do about it. Either he would heal on his own, or he'd have to talk to the doctors in the Far Frozen. Or, ugh, Vlad. As much as he hated to admit it, Vlad knew more about hybrid biology than anyone. Except maybe Clockwork, and Clockwork couldn't always help.

They passed where Danny had slept, and reached the shaft he had fallen down. They spent a while trying to see if they could climb up it, but it became apparent that they could not, even with Danny discretely using his enhanced strength to help them.

They then took the opportunity to rest. Danny, who had been asleep, was fine, but the others had been walking for a while, and before that, they had been trying to climb up the hole they had fallen down.

Once they felt better, they decided to keep going, and not spend any more time on the shaft. They clearly weren't going to get up it. After a bit of walking, they came to fork, a split in the tunnel.

"So, which way should we go?" asked Mikey, nervously.

"This way," said Danny, without hesitation. Pointing to the right-handed path.

"Why that way?"

"Can't you feel it?"

"What?"

"There's a breeze."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah. Also, I think that this might slope up a little."

"Really?"

The two human boys examined the right-hand tunnel, looking for the signs Danny had pointed out. In truth, Danny didn't see a slope, and, although he could feel a slight breeze, that wasn't his reason for choosing the right-hand side. His real reason was that he wanted to go down the right-hand path. It was a strange feeling. A pull. Almost like his sense of where home was, on a normal day, but not quite. He wasn't sure if he could trust the feeling, but he heard the invisible wisps humming approvingly, and they knew this place the best, so it probably was the right way.

"Well," said Ricky, "it isn't as if they other way looks any better."

"Yeah," agreed Mikey.

They turned down the right-hand tunnel. Eventually, it did start to tilt up, and then they saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Not in a 'you're going to die' way, but in a 'your trials are going to end' way. Although, Danny had learned that those could be the same thing, and he wasn't sure if he had seen any light at the end of the tunnel when he was dying.

Anyway, they came out in a little clearing, the not-moon shining brightly overhead. Danny breathed a sigh of relief. Being underground was okay, but seeing the moon (or not-moon) and stars (or not-stars) was so much better. Danny took a deep, cleansing breath. He could smell the trees, the grass, the earth, the faint sweetness of flowers and fruit, and the coolness of the air. His breath came out in a puff of mist, and his ears picked up distant music.

Before Danny could turn to Ricky and Mikey, and propose moving on, one of the smaller wisps, one whose diameter was about the length of his thumb, that had been following Danny dropped invisibility and zoomed off into the trees. Danny stared after it blankly, because, heck, how was he supposed to explain this?

"What was that?" exclaimed Ricky.

"Um," said Danny, thoughts whirling. He had nothing. So. Time to go to good old plan B: Run away from the problem! "I don't know! Let's follow it and find out!" He smiled wildly at the other two boys, before remembering that his teeth weren't human-normal at the moment, and then took off in the direction the wisp had gone.

His sharp ears picked up more music, this more discordant. Behind him, Ricky and Mikey were stumbling along. Then, a voice, one he knew.

"... I'm sorry, do that again, but more slowly."

There was a sound like a face being smashed into a keyboard.

"Look I know you're frustrated, but how do you think I feel? You've been leading me all over the place and I can barely tell what you're saying... Okay, so you're saying he's over here?"

That was Sam! Danny slowed down. He didn't want to. He wanted to run right up to Sam, but he didn't want to loose Ricky and Mikey. Wait, maybe he should try to loose Ricky and Mikey, at least temporarily, because it sounded like Sam was talking to wisps, and he didn't want them to be scared, but it would be mean to abandon Ricky and Mikey, not that he would be abandoning them, just avoiding them for a little bit, but they might think that he was abandoning them, and that might scare them more, or they might be angry with him, and he really didn't want that, and now it was too late because he had frozen and they had caught up to him.

"What- What was that?" asked Ricky between gasps, hands on his knees. Mikey stood, well, bent, next to him, his face red with exertion.

"I think I heard Sam," said Danny.

"Your girlfriend?"

"We aren't dating!"

The three boys looked up in surprise. The dark-haired girl had found them first, and was looking down at them with displeasure.

"Why did you-" she cut off when Danny ran into her, burying his face in her shoulder, and holding her tightly. "Danny you're freezing," she said, quietly.

"I know," he said back, his breath misting as he spoke. Sam's wisps were still with there, just invisible. "Where is everyone?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Sam. "Looks like you found Ricky and Mikey, though. Where were you guys?"

"We fell down a hole," said Ricky, still struggling to get his breathing under control.

"Really?"

"Yeah," said Mikey, "there's like this whole cave system down there."

"Interesting," said Sam. "More to this place than meets the eye, huh?"

Danny pulled back, rubbing the back of his neck. "I guess," he said. "How are we going to find everyone?"

"I have an idea, I don't know if it'll work, but, hey, nothing to loose, right? So, Jazz said that when she first woke up, she got the flowers to show her where you were. I thought that maybe they could do the same for us."

"Flowers? What flowers?" asked Ricky, skeptically.

"The blue ones. Remember when Lancer was trying to get everyone's attention?"

"You mean the freaky glowing ghost flowers? Why don't you just ask a ghost? Speaking of-"

"Well, I would ask a ghost, but I don't see any around, do you?"

"I don't see any flowers, either, Manson."

"Look again," said Sam, pointing behind them. Danny followed her finger over his shoulder, to a tree adorned with glowing, dark purple flowers with hot pink veins. "I don't care for pink very much, but that's pretty cool."