The next five minutes took an eternity for Levi. He was forced to sit, in near total darkness, watching as Susan lay there intermittently coughing up water, not knowing if every shallow breath was her last. It was excruciating. He wanted to scream. This wasn’t what dungeons were supposed to be like. They should be covered in bioluminescent moss with clearly demarcated tunnels, rooms, and bosses, with maybe an easy way to teleport back out when you were done exploring. Maybe his previous knowledge wasn’t actually helpful here, only lulling him into a false sense of security. Levi didn’t know, and at this point, he didn’t care. He wanted out.

Levi was hyper-focused on Susan’s breathing, so he immediately noticed when it changed, slowly starting to speed up.

“Susan? Hey, can you hear me? You there? Are you alright?”

With a final wracking cough, Susan expelled the rest of the water from her lungs before rousing from unconsciousness.

“I’m fine,” she managed to get out.

Levi would have been more convinced if she didn’t sound like a lung cancer patient.

“Are you hurt? What happened up there? You have arrows in you, should I take them out? What…”

Levi cut himself off with a deep breath. He needed to calm down, not bombard her with questions. He had to stay focused.

More calm, he continued.

“I can’t see much, but you have at least four arrows in you. Do I need to take them out?”

Susan coughed again before answering.

“No, leave them. I think I have five, but they shouldn’t be taken out without the proper measures in place. Just let me rest for a moment.”

They lapsed back into silence, Levi focusing on his breathing, forcing a slow inhale and exhale. He thought he heard somewhere that breathing slowly released chemicals in your brain that calmed you down, but so far it didn’t seem to be working. Susan said she was fine. But of course she did, what else was she going to say? ‘Oh Levi, I’ll bleed out in ten minutes, but no need to worry about me’. Yeah right.

At least she was awake now. That was a good sign, although he thought that was more an issue for head injuries. They always wanted people to stay awake on TV shows when they had some sort of head trauma. So while Levi waited for Susan to collect herself, he devoting his thoughts to using his Concentrated Will skill to focus on the inhale and exhale.

“Okay,” Susan said, “I think I feel awake enough to talk.”

Levi immediately zoned in on what she had to say.

“Let me first go over what happened in the tunnel, then you can take over for wherever we are now. I remember running along the tunnel, my skill telling me about the danger behind us. It seems I was so focused on that though that I didn’t pick up on what was in front of us until it was too late. I think we needed to stop before the hole, not rush into it blindly. In the previous tunnel the safe area was the lip before the hole, while for this tunnel there were arrows in front and behind, so I suspect we had to wait for the arrows in front of us to finish firing before avoiding the ones behind us.”

She paused here for another cough before continuing.

“I only realized all this when it was too late. By that time I had two options, hit the ground myself, or tackle you and try and get us both to safety. I had a feeling you wouldn’t survive if I didn’t try and save you, so I went with that option. I didn’t expect the hole to drop off like that though. Luckily there was water down here at least. I blacked out as soon as I hit the water, but I guess you must have dragged me to shore.”

“Okay, yeah, that makes sense I guess,” Levi said. “This dungeon couldn’t have left things simple, because of course not. Of course it had to not only fuck us over with the arrows, but then fuck us over with the hole as well. This fucking asshole dungeon, I bet the pathway around the hole would have collapsed or something if we had tried to get around the hole too. This fucking piece of…”

Levi cut himself off, realizing he was shouting there at the end. He took a deep breath before continuing in a calmer voice.

“Sorry. I’m just.., I mean,” he gestured lamely at Susan, which she couldn’t really see in the dark. “Never mind. I noticed you weren’t really moving that much when we were falling, and then you were only floating there when I surfaced, so I managed to grab you and pull you onto the bank over here. It looks like we are in some sort of underground cavern. I can’t see that well, but it’s not completely dark. I got a better look around before my flashlight was swept away, and I think there is an underground river running on the right-hand side, and some sort of small indent over here on the left side of the cave. I didn’t see any exits.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“But what about these arrows?” he continued. “We need to take them out. How can you just calmly talk like this with arrows in you?”

Susan went quite for few seconds.

“Do you still have your backpack?” She asked.

Levi shook his head. “No, I had to take it off to be able to swim out of the river. Maybe I could have pulled it out, but I definitely couldn’t have and saved you at the same time. Your backpack with the last of your picnic food also washed away.”

“So you don’t have the first aid kit that was in there?”

“No.”

“And none of the food I guess. And you said there were no exits?”

“I didn’t see any, but I could have easily missed them. I haven’t actually explored the area.”

“Why don’t you do that now,” Susan said. “I can hold on here for the moment, and we need to figure out what to do going forward.”

