Route Six could best be described as tranquil, a set piece to a calm journey after a string of strenuous and stressful events. Even as foreign as green still felt to Aidinza, he could not deny the placid nature of the road snaking back and forth across a slowly flowing, clear river.
There was just something soothing about the dance of territory between the tall rocky mountain, and the dense forests. The Forest waxing and waning in step with the Mountain’s lead.
He could understand why the Unova league decided to let the route linger and meander, unlike the direct route they took through the Ya’an-ah desert. The desert was a harsh mother, but loving, each trial existing to carve her children into something strong and wise. This place with its abundant berries, constant flowing clean water, and abundant shade as the mountain hid the Sun only an hour after noon, just felt loving.
Aidinza would not raise a family here, too many lessons would be lost in its halcyon paradise. This place would only give rise to the spoilt and the greedy.
But he would spend nearly two weeks dragging his feet to enjoy it for a few days longer.
It was a state of affairs that his Pokémon seemed to be keen to enjoy. The banks of the river were sandy enough for Sandile to spend hours at a time avoiding the most hated grass. The water was well to Naazin’s liking, lazing in the shallows as clear water lapped at his hard shell.
Even Astazhei found enough wild Pokémon itching for a fight day-to-day to keep himself entertained, and on the days that the Tranquills and the Unfezants were few and far between, he was content with pushing himself with his weight harness.
That was not to say that the other two slacked off with their training. No matter how much Naazin may have wanted to. Aidinza might have been taking his time to cool down after the… After everything that went down, his resolve when he caught Naazin was unshaken even by the betrayal of someone he thought he could trust. Who he thought got it, who he thought understood. But he misjudged that did he not? Or maybe he was the one that did not understand…
Aidinza glances towards the clear river, away from where he was watching Naazin puzzle through the second stage of Water Pulse. No matter how much he lingered on this Route, his thoughts felt circular.
“It hardly even makes sense.” He mutters an increasingly familiar mantra under his breath, watching a vivid black and green fish dart about the clear waters, racing towards a hapless Marill. “I knew him for what? Days?” He sighs, not even bothering to finish the thought.
It was hardly like he would ever meet him again either, an accessory to terrorism and attempted premeditated murder, both of which he admitted to. Kaine was going to be put away for a long time. So it should be easy for Aidinza to just put him out of mind. Instead, he found himself trapped in a cycle of begrudgement, anger, and occasional self-loathing as his mind tried to puzzle why Kaine did what he did, and what Aidinza should have done differently.
It felt like it should have a simple answer right? Kaine did not care, was just there to exploit Aidinza’s moment of weakness. To dig at his insecurity and push Aidinza into his way of thinking.
It should be solved by Aidinza just telling himself that Kaine did not matter and that Kaine did not care. That a good conversation and a bed to sleep in was not worth this much thought.
The young nomad snorts, watching as the Marill turns around and slams a heavy tail into the fish pokemon - Basculin, he reminds himself - and sends it careening into the river bed. It was funny, he had spent more time thinking about Kaine and what he did than he had ever spent interacting with Kaine.
A snout pushes into Aidinza’s side, and his hand falls absently to scratch along the scaled ridges of Sandile’s eyes to a satisfied purr. “When did you start paying attention?” Aidinza twists to smile down at his starter and brings his left hand around to join in on petting the desert croc.
Sandile was probably the principal reason why Aidinza had not just spiralled into endless questioning of why. The care-lacking starter for all his bumbling outside of training or battle, was sharp to his Trainer slipping into his thoughts, and quick to distract him. “Maybe I was too quick to say that you only cared for training, play and fighting.” Aidinza pulled his hand from the ground type's head and he watched as Sandile strained to follow, pushing himself up on his tiptoes. After a moment, the croc overbalanced tilting forward and tumbling down the rock tail overhead into the soft sand below.
Unlike the first three times he had seen it happen, Aidinza hardly reacted, just leaning over slightly to look down at the crumpled heap of reptiles. “There is not a thought in that head, is there buddy?”
Sandile blinks up at him “Bwaah?” His jaws open in a wide yawn despite the fact half his body weight was pressing down on it, and his tongue lolled out.
Aidinza could not help the grin that split his face, as he let himself slip down the rock to scoop up his starter. “Now come on, the Sun loathes idle hands, and I want to get Bite down before we get to Mistralton.”
