It took another eon for Sara to finally answer, and when she finally did, she hugged Mercy a little closer. "Let's go home, Merce..."
Mercy couldn't help but pull Sara to her and hug her close. "If I could love you more, Sara Otis, I would now," Mercy pronounced, punctuating her statement with a hasty kiss. "C'mon!"
Mercy stood, pulling Sara up with her, and started back towards the start of the stony maze, picking up her staff from where she'd dropped it upon finding Sara. She tried to remember the way she'd come, but to no avail as every turn seemed like the last, and everything had been so hazy in going forward that the way back seemed impossible to recall.
After the third dead-end, Mercy finally remembered...
"Rowan!" she called out, both aloud and in her mind, praying that the mental link granted by their pack totem would still function so far into enemy territory.
"Mercy? Where are you? What the bloody hell were you thinking?" was her alpha's response.
"You would've done the same for any pack mate, Rowan, and you know it," she retorted. "Can you help or do we have to make it back to the moon bridge?"
There was a long silence as Mercy half-heard Rowan talking to someone outside the pack link. "You have to get out of where you are first... I can't create a bridge into there. Second..." and Rowan paused, seeming to chew on the bad news before finally delivering it. "Double-Aught closed the moon bridge once Winds and I returned."