Chapter 51

I looked around, as if hoping that one of these paths would illuminate, or give me some hint as to the direction I should take. Perhaps a path with unusual growth? Or maybe there was some kind of light shining down one of them?

I dismissed the candleflame, and when it guttered out, I was plunged into total darkness. Not just the darkness of an utter lack of light, but the clinging black-on-black darkness of eyes unadjusted to it, as if a thick woolen blindfold had suddenly been pushed over my eyes. I blinked rapidly against the uncomfortable sensation of being absolutely deprived of sight, waiting for my eyes to adjust until I could make out any difference in light, perhaps a small reflection somewhere.

Minutes of standing there, utterly blind, and I was no closer to a decision. As near as I could tell there were no lights anywhere even close to me in these caves. I shifted around a bit trying to see if there was perhaps a glimmer somewhere just a little farther down, but ended up tripping over the rough stone and falling onto hands and knees. My attributes were high enough to protect me from such a brief fall, but it still stung my palms and shins where I’d hit the ground. I lifted a hand, summoning the steady flame once again to illuminate my surroundings. The light was absolutely blinding, dazzlingly reflecting dully in every surface around me, the light practically an assault on my dark-adjusted eyes.

As I stayed on my hands and knees, waiting to readjust to the light, I realized that the floor beneath me was quite cold. Bitingly cold, in fact. I could only imagine the air around me would be quite chilly as well, but my mastery of flame was more than a match for mere cold air. I slowly pulled myself standing, and carefully set off toward a particularly winding-looking cave off to my right, one that seemed to slope upward fairly steeply. If I needed to ascend the tower, then up would be the way to go, wouldn’t it?

I brushed off my palms, already warmed back up from their brief contact with the chilly floor, and began to wander upward, eyes scouring the surfaces of the cave for any sign of life, or markings of a path.

After an indeterminate time spent walking through an endless series of caves, taking each fork that seemed to lead upward, I stopped to rest; not because I was at all worn out by the endless walking, my constitution more than a match for the simple effort. No, it was far worse: I was absolutely, irretrievably lost. I couldn’t find my way back to the entrance if you’d held a gun to my head. I sat down against the wall, more out of old habit than out of any need to rest, cupping the candleflame in my hands as if the fire had any insight for me.

Perhaps it would’ve, if I’d taken that ability. I grimaced, thinking back on [Flamewatcher’s Insight] , the skill I’d been offered forever ago as a way to stare into fire and learn some kind of truths about the universe. It sounded dumb then, and it still sounded dumb now, except that maybe staring into the fire could’ve told me just what the Hell I was supposed to-

I was staring intently at the flame in my hands when I noticed an odd movement to it. In fits and starts, it would tremble a little, the flame seeming to lean ever so slightly in one direction, back the way I’d come. I stared at it in confusion and disbelief. Did I have some kind of spell? Some effect that would help guide the way? Was there some kind of wisdom hidden in the flames? A handful of seconds later, it leaned again, the flame shifting ever-so-slightly toward the path I had taken. Then I felt it.

A thin breeze, little more than a sluggish movement of air lightly buffeted the flame. The whispers of the world. Wind! Of course, that made sense. I could follow the wind trickling through the caves. There had to be some kind of movement of air, or else the stale air here would’ve suffocated me as soon as I started walking around. I stood up, and began walking, half-jogging in excitement at the new lead, and continued on until I reached a junction in the path before me. I stared at the flame, willing it to guide me, and followed when it seemed to lean in one direction. I jogged down that tunnel, and did it again at the next intersection, following it off to my left in a long, winding loop, speeding up into a light run, unable to restrain my excitement. The movement of the flame was getting stronger each time; I must be getting closer! The next split confounded me, as I stood there staring at the flame, chest heaving with excitement, seeing the way the flame kept nudging back the way I’d come. I must’ve missed something. A split along the way.

I ran back down the long tunnel, warily searching every shadow for a split in the path until I found myself back at the junction before it. This time, the fire pointed off to my right, and I ran a short distance that way until it began to narrow, pinching down to a space low enough I had to crouch, and then to crawl, and then to lay flat on my stomach and drag myself forward. I chased the steady flame and its’ slow, subtle dance until my arms and back ached from dragging myself on my elbows and knees, my chest heaving as I struggled to draw in a deep breath, the claustrophobia of my earlier dive coming back like the tide rising. I felt more than saw the tunnel narrowing even further ahead of me, cold stone pressing in on me from all sides. The heat pouring off my body did little to warm the stones, but instead caused their surfaces to glisten with chilly condensation, slowly soaking into my robes and cocooning me in cold and damp. I stared pleadingly at the candleflame that hung before me, willing it to show me the path.

