Golden thorns chapter 51
Once they made the uneventful trip to and from the generator room, the large main hall that they had camped in was illuminated to the corners by powerful arc lamps, revealing a wall of crates stacked up to the roof of the cave, hanging a good twenty-five meters above their heads. In one corner of the room, a pile of barrels were patiently awaiting recovery. Dominating the centre of the room were two gigantic hauling machines, their wheels easily as tall as Coran, their trailers loaded high with ore that had yet to be processed.
"Looks like Tarrion bailed out in a hurry." He said as they wandered towards the lifts that would take them down into the tunnels, "They've left a lot of stuff behind."
"Yeah, they've tried to salvage some of this junk in recent months but haven't been able to get close." Azura responded. "We were, believe it or not, quite lucky to get this far."
"Funny, my leg and your hand suggest otherwise."
"Hey, at least they're still attached." The huntress walked over to the command console and hit the large button labelled 'lift recall'. Immediately, the thick chains mounted in the walls of the mineshaft began to grind and groan, pulling taught, and then started to move, raising the platform to meet them. Rust and mould grew from the corners of the lift, the steel peeling back and flaking away. It did not fill Coran with a great deal of confidence. As they stepped on to it he felt the old metal flex under his weight as he gingerly made his way to the control panel and hit the 'down' button.
Progress was slow and the gears ground against each other, screeching and rasping as the mechanisms worked through the stiffness of eighteen months of neglect. The descent was unsteady, but the platform held as the lift made its way down, further and further into the depths of the earth. When it finally came to a standstill, and the shaft doors opened before them, they were greeted with a tunnel, barely illuminated by a string of soft yellow lights down one wall, and stretching into seemingly endless darkness. Coran heard Marie take a quiet breath in as they strained to see anything beyond the rough-hewn rock walls of the hallway. Azura spoke, breaking the silence and making them all jump.
"Well kids, here we are. If you look to your left you will see a chain of lights. These are only found in the main halls, so if you see them then you are well on the way to getting back here. You guys should split into pairs. Just in case anything bad happens."
"Like what?" Devlyn asked cautiously.
"Grimm attacks, cave in, injury, and panic attacks just for starters. If any of these happen to you when you're on your own the chances of you making it out of here alive fall exponentially." She replied.
"Noticing a fault in your plan there. There's only five of us. Call me dense but you can't divide five by two."
"You raise a good point Jo. However you are also forgetting that I have done this sort of thing before. I'm perfectly capable of handling myself."
"I think you're forgetting your hand is fried. How're you going to manage with that?" Coran gestured to her hand, bound in bandages and hanging limply by her side.
"For starters, ambidexterity is a good skill to start cultivating. Secondly, don't worry about me. It's my job to worry about you."
"So you're sending us out into dangerous, potentially Grimm-infested caves alone?" Devlyn sighed.
"You have made it perfectly clear that you can all look after yourselves. I have every confidence in you. And yes. That is exactly what I'm doing. Beacon pairs you off before teaming you up, yeah? So split like that and start working. See you all in a couple of days." She broke off into a run and disappeared into the dark maw of the caverns, her shape shimmering slightly as she went.
"Well I guess we should get started. See you round?" Coran said, releasing a slightly hysterical chuckle and taking a step into the daunting shadows, "Marie?"
"Coming."