“I'm Lisa,” The captive answered, “Please keep your dragon away… I hate dragons!”
Timothy didn’t want to hold a young lady captive, especially this hairy one who looks tough enough to beat him up, he didn’t want to make her an enemy. However, meeting her here has raised a lot of questions, though he was terrified, he was also itching to know everything!
“Lisa, I need you to relax, okay? I just have two questions, and after that you can be free to do whatever you want.” He promised, and tried to appear calm for the sake of cooperation, but in reality he was really worked up.
When the other nodded, he asked. “How long have you been in these caves, and how did you end up down here?”
“I've been here ever since I was born,” She answered, and the indifference in her tone vouched that she was telling the truth. “My parents were born here too, and my grandparents as well. Our ancestors were miners, but they were blocked in here by the lava that Saranax summoned.”
“Well, holy shit…” Tim's mouth hung agape for a second, and then he tapped on Billy's back, to have him free the captive. “So, you never saw grass and shit like that?”
“My parents spoke of it, but I never saw it myself.” Lisa admitted, and as she stood up, she asked. “Is it true that it tickles your feet?”
“I mean it depends, but oftentimes yes.” He said, and Lisa seemed like the happiest girl in the world once she heard that answer.
However, considering the uniqueness of this situation, Timothy didn't leave her alone with her thoughts for long, and therefore wiped the smile off of her face with another question. He had to be thorough, because this may be the most unique, and severe case of isolation in all of Valporovus!
“How did your people survive down here? How many of you were there in the beginning?” He asked.
“Fifty miners were trapped here in the beginning, about three-hundred years ago, twenty of them were women. After being trapped down here for more than five years, I guess everyone just decided to reproduce, because down here there was a greater strength in numbers. They ate rats, snakes and insects to stay alive, to survive, and this was substantial for a long time, until it finally wasn’t. Throughout these past fifteen years, we've been struggling with food a lot. I buried a lot of my people, and although there were forty of us just fifteen years ago, they all died off. Now, it's just me, I was unfortunate enough to survive.” She recited.
“Jesus… that's really sad.” He sighed, this was a terrifying story. “Okay, you're free now, but I'm also going to try and get some food in your gut as quickly as I can. First, we'll have Billy here go and fetch you another dragon, because we have to fly you across the lava pool. You're gonna bear with me until we get to the other side.”
Billy the dragonfly understood the conversation, so he beamed down towards that lengthy tunnel afterwards without even being asked to, and left the two goblins alone. He was likely to return after a couple of minutes, though.
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Anyway, after Billy left, Tim had to ask one more question. “Is there anything else important in these caves, anything of value? I need you to be honest with me now, because we have a guy who can tell if you're lying. You shouldn't lie to your heroes.”
At first, Lisa seemed hesitant to answer, but considering the circumstances, there wasn’t any other way around it. Her hesitation gestured that she knew of something really important!
“The lava, there's something below the lava. That's why Saranax appeared to begin with, he was protecting whatever it is that my ancestors found.” She said, and left the other covered in goosebumps.
There was a lot more intrigue to this trip then he thought, that was for sure. This was no meaningless mine-clearing mission, no, and he even started believing that the gods were messing with him again! The latter was plausible, but he had to decide what to do with this new information regardless, and he had to decide quickly, because theoretically, there wasn't anything that could prevent another, powerful dragon from appearing out of thin air! He didn't want to deal with another Saranax, because they would all die.
“Guess I should figure something out before the system takes those points away from me,” He thought, “These bastarding caves could be only temporarily safe, I can’t rule that out, so I gotta get below that lava as soon as possible. Maybe there’s a dinosaur below the lava or some shit, maybe there is someone I can bargain with…”
…
Bolivamus Tal the Greater, or Billy for short, got to the other side of the lava pool, and reconnected with his friends. Everyone panicked when they saw him return without Timothy, even the dragons panicked, but Skendus helped make sense of things, because he could read through the pictures within the dragon’s head.
“Tim's okay,” He confirmed.
In one way he was relieved that his friend was alive, but what he was about to say next got him and Ortana very tense again. It would appear that these caves had endless issues, and the team were saddled with fixing those issues! They felt really unlucky.
He explained, “Tim found another goblin down there, and judging from how hairy she is, she has to be one of the miners. She's an Armor-hide Goblin through and through.”
“Hairy is okay, let’s just hope she's not godly. We've dealt with enough godly creatures today.” Ortana added.
Ortana had Arvena rest over her lap, because she didn't want to leave her unconscious body unsupervised. There was no telling when she was going to wake up. Furthermore, Ortana had the feeling that there were plenty of Yellow-bellied Cave Snakes around here, so she'd rather not have their only official guide in this micro-universe get eaten by a random snake.
Anyway, about two minutes later, Skendus asked her. “How do you feel, Ortana? I don't want to pressure you considering everything that's happening, but something weird is going on with you.”
“Weird?” She parroted, though she wasn't oblivious to what the other was trying to say.
“Yes, really weird.” He insisted, and then added. “I can't read your brain anymore, Ortana. Did you escape the God's Punishment Realm of mana back there?”
“No, I did not.” She refused.
Afterwards, she raised her hands up in front of her face, to look at her golden veins once more. Almost instinctively, she summoned something that she had been avoiding for a few minutes now! She summoned a very physical spear on her hands, and it had the same shape, and color scheme as the spear that Arvena had summoned earlier on, before she fainted!
Ortana held the heavy spear in her hand, and said. “I don't think this can bring down a lava dragon, maybe it can just kill a snake, I don't know? The gods wanted me to have this ability, though, and I was unfortunate enough to receive it without my say-so.”