The walk through the caves was quiet, the tension in the air so thick, you could cut it with a knife. Each of us were nervous, I knew; I could tell by the way he walked. His feet tenderly pressed into the ground in front of him, as if he thought the stone might crumble away under each step he took. Our newly lit candle lanterns flickered violently, shaking hands throwing the light everywhere in the cavern.

CLATTER

“Oh shit!” I shouted, my voice echoing.

Tomas jumped at my yell, the lantern’s jerky movements scattering light haphazardly all over the close, wet, cavern walls.

“Don’t scream like that,” he said, annoyed. “Who knows what’s in here.”

“Did you not hear that noise?!” I whisper-shouted, inching closer and closer to his back, and peeking behind me with wide eyes. “Something’s here!”

“That was probably a rock,” Tom said. “Or a drop of water. Or a fucking bat.”

I bit my lip, chastised. “Okay… probably. But still! How are you so nonchalant about this place? It gives me the creeps.” Unbidden, I shivered. It was cold here too, after all, we were technically underground.

“It’s just… I don’t know. I’m just glad we have light.” He lifted his lantern, examining the candle and its remaining height. “For however long we have left.”

His reminder that candles are not infinite hastened our pace, and we kept on walking.

We reached a large cavern, open and impossibly tall. Stalagmites extruded from the floor, great, massive mountains within the mountain, while some stalactites hung from the ceiling, an impossible mirror of the shapes below. Some touched, the water dripping down the mineral cones and cascading lazily down to the floor below. Looking around, I felt as if we were in some monster’s mouth, lined with gigantic immobile teeth.

“This must be where we’re supposed to take some particular path…” Tom said, staring at the map, holding the lantern up close to the parchment. “Looks like Sage wrote a warning on here, too. Beware of…” He huffed. “I can’t read his damn handwriting; it’s so tiny. But I’m sure it’s something unpleasant.” He looked up at me, worried. “Guess we should be really careful.”

I nodded; it definitely couldn’t hurt to be careful in here, although I couldn’t help but admire the beauty of the internal mountains. I sat down on a flatter rock to take a breather.

“So where are we supposed to go?” I looked around the room, past the magnificent mineral forms, and to the edges of the cavern, hoping to see some obvious directions we could go. The vast cavern showed several different openings, some larger than others.

Tomas sat down on a similar rock near me, examining the map. I swung my feet, waiting for him to say something, my toes not touching the ground.

I tilted my head, thinking. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you this,” I said. “What made you think I was a demon, back in the café?”

Tomas looked up, surprised. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “Uh, it’s hard to describe.”

I raised an eyebrow, which he may or may not have been able to see in our meager lighting. In any case, my silence must have got my point across well enough, because he continued.

“I can… see demonic auras,” he said, turning back to the map, his cheeks flushing.

That wasn’t what I’d expected, and I wasn’t sure what to say. “Uh... so what does mine look like? Like other demons’? Wait, do humans have visible auras?”

He shrugged. “I don’t see human auras, for whatever reason. Maybe we don’t have them. And I’ve not met a lot of demons to compare yours to. But I’m a fuck-up with everything else – I’m sure I just messed this up too. Maybe I was wrong from the beginning, and all of this was just a stupid misunderstanding and all my fault.” He sighed deeply. “It looks like we just follow right turns everywhere… that’s really easy to remember.”

He looked up from the map to see me watching him intently.

“You can’t be too much of a fuck-up,” I said. “You lit our lanterns, didn’t you?”

He smiled a small, crooked grin. “I just got lucky. I’ve been trying for years, eventually it was going to work.”

“I don’t think magic works that way,” I said. “Not that I can do magic or know anything about it outside of books.”

Tomas didn’t say anything, and instead just buried himself in the map.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Did you know that while demons don’t need runes to cast magic, they can’t even use them?” I said conversationally, killing time. “I read that in a book, somewhere. I find that fascinating.”

He paused, then went back to the piece of paper. “We should get moving,” he said. “I don’t want to stay in here any longer.” He looked up, searching for the correct path that he’d found on the map. “I think it’s this one,” he said, pointing to a dark opening to our left.

He stowed the map and got up, offering me his hand to get down from the rock I’d been sitting on. I took it, surprised by his politeness. We went on our way, edging between mineral formations and little puddles, our feet splashing through the clear water as we approached the opening.

