Jun rushed to the entrance of the cave and peeked out around the corner, freezing at what she saw. Besides the friendly talking cat and the occasional screen that popped up in her vision, she'd be able to forget that this was a world filled with magic, but that was no longer the case. A strange creature stood outside the cave looking around as if searching for something.

It looked like a mix of a lizard, gorilla, and dog mixed together. It had a long canine snout for a face, it's skin covered in an ugly mix of scales and fur. Its four limbs ended in 4 fingered clawed hands that looked wickedly sharp in the morning light. The only thing that came to Jun's mind was "monster!"

Stifling a scream, Jun hugged herself against the wall of the cave and peeked out around the corner, watching the dog-monkey-lizard as it moved around the clearing. She watched as it stopped and sniffed all over the rock she was just laying on earlier before it found the backpack she'd left on the ground next to it. The creature snarled, revealing sharp teeth as it snatched the bag up and violently shook it while shredding the bag with its claws!

A shreds of the tough leather bag went flying as the monster tore through it, Jun gasped loudly before slapping a hand over her mouth as she realized her mistake, but it was too late!

The monster dropped the remains of the bag and whipped its head toward the cave, eyes narrowing as it peered into the darkness. Jun ducked her head back around the corner and prayed, hoping the monster hadn't seen her!

She had no such luck.

Claws scratched against stone as the monster entered the cave. Jun could hear it snuffling in the darkness as it drew closer to the blind corner behind which she hid. Could it smell her?

A scaly snout burst out of the darkness around the corner, faintly illuminated by the light of the cooking fire deeper in. Jun stifled a squeak as she carefully stepped back to the camp and desperately looked for something to defend herself. Her eyes immediately locked onto the long knife she'd used to carve up the roast. It was about 6 inches long with a rounded tip like a chef's knife and a simple wooden handle. It was a kitchen tool, but it was at least something sharp!

As quietly as she could, Jun hurriedly picked up the knife and turned around holding the knife out in front of her with two shaking hands, fully expecting to see the monster emerging from the darkness. It wasn't there. Still holding the knife in her shaking hands, Jun crept back towards the entrance of the cave ready to lash out with her knife at anything big and scaly. Her back against the cave wall, she cautiously peeked out at the entrance. It took all of her willpower to turn what would have been a gasp or a scream into a quiet, sharp inhale. The monster lay curled up on the cave floor, its bulk blocking most of the sunlight from the cave's entrance. She was trapped!

Retreating back to the campfire, Jun looked around, hoping she might find something to get her out of this situation. Her eyes fell upon the cheerily burning fire as half-remembered science lessons came back to her. Fires burned air! A fire burning in a cave like this should have used up all the oxygen, or at least filled the space with smoke, unless there was somewhere for the smoke to go, and somewhere for the air to replenish from! She wasn't dead, and the fire still burned, so that had to mean there was a vent or exit of some kind that she could get through, right?

She excitedly looked up, reasoning that since smoke went up, it was the most obvious place to check first. A dark stone ceiling, stained with ash and illuminated by the flickering light of the campfire below, sloped up and away into the darkness, no obvious cracks or holes in sight. Jun eyed the ledge above the campfire alcove the cat had slept upon the night before, tracing the stone with her eyes. She couldn't see much beyond the edge the cat had laid upon, shrouded in shadow as it was. Maybe there was another way out up there?

Eyeing the ledge twice her height from the cave floor made her uneasy. She'd never done any rock climbing, but there were a few rocks and cracks in the wall that she might be able to use to climb up? Walking over to the cave wall, she moved to climb up before realizing she still tightly gripped the kitchen knife in her right hand. She briefly considered holding it in her teeth like one of those heroes from action movies, but images of her slipping and falling, only for her to land on the knife filled her head. She couldn't take it up with her!

Besides, she reasoned, if there is another way out up there, I won't need to defend myself from the monster, right?

