Chapter Five Hundred and Four - Lighter

Awen and Desiree both had better light-making magic than I had. Awen with her Glass-magic, which she could empower with a bit of magic to turn a bulb of glass into a bright beacon, and Desiree with a rather unique spell that created two balls of light on the end of her tails, each individually brighter than my own Lightball spell.

I just kept my lightball tied to my ear tip to give us some idea of where the ceiling was, and of course Orange glowed warmly where she was cuddled in my arms.

With the four of us providing some light and no freaky darkness magic keeping the area shrouded in shadows, the weird gashed walls weren't nearly as scary. It was pretty easy to navigate the tunnels.

Easy, but not... simple.

The tunnels might have been well-built, but they were also kind of confusing. We passed several intersections, only pausing long enough for Awen to scratch a marking on the wall pointing in the direction we were walking.

As we entered on of the intersections, Awen frowned and inspected the floor. "There's an incline here," she said.

"There is?" I asked. I knelt down, careful not to squish Orange any more than she'd be during a hug, and then eyed the ground. It looked pretty even to me.

Awen searched her pockets and came out with a piece of string. A few moments later, and there was a tear-shaped bulb on the end. She lowered the bulb to the ground and held it by the far end of the string. "See?" she said.

A plumb bob! With the string hanging straight down, I could see that the floor sure did have a slight angle. "Wow, you're right! How did you even notice?" It was only off by a couple of degrees. I had lived in homes that had floors more uneven than that.

"Huh? I thought it was kind of obvious?"

"Do you believe that we ought to go uphill, then?" Desiree asked as she eyed the turn in question. The tunnel didn't look any different to the others as far as I could tell.

"I think so," Awen said. "No matter what, we want to go up toward the surface."

"Makes sense to me," I said. "Let's leave another mark though, just in case."

We did more than that. Awen scratched a curved arrow on the wall, a small explanation that we went that way, and then created a glowing arrow of glass in the middle of the path showing which way we went in.

We wanted to be sure that any friend behind us would eventually find their way back to us. I could easily imagine how awful it would be to be stuck in a space like this all alone for more than a few minutes, and that wasn't the kind of fate I'd ever want to leave one of my friends in. And that old man? How had he managed for so long?

Was he going to leave now? I... really hoped so. I kind of felt guilty that I hadn't managed to convince him to leave better.

As we started up the tunnel, I felt it starting to rise. By the time we reached another intersection, there was a definite angle to the floor, enough that someone might stumble and miss a step if they weren't careful.

The ground levelled off ahead according to Awen, but the passage to our right climbed once more, so off we went in that direction after leaving more markers behind. It didn't take long that we heard something out ahead.

My ears twitched up, and I saw Desiree tilt her head to one side, her own fox ears shifting slightly. "Is that whistling I hear?" she asked.

"Calamity!" I shouted.

The whistling stopped, and soon footsteps were coming closer.

I met Calamity with a big glomping hug that sent Orange scurrying out of my arms a moment before collision. "You're alive!" I cheered.

"What? Was there any doubt about that?" he asked as he quickly returned the hug with a manly pat on my back and then pulled away. "I'm not so easy to get rid of, Broccoli. Ah, and you found Awen and Desiree already... and Orange?"

He looked down at Orange. She replied with a faint flick of the end of her tail.

"I called her when the dark got... a little too dark," I said.

"Ah, yeah, that'll do it," he replied with a nod. "It did get dark. And here I thought my cat eyes were best suited to navigating in the dark, but I couldn't see a single thing even with them. We were teleported, right?"

"I... guess so. This doesn't look like the mines," I said.

"Well, one man's dark and dusty tunnel is another man's creepy underground fortress." He shrugged, then greeted Awen and Desiree. After chatting for a minute, we discovered that he'd had the same idea, and was travelling upwards, though he hadn't thought to leave any marks behind except for a few scuffs of his shoes. He suggested that I use some Cleaning aura too, to make the path we took clearer, and because the dust in the air was making him sneezy.

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With Calamity with us, I felt a bunch more confident. He had the right kind of skills to lead us through the tunnels, and could more or less confirm that he knew which way was north even after being teleported and turned around. He said that had more to do with being a cat than any navigational skills, but I wasn't sure about that.

In any case, we weren't heading into the mountain, which was good, it meant that as long as the tunnels continued to climb, we'd eventually break through the surface.

We were five or so minutes deeper into our walk when I heard someone coming up from behind. Instinctively, we all stopped. All three of us beast-types twitched our ears toward the sound, while Awen reshaped one of her floating glass lanterns to focus the beam down the tunnel. However, behind us was a sharp bend in the tunnel, so we couldn't actually see very far.

The footsteps got closer.

Desiree's tails had poofed up, and Awen had unlimbered her crossbow, but ... I felt calm, and Calamity had a neutral expression on his face. I caught his gaze, and he just gave an unconcerned shrug.

"Let's hold here for a minute and see who it is," I said, in the most confident voice I could.

Evidentially, that was pretty confident, because Desiree relaxed and Awen lowered her crossbow.

Maybe I had gone a little loopy, or maybe it was Friendmaking or something, but I had a feeling that anyone we met in here was likely a friend.

It was neither a friend, nor an enemy, but a strange grenoil man in padded armour and with a sort of very large pith hat on. We stared at each other, at least until I noticed the Exploration Guild pin on his clothes. I flashed my own, and Awen did the same, and then we greeted him properly.

As it turned out, he had been lost in the dark for at least a day. Or what felt like a day to him, he said that telling time was difficult when he couldn't see anything at all. Worse, his mana had run out and he had been feeling rather terrible for the last bit. I could hear the relief in his voice as he spoke.

He was more than willing to join us to search for the others as long as it meant that he'd have a good chance to get out of here. When he learned that we were with Sir Aberrforth, his mood was mixed. The man had kind of abandoned him and his companions to go on what this guy felt was a foolish quest to woo a woman who didn't want anything to do with him.

We continued upwards, Calamity rubbing the grenoil's back as the man muttered about his experiences. I felt like maybe I should ask the guild master about therapy and such. Was that something offered to members? It felt like maybe it ought to be if it wasn't. That, or group hug sessions.

Eventually, I made out some light ahead of us, way off in the distance. It was a pale whitish-blue light that I instantly recognized. We picked up the pace, came around a corner, and I found myself laughing as I rushed towards a narrow-eyed Amaryllis.

"Wait!" she snapped.

I came to a stop mid hug-run. "Huh?"

Amaryllis was eyeing me, a hand splayed ahead of her. Behind, there was Sir Aberrforth, Laine, and two grenoils in explorer gear, one was recognizably the one we'd found earlier in the mines. "How do I know you're really Broccoli?" she asked.

"Uh... are we worried about clones and illusions again?" I asked.

"That darkness had to be high-level illusion magic," she said. "So yes."

"Oh. Well, I hadn't thought of that. Oh! We have Orange with us! That's proof?"

"No it's not. Orange wasn't with us before, so if anything that's the opposite of proof."

"Oh," I said.

Her arm lowered. "But it might be. No one would purposefully make their illusion as... dimwitted as you."

"Yay!" I said as I rushed ahead and grabbed Amaryllis in a tight-tight hug. "I'm happy you're my friend," I said as I held her close. I'd seen too many futures where she wasn't to dismiss what I had. And what I had was a fantastic bunch of friends that I wouldn't change for anything.

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