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Terror struck me as I realized that the movement of the flame rose and fell in a particular rhythm, the soft gusts nudging it forward in time with my labored breathing. I clamped my mouth shut, refusing to breathe for several seconds, until it became clear that I was chasing my own breath through these tunnels, so keen to find my way out that I had invented false hope, driving myself onward until I ended up here, half-stuck in a narrow tunnel, drenched and freezing and-

I realized abruptly that I was cold. Very cold. As the fear clawed at my thoughts, I found it harder and harder to steady my breathing and maintain my passive shell of magic. The faltering connection to my flames made it harder to keep myself insulated from the chill of the caves, only deepening my fear and driving me further from the calm I needed to channel my power. The flame began to waver, dimming in response to my emotional state, the suffocating tightness in my chest all but sympathetically dousing the candleflame that hung before me. I lunged forward, hand extended, to grab onto it like a drowning man grabbing onto flotsam, only for that frantic movement to snuff out the last vestige of the flame, sputtering down into darkness.

My lunge had carried me too far forward, and I could feel the rock pressing against my chest from above and below, the chilly stone holding me so tight that my breath whistled as it left my lungs. I struggled as much against the stone as against myself, the slippery rock offering me no decisive grip, no leverage with which to free myself. I attempted to scrunch my body backward, lifting my feet and dragging with my knees to try and get myself some space to breathe, but only found limited success. My labored breathing seemed to stick me in place, the erratic movement of my chest pinning me even as I struggled to free myself, panic undoing my every attempt.

It wasn’t until I drew in a breath as deeply as I could, and then forced it all out that I was able to wriggle slightly backward. I clamped my lips shut and grit my teeth against the desire to breathe, methodically tightening the muscles in my thighs and stomach in an effort to slowly drag myself backward, the robes little protection against the coarse damp stone. I fought to only draw in a shallow, slow breath, raging against the instincts that screamed at me to breathe, to run, anything but lie here and die in the cold and the dark and-

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a glimmer ahead of me, through the narrowing passage. That hint of light was enough to briefly still me, taking it in and trying to determine what could possibly be shedding such faint illumination here, underground. My muscles burned from the frantic movements and lack of oxygen, but I forced myself to stay still, counting breaths in an effort to calm myself down. I drew in a breath, as deep as I could make it, and closed my eyes, reaching out to the presence wrapped around me, and channeled the energies of my cloak.

The stone was thick and tarry as it fought my forward progress, but I could move more now than I had been able to moments before, slowly dragging myself along with my head just above the ‘water’, pushing myself forward slowly and carefully, even as I could feel the cloak’s energy struggling against the dense gray stone.

“I heard the whispers of the world, that reach into even these darkest caverns, and it led me into the light. There, amongst the darkness and biting cold, I learned that no matter where in the world you went, Life would get there first. Nature always found a way forward, even if it was just a single defiant bloom somehow living off the faint light that trickled down through the crystals in the walls. I had no idea how a single seed could have gotten so far, nor found the single patch of fertile soil so far from the light… But it had. Even here, as lost and alone as I was, I witnessed something that had the power to survive against all odds, to grow even in the most hostile of places, to take every scrap of power that it could and thrive.”

The Greenwarden’s voice was a bare whisper in my ear, as if he were perched just over my shoulder. I dragged myself up out of the stone even as I felt the cloak’s power fading and the stone turning once more solid, clinging to me as if it wanted me to stay, reluctant to relinquish its’ hold on me.

I stared at the small, dull flicker of light that weakly glimmered from the ceiling, a jagged vein of quartz that glittered as if the stars themselves had been trapped within its’ facets. I could see the single, small flower, petals open toward the meager sunlight. Beyond the beam, I could see a doorway set into stone, the regular, man-made shape of it standing out from the uncut stone like a beacon.

When I glanced behind me, I could see the stairs down to the first floor behind me. There was no sign of the narrow passage I had crawled through, nor the winding paths that had split away from the stairs I had first ascended; all that existed in this space was the flower, the stairs, and the door ahead.

Shivering against the chill, I slowly willed my inner flames back to life, hoping to take the edge off the cold that surrounded me. I reached out, pressing against the door that barred my path, and it slid open silently. I stepped through, unable to quell the small ball of fear that hung at the back of my throat, all but choking me with the memory of the cold and the stone pressing against me. I swallowed down the taste of bile, and pushed onward.