She set the knife down on the rock where she'd found the knife the night before then started climbing. The rocks were sharper than she expected and bit into her hands, reminding her once again of her lack of calluses. Her breasts seemed pretty average in size to her when she'd first discovered her new body, perhaps even a bit smaller than average, but they made themselves known as she clung to the side of the cave wall! They kept getting in the way slightly, her chest scraping and catching slightly on every protruding rock. Her shirt helped keep everything in place, but several times she felt and heard the fabric catch and tear as she climbed!

Blushing in embarrassment and holding back tears from the latest scrape her girls had to endure, she heaved herself over the edge of the ledge and rolled onto the stone shelf. She laid there for a moment, catching her breath from the strenuous but short climb. The stone shelf proved to be just the end of a tunnel leading deeper into the earth. The ceiling was so low that Jun would hit her head on the ceiling if she tried to sit straight, and she was pretty certain she was a lot shorter than the 6 feet she'd been on Earth.

Peering down the deep hole, she felt a whisper of air flowing deeper in. Excited at the prospect of another exit, Jun hurried down the dark passage, following the flow of air. The tunnel proved to be surprisingly straight and quickly opened up until it was wide enough that she couldn't touch both walls with both of her hands outstretched and Jun could comfortably stand with her hand raised and still not touch the top of the tunnel. A few minutes of scrambling through the dark later was when Jun first noticed a faint glow ahead.

Light meant the outside! The outside meant an exit! Happy that her guess had been the right one, Jun picked up her pace, shrugging off the stubbed toes and near falls that came with the increased speed. The glow brightened rapidly as she moved, soon giving enough light that she could barely make out the outline of her hand stretched out in front of her. The improved light helped her avoid obstacles on the uneven tunnel floor, which in turn drastically sped up her exploration.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

The tunnel soon led out into a wide cavern filled with rocks and boulders, as if it had recently suffered a cave in. A large hole in the ceiling opened up the cavern to the blue sky above with tree roots questing down the sides of the hole. Jun's hope waned as she eyed the skylight above. It was at least 50 feet above the cavern floor, and the roots barely came halfway down the side of the hole. There was no way she'd be able to climb out that way!

Making a full circle around the well lit cavern, her hope died by inches and slivers. It was a dead end. There were no other tunnels besides the one she'd come through, or if there were, they were long buried by the rubble strewn about the place. She shivered at that thought, imagining the weight of the mountain above crushing down on her in a rain of stone and earth. She suddenly didn't want to stay here for long, the previously sturdy walls of the cave suddenly feeling flimsy. Nervously, she moved back to the tunnel, her eyes darting between it and the ceiling above, ready to bolt at the slightest hint of a cave in.

Keeping her eyes glued to the ceiling proved to be a mistake as her boot landed on something that crunched and slid, sending her tumbling to the floor!

Pain lanced through head as she landed chin first on the ground, barely avoiding biting through her tongue as her teeth slammed shut! "Ow..." Jun lay sprawled out on the ground for a few seconds, cursing herself for not checking where she was stepping.

Jun pushed herself into a seated position and gently poked her throbbing chin, wincing at the fresh bolt of pain that shot through her jaw. "Definitely bruised, fuck me!" Hissing curses at herself, she looked back at what she'd fallen over. A white stick of some sort stuck out from beneath a pile of rock. Blinking, Jun moved closer to examine the strange stick. It was had knobs on one end and splintered where she must have stepped on it. She moved to shift the pile of rocks trapping the other end when she froze, her eyes catching sight of another piece of the gleaming white material sticking haphazardly out of the pile of rocks. She recognized what it was immediately. How couldn't she? She'd seen hundreds of them every Halloween, in videogames and cartoons, even in the tattoos on her father's arms when he- Jun interrupted that last thought, forcibly shoving it down.

Empty sockets stared at her from pile of stone, a tremble running through her as she returned its unblinking stare. The skull was human, broken with a large hole running through its temple. She shivered, her hand absentmindedly touching the same place on her head as she shivered. "S-sorry..." Jun scooted away from the pile, pebbles clattering as she pressed against another haphazard pile of stone. The skull continued to gaze at her, unblinking, her apology gone unacknowledged.