It was definitely a sign that Aidinza had been leaving Sandile and Astazhei alone together too much, that in response to that Sandile decided to nibble on Aidinza’s arm. Hopefully being tossed into the water would curb that behaviour.
An annoyed twitter hits Aidinza’s ears, and when he glances over he sees that he managed to toss Sandile at where Naazin was lazing in the shallow water.
“Yes that was intentional Naazin, just because I’m thinking does not mean that you can go have a nap in the river.” Aidinza watched as Naazin, realising that there was no real point in trying to argue with his trainer, turned a slightly less placid gaze onto Sandile. Aidinza shrugs and turns away, the two of them would be back to work soon enough.
Of course, he turned just in time to meet two white pupiled eyes staring up at him and see Astazhei half tangled up in his weight harness, caught in the middle of trying to add yet more bronze weights to his harness.
The rufflet blinks and slowly lets the bronze disc fall back into its bag, before trying to hop away. Only to find himself tripping over the weight harness he had tangled up.
“Truly, the Sun punishes the discontent.” It was going to take Aidinza forever to get him untangled, and Astazhei would not sit still for any of it.
-
Aidinza was not the only person meandering down the peaceful, winding road and as a trainer, especially someone trying to slip away from his own dominating thoughts, that meant only one thing.
“Naazin, Smack Down!” If two trainers' eyes meet, then it was fate for them to meet in battle. Or at least, that’s what it felt like to Aidinza. Nearly twice a day someone would come up or down the road, and nearly every time moments after a greeting, most days without even finding out the other person's name a battle was on.
“Protect.” This was one of those times. A middle-aged man, half his body inked and missing a finger had come down a slight hill, asked how many badges Aidinza had, and sent out a Pokémon. A flying bug to be specific, with four mostly translucent wings that buzzed up and down dozens of times a second, banded with an orange stripe that almost created a solid bar of orange.
While the bug seemed extremely fragile, it darted about the air in incredibly quick bursts, stopping and turning on a dime, and was seemingly capable of seeing everything coming at it at any moment.
It made for a frustrating opponent for Naazin. A single good hit would put it down for good, Aidinza could tell that. The past few weeks of fighting had given him more than a little familiarity with just how much punishment a pokémon could take. But getting the pokémon into a position where he could be hit…
Was made all moot by that Sun-blasted green shield.
Dozens of sharp rocks, flung into the air by the clauncher’s massive claw, scraped uselessly against the protective shell. “Aerial Ace!” And like clockwork, the moment that the assault was over, was the moment that the bug flickered forward, as fast as could be believed and slammed into Naazin sending both Pokémon skidding.
“Vice Grip!” And like a dance on repeat, Naazin and Aidinza attempted to snap at the agile pokémon and caught nothing but air, the Yanma flittering away as the sound of a whistle pierced the air. The young nomad glanced up at his opponent, hoping to gauge anything from his face, but he was stone-faced.
“Follow through, Water Gun!” A pressurised stream of water blasted out the end of Naazin’s Red Claw, slicing through the air just behind the flying bug. Aidinza’s lips twitched downwards, he had hoped that the bug had been lulled into the pattern by this point and that by adding something new he would catch it getting lazy.
But the bug was far too fast for that.
Aidinza would need something a bit more clever it seemed. “Yanma, Sonic Boom.” Maybe it was comparing Cacti to figs, but knowing the difficulty Astazhei had in changing direction, much less stopping at his full speed, and then seeing this bug manage to go from a dead sprint in one direction, to a total stop and facing the complete opposite direction? The only delay in movement seemingly is registering the command from his trainer.
As frustrating as the fight might be, the young nomad could easily acknowledge both how impressive the feat was, and how surely well trained the bug was. For a moment a flicker of disappointment played on Aidinza’s mind, a fight between this bug and Astazhei would have been fantastic.
And a lot more straightforward. The bug’s wings blur even faster, becoming little more than an orange and white glow, and with a harsh crack, a shock wave blasted through the air towards Naazin, slamming into his carapace. It was nowhere near a telling blow, a light jab if anything. But it was done uncontested, and even a single raindrop could drown a desert if it fell a million times.
The young nomad's dry lips pressed together, as he watched the bug type hang in the air for a moment, another whistle splitting the air seeing it diving straight back into its insane fli-
…
The whistle…
Aidinza was thinking that the bug was very well trained but… what if it was too well trained? His eyes traced along the seemingly random flight path, esoteric and unknowable even with a suspicion that it was a tightly trained pattern. Esoteric and unknowable, but oh so familiar as he stared at it.
