Knowing that she only had a limited amount of time to explore if she wanted to be able to easily return, Jen moved quickly. It was still the same repetitive process of check the ground with her foot, move forward, try and use echolocation to get a picture of her surroundings. There was a pressure though that drove her to streamline her actions, the countdown in her mind relentless.
It took almost half an hour of travel before something changed. The ground gained a small downwards slope, and although it was still faint, Jen thought she could hear some sound coming from up ahead, a quiet murmuring that whispered on the edge of her perception.
Her eagerness to learn more warred against her desire for caution. Her situation was not so secure that she could afford to take risks with potentially deadly results. Jen slowed her movement down. Instead of challenging herself to move faster, she aimed for thoroughness, straining her senses to their limits to learn as much as possible about what lay ahead.
Her first clue was an increased level of humidity. The air in most of the cave had been a neutral temperature, the sort of atmosphere that was ignored more than it was noticed. As she moved forwards the temperature seemed to drop a few degrees, goosebumps starting to form on her arms.
Jen’s safety precautions paid off soon after she noticed the temperature shift. Her probing foot landed not on the solid rock that she had come to expect, but on a slick patch of ground, and it took all of her effort to maintain her precarious sense of balance. Curious as to what sort of terrain was responsible, Jen crouched down, feeling forward with her hands. The ground ahead was still rock, but far smoother than what she had been travelling over, and made slick with a light coating of water.
Jen pulled her damp hand back as she began to piece the facts together. The noise she was hearing was not that of an animal or the wind, but the sound of moving water.
Wary of accidentally falling into the water, Jen decided to use some of her recently regenerated mana to conjure a light.
The scene revealed was beautiful. Jen had noticed the ceiling getting lower as she travelled, but it had only been through her echolocation, and she was surprised to see that the ceiling joined into the wall ahead of her in a smooth curve, the straight wall she had been following leading into an alcove. The alcove was filled with water, rippling softly as it entered and exited through underwater holes. While the rest of the cave had been comprised of a smooth rock with occasional debris, the surface underwater seemed to be covered in crystal. It caught the light and refracted it into a thousand directions, sparkling brightly even as the rushing water distorted the image into a psychedelic experience.
Carefully maneuvering towards the water, Jen dipped her free hand in. The water was crystal clear and ice cold, and was moving with a current that caught Jen by surprise. This was no placid stream that meandered under the mountain, but a torrent of water rushing from dark to dark.
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Jen had formed a small hope upon seeing the water that there might be a way out, but she quashed that idea quickly. Not only was the water cold enough that hypothermia an issue, but the speed of the current was such that trying to control her movement in the water would be futile. Furthermore, while the river surfaced here in her cavern, it continued on through a fully submerged exit. Jen would be gambling her lung capacity against the duration of travel to the next air pocket, if such a thing even existed.
Jen didn’t know enough about the geography of the area to tell if this river would eventually emerge on the surface again, or if it would just lead deeper into the earth. It gave her another potential avenue for magic to help her; if she could not find spells to dig her way out, then perhaps spells to breathe water or otherwise replenish her oxygen would become available.
Jen realized that there wasn’t much she could accomplish, and the time until her beacon was extinguished continued to diminish. Not wanting to return empty handed, Jen anchored herself as best she could, two objectives in mind.
The first was to test the interactions of magic and water, in a location that wouldn’t damage her drinking supply. Using her right hand, Jen blocked the current near her, creating a relatively calm location.
Cautiously, ready to bolt if anything happened, she lowered her globe of mana into the water. At first it seemed like the experiment was a dud, but then the orb rapidly broke apart, the water around it beginning to glow as it was infused with magic.
The glowing wader faded quickly as it mixed with normal water and as the magic was expended, but Jen scooped up a handful before it could disappear completely. It felt much like any other water she had held, but Jen noted on the positive side that at least her hand wasn’t melting or mutating into a monstrosity.
Before she could really think about it, Jen had lifted the handful of water up to her mouth and drank it down. It was just as flavorless as normal water, but at the same time seemed to explode with energy. Jen could only compare the experience to the few times she had tested the charge of a battery by licking it. But while that feeling was converted into a coppery taste, the energy of the mana infused water surpassed that. It was an indescribable taste, and yet Jen was determined to categorize it. In the end, she had to treat it as a feeling of synesthesia. If some people could ascribe a taste to purple or a sound to 4, then the taste of magic was power.
Thankfully for her sanity, the feeling faded quickly, and Jen was soon back in the present. Promising to unpack that bundle of sensations later, she turned her attention to her second goal, to grab some of the crystals that lined the riverbed.
The first few she managed to dislodge were quickly swept away by the current, but Jen learned from her mistakes, and soon had a pile of the crystals next to her on the shore.
It took a bit of finangling, but Jen soon had her pockets and hands filled with the crystals to take back. The mushrooms she had brought along as an emergency meal were discarded, carefully placed upright in the hopes that they could take root and grow in this new area.
She was aware that travelling with her hands full would limit her ability to react to any obstacles she might come across, but after an uneventful journey, Jen optimistically hoped that the way back would be just as straightforward. Wanting to save time and explore more of the cave at the same time, she elected to head straight back towards her camp, the glowing mushroom still visible in the distance, guiding her path.