Guilt at disturbing this person's grave ate at her. She'd come here trying to escape from a monster, but she'd ended up disturbing a grave! She thought back to her attempts to clean up after herself, to do at least one small thing before the monster trapped her. There wasn't much she could do to make up to this unknown person, but she could still try!

Jun pushed herself up, wincing as her ankle flared with pain. With a muffled grunt, she limped over to the grave in front of her and carefully dug out the bones, soon revealing most of a skeleton. The bone she'd tripped over was the skeleton's arm, it's hand buried by the pile of rubble on the other side of the path from her. Turning to the other pile, she repeated her work, stones clattering as she moved them by hand, searching for the skeleton's hand. She soon found the skeleton's hand and quickly worked to free it, but its fingers were wrapped tight around something. Sighing, she continued her excavation, quickly revealing that the hand was clasped around the shaft of a weapon!

Caked dirt compacted around the hand, holding it tight around the shaft of the weapon. Jun gently brushed the caked dirt away, layer by layer, before the skeletal hand released, allowing her to pull it free and bring it together with the rest of the now laid out skeleton. She gathered rocks and pebbles from the piles she'd dug through and painstakingly buried the skeleton.

----------------------------------------

The light in the cavern brightened and began to wane again before she was done with her task. Where before there had been a narrow path between two piles of rubble there was now a neatly arranged third pile greater than the two before and a much wider path between the two now much smaller piles.

Jun wiped the sweat from her brow, leaving behind a muddy streak from her dirt encrusted hands, then clasped them together and bowed her head toward the new grave in prayer. "I'm sorry for disturbing your rest. May your next life be filled with happiness and joy, wherever it leads you."

Memories of her own experience came back unbidden. She wasn't sure if the person whose remains she'd buried would have a similar experience or not, and she wasn't sure if anything she did mattered, but her spirit felt lighter for it anyways. Whether it mattered or not to the universe, it was important to her. She hadn't known this person in life, but the least she could do is respect them in death.

Shoulders drooping, she ended her silent contemplation and looked up at the skylight above. She'd run in here sometime in the middle of the morning, but the angle of the light had nearly reversed since she'd first come in here. It was getting late, and the monster might still be blocking the exit from the cave. She wondered idly if the cat would be back soon, expecting her to feed him. Wait... the monster! The cat! Fear shot through her for the cute black cat that'd helped her yesterday. It might not know about the monster that was bigger than her sleeping in the cave! Images of the cat coming back expecting dinner, only to be attacked by the monster filled head alongside a rising feeling of dread.

She couldn't let that happen! She wouldn't! But what could she do? It wasn't like she was a soldier. She'd never really fought before, just that one time back then... No. Can't think about that now! The dark memories that had tried to sneak back out were brutally crushed back down. She thought about the monster, about how big it was. She needed a weapon. The knife she'd left by the campfire was sharp, but it was more tool than weapon. She wasn't sure that would be enough.

Jun glanced at the rocks around her before her gaze landed on the recently constructed cairn. If only she had a weapon like that person had...her eyes snapped back to where she'd freed the person's hand. There was a weapon there! It might be old, but it might be better than nothing!

Hobbling back to where she'd extracted the hand, she hurriedly swept away the remaining dirt and rocks and pulled the weapon free, shaking and brushing the worst of the caked on dirt away. Her eyes widened and a slight smile curved her lips as its form was revealed. This should work!

Clutching her new weapon in her hands, she turned back to the grave of the unknown person and bowed in thanks. "I'm sorry again for disturbing your rest, and I'm sorry I'm taking your weapon, but I need it. May the universe bless you." She pushed all of her intent into her apology, not sure if it was just her imagination as she felt something warm flow out of her chest.

Straightening her back, Jun turned back toward the tunnel that led back to camp and the monster. Squeezing the weapon tight, she felt warmth flood her limbs.

"Let's do this."