But he did not need to figure out the pattern. If he could exploit the source no?
His eyes drift slowly up to his opponent, the half-inked statue of a man. In fact, Aidinza thought he had just the idea for this. Progress with Water Pulse had slowed to a crawl, neither of them really had context for just what needed to happen. So they started trying to experiment with Naazin’s other moves to try and find some inspiration. They had little luck on the Water Pulse front, but in the desert, a man who only used what he wanted was a Mandibuzz’s feast.
“Naazin, when I order you to use Bubblebeam, don’t shoot them, hold them behind you,” Aidinza muttered, just loud enough that he was sure that Naazin would hear it. “Pen it in.” He demands a start to another cycle and a signal for a barrage of Water Guns and Smack Downs.
A cycle that ends quicker than Aidinza expected, with a flicker of a green shell, and a shouted demand for an Aerial Ace.
“Bubblebeam,” Aidinza mutters again, then much louder. “Water Pulse.” It was on the surface Aidinza retrying a trick. Early on in the fight, he attempted to fake out the other trainer with a powerful move, an attempt to dissuade him from committing to his attack with the potent move.
Naazin’s large red claw lifts up, a stream of water spilling out and gathering into a tightly compressed ball, the first stage of Water Pulse.
The trick had worked before, Aidinza’s opponent calling off his pokémon to completely avoid the attack.
“Commit.” It did not work now. But it was not supposed to, it was just there to cover up the dribble of bubbles from the clauncher’s mouth. The bubbles from Bubblebeam were surprisingly malleable for a few seconds, able to be redirected.
Or held in place just out of view.
Of course, that meant that it was Naazin’s body that went slamming through the strangely viscous bubbles, as the two pokémon went skidding with the force of Aerial Ace. Ultimately, the bug was never directly hit by the bubbles, and it was just Naazin left to shout in pain.
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Yet Aidinza grinned nonetheless. It did not matter that the bug was not directly hit by them, as he caught sight of the Sun glinting off a new sheen on his opponent’s wing joint. It was splashed by it nonetheless, and the strange chemicals that turned bubbles into a genuine threat against monsters that could shrug off being punched in the face with the force of an explosion.
It would take literal seconds for that light film on the creature to thicken and harden, messing with the creature's range of motion in its wings.
Slowing it down.
“Water Gun.” Astazhei would account for it. Astazhei does account for it, whenever Naazin splatters him with a Bubblebeam. But if what Aidinza thought was happening was true then the bug would not account for it.
A whistle pierces the air.
The bug flitters away.
The water gun slams into its back, and it goes toppling.
One good hit.
Aidinza grins over at his opponent, who returns it with a nod and an annoyed huff as he moves over, hand rummaging through his pockets. “Two badges my ass.” He grunts, as he pulls out a few notes, and hands them over. “I’ve seen Miltank take less punishment.”
Aidinza shrugs and shoves the notes into his own pocket. But before he could properly reply the man had already put a dozen paces between them. The young nomad shrugs again, honestly not the briefest, nor the rudest conversation he had had on this route. Some people just desired brevity he supposed.
“Cool sands and wet winds. Traveller.” He calls after him nonetheless, making up for being cut off by the other man just sending out his pokémon. Aidinza glances over to his own pokémon, Naazin unlike his other pokémon was not pumped up by his victory. Instead, the placid lobster was stretched out in the shade a few meters, quick to a nap even without water nearby.
“You and I are going to be playing around with that Bubblebeam trick a bit more.” Naazin twittered, and stretched further, presumably trying to convince Aidinza to just let him sleep. The Ya’an-ah just shakes his head, glancing north as he wanders back over to his pokémon. He would be reaching Chargestone cave soon, and his meandering will be put to an en-
There’s a rustle above him, and his attention snaps to it. Placid as route six was, it would not be the first time that some bird pokémon had swooped down at him. But he catches nothing but a flash of burnt orange and pale blue.
Strange…
His hand falls to Astazhei’s pokéball for a moment, before he shakes his head and just returns Naazin. No need to chase trouble in some vain attempt to prolong his stay on the route.
As tranquil as Route Six had been, it was time to stop dragging his feet.