“Okay. Just, don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

Levi gently moved away from Susan, making sure that she was alright when he wasn’t supporting her before moving to actually look around. It was more of exploring and feeling than looking, thanks to the low light, and Susan was right, he really should have done it earlier. While it was obvious he needed to make sure she was okay, the whole reason they were even in this situation was because of how dangerous this dungeon was. There was no reason to assume this section would be any safer.

Stumbling around, Levi cautiously made his way away from the river. His plan was to find the wall, and then follow that until he had mapped out the room they were in. It was possible there was some secret escape tunnel in the middle of the floor somewhere, but Levi thought it was safe to assume any potential exits would involve the walls. He had been burned by such assumption before though, so he still kept and eye elsewhere for anything eye-catching.

Now that he thought about it, why was he able to see anything down here? Wouldn’t it make sense that an underground cavern, clear of any obvious light sources, would be pitch black? There was no bioluminescent moss, torches, or ceiling that looked like stars, and the water appeared like regular water, that is, not glowing. But somehow, he could see things. Not well, but now that he was moving around and paying attention it wasn’t too hard to avoid the dips and crags of the floor below him, and it was almost easy to see the cavern wall he was approaching. It was all greyscale of course, and he likely couldn’t see well enough to differentiate a baseball from a tennis ball, but outlines were readily apparent. It was actually similar to the dungeon entrance now that he thought about it, although it didn’t really make that much more sense for there to be light there either.

More confident in moving faster once he realized he could see his surroundings, Levi expedited his exploration. His first trip was towards the top portion of the cavern, or what he decided to call the top since that was where the river was coming from. Levi walked along the wall, keeping his eye out for anything in closer to the river. There was nothing, and soon he came to the place where the river and the cavern converged, only leaving an opening just big enough for the water to rush out of.

The top part done, Levi quickly moved toward the bottom part, expecting to find a similar zero things of interest. He was mistaken though, as there was something different about the other end of the cavern.

There was a dip in the riverbank at the bottom corner, allowing some water to jump the bank and leaving a small pool of water on the cavern floor. Growing up from the pool of water on the wall was some sort of fungi. Levi first thought the dungeon had installed shelving, as the fungi grew up the wall in even rows. But after breaking a piece off he realized it was those weird mushrooms that grow on the side of things. Or something similar at least. He had no clue what this dungeon could or couldn’t do to its organisms, and he didn’t stick around to find out, his search now complete.

Levi made his way back to Susan to make his report.

“Nothing. There isn’t an exit anywhere, unless you count the river itself, as I guess that has to go somewhere. There is a slight gap between the river and the ceiling which could maybe be used to breath, but the river looks like it’s moving too fast for you to try that in your injured state.”

“Trying to surface in a tunnel likely wouldn’t be a good idea, injured or not,” Susan said. “The top of the tunnel is likely uneven, and surfacing is a good way to hit your head and get knocked unconscious, likely spelling death.”

“Yeah, that too.” Hearing that information, Levi was even more grateful he had managed to pull them onto shore. It could have been a quick one-way trip to the depths had he been a bit slower. They were much closer to where the river left the cavern than where it entered by the time he had gotten them to shore. “So what should I do about these arrows? We need to get them out, right?”

Levi waited nervously at Susan took some time to think about what to do next. The arrows seemed to be taunting him, distorting Susan’s outline in the low light of the cavern. He wanted them out.

Susan finally opened her mouth to speak.

“I wish we had that first aid kit, but you’re right, we do need to get these arrows out of me. Why don’t you start with the one in my arm. I don’t think that’s in too deeply, and maybe once you get some experience pulling them out it will be easier once it comes to the ones in my side. Those will be harder I think.”

“Okay. Do you want me to just pull it out, or…?”

Levi had just realized exactly what he would have to do, and suddenly the prospect didn’t sound so appealing. Taking an arrow out of someone was completely different than dissecting something, or at least that’s how he tried to psych himself up for the task at hand. He would do what he had to here. It’s not like he could ask Susan to pull the arrows out herself.

“I guess,” Susan replied. “I’m not very knowledgeable about how to take arrows out, so just try and pull it out unless you have another idea. That’s why we’re starting with my arm.”

The setup wasn’t complicated, with Levi moving behind Susan as she positioned herself on her side. He grabbed her arm with one hand, and the arrow with the other, took one final deep breath, and yanked on the shaft of the arrow.

Susan grunted in pain.

“I don’t think you got it that time. It must be jammed in there. Give it another try.”

“Um, I think we might have a small issue here,” Levi said, looking down at what he held in his hand.

Susan couldn’t see it as she was on her side facing away from him, but Levi had indeed succeeded in pulling the arrow out. The only problem was, the arrowhead didn’t come with it.