Tomas held the lantern in front of him, took a deep breath, and then stepped through. I followed, close behind, my lantern held ahead as well. We walked for some time in silence, our footsteps the only sound aside from the usual ambience of the caves. I made it a habit to stare directly at Tom’s back, mindlessly and automatically following him.

He stopped abruptly. My face ran into the middle of his shoulders.

“Ouch,” I said, rubbing my nose. “What’d you stop for?”

Instead of speaking, he just lifted the lantern higher, and showed me what he had seen before I had.

A massive pile of rock blocked our path – the cavern had collapsed, sealing the tunnel. There was no way we’d be able to pick through that, and truthfully, I had no desire to travel somewhere that was clearly susceptible to collapse. I shivered, though the cold wasn’t the reason.

“I guess… we have to turn back.”

Tom nodded grimly. “It looks that way.”

We turned around, and the way back was much quicker than the way down. We’d lost some time, but not much. I felt hopeful that we’d be able to find an alternate route. Tom had said the caves looked like a maze – did that mean that they connected?

We reached the cavern, pausing to reexamine the map. I peered over Tom’s shoulder, curious. The map was filled with winding twists and turns, confusing paths that possibly crossed, and only a few that were marked to even exit the mountain. Whoever had made this map had dedicated themselves to traversing these caves, and there were many.

“I think if we take this entrance here, then cross into the twist on that side, it looks like we can go around where that block must be,” Tom said, indicating with his finger his proposed path.

“Alright,” I said. “I’m willing to try that.”

We found the entrance to our new path, which was just to the right of our initial one. The opening was significantly smaller, and we had to crawl on our hands and knees. Tom’s head kept striking the ceiling, as he kept looking forward and holding a lantern with one hand. I, on the other hand, had no problem with this issue. I also put my lantern in my sack, satisfied with Tom’s lantern.

“Let me know if you want to switch and have me carry the lantern in front,” I suggested, after a little while of crawling uncomfortably like this.

It didn’t feel fair that he had to push forward the whole time. Crawling in this tunnel was awkward even without balancing a lantern in one hand.

Breathing heavily, Tom paused to wipe some sweat from his brow. “I’m alright. Thanks, though. It’s got to get bigger soon.”

We kept crawling.

A few minutes later, and Tom was sort of right. The cave had gotten bigger – horizontally. It was wide, and still just as short.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he said.

I stifled a giggle, despite the severity of our travels, it really was funny.

We continued on, and eventually, the cave did increase in height, allowing me to walk completely straight up, and Tom with his head only slightly down.

“We should be coming up on the turn, soon…” he said, pausing to take out the map again. “Look for an opening on the right.”

I nodded, remembered he couldn’t see me behind him, and then responded with an affirmative sound.

We walked, both lanterns out and held high now. Something felt wrong, though, and I didn’t like it. I couldn’t describe what I was feeling, except that we weren’t alone. It was as if I could sense the presence of another living creature, watching, waiting… I shivered, again, not from the cold.

The opening on our right appeared around the next bend, just as Tom’s map had predicted.

“I get the feeling that we should be fast about this,” I whispered to Tom. “These caves are giving me the creeps.”

He nodded. “I agree. I’m getting sick of being underground, anyway.”

We entered the new path, crossing through the opening, and kept walking. It was a much wider tunnel, getting wider and wider with each step we took.

Another bend, and suddenly we were in a large cavern.

And at the edge of a gorge.

“Stop!” Tom whispered, holding me back though I’d already stopped.

“I can see the abyss below, Tom,” I chastised, though I wasn’t upset for his concern for me. I was glad that he wouldn’t let me fall off of a cliff.

“No…,” he said, his voice shaking. “Look up.”

He had frozen, his lantern held before him, the candle flame flickering with his trembling hands. I followed his gaze, my eyes squinting to see in the darkness.

I could see our path, following the edge of this massive cavern filled with shadows, not more than a slight ledge. It didn’t appear that that was what Tom was looking at, so I stared into the emptiness of the cavern straight ahead. Looking closer, I could see what looked almost like a giant form, expanding just so slightly, then collapsing. As if it was breathing.

I looked up, unable to see the ceiling. What was hanging there, suspended?

“Tomas, what – “

I saw two horrible, pale yellow eyes open, glaring directly at us.

“Oh, fuck.”