-
Sandile hated the colour green. Left alone near a patch of grass, he would take great delight in tearing it to shreds, ripping it up root and stem. He fought particularly hard whenever he was sent out against the Sewaddle line, and more recently, he tried to - unsuccessfully - gnaw a ferroseed’s spikes off.
Aidinza hears a low gurgle and resists the urge to sigh as he glances down.
Conversely, Sandile seemed enamoured with the colour blue. Maybe it was the recent presence of water near his beloved sand, maybe it was because, unlike green, blue things did not tickle at his scales, nor leave behind an unpleasant scratch.
Maybe he just had some wires crossed and it made him really like blue.
Whatever the reason, it meant that Sandile was delighted by finding blue things to show off, especially to his trainer. Which would be fine, Aidinza had read that dark-types presenting things to their trainers was a sign of a healthy relationship, where the dark type valued the trainer’s opinion and was seeking approval.
In the past two months, Aidinza had actually built up a small collection of things Sandile had brought to him. A stick that Sandile liked to gnaw on, a strangely shaped rock he found one day that if you squinted just right looked like a krookodile’s head, a nice blue flower with its stem utterly eviscerated, and the first thing Sandile had ever brought him - what instigated Aidinza to do a little digging into why Sandile was so insistent he take what seemed to be a piece of junk - a piece of vividly blue fabric, which sat tied around Aidinza’s right wrist, from the day he was given it.
The problem was simple, Chargestone Cave was, save for the parts covered by web, entirely blue.
Its rocks were blue, its pokémon, roggenrola and boldore, were predominantly blue. It was all illuminated by a blue luminescent glow that radiated out of yet more blue - usually floating - rocks. It even had a strange electric tang to the air that tasted blue.
Sandile looked up at his trainer with a gummy smile and held between glittering teeth, was a blue rock.
A blue rock like the nine other blue rocks that Aidinza had stuffed into his bags or pockets. Aidinza looked away, he nearly had two rocks for every day he had been in Chargestone, and he was quickly running out of places to put the rocks.
He knew he had to tell Sandile to put the rock away, at some point he had to put his foot down or he would end up having to throw away something to make room. He knew he had to take a deep breath and tell Sandile no.
So he takes a deep breath and glances back down at Sandile.
“Bwaah?” Sandile’s gummy smile spreads wide across his face, and his head tilts slightly, the rock held so delicately between jaws that it could crush it into dust, clinking lightly against his teeth. But nothing in the world could crush that rock more than that damn smile crushed Aidinza’s resolve to tell Sandile no.
“That’s a very nice rock, Sandile.” He kneels down, hand coming up to scratch at Sandile’s throat scales, earning a pleased rumble and after a moment the rock dropped into his hand.
Aidinza pauses as he examines the rock. It was different, smoother, with an inner light that flickered against Aidinza’s tanned skin. Different but not unfamiliar, the young nomads' eyes flicker to the side, towards a glowing blue rock nearly twice Aidinza’s size floating off the ground.
Carefully his eyes traced along the ceiling of the cavern, as his hand slowly explored the blue rock. This was the first time he had seen any of the rocks smaller than him, much less small enough to hold. A keen pain interrupts his search as his thumb wanders over a sharp edge.
Maybe it was just another oddity of this strange blue cave, whose rocks float and the air crackled with a colourful taste. But Aidinza was willing to bet that this rock was cut away from its whole, and judging by the lack of teeth marks, it was not done by Sandile.
“Did you sneak into someone’s camp and take this?” Despite addressing his starter, Aidinza continued glancing around the cavern he was in. He had tried touching one of the glowing rocks when he first entered the Chargestone Cave, and it took nearly three days for his hand to stop throbbing painfully.
Aidinza brings the rock up to just in front of his face, studying the dance of blue luminescence inside, before tracing his eyes along the precisely cut edge.
“Hello! I think my Sandile has taken your shiny rock!” Aidinza calls out, as Sandile bumps his snout into Aidinza’s shin, and splays himself over Aidinza’s left boot.
“I know, I watched him take it.” A rich, but strangely rough voice startles Aidinza, and he pivots on his left foot to half turn towards the source.
It was a tall, lanky boy with long well-kempt green hair, partially hidden underneath a white and black hat. “Cool sands and wet winds, traveller.” Aidinza nods at the man, and studies him as best he could side-on as he was. The green-haired boy was at a glance best described as delicate, his face boyish and expressive, and while Aidinza found his pale skin strange, it was far from sickly like he had seen in some people in the cities.
But most interesting to Aidinza were his eyes. Blue orbs glittered in the cave light glow with a cautious uncertainty, lost in a way that Aidinza knew had nothing to do with the winding tunnels.
“Greetings, I am N.” The boy inclines his head, the elegant, practised gesture a strange contrast to his rough voice.
“Aidinza. May the Sun watch over you.” Aidinza’s hand traces over his heart before he touches his forehead. Aidinza glances down at N’s belt as serendipitously as he could side on. The lack of pokéballs was strange after weeks of meeting nothing but trainers.
“You’re a trainer, aren’t you?” The boy talked like a deep desert Ya’an-ah teen, one who knew his words but was not yet comfortable with both his tongues. But the twist on his words was beyond strange, unlike anything that Aidinza had heard.
But maybe that was not saying much.
“Yes.” Aidinza feels Sandile shift on his foot, and glances down, hoping that he would get off so the nomad could turn to properly face N. When he glances back up, it's to catch the tail end of a strange expression. A twisting of his mouth, eyebrows just a touch lower…
The nomad could recognise disgust when he sees it.
Aidinza’s hand hovers lightly over his pokéball, a motion that did not escape N’s attention in the slightest. While the young nomad could see no pokéballs on ‘N’s’ body, that did not always mean that a trainer did not have Pokémon nearby.
Verdant green eyes met aqua blue, as the air grew tense and heavy. Aidinza could see expectation in N’s eyes, a certainty on just how this was going to play out. Tanned fingers played across the smooth metal of Astazhei’s Pokeball, and the moment stretched into a tense eternity.
Aidinza's ears pricked up, as the scrape of skittering chitin broke the silence between the two men. A sound that instantly tore Aidinza out of this strange territorial stand-off. Because it was a sound that he had been expecting for days at this point. All across Chargestone caves were massive cobwebs, the smallest merely man-sized, the largest spanning hundreds of metres, covering entire tunnels with silk that occasionally flickered with electricity.
Galvantula webs. Webs designed to entangle even the heaviest of rock-ground types, making up for their creators' usual inability to step toe-to-toe with them.
The issue was that Aidinza had yet to see even a Joltik in the cave. The sheer quantity of webbing meant there should have been thousands of Jolitk and hundreds of Galvantula, at the very least. Something had spooked the usually docile Pokémon away, and a spooked Galvantula was an agitated Galvantula.
His eyes flick over N’s shoulder and widen as he spots a truly behemothian example of the Galvantula species crawling across the blue stone roof of the cave, its two larger eyes focused on the green-haired boy only a few steps from Aidinza, its four smaller eyes little more than a dull shine in the blue glow.
It was moments away from spraying its webs and pouncing.
Aidinza did not wish to give it those moments, and so with a silent apology to Sandile he surges forward. He crossed the distance between him and N in moments before the Green Haired boy could even manage anything more than his eye widening. Aidinza’s right arm latches around N’s waist - thin and boney, he notes - as his boots skid slightly on the stone floor of the cave.
“What are yo-.” Aidinza meets the Galvantula’s hungry blue eyes for a moment, as it rears up on its hind legs, long pedipalps sparking with electricity. Aidinza shoves the two of them backwards, physically lifting the taller, but much lankier N.
A silken web infused with crackling electricity spewed out of the Galvantula’s mouth, crossing the air with shocking speed, before splitting into a wide net, blazing with lightning.
But its target had already moved, pulled away, leaving it nothing to envelop. But even still its ends caught Aidinza’s boots, the brutal electricity hardly dulled even by the thick leather, burning its way into his foot, and up his calves.
He collapses with a choked scream, nerves fried, right leg uncontrollable. He lands heavily on the unforgiving blue rock floor, pain lancing down his shoulder to mingle with the burn searing through his veins up his leg.
In a blind panic, he attempts to both scramble for the pokéballs at his waist and push himself up with his shoulders, only managing a useless, spastic motion, as the weak current still pumping through his boot kept his muscles seizing intermittently.
He was paralyzed, both from the electricity coursing through his body and from the pain it brought with it. He was not thinking clearly, and all he had to protect himself was Sandile against a behemoth of an agitated Galvantula and a hostile man.
In short, his situation was nightmare fodder. Even if Sandile managed to overpower the clearly fully mature Galvantula, there was all the chance in the world that the electricity still skipping through his veins would stop his heart before that could happen. Some insane corner of Aidinza’s mind, untouched by the pain by sheer obscurity, snorted and wondered if a situation could be nightmare-inducing if someone did not live long enough to have nightmares about it.
Then, the pain stopped. The electricity blistering through his body had for the moment, ceased, and not long after his spasming muscles calmed down. Though, it did little for the panic racing through his mind.
But what he saw when he managed to scramble to his feet, stopped it dead in its tracks.
There’s no room for panic when it gives way to the bafflement of watching a gigantic Galvantula fall apart like a puppy under the hands of a boy it out masses by at least ten kilos.
Aidinza pushes himself up on quivering arms, his balance slumping forward, as a low murmur hits his ears. N was saying something to the Galvantula. Sweet nothings or proper words Aidinza had no idea.
Was N… the Galvantula’s trainer? That thought was enough to spark the panic in Aidinza’s mind back up, through the confusing sight of a Galvantula… snuggling. Someone training a Galvantula that was agitated enough to snap attack another trainer was dangerous.
Sandile.
The name struck Aidinza with all the force of a sledgehammer. Where was his starter? The implications of a battle not currently raging was almost as terrifying to Aidinza as being paralyzed in front of a hungry Galvant-
A trill of noise floods Aidinza with relief, the welcome feeling of a smooth snout bumping into his side a soothing balm in the chaotic mess of the current situation. His hand limply falls down to scratch along Sandile’s scaly skin, and once again his emotions twisted down this heart-pounding roller coaster, as he was left wondering why in the world if Sandile was not hurt, there wasn’t a fight going on right now?
Before Aidinza had the chance to even properly process the thought, the sound of chitin skittering stole his attention again, head snapping up to track as the Galvantula stole away deeper into the cave, in a burst of explosive speed, an outbreak of frenetic energy and motion so patently unique to bug pokémon.
Though in some strange way the energy found itself mimicked in the way N twisted around and crossed the distance between him and Aidinza in moments, squatting over the still recovering Desert Nomad.
The two men watched each other for several long moments, blue-grey eyes meeting green with an almost inhumane intensity. Aidinza was not a small enough man to deny that the stare was unnerving, intimidating almost. Made him feel like he was being examined in a dozen different ways like his core was being drawn out and probed.
“You did not attack the Galvantula.” N breaks the silence first, the once strange rough voice, now remarkably fitting, like a prior veneer that tilted it into something uncanny had been stripped away.
“It was agitated and hungry, there are few ideas worse than making it more so with pain.” Aidinza sits further up, pulling one knee up to his chest. In part for comfort, in part to hide the way his hand hovered over his pokéballs.
Another long silence, another long moment of being dissected underneath N’s stare.
“You had no idea what you were doing.” Comes N’s certain declaration, the strange alien intensity in his eyes slowly falling away, to something more familiar. More human.
Aidinza’s eyes flick away for a moment. N was right, he had no real plan beyond getting N out of the way of the massive Galvantula.
N rocks back on his feet, the same uncertainty that glowed in his eye when the two of them first met, before N realised Aidinza’s status as a trainer. The look of a man with a lot to think about things that he had no particular desire to think about.
“Keep the stone,” N says abruptly, straightening up to his full height. “We have enough, and Sandile would not forgive me for attempting to take it back anyway.” Aidinza blinks, hand falling to his pocket, and the stone inside. He had managed to forget about the start of this whole thing.
Then without another word, N brushes past him, the lanky boy's long stride eating distance quickly. In moments he had disappeared into one of the dozens of different tunnels branching deeper into the depths of Chargestone Cave.
Aidinza pulls the rock out, feeling a slight tingle as his fingers run over the mostly smooth blue surface. He twines the blue fabric tied to his wrist around it, creating a makeshift bracelet.
He lightly taps the glowing stone, as he glances towards the tunnel N just disappeared into.
What a strange man.
Then, his lips thin as he glances to where the Galvantula had skittered away to.
What strange circumstances.
He adjusts the stone, as a tingling sensation spreads across his wrist, and glances down to where Sandile had taken to chewing at his singed boot.
“Time to go, buddy.” Sandile perked up, and with another glance backwards, they continued deeper into the cave.